via tvmedia.ign.com
Pop culture has an irritating tendency to create asshole characters who just turn out to be big ol’ softies on the inside. Rarely are we treated to characters who are just genuinely bad people. More rarely still do we get to spend time with one that is a bad man, but still a man— as in, still recognizably human.
Which is why Benjamin Linus is a huge part of what made Season 4 of Lost so strong. Ben is an excellent villain: a baddie who’s actually good at what he does, a ruthless, manipulative, completely self-interested man with a cruel sense of humor and without an ounce of warm fuzzies. But that’s the easy part. What makes him extraordinary is the fact that he still registers as human. I still believe him when he claims to be one of the good guys, or at least I believe that he believes it. No one thinks of himself as a villain in his own story.
Michael Emerson has a gift for emoting in ways that are subtle but incredibly impactful, and the writers have handed him just the right mix of pure evil and pathos. At no point does Ben get a big “poor me” moment that’s supposed to win our sympathy, and we never stop hating him. Yet I feel for him, and understand him as well as I do any of the other characters. (Also, he gets all the best lines; Ben is hugely entertaining to watch.)
Here’s hoping there’s more of that magic coming when the new season starts in two weeks.
21 hours ago
