Season 3, Episode 5: "The Cost of Living"

First, let me say thank you to everyone who left comments last week! Like I said, I was really just curious as to who even reads this (because I only send it to like, four people, basically my husband and a couple of friends). Everyone always tells me they forward it on to a bunch of people, so I was just curious if anyone was "really" reading this.

Also, when I first started writing these, it was because I had a discussion one night at dinner with a few friends and we realized that we were all really addicted to the show, so we would email back and forth every Thursday morning to discuss our thoughts from the night before. Then it was suggested that I start posting my emails to a blog so that they could forward it to some other people who might be interested in reading them, which I started doing...but once I started that, everyone would just read what I wrote but the emailing back and forth stopped. So that is why I was asking people to post in the comments...because I like hearing other people's comments about what they think. One of the things I love about this show is that there can be so many different theories about what is going on, and what I might read into something, other people might look at very differently. So, if you feel like leaving your comments as to what you thought about the show as well, I would enjoy reading YOUR theories and observations too!

Okay...now on to the show (warning - this is going to be long!)


The title of this episode was THE COST OF LIFE. Eko stood up for his own beliefs, and refusing to confess to these "sins" cost him his life. This is a very religious-driven episode. As we have seen in many previous episodes, there is a lot of religious symbolism and implications.

YOU OWE HIM A CHURCH
So now we know the reason that Eko built the church on the island...it was for his brother. After killing the men in his brothers' church, the woman in the village said "you owe him a church." It seems he had more loyalty to his brother than he did to God. Interesting that he posed as a priest for so long when in fact he really did not believe in the values that a priest would have. At the end, he has a choice to confess his sins for forgiveness and he chooses not to. This was exactly the same as in his first flashback as a boy, when the nun was trying to force him to confess and he wouldn't (because he truly believed that stealing the food for his brother was okay, because he was hungry). And now he believes that he did not sin because he killed for what he believes to be good reason (to save his brother, first...then to save himself). He made the comment that he lived the life he did, because he had to do whatever he needed to keep himself alive. This reminded me of the theme of last week's episode "Every Man for Himself." Rather than living his life for God (which he would have done if he were truly a priest), he was living his life for himself.

I thought it was interesting to see Eko's flashbacks of him as a "priest" taking over for his dead brothers church. I had truly thought this whole time that Eko really did become a priest and was in fact a "man of God" and that he was good and holy. However, we saw that even after his brother was killed, he still went back to his old ways. Earlier when we saw that his brother was killed, it was because of the choices he made as a drug smuggler (in fact, in a previous episode when we first saw how his brother was killed, his brother tells him that "you will never be good" after Eko threatened his church unless he helped him with the drug smuggling. In turn, that led to getting his brother killed.) In this episode, while still "posing" as a priest, he tried to set up his own scheme selling the vaccines to a different group of smugglers so that he could profit from it. Then he kills the men who came to threaten him. This just shows that he really never did become a "priest" - I had always thought that after he lost his brother, he truly was a changed man because he was ridden with the guilt over what he had done. But we saw a different side of him tonight, showing that he wasn't actually this "holy" man like we thought. Let's not forget one of the first flashbacks we saw of Eko (last season) when he slashed the throat of a man, and they tell him that he has been known as "the man with no soul."

At the end, after his "confession," Yemi tells him "you speak to me as if you were my brother" - basically saying that he is NOT his brother (I think he means brother in more of a religious sense). Yemi, who truly was a good man, recognizes that Eko was NOT good, that he does not follow God's plan of forgiveness and confession of sins. Being a man of God, Yemi basically "disowns" his brother. Which is interesting, because Eko basically says that all of the bad things that he did, he basically did trying to save his brother, and says he was proud of. So while Eko lived to save himself and his brother, Yemi lived his life for God and the church.

Also in that same scene - it appears that they are in some sort of graveyard on the island. There were rows and rows of what looked like burial plats with flowering bushes planted over them, as if it was a cemetary.

Another "religious" reference was when Eko went to the plane and pulled away all the wreckage to find his brother's body but it was gone (just like the Biblical scene of rolling the stones away from the cave and finding that the body of Jesus was gone.) This was kind of a symbol that his brother - who was a holy man - had been "resurrected" so to speak, because he was GOOD.


THE SHADOW OF DEATH
Eko has seen the black smoke before (season 2, episode 10 - "the 23rd Psalm) - and if you scroll down you'll see that I wrote in that episode that it appeared he was facing "the shadow of death" which now makes more sense. I think that the "black smoke" represents the devil coming to get him. (And just before it came, he started to recite the 23rd Psalm, which references "I fear no evil...I walk through the valley of the shadow of death). Also, we had assumed before that Locke also saw this same "black smoke", but we find out that he actually saw a white light (representative of God/angels/heaven). Remember last year when Locke said it was a "beautiful thing" - now we understand that Locke saw something entirely different. Rather than black smoke, Locke saw a white light. Good vs. Evil. So we can assume this means that Locke truly is a "good" man and that Eko was "bad." It is as though the island is a test for who is truly good and evil. As Eko was dying and whispered something to Locke, he tells them that "they are next." Does this mean that the rest of the survivors who are "bad" are also going to be killed as well? Does the "island" know who is good and who is not? From what we have seen, all of the survivors have sinned in their life, which we have seen through flashbacks, and we've seen that many of them who appear to be good on the outside, really are not. Most of them have killed someone or are somehow responsible for others deaths. It is almost that the island serves as a "symbol" of God, placing judgment on who is or is not good. We have seen so many references to whether each of them is "good" or not. It is like the island is a place where all of their sins are coming out, we have already seen that most of them suffer from guilt over their past sins, and depending on whether or not they are truly sorry for what they have done will determine if their life is spared (which is "the cost of living.")

Another note about this "black smoke" - I remember from the first season when Danielle Rousseau told the survivors about seeing the black smoke when the Others were coming (she told them that is how she knew they were coming, because she would see the black smoke). Was she also faced with the black smoke and if so, did she pass the island's "test?" We know that she killed all of the members of her team, so was this black smoke that she saw also some kind of a test of her guilt/sins?

Something else I just thought of - all of the references to Ben saying that they are "the good ones." If they have truly been on the island for their whole lives, then surely they have faced "the black smoke" at some point. They, too, could have been "tested" and they are the ones that survived the island's test, hence making them "the good ones." For example, maybe Danielle's team was a part of their group at once, and they were killed by the black smoke because THEY were the bad ones. The Others know that all of the survivors are going to be tested as well, which is why they are trying to get "the good ones" on their side.


DON'T BELIEVE A WORD I'M SAYING
The whole fake movie with Juliet and the "cards" - to me seems more like a con. Ben may have even put her up to it. He went to Jack to make him feel like he had a choice. Telling him they were trying to gain his trust so he would WANT to save his life. However, as we have seen tonight with Eko, it seems that there is always a test of who is good vs. bad. We know that the Others consider themselves "good" and only want "the good ones." I think this could be their way of "testing" Jack to see if he is truly good or bad. If he truly was a good person, he would do whatever he could to save a person's life, regardless of who that person is, because that is the right thing to do. I think bringing him in to save the woman who Sun shot was also a "test" on their part. They even said that they waited several hours before bringing him in, and they could have known she was not going to make it. They could have tested him to see if he would truly do everything he could to try and save her (which he did). Ben knows that Jack is an "ethical" doctor and that he has to "fix things" and will not let him die, that he will do everything to save him. I think Ben is playing one of his "mind games" with Jack. (This is also similar to Sawyer's "long con" plans where he tells the girl that in order to be a good conman, you have to make the mark think that the con is their idea.) We have already seen from when "Henry Gale" was imprisoned in the hatch that he knows how to test people and that he would never give up "the truth" too easily. I really don't think he would just put it all out there and tell Jack everything (especially telling him straight out that "we were trying to trick you"). Plus I don't think that Juliet could have easily pulled off something like that without Ben knowing. Remember, he sees EVERYTHING!

Also, when asked if he believes in God, Jack questions him back and asks Ben if he believes in God? Ben does not specifically answer the question...he just says that two days after finding out about the brain tumor, a spinal surgeon fell out of the sky. That seems weird to me, because they have been on the island for over three months (Ben told Jack they have been there 69 days, when he showed him the film of the Red Sox), so Ben has been living with this fatal tumor for that long? Seeing that the Others were aware of everyone and knew exactly who they were, why would they not have come for Jack sooner, knowing the spinal tumor was as serious as it was? I'm beginning to take everything that Ben says, and just think the opposite. Clearly he has shown us that he is the master of mind games. I think this could be their way of testing Jack for some deeper plot.


REPETITION:

- Locke says "don't mistake coincidence for fate" - that is the same thing that Eko said to him last season (in the hatch when he was explaining about finding the hidden film reel.)

- They played a Patsy Cline song during the woman's funeral. We have heard Patsy Cline songs several other times in flashbacks before (in the flashback where Kate kills her father).

- When Eko sees the altar boy in the jungle, he holds his finger up to his mouth and says "shhhh" - this is just like when Shannon saw Walt do the same thing (and it was also just before she died.)


QUESTIONS:
I'm really pissed that we only have one more episode, and then we have to wait three months until the season starts up again. There are so many questions left unanswered. For example, what happened to all the children that were taken by the Others? And what about Walt and Michael - did they really let them go...where are they? What about Penny Widmore (Desmond's ex), whose hired Russian spies finally spotted Desmond's location on the island? What about the flashback where Jack's dad is in Australia and goes to see the woman asking to see his daughter? (meaning jack has a sister!) And are we EVER going to find out how Locke was paralyzed? There are still so many open-ended storylines...I just want answers now!!!

PS - I emailed this to those who I send this to a few days ago, but for everyone else reading this...I added another post earlier this week, down below. It's the videos of the two Orientation films, if you want to look at them again.