s3e05: The Cost of Living

Maybe it's just me, but I think this episode title is a veiled reference to the moving-violation arrests that preceded the deaths of Ana Lucia, Libby, and now Mistereko. It's like Abrams, Lindelof and Cuse saying to the actors, "You want your character to keep living? Don't do anything off the set that might land you in trouble. No drinking and getting behind the wheel of a car. That's the cost of living, my friends." I guess it actually refers to the "vaccines-for-protection" arrangement from the Eko flashback (by the way, can we officially get suspicious of any future flashback that doesn't feature Jack, Kate, or Sawyer yet? We're now 3-for-3 on characters getting flashback episodes right before dying, with Libby being the only counterexample, but she was also the least fleshed out of the characters to go), but still.

Back in St. Othersburg, Jack tells Benry Gale he knows about the tumor. Benry stonewalls him, but later not only confesses that he has a tumor, but suggests that the entire thing has been a plot to get Jack to do the surgery, as he reveals that he found out about his tumor two days before the plane crash. Benry was trying to set up a scenario to condition Jack to like him and want to do the surgery. And clearly, locking him in a room is the best way to do that. It's revealed that Juliet was chosen to be Jack's minder specifically because she "bears a striking resemblance to [Jack's] ex-wife." A striking yet superficial resemblance? I suppose I can see it a little bit, but then they really had a limited selection, right? Even if she looked nothing like Sarah, she probably would still have done it just because she was blond and a woman. At the end of the episode, Juliet reveals via super-secret video that she and possibly some others in the group (other Others? Ba-dum-pssh!) would like nothing more than for Jack to "accidentally," wink-wink, kill Benry Gale during the surgery. Coup-d'e-freakin'-tat!

Meanwhile, Eko has visions of his brother and wanders into the jungle. Locke, Sayid, Desmond, and a couple of contract players head for the Pearl, so they all end up in the same place. Eko's brother's body has vanished from the plane, and then Eko is seeing very tangible visions of him. In the backstory, we find out that Eko killed some gangsters while posing as a priest, and that the building of the church he was doing was based on something a woman told him, that because he had defiled his brother's church by committing murder inside, he "owe[d] him a church." Why he thought that project was worth abandoning to push the button is never really explained, and now it won't be because after his brother's vision apparently reveals itself as some sort of shape-shifting demon (I have no idea either), the black smoke shows up big-time, forms into a hand, flings Eko around, and EKO FUCKING DIES.

I thought Naveen Andrews was being a bit whiny last year when Shannon was killed off and he huffed about how he thought characters were being killed for no reason, but it seems like we're going that way. What purpose did killing Eko serve? How are we going to learn more about the questions that were raised in this episode? I can't say it makes a ton of sense to me. And he was one of the best characters in the show! Can't they just kill the completely useless Charlie already? Seriously, please. If he makes it to the end of the run while all these other interesting characters get slapped aside, the finale better include a scene of the black smoke wearing headphones and rocking out to a Driveshaft CD.

Oh, and there's some eyepatch-wearing guy in another hatch, although which one or where it is, we don't know. That's the sort of tantalizing clue that's just interesting enough not to be answered for another year and a half. This was at least a pretty well-done episode overall, but it ended with a couple of the most frustrating aspects of the show.

Next week: the fall season finale already. If they have sixteen more episodes to run after this, and they're going to run them in sixteen straight weeks like I heard, that's cool, but on the other hand it means no more Lost until what, late January? Early February? Bring it back for February sweeps and run it straight through May sweeps? That's a long break, even if it means no interruptions for most of the season - I already waited four months for the third season to start, and now after wetting my beak, I have to wait another almost three months for the rest of it? Oof. Anyway, the teaser promises the best episode of the year so far (I'll believe it when I see it). At the very least it'll probably have the best cliffhanger, no? It also has Sawyer's life apparently in danger yet again, a plot involving Benry's tumor, and Kate flashbacks.