'Lost' recap: Smokey on the Daughter

Ben gets judged by the monster for letting Alex die, and the roots of the dead-mama's boy's feud with Charles Widmore are revealed

If there's a theory to be had that Lost is the sci-fi version of Survivor, we now know where tribal council takes place: In the subterranean court of The Island's pitiless judge, Smokey, an ancient chamber adorned with hieroglyphics and images of the jackal-headed Egyptian god Anubis, an underworld deity who serves as a shepherd to lost souls and the adjudicator of a truthful heart. In ''Dead Is Dead,'' certain to be hailed as one of the season’s best episodes (marred only by some really bad hair pieces), Benjamin Linus crawled into the crack underneath The Temple's outer wall and found himself standing before The Monster's bench. The charge against him: Being a really crappy father. Steaming out of tiny holes in a perforated stone slate and accompanied by its trademark clicking, Smokey gathered itself into a black thunderclap crackling with psychic energy, then swallowed Ben whole.

A veritable ''Previously... on Lost'' recap of his tragic history with adopted daughter Alex flickered in the haze, from the moment he refused Charles Widmore's order to kill her when she was an infant to the day he allowed Keamy the Mercenary to blow her brain out across the Dharmaville green. I thought he was cruisin' for a Mr. Eko bruisin'... but then The Monster dissipated and curled back into the bowels of The Island. Phew. Linus was seemingly acquitted, but then Undead Alex showed up, looking pretty as a CW starlet — call her a Golem Girl. Pinning Ben against a pillar, Little Miss Death Becomes Her got even-steven with her faux pa for failing to prevent her murder by issuing the following, humiliating Island edict: Humble yourself before your new lord, John Locke. ''I know you’re already planning to kill him again,'' Alex seethed. ''You will listen to every word he says and you will follow his every order.''

Moments later, after Golem Girl had vanished, Ben found himself looking up into the gaze of the born again Island golden boy who now controls his destiny. ''What happened?'' Locke asked. ''It let me live,'' Ben replied queasily, looking like he'd just been slapped with a death sentence. Now you know what control freaks look like when they're made to go cold turkey.

Of course, we should be careful about drawing conclusions about Ben's guilt: The Island's judicial system seems to me as muddy as the dirty water that filled that... well, what the hell was that thing at the end of the rocky corridor on the other side of Ben's glyph door? It was a basin with a stopper, but when Ben reached down to unplug it so he could yell down the drain, it suddenly became communication device. Part bathtub, part telephone, I guess you could say it was... a teletubby? And who was on the other end? Jacob? Richard Alpert? The clandestine oomp-loompas who pull the levers and crank the wenches in The Island's engine room?

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