5.05 - This Place Is Death

Title’s significance: Charlotte tearfully tells Jin that Sun must never come back because “this place [the island] is death.”

Recap: Jin’s time with Rousseau corroborates most of the crazy Frenchwoman’s story as Jin tries to find his camp and the radio tower on the island. But the smoke monster crashes the party and attacks Montand; when his team tries to save him, his arm gets torn off, and he’s sucked into some ruins. All of Rousseau’s team follow Montand into the ruins, but Jin prevents her from following them. Time skips, more intensely than before, and Jin sees the pillar of smoke before finding Rousseau at her camp, pointing a gun at Robert, who she claims is ill like the rest of her team that she has already killed. Before she can shoot Jin, time skips again, and Jin is reunited with Sawyer; Locke tells Jin that Sun is safe and reiterates a need to get to The Orchid. But time skips again, and again, and Charlotte collapses as Sawyer experiences a nosebleed now. With the time-skipping careening out of control, Locke forges on ahead, but Daniel agrees to stay with Charlotte, who confesses before dying that she grew up on the island and that she met Daniel when she was young. At The Orchid, Locke finds a well, but before descending he has to promise Jin not to bring Sun and her baby back to the island; in the well, Locke fixes the frozen wheel and meets Christian, who directs him to Eloise Hawking before Locke disappears in a bright white light.

Just as Sun’s ready to kill Ben, she gets a call from her daughter, who misses her. Sun’s further deterred when Ben reveals that Jin isn’t dead. Ben promises that the same person who can take them back to the island has the proof that Jin is alive, but Sayid and Kate (with Aaron) bail on the return expedition. When Jack tells Sun that he’s willing to kill Ben himself, Ben gets teed off at how ungrateful they’re being for his attempts to bring them back to the island. Ben reveals that he visited Locke before he died and gives Sun Jin’s wedding ring as proof. Suddenly, Desmond arrives; he’s found Faraday’s mother, and not only is she the woman Ben’s been working with, she’s also Desmond’s temporal policeman, Daniel Faraday’s mother – Eloise Hawking.

Thoughts: The direction in this episode is stellar, but I think it suffers from an overreliance on the on-island shenanigans while shortchanging the Oceanic 6 plotline. I think the episode isn’t the best-written either, although my complaint is chiefly with the handling of the Rousseau plotline; it’s tantalizing, but it ultimately doesn’t deliver much beyond what we already knew about the situation. By the end of the episode, though, we’re in a good place.

Favorite moment: Christian’s line about Ben – “Since when did listening to him get you anywhere worth a damn?” – is priceless; in fact, that whole scene in the cave is delightful.

Characters introduced (in order):

• BRENNAN, LACOMBE, and NADINE, members of the science team

What we learned:

• Montand lost his arm while his team tried to save him from the monster.
• Robert tells Rousseau that the monster is a security system for the temple.
• The smoke monster retreats to a temple on the island.
• Charlotte grew up on the island, but she left at an early age and never spoke of it with her mother.
• Charlotte became an anthropologist to find the island again.
• Daniel will meet young Charlotte.
• The time flashes kill Charlotte.
• Locke, not Ben, had to move the island.
• Christian knows about the frozen wheel.
• Daniel's mother is Eloise Hawking, Ben's collaborator and Desmond's temporal policeman.

Questions:

• How does Ben know Jin’s still alive?
• Why did the monster single out Montand?
• What is the temple for?
• Did the smoke monster do something to Rousseau’s team, or is she nuts?
• Is Ben serving his own interests here, or is he really caring for the Oceanic 6?
• Who built the well?
• Under what circumstances will Daniel meet young Charlotte?
• How did Ben get Jin’s wedding ring – the one he gave to Locke?

Things that are going to be important in Season Six:

• Despite highlighting Rousseau and her science team, we really didn’t get any information on the so-called sickness that befalls her team. Double-You-Tee-Eff, mate?
• Geronimo Jackson comes up again. The writers know this is important, but who are they? (My personal theory: it’s a band that Charlie forges in a post-Jughead world.)
• Who built the well? And the wheel?
• Notice that Christian adamantly refuses to touch Locke. Is it because he’s really Jacob’s nemesis/the smoke monster? Or is it just an issue of Locke’s destiny?