Paul Terry's Blog: Episode 7 - Dr Linus

Michael Emerson knocks it out of the park, past the boundary fence, over the cliffs, and way beyond the sea… Plus, TLI’s Matt Patrick scores a three-pointer from the gods…

Ben I love you....I hate you....I love you!Benjamin Linus – you are one clever, clever soul. Michael Emerson – damn you for making me do a complete U-turn and now feel nothing but 100% sympathy for your character!

Up until ‘that’ scene in ‘Dr. Linus’ (yes the one where – come one now – you all have to admit getting pretty choked up, like me, GT and Iain did), although I did have sympathy for Ben to a certain point, I was pretty much of the mind that he was the world’s greatest master manipulator... but not anymore. Lost has had some incredible twists over the past six years, but for me personally, feeling guilty for ever doubting Ben is not an emotion I was expecting to experience in this final season. But then, this is the man who has been nominated numerous times for the calibre of his acting, and last year (rightly) won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. All hail Emerson!

However, it wasn’t the only jaw-dropping performance and triumphant act that blew my tiny mind last week…

We tend to forget how much we are at the mercy of technology these days, until – as Hooper from ‘Jaws’ would say – “it swims up and bites you on the ass!” Not that (if we stretch that metaphor a little further), you can ever really prepare for technology’s vengeance, with, say, Skynet-proof pants, but it tends to come down to how you decide to deal with the chaos when it strikes. And boy did it strike.

Me at home watching Ghostbusters in my arctic fleece.As I’m sure you’re now aware, we had some horrid gremlins in our studio last week that no one could’ve prepared for, which pretty much meant we lost all of our visual footage. So please, take a moment, and raise whatever glass/mug of tea you have to hand, and chant the words “Matt Patrick!” For he (our TLI cameraman/editor/all-round post-production genius) came up with the hilarious edit that you have now all seen featuring stills/photos cut to our audio debate about ‘Dr. Linus’… all created in an unbelievably short space of time, and all done so that you, the dedicated Lost fans, wouldn’t be without an episode of our li’l show. Nice one Matt. Don’t stop believin’.

And in a final Ben-related incident, this week has not just meant basking in the skills of these talented gentlemen, it’s meant experiencing the chill of the donkey wheel cave: a new boiler at home = no central heating for a couple of days. So I’ve been sat in several hoodies (so many in fact that the hoods have formed a kind of colossal turtle shell on my back, not that dissimilar to Filbert’s from ‘Rocko’s Modern Life’. A good excuse for sitting under a mountain of duvets and watching films? “That was a hoot…”