this is truly one of the best scenes of ABC's LOST (2004-2010). the acting. the way mib!locke says "it's the door to the hatch, where you and i first met" with such tenderness (why????), their character dynamic, the way ben's theme starts playing as he explains one of the most compelling plot point of season 3, the way this season has been rewriting the book of job and this is now all culminating in that one sentence spoken by mib!locke: "despite your loyal service to this island, you got cancer. you had to watch your own daughter gunned down right in front of you. and your reward for those sacrifices? you were banished. and you did all this in the name of a man you didn't even met. so the question is, ben, why wouldn't you want to quit jacob?"
now i know we all make fun of LOST for being so catholic, and rightly so, because it didn't need to be that catholic. however the way they rewrote a whole book from the bible and this provided one of the best storylines in the history of television is truly a masterpiece. the original story of Job is that of a man who is healthy, wealthy, has a loving wife, loving children, who is loved by God and knows he is loved by God. his love for God doesn't vanish once all of this is taken away from him. Ben's story is the exact opposite of that. maybe the difference lies in the very different background of those two characters. Ben didn't come from money or from a loving family. All he managed to get - his daughter Alex, his standing as the leader of the Others - he got them by sacrificing all that he knew. He killed his dad and committed a genocide against his own people to get them. I think Ben has a sense of entitlement that goes deeper than Job's. I think Ben felt entitled to rewards because he did sacrifice way more than Job ever did to get all he got. I think Ben is a much more realistic character than Job on that front. Ben is a 21st century man, who thinks he is entitled to other people's respect, and especially so to women's respect (see how he treats Alex and Juliet as if they were his property, manipulating them, sequestering them, emotionally abusing them).
now for an aside: i love that in a TV show about authority and how your childhood, and esp your relation to your parents shape who you become as an adult, Benjamin is the one set to kill Jacob when, in the Bible, Benjamin is Jacob's (youngest) son
lost season 5 i wish i knew how to quit you...
