"Jim Gysin" <jimgysin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote
> Where I draw the line is in not letting *us* know when someone is lying
> or something is off. It's one thing to keep the show's characters in
> the dark, but something else entirely to out and out lie to the
> audience. For example, Ben lies to people all the time, but we *know*
> when he's lying in short order, so it's okay. But to let a lie remain
> out there for a year or more in real time... well, I would have a real
> problem with that, I guess.
I agree that the viewers should be in on im****tant lies that characters
tell
but I don't think we need to know mysteries that the characters themselves
don't know about. I think you could easily make a case that Ben's
miserable
childhood and the subsequent gassing of the Dharma folks were results of
his
mother's death. The knowledge that she's been alive all this time could
impact Ben's identity, but if Ben doesn't know it yet, we don't need to
know
it either.
> I definitely agree on the "timely manner" business. A perfect example
> would be Shannon's "death" at the hands (?) of Smoky. Before the
> episode was even over, we knew that that was just an illusion on Boone's
> part. Now if they had written off Shannon for 24 episodes and then
> brought her back and said, "Well, we never actually said she was
> dead..." that would be too much.
But depending on how a "death" is depicted, I think they can bring people
back. For instance, prior to Miles spotting Danielle's body, I think the
writers could have easily brought her back 5, 10 episodes from now without
the viewers feeling they cheated. Since we never even witnessed Ben's
mother's death, they could do the same with her.
> Again, if Roger says, "Your mother is dead and you killed her," I don't
> think it's an unfair assumption (with the above three caveats) to assume
> that Roger is telling the truth, and that Emily is dead. If we have to
> start assuming that *no one's* word can be taken at face value, we're
> gonna be in robgood's bizarre little world in no time whatsoever.
Maybe Roger was lying and she walked out on them when Ben was young or
maybe
her death was faked and Roger doesn't even know that. What's im****tant is
that we understand Ben's reality and Ben's reality is that his mother died
during childbirth.
> The theory itself isn't outrageous, but the abuse of the audience and of
> script credibility would be extremely outrageous, IMO.
But again, it's not necessarily an abuse of the audience or the script
credibility. At the point we all assumed the loved ones were mere visions,
we didn't know there was tele****ting/time travelling going on. This new
information alters the certainty of assumptions we've made. So maybe
before
I was around 95% certain those were visions, now I'm at about 60%. If
you'd
asked me six months ago if Ben's mother was dead I would have been about
99%
certain but now I'm about 75% certain. The writers give us elements we
think
we understand but with new information we realize we didn't understand
correctly. All that matters is that the explanation matches up to what we
actually witnessed and not how we interpreted it.
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