Initial Thoughts: "This Place is Death"

First off, apologies for not putting this recap up yesterday. Last night I stared at my computer screen for about an hour, about to write, before finally giving up and falling asleep.

But today I'm energized. And I'm here to say that I really liked Wednesday's episode, "This Place is Death," a heck of a lot more than "The Little Prince." I've always said Lost is about the journey, not the destination, but last week's episode took that too far -- it was all about people in the middle of point A and point B, doing stuff that didn't seem to matter much. This episode was more compelling and had a ton of cool moments.

Still, let me get my major complaint about this season out of the way first: they're rushing things. Yes, it's wonderful that the show has an end date, but if you look at the pace of Season 1 versus the pace of Season 5, the difference is drastic. Those opening scenes with Jin and Rousseau? In the old days, that would've been an entire Jin-centric episode. Charlotte's deathbed confession that she was born on the island? We would've gotten an entire flashback episode about that. (And yes, I know the latter was probably due to Rebecca Mader's own scheduling conflicts, but you see my point.)

Are we losing something by trimming everything down like this? I think we are. The dialogue between the characters has become too clipped, too forced, too "let's get this out of the way in three lines so we can get on with the plot." Take the moment in which Ben tells Sun that Jin is still alive. The realization of this possibility should be a big moment for Sun, and though Yunjin Kim does what she can, the writers don't give her enough to work with. So they have her state the obvious -- "for three years I've considered him dead" -- and then move the plot along. Get in the van. Places to go, people to see.

The careful building of character was what set Lost above other sci-fi shows. In their excited rush to the finish line, the writers seem to have forgotten they're still writing an episodic television show -- and if each episode doesn't have some semblance of its own emotional arc, then it will feel somewhat disappointing no matter how much stuff they cram into it. That's why the flashback structure worked so well for so long -- because in the midst of this gigantic serial drama, we also got a reasonably self-contained story with its own character arc.

I'm not suggesting they do an umpteenth Jack flashback. But I am suggesting that they strengthen each individual episode's own theme and denouement, and a good way to do that is to strengthen each episode's central character and stop plotting each episode so densely. In "The Little Prince," did we really need the scene with Claire's mom or the canoe vs. canoe shoot-out at the island? It was obviously supposed to be a Kate episode, but Kate spent most of the time as a spectator. Likewise, this week seemed meant to be a Sun/Jin episode -- but as soon as Jin meant up with the other castaways, he was shuttled into the background for the rest of the episode.

Anyway, those are my dark thoughts on this season as a whole. As for this episode -- which I liked, remember -- here's what was going through my mind...

-Every scene with Jin and Rousseau was top-notch storytelling. The monster attack was the most exciting monster scene I remember since its introduction in Season 1. We find out that it's job is (or was) to guard the temple -- Robert called it the temple's "security system," which must be where Rousseau got that info when she used that phrase to describe it to the castaways in Season 1 -- and that the "sickness" is, unfortunately, real. Somehow, the monster turned Robert and the rest of the Frenchmen evil -- evil enough to convince Rousseau to lower her weapon and then shoot her. In a stroke of ironic luck, Robert's gun jammed, Rousseau blew him away instead, and Jin picked a really bad time to run out of the bushes and say hi. But really: it was very cool to see all this backstory.

-The notable Oceanic Six moment for me was Ben's hissy fit while driving to meet Mrs. Hawking. Hilarious! Everybody keeps treating Ben like the bad guy even though I'm only trying to help you %$(ing @^#holes!

-Why did Sayid suddenly turn tail and leave? I'm not following the logic. After all that you just went through, you're randomly walking away just because Kate did too?

-Convenient of Desmond to turn up at the exact same time as Ben and co. I wonder where Penny is?

-Charlotte's death scene: sad but expected. Great performance from Mader as she was starting to babble timeline-confusion nonsense. The big bombshell is not that she was born on the island -- we more or less already knew that -- but that grown-up Faraday met her as a kid and told her never to come back. I wonder if Faraday, now that he knows he said that, will bother telling her "again" when the time comes?

-The scene between Locke and Christian Shephard was extremely well-done (I'm especially curious about whether Locke figures out he's Jack's dad by the time he meets up with Jack as Bentham.) It does beg the question of whether or not Locke actually should've turned the wheel when Ben did -- or whether Locke's destiny was always to turn the wheel now, realigning it from when Ben disaligned it. Christian seems to think Locke should've turned it originally, but I don't see how the result would've been any different from when Ben turned it. It does, however, suggest that Christian and Ben are not on the same cosmic side, which by extension means Ben has totally fallen out of Jacob's favor. Something to think about.

Next week's episode: "3:16," which hints that the majority of it will take place with the Oceanic Sixers and Mrs. Hawking. The week after that, it's "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham," which pretty much explains itself -- but which does imply that "3:16" will be totally Locke-less.

TAGS: Random Initial Thoughts, Recaps, Season 5, This Place Is Death
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