"rwgibson13" <rwgibson13@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:5166594d-114e-4800-84ed-f0d5030b2429@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> "Backgammon's the oldest game in the world. Archeologists found sets
> when they excavated the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia. Five thousand
> years old. That's older than Jesus Christ. Two players. Two sides. One
> is light, one is dark. Walt, do you want to know a secret?"
>
> John Locke - "Pilot"
>
>
> The producers have hinted since the very beginning that the light/dark
> motif would continue to be im****tant during the entire run of the
> show, and "games" have shown up more often than I can remember or
> count, so it's impossible for me not to figure that means something in
> the overall scheme of things - but it wasn't until this last episode
> that we got any actual reference to "rules" to whatever "game" is
> being played. Assuming that Ben wasn't simply lying his ass off again
> (something I'm never going to discount since lying is as much a part
> of Ben Linus as his beady eyes), it would seem that he and Widmore are
> both familiar with some kind of framework that may or may not still be
> in place.
That may be all the light/dark business has to do with, of course: the two
opposing sides of a game, not necessarily good vs. evil, which qualities
have been deliberately made ambiguous throughout the series.
>
> In all this talk about "rules" and whether or not Widmore broke them
> got me thinking - Keamy was readily willing to pretty much do anything
> he had to do to "get" Ben. Miles was in it to make money and figured
> he could do so by claiming Ben was dead with the apparent belief that
> his word alone would be enough.
>
> So, what exactly makes Ben so valuable ALIVE that Widmore would go to
> all the trouble? Is this "game" like "Capture the Flag" with the Flag
> being Ben Linus? Doesn't seem all that logical, considering Jacob and
> the fact that most of the Others don't seem to look to Ben as being
> some kind of king.
Right, that doesn't seem logical since Ben's allusion to Widmore's
"changing
the rules" clearly implies that he's on one side of the game and Widmore's
on the other -- so if there's a "flag" it must be something other than
Ben.
>
> And where, exactly does John Locke fit in. Just about every flashback
> shows him playing some kind of game. He obviously loves 'em. He beat
> the chess game on the Flame computer, something Mikhail claimed was
> impossible. He knows about and was apparently employing the
> "Australian strategy" in RISK :-) Did Jacob/Craphole choose him
> (Ben's replacement, perhaps?) because he was good at games in addition
> to being able to be easily manipulated (a quality Ben certainly does
> NOT share with him)?
Hurley's the other one who's consistently successful at games -- more so
than Locke, I think.
Good episode this time -- 100% gobbledegook-free, and how often do we get
one like that?
Neil
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