Lost – This Place Is Death (5.05) Review

February 12, 2009 at 7:59 pm (Review, T.V.)

(Spoilers if you have not seen this episode)

Ben Screwed Up. But more on that later.

This Place Is Death once again set a very dark and serious tone for season 5, and I still like it. We pick up where we left off last week, with Jin having recently been fished out of the water by Danielle’s research team. Finally, in the greatest fan service ever,  we get to see almost all of her story. Almost as interesting as her history being reveled, is seeing how much of it actually matches up with what she told the losties in season 1. A lot of things didn’t match up with what she told Sayid and the others, but I am willing to accept that 16 years in solitary on a crazy island will make you forget exactly how things happened. Question; what the hell happened to Montand’s arm? Answer; Smokey. Yes, finally, our wonderful, vicious, brutal Lost smoke monster makes his return. When the group notices that one of Danielle’s research pals Nadine is suddenly missing, they go back to find her. Suddenly a tree explodes out of the ground, Nadine’s dead body falls from the sky, and the smoke monster is back. It quickly sets it’s sights on Montand, who is draged by the leg (in very similar fashion to how Locke was draged into that hole) towards an opening in the ground near a wall covered in hieroglyphs. As the others try to hold Montand up, while Smokey is pulling him down, his arm is ripped off him, and he is taken into the dark. It was an intense scene that was all about those damn fan’s and their annoying commitment to all of Lost’s little mysteries. Hahaha. I can only hope that the four toes statue is answered in similar fashion. Ok. So onward. Montand’s arm gets ripped off and he is pulled into a dark hole, then suddenly, and in a very strangly calm way, he calls for help. Robert (Danielle’s husband/baby daddy) and the others decide to go in after him, despite Danielle’s objections. Robert convinces Danielle that they need to go in after Montand and save him, Danielle agrees. Then Jin steps in, and stops Danielle from going down with the rest of the team, for the sake of the baby. It was here that I realized how much I love the idea that one of the Ocianic Survivors was on the island when Danielle was. For some reason to me it makes everything involving her so much more interesting. And Jin just proves once again to be a complete bad ass and shows how much the island has changed him. When Danielle’s team went back to search for Nadine he could have bailed and gone to look for his camp and Sun like he wanted. But instead he stayed and helped, knowing that out of all of them he had the best knowledge of the island. Go Jin. You rock.

So, Robert and the rest (except Danielle) go down the rabbit hole, and Jin experiences his first time flash (going to assume he was unconscious for all the others). This was the first flash of the episode and I noticed that it seemed a lot more violent than all the others. Jin was clearly in pain, and (though this may have just been a decision made by a different director) there were some different effects added to make the whole experience look a lot more intense. The sky clears and Jin looks around, having no idea what happened. Taking a step he kicks something,and looks down to see Montand’s decayed arm. Ok, Jin you just traveld to the future, what are you going to do next? Run into the jungle of course. Heading towards a pillar of black smoke he sees near the beach (for a brief second I thought he was going to wander into the events of Exodus) he stumbles upon a beach camp. Quickly he finds the bodies of the last two men from the research team, apparently dead from up close encounters with Danielle’s bullets. Jin then stumbles across Danielle and Robert yelling with guns pointing at each other. Danielle is telling Robert that she knows he is infected, that just like the others he was replaced by the monster when they went into the hole (or what I am pretty sure is one of the Cerberus Vents). Robert argues that it is not a monster, just a security system guarding the temple.

Pause for a moment. Yes, the Temple. I can only assume that this is THE Temple that Ben sent the rest of his people to. That he called the last safe place on the island. That he sent Danielle, Alex, and Karl to. Finally it seems we have seen the temple. From what Robert said, and the way he was defending it, I also think maybe he and the others made multiple trips to the temple. Maybe they discovered something there…Maybe I’m reading too much into it. Anyway. Back to the action.

So thanks to season 1 we all know how this argument ends, Robert tries to shoot Danielle, but she had removed the fiering pin from his gun. She looks horrified that the man who had just said he loved her and didnt want anything to happen to her or the baby just tried to shoot her. So, BLAM, Danielle shoots Robert. Jin lets out a bit of a startled yell at this, alerting Danielle to his sudden reappearance. “You, you disappeared” she yells at him as she opens fire. Jin runs away as the sky lights up again. Immediately he hears a gun cock behind him and a voice tell him to turn around. Oh happy day, it’s not a crazy french person, it’s Sawyer and company! Finally reunited with his friends Jin of course asks where Sun is. Sawyer makes a humorous attempt to explain to Jin that every time the sky lights up they travel through time, but Jin is more concerned with why Locke wants to bring Sun back to the island. Standing in front of Miles and Charlotte Jin asks for translation. In a hilarious moment, Sawyer looks at Miles and says “You heard him, get to translatin”. “He’s Korean, I’m from Encino” Miles responds. Haha. Oh it was glorious. So Charlotte, with her yet to be explained fluent Korean, explains to Jin everything that is going on. As they continue their trek to the Orchid, Jin makes it known that he does not want Sun brought back, but Locke continues to tell him that they all have to come back.

Then it happens. Well, ok not quite like that. But it starts. Two (or was it 3?) rapid back to back time jumps and everyone is in bad shape. Nosebleeds all around (except for Daniel, Jin, and Locke…curious) and Charlotte is in really bad shape. She is down, nose bleeds, and suffering form mental time jumps like Minkowski. Things are looking bad for Charlotte. The group decides that they much keep moving because things are really starting to get bad. Daniel decides to stay with Charlotte, and the others take off for the Orchid. But not before Charlotte can tell Jin not to let Sun come back, because “this place is death: (her words). And when the question is raised of what if they get to the Orchid at a time before it existed, Charlotte says to look for it by the well.

So Daniel is left alone to watch the woman he loves die. Things are getting pretty serious on Lost. In her final moments Charlotte reveals the only interesting thing about her character, she has been here before. Where? The island. Charlotte finally reveals what so many of us have thought, that she was born on the island. Her parents were members of the Dharma Initiative until one day when they had to leave. Her and her mother left to live in England, but her Father had to stay behind. She says that whenever she would mention the island, her Mother would tell her it wasn’t real, and that she made it up. So Charlotte became and anthropologist to dedicate her life to finding the island. Once again on Lost, things come full circle. Charlotte then says she just remembered something. When her and her mother left, a strange man who scared her as a child, told her she had to never come back to the island, or she would die. She then looks at Daniel and says “Dan, I think that man was you.” BAM! That was Lost punching you in the face with WTF power. Haha, sorry. Ok. So Dan told child Charlotte to never come back tot he island or she would die…I’ll come back to this later.

Locke, Sawyer, Jin, Miles, and Juliet arrive at the Orchid. Juliet makes a comment about how lucky they are to be in a time when the Orchid is still there (looks to me like they were far into the future by the looks of the green house), and immediately a time flash to the distant past when the Orchid is not there. “You just had to say something”. Good to know we are getting some of Sawyer’s old sarcastic attitude back.

Locke quickly discovers the location of the well and prepares to descend the rope down into the dark unkown. A brief interlude with Jin results in Locke promising not to search Sun out and bring her back to the island, but making no promises that she won’t search him out. Jin gives Locke his wedding ring and tells him to tell Sun that Jin’s dead body washed up on shore and they buried him.As Locke climbs down the well, the sky begins to light up, and the island time jumps again. Locke falls, hits the ground, and suffers a pretty sever broken leg. He looks around the darkness, trying to figure out where he is or how he gets off the island. I’m sure at this point Locke is really wondering what exactly his plan was, and then, footsteps.

A shadowy figure entres, lights a lantern (the exact same one from Jacob’s Cabin) and Christina Shepard makes his way over to Locke. I would just like to say that i think Christian is one of the most interesting characters on the show, even is his alive off island form. John Terry is an amzing actor and has been responsible for some fo the best scenes in Lost. Ok, end rant. Christian tells Locke that HE was supposed to move the island, not Ben. Two things come to mind at this revelation. Firstly, that if Locke had moved the island, maybe the bad things wouldn’t have happened, and maybe the Ocianic 6 need to come back for a reason other than to stop the time jumps. 2nd, Ben kinda screwed up. I think he honestly thought he had to move the island, and didn’t do it to screw Locke over. I think it was widely believed that it was Locke’s destiny to lead the others and guard the island and replace Ben. Now it seems that Locke’s destiny was simply to save the island, and was never meant to replace Ben. Interesting. Christian also tells Locke that his need to die is a sacrifice. I was called back to the way Locke so calmly explained that Boone was a sacrifice the island had demanded and never seemed really shaken up by his death. Christian seemed to feel the same way about Locke’s impending death.

Locke turns the wheel.

Meanwhile off island things are slowly getting interesting. It seems that Ben is close to getting everyone together, as Sayid, Jack, Aaron, Kate, and Sun are all at the pier together. With Sun holding a gun to his head, Ben tells her that he can prove that Jin is still alive, but she needs to go with him to the woman who will help them all get back to the island. When Kate hears that the plan is to go back to the island, she takes Aaron and leaves. I hate Kate. God I hate Kate. Sayid also leaves. Ben convinces Jack and Sun to go with him to see ‘the woman’ who I think we all knew was Eloise Hawking. Along the ride Sun and Jack discuss shooting Ben, leading to one of the most interesting scenes of Ben, fomr a character standpoint. Ben pulls the van over, and yells at the two of them that if they had any idea what he had done to keep them and their friends safe, they would never stop thanking him. Interesting. What exactly has been done to protect them? And who or what is he protecting them from? It was interesting to see Ben show some emotion and general frustration. It is clear that he knows exactly what is at stake if they don’t all get back to the island, even if he hasn’t told the O6 yet. When the 3 of them arrive at Hawking’s church, Desmond walks up, having just arrived in LA. Asking what they are doing there, Ben replies with “the same thing you are.”

“You’re looking for Faraday’s Mother too?”

I KNEW IT! Eloise Hawking is finally shown to be Daniel’s mother (interesting that he named his rats after his mother) as Sun, Jack, Ben and Desmond enter the church. Hawking tells Ben that he needed to bring all of them, and she seems totally unsurprised that Desmond has found his way back to her. “Lets get started” she says, to close the episode.

This Place Is Death was a totally amazing episode, and that makes 5 in a row for season 5. The writers are definitely showing that they are giving all the answers, and laying it all out on the table. We got Danielle’s back story. We saw (part of ) the Temple. We got a little more info on Smokey. We saw Locke leave the island. We found out that Charlotte was born on the island. We found that that Hawking is Faraday’s Mother. The information is just pouring out of this season, it’s almost hard to keep track of it all. I was in love with this show before Season 5 began, but now I am just totally and utterly blown away by it. I cannot wait until next week.