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Lost: This Place is Death

Robert Rousseau: "What is that?"
Jin: "Monster."

Was Jin right? The Island is death. So many of the characters on Lost have met a horrible, flamey, gruesome, and/or painful death. Like Charlotte. Who's next? Will the Oceanic Six return to the Island only to get picked off, one by one?

Monster. Arm. *shudder* The Monster guards the Temple? Did you notice the hieroglyphics on the Temple walls? (Atlantis! Atlantis!) It kind of went with the Well having a miniature Stonehenge around it. What happens in the Temple? Whatever it is, it seems to involve some sort of brainwashing unlike the Clockwork Orange thing Ben did to Karl. Whatever it is, it happened to the entire French contingent, excepting Danielle. But why on earth did Robert try to kill his pregnant wife? If he were an Other, the baby would be a huge priority for him. Very confusing.

Jin kept Danielle from going down the Monster rabbit hole. But how could he have saved her since she never went down the hole in the original timeline? Later, she nearly killed him. Could she? Is it even possible? Or would her gun have jammed, like Michael's did?

I wouldn't expect Locke to sacrifice the Island and everyone on it just to keep his word to Jin; Locke does lie. But Locke was also outright valiant and courageous, literally dragging his broken body to the Wheel in order to save everyone. Not that Jin wasn't valiant, too, willing to sacrifice himself to save Sun. Well, maybe not valiant, since everyone on the Island would die.



We finally learned about Charlotte, right before her unfortunate demise. She grew up on the Island, left, and spent the rest of her life trying to return. (To Narnia.) She even knew about the Well. At the last moment, when it couldn't possibly help her, she remembered an incident from her childhood where Faraday told her to leave the Island and never come back. A retroactive sort of memory, like what happened to Desmond. Why did Faraday even try when he knew it wouldn't work?

What's sad is that we haven't seen it happen yet. But I'm sure we will.

It's Ben that Sun was after, of course. I don't know why I even considered that it might be Jack or Kate. Ben went on an out of character tirade saying he's protecting the Oceanic Six. Ring of truth? Another lie?

Ben now has Jack and Sun, but has lost Kate, Aaron and Sayid. And he still doesn't have Hurley. If everyone has to go back, including Aaron, what about Ji Yeon? She was conceived on the Island. And if not, how could Sun bear to leave her behind?

Character bits:

Faraday's mother is indeed named Eloise Hawking. Why did Faraday name a lab rat after his mother? Maybe he just wanted the world's first time traveler to be named after her.

Charlotte's parents were Dharma. Charlotte and her mother left; her father stayed on the Island. Anyone we know?

Danielle wasn't lying about what happened sixteen years ago; she wasn't crazy, after all. Not that I thought she was. We had also heard about Montand's arm before, and about Danielle disabling Robert's gun. Good continuity there.

Locke injured his legs again. I wonder if his fate as a paraplegic is trying to reassert itself? I should have picked up on that before. Or maybe I did, and I forgot.



Christian seemed less creepy and more like himself. He even told Locke casually to say hello to his son. But Christian, a doctor, wouldn't help Locke, who was in agony; he said, "I can't." Was it because of the proximity to the Wheel? Against Walking Dead rules?

Christian doesn't like Ben. That's really interesting.

If Faraday was involved with Theresa Spencer, then he has now lost two loves to the side effects of time travel. You'd think he'd learn from this or something.

Jin and Sawyer are both Island widowers now. Come to think of it, so is Faraday. And hey, Juliet lost Goodwin.

Montand the arm guy said that Nadine was probably off chasing a butterfly and they shouldn't have brought women along. Condescending sexist pig. He probably didn't deserve to have his arm ripped off, though. And hey. He wasn't screaming; he just said he needed help. Why wasn't he screaming? Was the brainwashing instantaneous?

The Sawyer nickname moratorium continued.

Desmond is in Los Angeles. Hide Penny from Ben, Desmond!

Bits and pieces:

— Water was a theme. Searching for water. Jin and the leaf. The Wheel at the bottom of a well. A dry well.


— At the Long Beach marina, one of the boats was named "Illusion."

— Charlotte heard Geronimo Jackson while she was revisiting her childhood.

— Long scene with the Monster. You could hear the roller coaster sounds.

— A lot of people are finding the time travel stuff confusing. It's our group of characters who are traveling in time; everything else on the Island is stationary. Keep in mind what Faraday said: that time is a stream, you can travel up and down the stream, but no matter how hard you try, you can't change the direction of the stream. You can only throw pebbles in it, and swear a lot.

— The pop-up video repeat of last week's "The Little Prince" told us that when Ben turned the ancient Time Wheel Thingy, he arrived in Tunisia ten months later. I'm sure that fact was in the original episode, but since Locke just turned the wheel, I thought it could use repeating.

— I also noticed that Sun's box contained sixteen chocolates. Charlotte's last words were about chocolate.

— Gold acting stars for Rebecca Mader. I've never been fond of her character, but she did a masterful job in this episode.

Quotes:

Montand: "First a boat. Then a helicopter. Next thing you know, he'll be talking about a submarine." (Ha, ha.)

Jin: "Translate, please! Translate!"
Sawyer: "You heard the man. Translate!"
Miles: "He's Korean. I'm from Encino."

Faraday: "You speak any other languages?"
Charlotte: "Just Klingon."
That made me finally like her. Right before they killed her off.

Sawyer: "Sure you don't want us to lower you down?"
Locke: "Where would be the fun in that?"
Yes, I'm Locke. I'm a manly man. Locke should have listened to Sawyer. If he had, he might not have suffered a compound fracture. But if he hadn't fallen, would he have materialized in dirt and suffocated? Did the Island make him fall?

This may be a four polar bear episode,

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

23 comments:

  1. Great review, Billie. I noticed the "Illusion" boat in the marina too, and then promptly forgot about it. Two questions: when did we hear about the arm before? And (sorry if this is lame) what is Geronimo Jackson?

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  2. I didn't like it as much as you did Billie, since the episode was so choppy. On one hand, it was plotted like a Jin/Sun episode, and then the latter half suddenly devolved into a Charlotte episode. I think it could have been better for being two seperate episodes; One with Jin/Rousseau and the Oceanic Six, and the second a classic flashback episode centering around Charlotte ending with her death.

    But I guess I just wanted more Charlotte...

    And Meredith, if I may? Geronimo Jackson was a singer from the 70's -- though I might be thinking of Jethro Tull. And Rousseau mentioned Montand's arm in the second last episode of the Season One Finale, when they entered the "Dark territory".

    Also Billie, did you notice that Nadine disappeared like Cindy the Flight attendant did in The Other 48 Days, as the Tallie's approached the camp? Maybe she might turn up again, like Cindy did, intergrated into the Other's camp.

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  3. Hi Meredith,

    I wondered about Geronimo Jackson too and found the following on wiki:

    Geronimo Jackson has been referenced in five episodes of Lost as well as in The Lost Experience. The producers of Lost have asserted that Geronimo Jackson was a genuine, but obscure, 1970s rock band, which released one album entitled Magna Carta. Aside from sources relating to Lost, there is no evidence for the existence of this band.

    In "The Hunting Party", a Geronimo Jackson album is found by Charlie and Hurley while they are going through all of the gramophone records in The Swan. The band is also referenced in the episodes "The Whole Truth","Further Instructions", "This Place is Death", a poster in John Locke's locker in "Cabin Fever" and at the Hugo birthday party in "There's No Place Like Home".

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  4. Hi Billie........

    Great review, as always but a small error

    "Ben now has Jack and Sun"

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  5. MBenz, I did notice that Nadine just slid off the radar like Cindy and it made me wonder again where are those kids? That seemed like such a big deal that they took them in the beginning and now nothing about them for a long time. And Paul, thanks for the info, now I don't feel so clueless since Geronimo might never have existed anyway.

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  6. Hi Billie, great review as always.

    "Jin kept Danielle from going down the Monster rabbit hole. But how could he have saved her since she never went down the hole in the original timeline?"

    I think you got the answer right there:

    " what Faraday said: that time is a stream, you can travel up and down the stream, but no matter how hard you try, you can't change the direction of the stream."

    I'm not sure, but I guess in the time travel "rules" of Lost ther are no "original" timelines. There is just one timeline. That's why it can't be changed.

    Jin had to travel through time to save Danielle, because Danielle was saved by him... I hope I make sense...

    Everything that has happened or will happen has already happened and will always happen.

    Except when Desmond is involved. He's the only on who can actually change the stream of time.

    I can't even imagine, what will happen if Desmond get's back to the Island and starts travelling through time. I just hope the series won't end with him stopping the plane from ever leaving, making the whole series non-existant or something like that...

    Btw. Lost ends with this season, right?

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  7. Billie,

    Sawyer did call Charlotte "Red" at the beginning of the episode...so there was one nickname.

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  8. "Btw. Lost ends with this season, right?"

    No, there will be 17 eps in this season and 17 more in season 6.

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  9. "No, there will be 17 eps in this season and 17 more in season 6."

    Great! So we have another year of confusion! (slightly reduced by great Billie-reviews. Seriously, I'd be totally lost on Lost without them.) ;)

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  10. Solid episode, not as great as it could have been though.

    Raising as many question by episodes is really frustrating too.

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  11. Fascinating episode. I kept wishing that I could compare what was happening with previous Rousseau episodes. And wondering how the french mans arm stayed in exactly the same place when Jin moved through time. Wouldn't weather conditions or animals cause it to move somewhere ? Or it get buried or something.

    I felt sad for Charlotte but I wasn't emotionally invested in her story enough to get really upset. Although I am now wondering if Richard is her father.

    My favourite part of this episode was Sawyer and Jin hugging. Very cute. My least favourite was Daniel, but that was purely the acting which I thought was pretty bad.

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  12. Did anyone pickup what Christian said to Locke at the bottom of the well after Locke mentioned that Richard had said he would have to die? It sounded lile "That would be cyberflies"...........?!

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  13. Nice review, great episode overall. I think that Charlotte's father might be Charles Widmore, just an idea. It would be so like this show to have more secret siblings. Does that make any kind of sense with what we know of the timeline?

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  14. We know that Charlotte's initials are the same as C.S. Lewis's, and Charlotte was the one to tell Locke about the Well. One of C.S. Lewis's favorite books was The Well at the World's End by Willaim Morris. Here's the Wikipedia link:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well_at_the_World's_End

    And here's an excerpt from the plot summary:

    "Using language with elements of the medieval tales which were his models, Morris tells the story of Ralph of Upmeads, the fourth and youngest son of a minor king, who sets out, contrary to his parents' wishes, to find knightly adventure and seek the Well at the World's End, a magic well which will confer a near-immortality and strengthened destiny on those who drink from it."

    Don't know if the Lost writers were aware of the connection or just coincidence........

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  15. Also, to Mick, I believe what Christian said to Locke was something like, "That's why it's called sacrifice."

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  16. Ah ha! Thanks anonymous. I guess I was trying to read more into the comment than there was.......

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  17. I just happened to be flicking through the channels this weekend and an older lost episode was on, Season 2 I believe. It was the episode where Mr. Ecko started having dreams and was helping John Locke (I apologize for not knowing the exact episode name). He then goes to visit a family of a young woman who drowned but then came back to life a day later. The reason I bring this up is watching it now I took notice that the girls name was Charlotte....

    Was she traveling in time when they thought she drowned?? She later then goes on to tell Mr. Ecko about his brother Yemi.

    Has anyone else noticed this?

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  18. MBenzN and Meredith: in regards to Nadine sliding off the radar and maybe turning up again, I don't think so because she fell/was let go straight down from the trees? Danielle was upset and then Jin said to run.

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  19. Did I miss something??? When did Jin find out that Charlotte spoke Korean???

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  20. Someone may have already said this, but i assumed the 'walking dead' were actually the monster itself, which would explain why Danielle's crew didnt sound in danger when they shouted up from the tunnel, it sounded like the monster was tricking her to go down to help them.
    Great review as always :)

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  21. "If everyone has to go back, including Aaron, what about Ji Yeon? She was conceived on the Island. And if not, how could Sun bear to leave her behind?"

    I guess because Ji Yeon wasn´t on the plane the first time?

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  22. Does the fact that Desmond is part of the group at the church mean that he is going back to the Island? I hope not; I want at least one of our gang to be happy in this time.

    While time travel is not really my favourite thing, I am enjoying seeing some of the stories we've been hearing about for a while now come to life. I was also pleased to see that Jin ended up where he belonged.

    But, Locke? That man is a good liar!

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  23. God, my heart aches for Locke. He hasn't been the most valiant or heroic character for a while now (Maybe since mid season 2), but I can't help but root for the guy whenever I see him. A recurrent theme in his character is his refusal of being told what he can't do. I don't really like fakeouts, but I really do hope that Locke's death is not real. (On another note, his Motif is my absolute favorite, and "Locke'd out again" is my favorite piece from the soundtrack).

    Could Faraday be Charlotte's father? It would make sense considering his absolute devotion to her. Faraday does not really strike as a "Love at first sight" kind of guy. Also, he has to be an other, right? He looks as old as he was in that Dharma flashback a few episodes back.

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