Lost Episode Review 5.04, "The Little Prince"

"Time travel's a bitch"

I was actually fairly bored with this episode until the last ten minutes, which did somewhat redeem it. The dual treat of Jin being alive and getting to see Danielle land on the Island certainly offset an episode where, well, not much really happened.

Raise your hand if you figured out that Ben was playing Kate like a harp to make her run. Thought so. And my heartstrings simply refuse to be tugged by the re-emergence of Skate. Wouldn't you rather see them develop Sawliet (Juliyer?) instead? I sure would. I will have to say though the look Kate gave Ben when she saw him was priceless.

And allow me to enter full horn-tooting mode for a moment. Not only did I predict last season that Jin was still alive, but this little quote seems awfully prescient now:

The one thing that makes me think Jin might be still alive is that he's the one person who could bring Sun back from the dark side (and maybe finding out he's still alive will prevent her from doing something horrible at a critical juncture).

And what would be more horrible than Ben getting killed. :)

/horn-tooting

Until the last scene, the time jumping this episode was kinda boring too. While it was neat seeing the beam of light from the Hatch and Claire giving birth with Sawyer nearby, they didn't really tell us anything new. And the scene where they found the boats only seemed to serve to get them to (hopefully) hook up with the time-traveling Jin and Danielle (BTW, kudos to the casting director who found a wonderful young actress to play everyone's favorite crazy French woman).

The most interesting questions coming out of last night are really from next's week's preview. The band's beginning to get back together, so it looks like we'll get the resolution of the "Kwon... Sun-Hwa Kwon" subplot. And my fearless prediction: Ben knows Jin is still alive because he saw him in the past on the Island. Question is, how is he going to prove it to Sun? Did Jin give Ben something in the past that he can show Sun now? Only thing I can think of is his wedding band... hmmmm...

Enough rambling. As a reflection of how empty this episode was, I really struggled to come up with five questions this week.

Five questions:

1) Who's trying to kill (or capture) Sayid?

While Ben's plan to manipulate Kate was pretty transparent, it's less clear if he's the one trying to get to Sayid. Seems unlikely. And since Widmore seems to have been taken out of the equation as a bad guy because of his feelings for Penny, who's going to be the villain trying to keep everyone from getting back to the Island? The only person I can think of is Abaddon, who we really haven't heard from in a long time (I don't think we've seen him in the present since he visited Hurley in Santa Rosa). Wonder if he's going to visit Hurley in jail now...


2) How is it determined who gets the Time Travel Flu?

Daniel remarked on it could have had something to do with the "amount of exposure." But so far we've seen it affect Charlotte, Miles and Juliet in that order. Exposure to the Island? To radiation in general? Dunno, but let's say it's the former. We know next to nothing about Charlotte and Miles' backgrounds (and it certainly seems like they were hinting Miles was on the Island in the past - perhaps as a baby for all the conspiracy buffs out there), but Juliet was on the Island for three years. Are we to believe Charlotte and Miles were on the Island for longer than that? Very confusing. And furthermore, why hasn't Daniel been affected at all? You would think he'd be the most sensitive given the way he's fried his brain. Did he fix himself by speaking with Desmond?

The corollary to this question is how do they fix it? Do they have to all find Constants or do they just have to wait for Locke to spin the wheel? Also it's weird that their consciousnesses don't seem to be jumping - they're just passing out.

3) Who were the guys in the boat who were shooting at the Losties?

And when in time were they when it happened? Judging from the rusted state of the supplies on the beach, it looked like the future.

The Ajira Airways water bottle they found is a promotional tie in with some online LOST stuff ABC did a while back. I haven't really explored the sites, but Lostpedia has a really nice overview. Regardless though, who owns this company and how did they get to the Island? Was there another plane crash?

4) If they were in the future when they took the boats, what happened to Bernard, Rose and any of the remaining redshirts?

And how many of them are still alive? Bernard and Rose, I think, are the only ones we can be certain of. And Vincent, of course. :)

5) Are we finally going to spend some quality time with Danielle in the past?

Not really a show mystery as much as a request. What we really want to see from Danielle's flashback is 1) Her giving birth to Alex, 2) Ben stealing Alex and 3) what happened to her crew, i.e. did they really go crazy with some sort of "sickness." Getting to hear Danielle record the radio tower message wouldn't really tell us anything, but be pretty crazy cool.

Tidbits:

* Em thinks Aaron is an incredibly ugly kid. I really wouldn't go that far, but he's certainly not the kid from "Jerry McGuire" either.

* For an episode packed with The Numbers, Sayid was in Room 133. Weird.

* Kate lives at 42 Panorama Crest

* The rendezvous was at Long Beach Marina, Slip 23

* Ben's lawyer's license plate was 4PC382

* Why a gun in a Godiva box if Sun ordered the gun from someone in a sealed package? Was the box lead-lined to foil airport scanners or did she just want some truffles for the road?

* John has now found his purpose in life - to die bringing everyone back - and he seems perfectly happy simply knowing what that purpose is.

* Orange isn't exactly a slimming color on Hurley.

Summary:

This was a filler episode to me, designed to do two things: 1) Get all the L.A. Losties to the docks and set up the Ben/Sun confrontation and 2) Get the Island Losties to the other side of the Island so they can meet up with Jin (and possibly Danielle). The rest of it was just kinda filler. Giving this one a 3.0/5 and hoping for everything to come to a head next week. If we get some serious Danielle screen time, all will be totally forgiven.