s4e08: Meet Kevin Johnson

Not much beating around the bush this week. Miles reveals to Locke's camp that he's here for Ben, and doesn't exactly deny it when Ben says that if he is captured, the Freighters will kill everyone else, per Widmore's orders. Ben then reveals at Hurley's prompting that Michael is his spy on the boat. It's off to the boat, then, where Sayid forces Michael to tell his story. And tell he does, over most of the rest of the episode.

Michael attempts to kill himself by crashing his car, with a note to Walt pinned to his chest. Walt is now living with Michael's mother and won't speak to his father - it is implied that at some point, Michael had to explain to Walt just what he did to get them off the island. Also, this way we don't have to see clearly-older Malcolm David Kelley for more than a second. Pretty crafty, writers. Michael tries again to kill himself, this time with a gun, until Tom steps out of the shadows. They fight, and Tom eventually points the gun at Michael, who urges Tom to shoot. Tom says that Michael can't die even if he wants to, because the island won't let him. Michael tries to shoot himself again but the trigger just clicks, even though it's fully loaded. After seeing that 815 has been found, Michael runs back to find Tom.

Tom (who is briefly shown to be gay, because why not, I guess) explains that Widmore faked
the Bali crash site so that no one would go looking in the right area and possibly stumble across the island. Naturally this contradicts with the suggestion in the last episode that Ben was behind the fake. Tom's explanation seems a little more convincing - he actually has evidence, and of course it's possible that Widmore would have lied to the freighter's captain - but who ever knows with the Others. At any rate, Tom tells Michael to join the crew of the freighter so that he can kill everyone on board. Michael tries, via bomb, but it's a dud - a little flag goes up saying "Not yet." Ben, pretending to be Walt, calls Michael on the boat (clearly the only way he could call without arousing suspicion) and tells him that the difference between Ben and Widmore is that Ben doesn't kill innocent people. Michael is instead ordered to make a list of the people on the boat, then sabotage the radio and engines.

After hearing the whole story, Sayid drags Michael in front of the captain and reveals that Michael is the saboteur and a spy for Ben. I guess Sayid really wants to get back to the real world, huh? Makes you wonder just how bad things have to get for Sayid to end up killing for Ben himself.

To wind up, Ben sends Alex, Karl and Rousseau towards the Temple, but, fulfilling the teaser's promise that someone would die, Karl and Rousseau are shot by unseen assailants. Alex jumps up and yells that she's Ben's daughter, and we go to Lost logo. The last scene was a little weird; was it perhaps intended to show that in spite of what he may want people to believe, Ben is just that dangerous? He seems to have sent them into a trap that would bump off Alex's boyfriend and biological mother, thus leaving Ben as her only family on the island - as verified by the fact that she leaps back to her connection to him to save herself. Pretty fucking diabolical, no? Kinda makes you wonder if we're supposed to end up rooting for either side in the Ben/Widmore conflict.

April 24: Lost is back. It sounds like it's going to spread over six weeks, with the finale coming in two parts over two weeks thanks to dumb-ass Grey's Anatomy. Should be pretty awesome. By the end of the season we're supposed to at least have some idea how the Oceanic Six get off. Works for me.