"It's Not a Toomah"... Oh Wait, Yes It Is
Over at Bill Ervolino's blog today, he speculated that the preview might be misleading us to think the tumour (yes, I'm a Canadian who favoUrs the u for the coloUr it gives to words such as tumoUr, heehee) is Benji's, when in fact it's Locke's. It's funny he should say that, because I was thinking exactly the same thing until that stupid preview came on. (I really hate the previews we get at the end of Lost, both the U.S. and Canadian versions.) Remember when Juliet was flipping through Jack's file in "A Tale of Two Cities" and said they have everything on file about Jack? Could those spinal x-rays be part of Jack's file? Is it possible that Locke's case was referred to Jack years ago, and Jack, after the disaster that happened with Gabriella's father, decided no, he's not a miracle worker, and he can't help Locke? Then somehow those x-rays came to the island?

OK, that's a wild out-there speculation that I tend to stay away from. The more obvious answer could be that when Locke blew out of the hatch, he was knocked unconscious for a very long time, the Others took him to the Caduceus station and x-rayed his back and discovered a tumour in there. But if a tumour of that size might affect your ability to walk, it would make more sense to me that that might be an x-ray from before the island. Just as Rose's cancer disappeared the moment she landed on the beach, perhaps Locke's tumour similarly disappeared... he didn't lose his legs because of a gun shot or kidney failure or being hit by a car, he was levelled by a tumour. Hmm...

I mean, if that tumour was really Benry's, how can that man fight with the might of 10 men?

Other thoughts: I was thinking more this morning about Of Mice and Men. The book's title comes from the line from the poem, "The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry" (or something like that... I'm sure I've got a word wrong in there; I'm going back to my school days here). It's a line that could be attached to any of the groups -- The Others, the Lostaways, the Tailies, every individual person. I mean, it could even comment on the producers: their best-laid plan to bring in some more eye candy has given us the "less-interesting-than-watching-paint-dry" Paolo, which has seriously gone awry. (Come on, Paolo, make me like you. I loved you in "Love, Actually"... though, I wasn't really looking for you to stun me with your insight in that film.) But the book was also about two people, one the leader, the other the follower who really needed the leader. Is Ben going to be Sawyer's leader? Or will Ben's best-laid plans still go awry?

It was also very interesting to me when Ben was talking to Sawyer as S. was on the table, and he said they're not in the business of killing people. Again, like I said in Finding Lost, if we saw everything from their perspective, I wonder if we come up with a different show. From the Others' point of view, they lived on the island, quietly conducting their experiments to help animals, extend human life, etc. and along come this scraggly group of people to interrupt them, and they kill Ethan, they kill Goodwin, and now they kill Colleen. But even from their perspective, did kidnapping Walt, trying to kill Charlie, attempting to take Claire's baby before killing her, blackmailing Michael to force him to kill someone, and then kidnapping three other people somehow make them good people? It's a tough one here.

I've read some insane theories out there, including several ones that this is a comment on the U.S. government, and maybe when it comes to the Others conundrum, that's where it most closely mirrors it. Just as the Iraqi people probably don't see the Americans as liberators, despite the Americans being the supposed "good guys" in that particular story, so do the Others not see themselves as being the bad guys. It's all about perspective.