Lost – The Little Prince (5.04) Review

February 5, 2009 at 7:26 am (Review, T.V.)

Well for some reason I haven’t written a single word on Season 5 of Lost yet…but I will. Wait, I am right now! What I mean is I’ll get to the first 3 episodes later. So, lets talk about episode 4, The Little Prince.

As a rule, I tend to dread Kate centric episodes. I think she is the least interesting character on the show, and have since season 1. I really never gave a damn about what she did, and as her whole story slowly unfolded over the next 3 years, well lets put it this way, I would have taken a couple more episodes about Niki and Palo over Kate bitching about ‘taco night’. But none of that really matters now because honestly, can we really even call any of these season 5 episodes ‘centric’? They all pretty much cover everything that is going on with everyone at the same time. And I love it. Anyway.

The Little Prince picks up where Jughead left off, with Charlotte bloody and unconscious and our losties trying to figure out where/when they are and what they need to do. Locke decides that he needs to go back to the Orchid and do whatever it was Ben did to get off the island. I’m curious to see how this plays out. Locke know she needs to get off island to bring the Oceanic 6 back, and knows Ben got off the island via the Orchid. But Ben moving the island is what screwed everything up and caused the time jumps, at least as far as we know. So if Locke moves the island, maybe it will fix the time jumps and the O6 won’t need to come back after all. Who knows. Anyway. I got way off topic.

So Charlotte comes to, rather anti-climatically and the group moves on, the plan being to get back to the beach and use the Zodiac to get closer to the Orchid faster. Along the way Miles starts to get a nosebleed. He confides in Dan, who says he doesn’t know exactly why the temporal displacement is happening to some people, and not to others. His theory, which agrees with many fan theories online right now, is that it has something to do with how long a person has been on the island. Miles’ response is along the lines of him having only gotten to the island, to which Dan replies “Are you sure about that?” Hmm…very interesting. Gives some support to the theories of Miles being the son of Dr. Pierre Chang.

So the big issue with this episode, for me, going into it was the teaser from last week. We say the light from the Swan, and we had heard Swayer say he saw Kate. So when Locke walks outof the jungle and looks up to see the light from Dues Ex Machina, I expected something big to happen. Maybe the group would march forward and see Locke. Maybe we would see a previously unknown conversation of past Locke and future Locke. Something. Some kind of revelation. But no. Locke lies, says he doesn’t know what the light is (though he later confides in Sawyer) and insists that they keep moving. A moment later we hear screaming, and having watched season 1, it is obvious that it is Claire giving birth to Aaron. Swayer runs forward and see Kate delivering the baby. Again, expecting something, anything…but no. he just watches until another flash of light occurs. Really the only disappointment so far this season, is what seems to me like a huge wasted opportunity here. I thought the writers could really have done something to shock us all, instead they just showed us things we had already seen. But the great thing about time travel, is that there is no such thing as a wasted opportunity. Lucky us.

When the losties arrive at the beach camp, not only do they find that it actually exists, but it seems to have been ransacked. None of the other survivors are around, leading me once again to wonder what exactly happened to Rose and Bernard, and how are they dealing with all this time travel. Makes me think either these characters have been removed from the story in a very uncharacteristic way of Lost, or they are going to become much more important than I ever though.

So with the camp in partial ruins and the zodiac mysteriously missing, Locke and company need a new way to get to the Orchid. This is when, for me, the coolest part of the episode takes place. The group discovers two wooden canoes on the beach and assume they belong to whoever ransacked the camp and took the zodiac. Miles discovers a water bottle in one, proving that the canoes are not that old. Sawyer investigates the bottle, noting the name Ajira. Juliet, the source of wisdom that she is, tells the others that Ajira is an airline that flies in the Asian Pacific. To me this screams Oceanic 6. Just my thought. But I think the group of survivors and the Oceanic 6 just missed each other here. But hey, that’s just me.

Anyway, they take the canoe and begin to paddle their way around the island. Along their journey they find themselves under fire. The other canoe from the camp seems to have followed them and it’s passengers are now opening fire on our survivors. Juliet returns fire, and shoots…someone. The scene was done is very typical Lost fashion, carefully not showing us who the people in the second canoe were. This does nothing but make me believe that someone important got shot…Good job Juliet. Another timely time flash occurs, propelling Juliet and the rest safely out of harms way and directly into a storm. Once on land Sawyer and Juliet share a moment, and it seems that Juliet has a bad habit of falling for every man on this island…well except for Ben of course.Juliet also gets a minor nosebleed, and it seems that everyone is going to find themselves subject to temporal displacement soon. I hope Dan can figure out what is up before someone dies…The group heads off towards the orchid, stopping only a moment to ponder over some fresh wreckage…that appears to be in french…

Meanwhile off island things are more interesting in than in the past, but still not as interesting as the on island events. Kate is on a quest to find out who is after Aaron. Her great plan is to follow the lawyer to his private meeting with the client who is supposedly after the blood samples.

Also meanwhile, Jack receives a phone call of Hurley, just to let Jack know that he is safe in jail. Good job Hugo, way to make everything more difficult. Ben arrives at the hospital, just in time for Sayid to be attacked by a mysterious assassin, who conveniently has Kate’s address in his pocket. With Sayid, Jack and Ben all reunited, and Kate in apparent danger, the three of them split up agreeing to meet at the pier once they finsih what they need to do. Jack of course goes after Kate, while Sayid and Ben go for Hurley. Kate’s adventure, with Jack in tow, lead them to a motel where the lawyer in question has a secret meeting with the person after Aaron…Claire’s mom. The plot thickens. Jack goes in to speak with Ms. Littleton and find out why she wants the child. And then it turns out that she has no idea what Jack is talking about and that she is in town to collect money from a lawsuit against Oceanic airlines. What a let down. I had really hoped that Claire’s mom was involved, because the only other option was the obvious ‘Ben went after Aaron to scare Kate into running so she would be easier to get to come back to the island’ scenario. Which, as it turns out, is exactly what was going on. So as the episode draws to a close we find ourselves at the pier with Kate facing off against Sayid, Ben and Jack, all on the verge of telling her that they need to go back. Nearby is Sun, with Aaron in the back seat. She has her gun, and clearly intends to shoot Ben. I have a feeling she’ll wind up shooting someone else. Also, I think Sun’s little mission to kill Ben is horribly bland and really pointless. She has no way of knowing that Ben was partially responsible for the freighter blowing up, therefore has no way of linking him to Jin’s death. Oh well.

And then the show gets back to being Lost. The final 5 minutes are really what this episode is all about. Set in the ocean, a small group of people floating in a raft. All of them men, one of them a young woman. All speaking french. Finally, it seems, we are going to get the long awaited back story of Danielle Russeau. But it wouldn’t be that simple and easy would it, no of course not, this is Lost after all. While adrift at sea these shipwrecked folk see a man afloat at sea. They manage to pull him aboard their life raft. Jin lives. Of course I am sure that few people believed him to really be dead, it was nice of the writers to not bring him back right away and make us question whether or not he was still alive. So dawn breaks as Jin awakens to find himself on the beach with some random Europeans. The young woman, who is soon revealed to be pregnant, asks him who he is and gives him some water. “Jin. Nice to meet you, I’m Danielle. Danielle Rousseau.” BOOM. End episode.

All in all I think it was a good episode, though not the best of the season. Obviously the big reveal is that Jin is alive and all the time travelers on the island are in 1988. I hope that we have enough time before they jump again to find out how Montond losses that damn arm, and how Robert and the rest die. It will be nice to finally get Danielle’s story after 5 years of waiting. Most of the Oceanic 6 have been reunited, sort of, and it seems we are getting closer and closer to their return. It seems now, that this will happen well before the season finale, as I had originally though. The hi light for me was the Ajira Airways water bottle. I can’t see how that is anything but the return of the Oceanic 6.

The Little Prince was not a earth shattering episode, but it was far from a bad piece of tv albeit a little slow starting. At this point in the show I really don’t think we are going to have too many wasted moments or bad episodes.

I apologize for the rambling mess that this review is. It is late, and I havn’t quite gotten back into the rythem of writting these things yet. Hopefully I’ll be able to do better next week.