There was a TV show when I was in high school called Billy, which I remember as Billy the Liar, about a Walter Mitty kinda guy. Now we have Ben the Liar on Lost, a guy who tells the truth only when necessary. This week we were treated to a tour-de-force performance by Michael Emerson, including several bad wigs. We saw Ben the boy, Ben the adolescent, Ben the young man and Ben as we know and (love) him. He showed us and other characters many facets of himself, perhaps none of them real. The one moment when he seemed to be entirely truthful was when he told Sun that he was terrified by the fact that Locke was alive again–but why should we believe that? What did he stand to gain by telling her that if it were true? He’s easily one of the most complicated characters I’ve ever seen on a TV show. His mind is always working and, as he told Jack last season, he always has a plan. Not always a good one, but a plan nevertheless. This week’s episode was much better than any of the previous several in that it didn’t feel like the writers were perfunctorily filling in holes but actually revealing truths that help us understand him better. I’m really looking forward to next week, when we will learn more about Miles–I have a suspicion that he is the person on the island the Ajira crew expected would know the answer to their passcode about the shadow of the statue. I’ll also be curious to hear how Locke plans to reestablish contact with the 1970s Losties. It’s becoming more and more apparent that Ben is losing his grip on the island–there are a lot of things he simply doesn’t seem to know any more, like the fact that Jack, Kate & others were in Dharma. Isn’t time travel fun?
I received a review copy of the new Hap & Leonard novel by Joe R. Lansdale last night, so I had to put everything else aside and start onto it right away. It’s called Vanilla Ride. “I hadn’t been shot at in a while, and no one had hit me in the head for a month or two,” Hap says in the opening sentence. So, of course, he and Leonard set about to change that as quickly as they can, doing a favor for their friend Marvin. His 18-year-old granddaughter has fallen in with a drug dealer who beats her and Hap & Leonard are charged with extracting her from the situation and laying a beating on whoever gets in the way. Of course, this ruffles a few feathers.
I managed to lose the last 10 minutes of Fringe when I recorded it, so I had to go online to see how it turned out. Glad to see the show back after its hiatus, and looking forward to Leonard Nimoy showing up before the end of the season.
I plan to write my Storytellers Unplugged essay this weekend, and probably my next Cemetery Dance column, too. I expect to receive the first layout pass of the book-in-progress from the publisher at the beginning of next week. I have to do some proofing and write captions for pictures, and only have a week to do it, so I need to get the other projects out of the way first. Fortunately it’s a long weekend, so I should have no trouble getting those other things done.
