Lost 5x11: "Whatever Happened, Happened"

[TheGodBen]

Boring as all hell for forty-two minutes. Excellent for one minute. John Locke's ten second scene was more entertaining than everything that came before it.

Agreed, and even the Locke scene was predictable. I have a great dislike for scenes where you can predict what the character is going to say and you can just tell that Locke was going to say "Hello Ben" then LOST would come clanging up. What made the scene interesting was the fact that Ben seemed genuinely surprised that Locke was revived.

Poor.

 

[Mr Light]

My working theory on Penny: Widmore has been running an Off-Island life creating his corporation for decades and Penny was raised in the real world as such. It was only in 1992 when the Purge happened that Ben became the leader of the Others and kicked out Widmore, claiming that Jacob (who only Ben can see) told him that Widmore has to Donkey Wheel the Island safely away from Dharma.

 

[ITL]

^ Sounds good to me.

I can totally imagine a shot of Widmore waking up in the Tunisian desert in a Dharma jumpsuit...

 

[Velocity]

Jack has always been a fanatic problem solver and life saver... for him to just sit back and watch this little innocent boy die on the table? Whatever happened to the Hippocratic Oath? Actually did Jack ever actually lay eyes on Lil'Ben? Maybe if he'd actually met him it might have changed his mind.

Technically, Jack hadn't taken the oath yet...

 

[gh4chiefs]

If Jack had helped young Ben, he wouldn't have gone to the Others to become who he is today.

Not necessarily. If Jack had agreed to helped with Ben then the timeline would have self-corrected and events would have still played out more or less the same.

Example: Jack agrees to help, but on the way to the infirmary he trips on a rock, smacks his head on (insert random object) and is knocked unconscious for a long period of time. Events play out the same as if he had not agreed to help.

Not the best example, but you get the point. Jack is not to blame. Sayid is not to blame. Whatever happened, happened.

Ok taking that thought out a little further, doesn't this "whatever happened, happened" rule of time travel on LOST pretty much make everything that happens with the 06 (who are back in the 70's) inconsequential?

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Not necessarily. Only inconsequential in that they can't alter the timeline. They can still die and they can be responsible for other people dying (anyone we know doesn't get purged later).

 

[Skywalker]

Not necessarily. Only inconsequential in that they can't alter the timeline. They can still die and they can be responsible for other people dying (anyone we know doesn't get purged later).

Right, but if anyone dies because of their actions in 1977, it's only because those unfortunates were always going to die because of their actions in 1977. I think.

This time travel stuff is too confusing. I'm gonna stand over in the "Whut?" corner with Hurley.

 

[sidious618]

Agreed, and even the Locke scene was predictable. I have a great dislike for scenes where you can predict what the character is going to say and you can just tell that Locke was going to say "Hello Ben" then LOST would come clanging up. What made the scene interesting was the fact that Ben seemed genuinely surprised that Locke was revived.

Poor.

I did quite enjoy Ben's look of surprise but what did make that last scene for me was the cold, hard stare that Locke gave him. That reminded me of the mysterious Locke from season one.

 

[chrisspringob]

Not necessarily. Only inconsequential in that they can't alter the timeline. They can still die and they can be responsible for other people dying (anyone we know doesn't get purged later).

Right, but if anyone dies because of their actions in 1977, it's only because those unfortunates were always going to die because of their actions in 1977. I think.

I think people are unnecessarily tying themselves into conceptual knots over this stuff. Even with this version of time travel, people's actions still have consequences. What people do still matters. It's just that their actions and those consequences are sometimes known in advance.

For example, when Miles told Hurley to take his gun and shoot him, Hurley could have done it. Hurley didn't do it, but one could imagine a hypothetical universe in which Hurley did do it. Even though Hurley's decision not to shoot Miles is something that "had always happened" and "was always part of the timeline", the fact that it had always happened didn't *cause* Hurley not to shoot him. Rather, it's the other way around. Hurley deciding not to shoot him is what caused it to always be part of the timeline.

 

[Mr Light]

This is the most simple form of time travel there is. There's no alternate realities or split timelines to worry about. Everything is pre-ordained. Nothing can be changed. There is no free will. They're all just puppets on a page. So anything the time travelers do in the 70s is what always happened. So Lil'Ben can't die because we see him grow to an adult. Jack et al can die because we haven't seen them being alive when they're older in their own relative timeline.

 

[chrisspringob]

This is the most simple form of time travel there is. There's no alternate realities or split timelines to worry about. Everything is pre-ordained. Nothing can be changed. There is no free will. They're all just puppets on a page. So anything the time travelers do in the 70s is what always happened. So Lil'Ben can't die because we see him grow to an adult. Jack et al can die because we haven't seen them being alive when they're older in their own relative timeline.

See, this is where I might slightly disagree, though perhaps the disagreement is simply a semantic one. Let's forget about time travel for a second, and just consider the real world. Suppose I believe that there are no alternate universes. Does that mean that I'm just a "puppet", and my decisions don't matter? I could decide to go on a big crime spree or not. One could say that whether I decide to do so or not, it was always written into the timeline, and there was no other choice, because there are no alternate universes where I made the decision differently.

But this is perhaps too clever by half. The fact that there is just the one timeline in which I ultimately decided not to go on a crime spree didn't cause me to decide not to go on the crime spree. It's the other way around. My decision not to go on the crime spree is what *caused* me not going on the crime spree to be written into the one and only timeline. The fact that an alternate universe in which I made the opposite decision doesn't literally exist doesn't get me off the hook. It only has to be *hypothetically* possible to imagine the alternate scenario, in order for my choices to have meaning.

The only new wrinkle that gets added with time travel is that you sometimes know some of the consequences of your actions in advance. For example, I have knowledge of the future that says that a certain individual is going to live for many years to come. I now know that I can shoot that guy, and he won't die. But there are still many possible negative consequences that could come about from me shooting the guy in question. The fact that I know *some* of what happens in the future gives me a certain freedom in making certain decisions. But it doesn't mean that I might as well just start making decisions completely randomly, because hey, "whatever happened, happened, and any decision I make was destined to happen anyway".

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Not necessarily. Only inconsequential in that they can't alter the timeline. They can still die and they can be responsible for other people dying (anyone we know doesn't get purged later).

Right, but if anyone dies because of their actions in 1977, it's only because those unfortunates were always going to die because of their actions in 1977. I think.

This time travel stuff is too confusing. I'm gonna stand over in the "Whut?" corner with Hurley.

Personally, this is my favorite kind of time travel. It avoids paradoxes in the future completely. Although there's some gray area over whether or not things can't change or just probably can't change (Desmond could be wrong).

 

[Skywalker]

Honestly, I'm not terribly confused, I just wanna go stand in the "Whut?" corner with Hurley because Hurley's awesome.

 

[zengoth]

nicely above-average, well-paced and nice work by Evangeline Lilly. (cool to see Cassidy again, too - altho Aaron's grandma looked a little too made-up for a woman cooling her heels in a motel room)

altho i appreciate the writers letting Hugo & Miles banter some of the same fan-based theories of time travel I've read here, i wish there would have been some scenes of Sawyer & Juliet having the same conversation over their 3 years in the 70s. Especially with Juliet's insider-knowledge. Obviously she's not going to tell Sawyer everything she knows (the Temple is a good example), but Sawyer must have convinced her to let a few secrets loose...

Juliet realizes at the moment she has the idea about the Temple that this is how Ben becomes Ben and she is complicit in it. A huge mindfreak and I'm thinking she's the one who will bear the brunt of this realization more than Jack/Sawyer/Kate/Sayid.

 

[gh4chiefs]

This time travel discussion reminds me of a scene from DS9 where Chief O'Brien, with a look on his face that's somewhere between puzzlement and disgust, says something to the effect "Oh, I HATE temporal mechanics."

 

[Mr Awe]

Average

This episode was filler. Entertaining filler, but filler nonetheless.

Filler? We find out why Ben is the way he is, clear up what happened to Aron, actually move Kate's character in an interesting direction and give her an actual purpose and resolve an important character point from last season's finale and you call that filler?

Definitely a high Above Average on the Lost scale, but if it was the "Everything else" scale, it would be Excellent.

An important character point? What a big twist giving Aaron to his grandmother was! Who didn't see that one coming? Anyone?

Ok...who didn't see Ben getting saved by The Others? *crickets*

This episode was so obvious it was boring. I did however like the time travel discussion between Hurley and Miles and we got some good character stuff for Kate (although she is still as dumb as ever).

I agree with this sentiment, although I still found the episode enjoyable. As I stated in my review, I was actually hoping that young Ben would die just to throw a monkey wrench into the works. A twist would've made it interesting. Instead, we got the obvious and all the drama leading up to it only produce the expected result. The result that they actually spent a lot time belaboring had to happen, actually did happen. Ok.

Mr Awe

 

[exodus]

If Jack had helped young Ben, he wouldn't have gone to the Others to become who he is today.

Not necessarily. If Jack had agreed to helped with Ben then the timeline would have self-corrected and events would have still played out more or less the same.

Example: Jack agrees to help, but on the way to the infirmary he trips on a rock, smacks his head on (insert random object) and is knocked unconscious for a long period of time. Events play out the same as if he had not agreed to help.

Not the best example, but you get the point. Jack is not to blame. Sayid is not to blame. Whatever happened, happened.

So why doesn't Desmond remember Fairaday?

 

[Mallet]

If Jack had helped young Ben, he wouldn't have gone to the Others to become who he is today.

Not necessarily. If Jack had agreed to helped with Ben then the timeline would have self-corrected and events would have still played out more or less the same.

Example: Jack agrees to help, but on the way to the infirmary he trips on a rock, smacks his head on (insert random object) and is knocked unconscious for a long period of time. Events play out the same as if he had not agreed to help.

Not the best example, but you get the point. Jack is not to blame. Sayid is not to blame. Whatever happened, happened.

So why doesn't Desmond remember Fairaday?

Because the writers didn't know that they were going to meet up back in time when they first wrote scenes with those characters. Just like they didn't know when Sayid & Ben first met that they would eventually have Sayid shoot Young Ben. That is why we are getting all of this forced explanations that "Desmond thought it was a dream" and "The process to save Young Ben will make him forget being shot", yadayadayada.

Since these specifics wern't worked out exactly 2+ years ago, and since their style of time travel is "you can't change anything" then we will keep getting situations where they will make/force people not to remember events that they should remember. It's just the nature of writing a long running seriaized tv series.

I mean, maybe they knew back in season two & three that in season 5 some of the main characters would be back in time in the 1970's dealing with Dharma. And maybe (and this is a big maybe) they even had the idea tat someone would shoot Young Ben... but for all we know it was going to be Mr. Eko or Ana-Lucia that they had planed to pull the trigger and then when those actors had to suddenly be written off of the show they had to change their plans. Now Sayid is the shooter and since they wern't planning on that, that's why they have to make sure that it Ben doesn't remember who shot him by having the "process" erase his memory. It's the only way to tie up those loose ends.

But I still doubt they had this fully planned out back then. They probably had a general idea of what was going to happen, but no specifics since at that time they didn't even know how long the series was going to go on for (7 seasons with 24 eps. each? 8 seasons?) they didn't know. They also didn't know which actors would still be around by the time they got to telling this part of the story.

 

[gh4chiefs]

LOL @ myself. It's so easy to get wrapped up in this stuff and to forget, "hey none of this is real." Very good post Mallet. I think you hit the nail squarely on the head.

 

[ITL]

The show's creators always said that LOST was planned from beginning to end - but in a way that was flexible enough to adapt to new ideas and circumstances along the way without sacrificing the Big Plan.

Kinda neat.