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Just like we did last week with the episode “316″, we’ve collected some reviews and recaps of “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” from around the web.

Click on the authors’ names to read the full articles.

1. Jeff Jensen for EW.com:

”The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” was largely a flashback saga, bracketed by the Hydra Island stuff. Locke’s globetrotting, let’s-put-the-band-back-together journey began with a scene of massive mythological importance, and ended with an all-time awesome scene. The whole episode evoked and synthesized a number of literary, religious and pop culture references, and if you will allow me to just let me list some of the titles here, I promise not to bore you with the details as we move along: Homer’s The Odyssey, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, Esau and Jacob, the passion of Christ, Acts of Thomas (specifically, ”The Hymn of the Pearl”), and…Ocean’s 11, 12 and 13, plus the platforming narrative structure of Rock Band: World Tour! (Just kidding.)

2. Alan Sepinwall:

Cuse and Lindelof like to talk about how they believe the characters are more important to the show than the island mythology, and an episode like this bears that out. We got a few clues about the island — the Tunisian desert is always where the frozen donkey wheel spits out its movers, Ben tricked Widmore into moving the wheel years before, the island isn’t just animating corpses but bringing people (Locke, at least) back to life — but really, this was just the story of John Locke, lonely zealot, and it was more compelling than the last few episodes leading up to it, even though those featured more action and/or more more mythology.

[More reviews after the jump.]

3. Patrick Kevin Day (LA Times):

The scenes between Abaddon and Locke, as Abaddon drove Locke to visit the Oceanic Six, were a treat. They felt like a mini-play, almost a self-contained little drama in the greater framework of “Lost.” Also great was the scene in a dingy hotel room between Locke and Ben as Locke, racked with despair, attempted to kill himself while Ben begged him not to do it. O’Quinn has stated in interviews that Michael Emerson is the actor he loves sharing scenes with most, and this hotel room confrontation was further evidence of that. Two great actors not afraid to go full out with emotion and many layers of meaning and intent.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Walt’s return felt awkward and tacked-on somehow. There’s definitely more to Walt’s story, but I wonder if the producers will ever find a way to satisfactorily wedge it into the rest of the series.

4. Jace for Televisionaryblog.com:

How fantastic was the scene between Charles Widmore and Locke when Widmore gives him the Canadian passport for Jeremy Bentham and says that since Locke’s parents clearly had a sense of humor about his name, he’ll have one as well and give him the name of another British philosopher? It’s the first time that Darlton are so precisely tongue-in-cheek about the fanciful names on the series and state outright that the choice of pseudonym was intentional rather than accidental. Brilliant.

5. James Poniewozik (TIME.com):

John Locke is Lost’s man of faith. But he’s not, really, not entirely. He certainly has faith, in the Island, in the unexplained, but he also has doubt; his faith is constantly shaken and never as absolute as he wants it to be. When he goes to persuade Jack that he needs to go back to the Island, you can see in his searching popeyes that some part of him also wants to persuade himself–that he is special, that his “destiny” is not a mistake, that he’s not being swindled again. (Think about it: if one character on Lost has reason to have no faith, in anything or anyone, it’s John Locke.)

Take a look at the scene where he gets ready to hang himself. He’s not going into this calmly, as some sort of stoic sacrifice. He’s been told by Richard Alpert that he must die to save the Island, but he doesn’t entirely believe it, doesn’t entirely want to. You can see the despair in his eyes, the fear. He wants to die; he doesn’t want to die. The man of faith is a man of doubt.

6. Thomas Anderson (screenjunkies.com):

Exactly as expected, this Lost one ups last week’s season-topper in virtually every possible way, taking a story that we pretty much thought we knew everything about (after all, we know the end result), and infusing it with a whole bunch of goodies, enough to make Lost fans salivate all over their keyboards and couches.  Obviously, we have the huge reveal – that Ben killed Locke, and now we know that he wasn’t necessarily meant to come back to the island (in fact, didn’t he say that he could never come back?), because he didn’t disappear in the flash of light.  Locke being picked up by Widmore right away was a neat surprise too, and it answers a long-standing question, fully and finally: Ben and Widmore have some kind of dispute over the island, and Widmore has been trying to get back all these years after Ben kicked him off.  Does that mean Ben is the overall bad guy?  It’s fully possible, but not in any way knowable, considering how devious Widmore himself can get sometimes.  So that means Locke has righted the time that the island is in, and no more time jumps, right?  Good, at least it wasn’t a gimmick that they kept up too long or pushed too far.  What will be fun next week is seeing what the islanders have been up to, as they’ve been absent for the past two episodes, and sparks will definitely fly when Sawyer and Kate meet for the first time, although haven’t only a few days passed for the islanders while the off-landers have aged three years?  We’ll get to see if they mention that too.  This show keeps getting better and better.

7. Nikki Stafford:

I loved the scene with Widmore sitting by John’s hospital bed. Why did John Locke make such a huge impact on Widmore when he was 17? He was hostile to Locke, and John talked only to Alpert. Presumably the flash happened, Locke disappeared, and Widmore was as gobsmacked as the rest of them. If he was really on the island for 30 years as he says he was, then Alpert, who would have been tracking Locke’s life, might have been passing on information to him and he’d been following John’s life as closely as Alpert had been.

I said way back in “The Shape of Things to Come” that if you watch that end scene between Widmore and Ben as if Widmore is the good guy, it’s a very different scene than the one we think we’re watching initially (my season 4 Finding Lost book has a very long section on that one scene; I think it’s one of the most essential scenes in the series so far). What if Widmore really is the good guy? He appears to be helping Locke, while Ben is the guy strangling Locke with a cord. Not exactly helping Ben’s case. Or is this all a set-up to make us think Widmore could be the good guy, and it really is Ben?

By the end of the episode, I couldn’t help but worry that poor Locke is just a pawn – no, maybe a knight – in the game of chess that Ben and Widmore are playing. Widmore says he sent his freighter to the island to wipe out Ben so that Locke could lead. Ben says he moved the island so that Widmore couldn’t find the island so that Locke could lead. They’re both saying the very things that Locke wants to hear. They both give him just enough hints to get him on-side, and confuse the hell out of him. Locke has no idea who to be loyal to… who would?

8. Ryan McGee (zap2it.com):

Here’s my hope: that in a day, a week, or after a few episodes, tonight’s outing looks better than it does right now. While I had admittedly high hopes going into it, I don’t think they were unreasonable ones. But as we near the midpoint of Season 5, now is not the time to add more complexity to an already overstuffed narrative. Perhaps we were supposed to sympathize with Locke’s confusion over whom to believe, but we as viewers should not be helplessly left in the dark with the end goal ever nearer. As I stated earlier: there’s a good kind of confusion this show can instill, where its mysteries are shrouded but tantalizingly accessible. But tonight provided the type of confusion no one can hope to illuminate. Maybe later, but not right now.

It’s not like I enjoy disliking an episode. Far from it. I’ve labored to provide as objective a recap as I can, pushing past my misgivings to see what I might have missed. But right now, I’m not seeing it. If you did, that’s awesome: tell me what you saw, what you liked, what you got out of it. Tell me why I’m wrong. There’s nothing wrong with the show trying not to tip its hand in regards to the true “light” and “dark” side fighting the impending War of the Island. But at this point, the show should strive to cast more light, not shroud even more in the dark.

9. Drew McWeeny (HitFix.com):

Although the episode focused on John Locke in his time off the island, what the episode actually accomplished was a further clarification of just how much the Oceanic Six and John and the Skippers are all just pieces on a chessboard, and on one side, we’ve got Widmore, and on the other side, we’ve got Ben.  And no one is going to stop either one of those people from getting what they want.  What’s fascinating is thinking back to the very first episode, and the very first time we see John Locke.  He talks about the game of backgammon to Walt.  Makes me wonder… just how long have the producers of this show been building to the reveals we’re getting now.  I know people who love to claim that the show never had any idea where it was going until they set the end date, but there’s just too much evidence now in the way it’s playing out to contradict that.  I think they did know, and more than that, I think that aside from some padding when they thought they were going to have to stretch things out more, they’ve remained a pretty remarkable sense of focus as they’ve built the story.

10. Maureen Ryan (Chicago Tribune):

More than ever, I feel like I have zero ability to predict what other people will think of an episode of television. You may have loved “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham.” And that’s cool. I had high hopes for it — I knew the episode was going to run extra long and hoped that promised an extra ration of “Lost” goodness.

It’s not that I thought it was bad. It was just more of a “phfffft” episode than a “wow” episode. I think the problem is that my expectations were high, and the episode was just sort of … there. So the answer is for me to give up on having expectations about “Lost” — I do heart the show, but I have no ability to predict what episodes will float my boat and which ones will (ideally) serve as bridges to future awesomeness.

So, we finally got a bunch of answers about John Locke. However the answers we got felt like they revisited territory the show had already covered. They revealed Locke, again, to be a pawn in the games of others. And we still don’t know why, exactly, Locke is special. (“Because you are,” Widmore told him. OK then.)

If you’re a Locke fan, then this may have been Christmas. Not that I don’t dig Terry O’Quinn’s performance, but Locke hasn’t been one of my favorite characters for a while now, given that he’s so frequently manipulated by others. And this was nothing if not the Locke Manipulation Hour (Now With Added Widmore!).

11. Jonathan Toomey (TV Squad):

I was really excited for this episode. However, and it wasn’t bad, but it turns out that the whole mystery surrounding John’s alter ego Jeremy Bentham wasn’t much of a mystery after all. The entire hour played out as a laundry list of confirmations – things that we either kind-of-sort-of knew based on past episodes or things that most avid fans of Lost assumed to be true anyway. If anything, it was a nice pat of the back because it’s always a good feeling to think every now and then, “Hey, I do get this show!”

12. Rachel Dovey (PasteMagazine.com):

While the story was interesting, and obviously needed to be told, the episode was a little slow. It rewound to the characters’ former lives—Sayid, Kate and Jack with their respective struggles and Hurley with his flannel bathrobe and padded walls. After watching them plop from the sky and back onto the island, it was almost yawn-inducing to see Jack and Kate struggling with their faith in Locke’s message again. Kate brought up an interesting point in saying, “I think about how desperate you were to stay on that island, and then I realized, it was all because you didn’t love anybody.” However, bringing Helen back into the mix felt like old news, and I was unconvinced that her memory would have driven John to suicide, especially when he has the island’s best interest to look after. Of course, he felt like a failure at bringing people back as well.

But “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” did introduce Mr. Widmore in a completely new light. Up until this episode, we knew Ben and Widmore hated each other, and we knew Ben probably was not the “good guy,” but we did not know that Mr. Widmore might be barely trustworthy. Each constantly paints the other in the vilest of terms, so it’s difficult to know who is the least of two evils, or if there is one. What seems more likely is that they’re each deeply wound up in this power-grab and manipulate the characters into thinking the other is worse than himself, so that they’ll fear that other side. The repercussions of this control play are exploded with Mr. Widmore’s loaded statement that there will be a war. And if Jack and crew aren’t back on the island, he says, “The wrong side will win.” Of course, the wrong side for Widmore might just be the right side for everyone else.

13. Tim Goodman:

In a moment of lucidity, much of this episode made sense to me. In fact, I followed the time lines pretty easily (not a single nosebleed). Locke’s trip to get everyone was perfectly done. What did confuse me is Ben stopping Locke from hanging himself (to fulfill Richard’s prophecy) and then killing Locke. My guess is that it coincides with either the revelation that Jin is alive or that Richard said Mrs. Hawking will help Locke find the way back. What it sets in motion is that Locke won’t forget, as the last scene proves, that Ben “is the man who killed me.” This is a minor game changer, allegiance-wise.

14 Jay Glatfelter (huffingtonpost.com):

Anyone that knows me knows that I love John Locke. I am a John Locke fan and his character is what drew me into the show. I think the wheelchair scene in “Walkabout” was most people’s “I love this show” moment. Not only was that the moment that got me hooked, it was the moment that made Locke the character I felt for most. It made me want to root for him the most. Even Locke’s musical themes are my favorites in the show. He is my lost-away soulmate. That being said, Locke needs to seriously wise up. I swear he better kick some serious Ben butt next week and in the weeks to come. I mean how many times do you need to be killed by someone? Fool you once shame on you (being shot in the gut in “Man Behind the Curtain”) but fool you twice shame on you, Mr. Locke. Enact some bald man vengeance on Ben please. I won’t hold it against you, I promise.

15. Chris Carabott (IGN.com):

What’s great about “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” is that at the conclusion of this episode I have no idea of what will come next. After the conclusion of season three I had certain expectations that I knew would be met in the next couple of seasons. I knew the story of how the Oceanic Six got off the island would have to be told and I eventually knew that we’d learn how they got back. Now that this story is complete, besides a few lingering questions (Who attacked Ben, what happened to Aaron and how did Sayid and Hurley know about the flight in “316″), I really have no inkling of what could happen next.

16. Jon Lachonis (UGO.com):

“The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” may have made the overall mystery a little deeper in some ways, but it did succeed in answering one question – had the creators been forced to extend the story without certainty of an end date, they would have had no problem keeping our heads spinning. The good news for those who are begging to be let off the roller coaster is that the end is pressing in, faster than any of us expect or perhaps even want. Savor the last few game changers while you can, because before you know it the remaining episodes of LOST will be in the single digits – and the mysteries of the island will be coming to a resolute end.

Related posts:

1. “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” Recap by Jeremiah
2. Al Trautwig’s Thoughts on “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham”
3. “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” Recap & Analysis by Chris Kirkman