Well, only one of my girls was really moved by "The Constant", and mostly because she's a romantic and tears up whenever love prevails or a baby is born.

We've watched the next two since then, which serve to remind me that Juliet is the worst, and they should have shot her about 15 seconds after they shot Ben Linus (if they would have ever done that)

S4E6 is "The Other Woman" telling more of her time on the island, including boning Goodwin, who must have had a John Mayer sized dong to land both her and his super hot wife Harper.



I have to say I feel better about myself about my courting a woman techniques after watching Ben Linus in action.

He goes with the 3 point system of:

1) Staring so intensely at the side of your face from maybe 18 inches away while you're looking through a microscope.
2) Inviting you to a dinner party, except the party is just you two.
3) Showing you your impaled lover's corpse after a day or so of rotting to remind you that there's a single guy on the island named Ben Linus who's all about you.

That episode is the first for me that gets into the sort of not feeling it territory when there's a showdown between Juliet, Charlotte, and Daniel in the power station, and I found myself thinking, "None of these people are my plane people, I'm not sure I care what happens here." Obviously a show has to add new characters eventually, but I've found myself really despising Juliet this time around.

S4E7 is "Ji Yeon", which very cleverly fooled my girls with the Sun flashfoward to having the baby in Korea and the Jin flashback where you think he's survived as well and is going to meet her, but it's actually years ago delivering the Panda to some Chinese guy's grandson in a different hospital.

Having intensely done their math that Sun is the 6th of the Oceanic 6, they immediately concluded that Jin dies and I'm not going to let them off the hook for that feeling so they can be relieved when he shows back up in Season 5.

Juliet doubles down on being the worst by telling Jin that Sun cheated on him, although how would Jin have learned what "affair" means after a month of English lessons? Regardless, it leads to a very satisfying flash forward of Hurley meeting Sun's baby. It is crazy how much my girls love Hurley. Like sheer delight every time he is on screen.

Hurley was the best

Hurley is number 1.

BAS: Kate
Hope: Juliet

There's a reason Hurley became the protector of the island in the end.

Well my girls got the shakeup of a lifetime last night as we watched "Meet Kevin Johnson" and "The Shape of Things to Come"

In the first one, which is still not about the former Phoenix Suns all-star, in no short order they saw or learned:

Michael off the island trying to kill himself twice
Michael told Walt he killed Ana Lucia and Libby, causing Walt to seek refuge with his grandmother
Mr. Friendly blackmail Michael
Michael seeing Keamy and Company practicing with machine guns
Michael thinking he was blowing up the ship but it being a ruse
Karl and Danielle killed and Alex getting taken hostage

Followed by the second one, which features
Claire appearing to die, but surviving
Alex getting murdered in cold blood by Keamy
Sayid going to work for Ben off the island
Sayid's wife's funeral
Ben threatening Charles that he will kill Penny
Ben having the ability to call the Smoke Monster
Faraday lying to the beachies about what a telegraph says, caught in the lie by Bernard
Faraday admitting they aren't ever taking them off the island
Jack being on the verge of appendicitis

These episodes are really good when watched back to back because they have a couple of nice parallels.
In the first one, Sayid ridicules and exposes Michael for working for Ben, only to end up doing it himself in the second.

In the first one, Ben rubs it in Michael's face (over the phone) that Michael is the one that killed Ana Lucia and Libby, nobody asked him to; and then Ben getting crushed by Widmore during their odd penthouse encounter that it was Ben that got Alex killed, not Widmore.

The second episode also gives you the very strong hint that Widmore used to be on the island
And we get the subtle but definitive switch of James Ford to being a good guy for the rest of the show. He risks his own life repeatedly for others, namely Claire, while Hurley takes care of Aaron and then splits away to protect her and Aaron by leading them back to the beach. I know his big sacrifice on the chopper is coming soon, but I don't think Sawyer does another self-serving thing for the remainder of the series.

We knocked out the last 2 episodes of Season 4 before the 3 part finale yesterday.

The debate of Island Dirty Kate vs. Cleaned up Kate has rage for 20 years and I was always an Island Kate guy ,but had to seriously reconsider during the scene in "Something Nice Back Home" when Jack proposes to her. Good lord.



Jack has his appendix out, which is pretty melodramatic since you know he's not going to die since he's also in the future scenes, and Claire does a hard left, veering into crazy ville by following Christian / MiB into the jungle and deserting Aaron, which I always found to be a really weird plot device and one of my kids is going to absolute hate since she loves Claire.

The second one, Cabin Fever, is one of the best for me during the rewatch, even though it is sort of backwards plot setting with Richard Alpert visiting Locke as a baby and as a child, when he gets super pissed that John picks the wrong items on the test.

You get your first real taste of the fascinating Hurley / Ben dynamic as they talk about Ben killing the Dharma Initiative and later share a candy bar, and a real taste of the weird time dynamic as we see the reverse of events of the doctor showing up dead on the island happening seemingly before he gets killed on the boat.

Locke entering "Jacob's" cabin is super spooky even though I knew what was coming, but still feels like they didn't really know what they were doing with Christian as the MiB at that point, especially Claire's involvement. John saying he has to move the island didn't really register with my kids, I think because it just doesn't make any sense until you see what happens.

THe kids and I knocked out the 3 part Season 4 Finale last night. My least favorite finale of the first 4 seasons. I realized they were hamstrung by the writers' strike and had to cut a bunch of stuff, but felt really uneven. The giant frozen wheel scene really sticks out as a sore thumb for me, edging towards the Jump the Shark line. But it is what it is, and the time travel stuff, especially a lot of Hurley and Sawyer's stuff in 1977 is pretty great.

One of my kids thinks the island is in giant snow globe and they moved it underwater; not a bad theory. They both think Jin is dead, so I'll be keeping my poker face there until at least Friday. My favorite scene by far was the totally forgotten Sayid vs. Keamy fight. Sayid gets to be a bad-ass in every season finale seemingly.

I used to think Desmond was my favorite non-plane character, but after watching Season 4 again, I think it's actually Frank Lapidus. Jeff Fahey is great in every scene he's in. Sawyer dubbing him "Kenny Rogers" is an all-timer.

It's definitely fascinating watching Ben transition from ultimate evil to sort of loose ally / extra vote on doing stuff, but more than anything he's a massive sociopath who lied to everyone he knew about being able to speak to Jacob for all those years, murdered everyone on the boat when he killed Keamy, and murdered Locke out of jealousy - and of course, murdered Jacob.

A really funny visual moment last night is when Faraday takes a boat full of non-main characters in the Zodiac back to the freighter. Both my kids have been well versed in "if we don't know your name, you're probably going to die". Both immediately thought that boat was going to blow up or something, especially once Juliet decided not to go o it.

oragator said:

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Ben will always be my non plane favorite character. There just so much going on with him. Is he truly a bad person, just trying to protect the island, just trying to protect himself? Really well written and perfectly acted.
But it's funny on Desmond, as little screen time as he and Penelope got compared to many others, I always felt like his story line was the heart of the show. It's hard to put into words without writing a book, but basically it perfectly encapsulated longing for home, transition as a person, love in all its forms (his was god and Penny over time), separation, determination and fate, all the recurring themes. And his story lines were always emotional with Penny.

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Ben and Noah from Dark had very similar arcs/trajectories.