Episode Report Card Joe R.: N/A | 438 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT The Shape Of Things To Come
By Joe R. | Season 4 | Episode 9 | Aired on April 24, 2008
The body of the doctor from the tanker washes up on the Lostaways' beach with a slit throat, which leads Jack to request/demand that Daniel try to contact the freighter via morse code and find out WTF is going on. Daniel does so, and relays the message that a helicopter is coming in the morning. Lucky for the Lostaways, Bernard knows morse code too, so he tells Jack and the others that Daniel is lying and that the real returned message was "What are you talking about? The doctor is fine." Jack bullies Daniel into admitting that they never intended to rescue anybody from the island. None of this is good news to Jack's sudden onset of sweeps-related appendicitis.
Alex's captors force her call in a message -- "code 14J" -- to Locke's camp. Ben immediately springs into action, boarding himself, Locke, Hurley, and Aaron (and later Sawyer and Claire) inside his house. Miles eventually shows up, too, with a walkie-talkie from the commandos, who march Alex right out in full view of Ben and threaten to shoot her unless he surrenders himself. Ben tries to sell the idea that Alex, not being his real daughter and all, holds no value to him, and thus no value as a hostage. In response, they totally shoot Alex dead! Which leads Ben to sprint into his secret passport room, then into some sort of hidden tunnel, and then somehow (offscreen) he unleashes the smoke monster to wreck shit and take out all the commandos. Ben sends Locke and the rest to safety while he tearfully says goodbye to Alex. Then it's to the woods, where Ben informs everyone that the next step is to seek out Jacob. None too keen on heading off to see the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Sawyer takes off for the beach with Claire, Aaron, Miles, and Hurley. Only Locke and Ben need Hurley to find Jacob, and Locke pulls a gun on Sawyer to ensure he gets his way. Hurley, not wanting to see a firefight around the baby, agrees to stay behind.
The episode's flash-forward finds Ben in Tunisia in 2005. There he spots Sayid on TV, and he travels to Iraq to find him. Seems after Sayid got off the island, he found Nadia, then married her, only to see her killed by a hit-and-run in L.A.. Ben tells Sayid she was killed by a man hired by Charles Widmore. And so it was that Ben and Sayid began taking out any and all Widmore associates. But to what end? We find that out when Ben breaks into Windmore's hotel room and pledges to return the favor by tracking down and murdering Widmore's daughter. That would be Penny. Widmore says that Penny is too well hidden to be killed, but I say that smoke monster can find just about anybody.