This Place is LOST

LOSTaways-

Jin's time spent floating in the ocean has somehow taught him proper English. The root of Rousseau's insanity/creepiness is explained. Locke (and his pants) take a turn at the frozen donkey wheel.

All-in-all, not a bad episode, if you ask me. This Place is Death was chalk-full of call-backs to season one and hints towards the future.

I'm gonna start by running through the off-island, present-day (relatively speaking, of course), activities of the Oceanic Six. Sun tailed Kate/Jack to Ben and pops out of her car to pop one in Ben's rear. Ben reveals that he knows Jin is still alive, and that Locke told him as much when Ben went to see John. Now maybe Locke was true to his word to Jin and told Ben that Jin was dead and now Ben is just using the ring to manipulate Sun...or he did tell Ben in order that Ben might help John manipulate Sun to come back....or...oh, who cares, right? The point is that Locke is dead, Jin is not, and now Sun knows.

Kate/Aaron and Sayid bolted as soon as things got weird with Sun and her gun, so Ben drove Jack and Sun in his "Reincarnation" van to see Ms. Hawking just in time to bump in to a shell-shocked Desmond. Hawking didn't care for the fact that 4 necessary parts of the Oceanic Six were not present, but says that they ought to "get started" all the same. It sounds like there is some sort of process to returning to the island that is more complicated than clicking your heels and repeating "There's no blog like 'Pants'...there's no blog like 'Pants'." But more on this next week.

Now to the happenings on the Island....

We learn that when Rousseau and her team arrive on the island that it is November of 1988. Jin is understandably confused and wants to go look for his camp. The Frenchies convince him to help lead them to the radio tower where a transmission was already playing on-loop with the numbers being said over and over again. En route, Blackey the Monster of Smoke decides to attack some chick named Nadine and then the leader of the group Montand. One ripped off arm later, and the three other French dudes in the expedition decide to go down the Temple's rabbit hole after Montand (who is doing his best Will Ferrell in Austin Powers impression). Jin stops Rousseau from going in, and good thing because we soon find out that the "sickness" Danielle told Sayid about in Season One was more like some supernatural experience that "changed" even her boy-toy Robert as soon as they went down in that hole.

The scene with Robert and Danielle on the beach, with Jin peeping from behind the bushes, was chilling. Whatever happened to those blokes down in the bowels of the Temple was jarring enough that it freaked Rousseau out to the point of murder and would push Robert to the point of being willing to kill his lover and unborn child. Two of call-backs to season one include the music box on the beach which Rousseau had in her cave-dwelling when Sayid was locked up and tortured by her. Danielle took the ammo out of the gun that Sayid tries to use against her like she did in this episode with Robert. (Girl's got trust issues.)

It seems that Robert and the others who went down in that hole were told what the Monster is ("a security system for that Temple"). Now whether it was the Monster who told them or if there were people down in there (i.e. The Others, Dharma people, Jacob, etc) is left to be seen, but we do know that Ben and the Others know about the Temple and even went to hide there at the end of Season Three and this was referenced again in Season Four. Perhaps Richard was down there, seeing as how he pops up everywhere else (and at seemingly any time). Before we could find out more Robert was capped and Jin was high-tailing it outta there.

When the time shifts Jin finds himself surrounded by Sawyer, Locke and the core time-traveling posse. They catch Jin up on what has transpired using sign language and loud pronouncination of words. They continue their journey to the Orchid, but along the way my girl CS Lewis collapses in a mind-fried stupor for the last time. Daniel stays behind with her and we learn one of my favorite secrets/twists of the entire series: Charlotte lived on the island as a little girl, left with her mother who did what she could to con her into thinking the island didn't exist, spent her life searching for it, and was warned as a little girl on the island by Faraday that she must never return to the island or she'll die....gulp. Wow.

She specifically told Faraday that she "didn't remember something until just now" and then dropped that bombshell on her not-so-secret-admirer. This might speak to the question we all have about time travel: Why don't people remember people they've seen in a flash back? It seems that however it is this time-shifting works, people don't remember events until they are supposed to remember. Not too deep a thought on my part I know, but it's something.

So CS Lewis is dead, but there is more I have to say about that final scene with her and Faraday. For those of you who don't know, I am obsessed with the British author Charlotte shares initials with, and he suffered a great pain/loss in his life. He was from England and his wife was an American who he met later in life and only got to spend a few years with because she died painfully and tragically of cancer. (Note: If you have never seen film Shadowlands starring Sir Anthony Hopkins on this part of CS Lewis's life, you aren't a good person. Go rent/buy it.) There is a heart-wrenching scene in the film depicting the final few moments of his wife's life that reminded me of the final scene between Faraday and Charolette. A Grief Observed is one of the best books by one of the best authors of the past 100 years and is Lewis's own account of the ordeal.

Moving right along, the rest of the group heads to the Orchid with the advice to "look for the well" if the island has shifted them to a time when the Orchid station has not been dug out by Dharma. They find the well and before John descends into its depths Jin makes him promise never to bring Sun and his baby back to the island. Looking as sincere as he can, Locke agrees and falls down and ends up with yet another sharp object through his ravaged legs. And who should appear? Why, none other than our favorite "dead" dad, Christian Shepard (looking like he just got back from a shopping spree at whatever stores middle aged dads in the UP of Michigan shop at).

Old Man Shepard tells Locke that he was wrong to disobey the orders for Locke to move the island and it seems that Ben either manipulated Locke again or made an honest mistake (probably the first in his life should this be the case). If Ben did lie to Locke and knew that he should have let our favorite bald-headed knife-man turn the frozen donkey wheel then this would suggest that Ben wanted to get off the island before things got worse, or that he wanted off the island to hunt down Widmore and Penny and he figured Jacob/the Island wouldn't be cool with that, or that there is still a bigger goal here with Ben who is still working for the good of the island (in some, yet-to-be-explained, way).

Locke is given another chance to get back on the straight and narrow path to Island enlightenment. He asks Christian for help up, and he is refused. Obviously there is some symbolism of Locke needing to do this on his own here, but I also think that Christian is really dead and therefore a spirit (or the Black Monster manifested like Yemi in Season Three) and was also meaning that he literally can't help Locke up.

Thoughts/theories:

-Before Charlotte dies she says "Turn it up...I love Geronimo Jackson!" It is a made-up band that the show has been referencing form time to time since Season Two. Check out that link to learn some more about it. She also says, "I'm not allowed to have chocolate before dinner." My prediction is that she will have remembered that specific line because she said it to Faraday who will travel back in time to when she is a child and attempt to talk to her by bribing her with chocolate. Kind of creepy in the real world, but this is LOST, so all bets are off. The big question is: will Faraday still warn her now that he knows he warned her before? Can he really not change things?

-You should REALLY read some of Doc Jensen's review of the episode here at Entertainment Weekly's website. It's a doozy.

-Eloise Hawking was burning a votive candle in the church at the end of the episode. Some of you may know more about them than I, but from what I understand they are used as part of a prayer offering to Jesus or Mary in the Catholic Church. You light one when you are asking a Higher Power for help/protection/etc. The kind of thing one would do before embarking on a very risky trip back to a magical island.

-Charlotte said that her and her mom lived on the island and when they left they never saw their father again. Before she died she blurted out "Why can't daddy come?" Now we know how hard it is for people to leave this island, so I am guessing her mom was "on the run", as it were, from someone. Her mom did what she could to make her daughter forget the place. So either the two of them were bolting because of someone on the island, or another thought that just came to me is that Faraday will go back in time and warn Charlotte's mom who will then do what she can to get her daughter far away. Either that or her dad is Ben and her mom was the little girl Annie that Ben was in love with as a child.

-The Temple and the black smoke, as a good friend and his brother reminded me, have many tie-in's with the Bible. Frequently in the Old Testament God appeared to the people of Israel as a black cloud of smoke. When the Holy Temple was built in the Holy City of Jerusalem God's presence dwelt in the sacred building, and without getting to deep in to all of this, you could say that the sacredness, the specialness, of the Temple was guarded by that cloud-like presence of Yahweh. Any who entered the Temple's inner chambers in an improper fashion or with un-atoned for sin would be struck dead. I could write a lot more here, but the parallels are fairly obvious from what I've said so far. If you are interested in more on this, let me know or read the Bible. I suggest the second option first. 2 Chronicles 5:13-6:2

-Back to Christian Shepard and the various dead people we've seen on and off the island...I still think there are multiple forces on this island. There is Jacob. There is the Smoke Monster. There is what people refer to as the power of "the island". There is the "magic box" that Ben tells Locke contains whatever people desire in it. I'm just trying to show that there might be more than one thing/entity competing on this island. Maybe the Island is different from Jacob. Or the Temple and the Security System for it are some other power. Charlotte screamed in Korean to Jin that he should "never bring her back", which spooked him and led to him making Locke promise. Claire appeared to Kate telling her not to bring Aaron back. But then the island is in need of those people what left to come back to "correct itself." Someone is lying here or there are competing forces sending mixed signals.


That's all for this episode. This week's adventure is going to be called "316" and we're going to see what happened to Locke when he went back and how he ended up deadski. Enjoy.



Sincerely,
Montand's Severed Limb