Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: A | 904 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT Ben, You're Always Running Here and There
By Cindy McLennan | Season 6 | Episode 7 | Aired on 2010.03.09
When Ben finds an Oceanic Airlines water bottle, he tells Frank he remembers that plane breaking in half like it was yesterday. Frank accuses him of sounding nostalgic (the "over a ghastly tragedy" is implied). Ben admits that maybe he is. Frank then reveals he was supposed to be flying that plane. Ben can't believe it when Frank says he overslept. Frank says, "Imagine how different my life would be if that alarm had gone off." Um...probably not very, Frank, unless you were full on dead, like the first pilot. Ben sort of agrees with me. "How different would it have been? The island still got you in the end, didn't it?" Frank cocks his head as he considers this with a chuckle. When he then flashes an all-too-bright smile of approval, Ben beams, thinking it's for him, but it's actually for Ilana and the rifle she's about to shove against Ben's neck. And she does just that. Ilana then orders Ben to walk, and marches him up to Boone's Bluff, where she chains him with cables and a make-shift shackle she MacGyvered up from the final remains of the fuselage. She then commands him to start digging a grave. "You murdered Jacob. It's for you." Whee!
L.A. Reality; School Library: Ben quizzes Alex on Cornwallis, the East India Trading Company, the Charter Act of 1813, etc. When she can't answer the last question, she freaks out. Ben reminds her it's just a test, but Alex says it's her entire life. Her mother works two jobs just to pay the rent. "How I am going to pay for college, never mind Yale, assuming I get in?"
Ben tells Alex she's his best and brightest, assures her he has every confidence in her, and offers to write her a recommendation. Alex says she needs one from an alum, though, like that "pervert" Principal Reynolds. Ben is flustered by this, and prods to make sure that Reynolds hasn't been perving on Alex. He hasn't. He's just been doing it, in the hearing test room, with school nurse Kim Kondracki, who must have forgotten Alex was in sickbay, sleeping off a tummy ache. I've been out of high school for longer than I care to admit, but the thought of any of my former school principals doing it with any of my school nurses shuts my libido down for at least a week. For my husband's sake, I'm going to move forward. Suffice it to say that Ben promises to keep the conversation a secret. "A promise is a promise." Suffice it to say: Ben lies. While they return to their study of the high seas, we watch the gears in Ben's mind whir and click into place. He's having a thought. Now, he's having a plan!