"Let's Get Started" - 5x05: This Place Is Death

I loved this episode. LOVED it.
My standard is always “The Constant,” my all-time favorite, and “This Place Is Death” is right up there. I thought “Jughead” might be second on the list when it arrived, but last week’s episode might have knocked it down a notch. This one just didn’t stop, like the flashes; it was one thing after another. It just never let up. Add that to the content of the show: Charlotte’s death, the incredible Smoke Monster scene, finally seeing how Montand lost his arm, the first appearance of what might be the Temple, Locke leaving the island by turning the frozen donkey wheel with the guidance of Christian Shephard, and a possible explanation of why the flashes were happening.

I’m trying to squeeze this recap out quick, since it’s already so late as it is, so let’s get to it!

Sun is watching Ben, Jack, and Sayid from the car. She gets a phone call – it’s her mother, who is taking care of Ji Yeon (who is adorable) back in Korea. Sun tells her daughter that she has a new friend for her in America named Aaron. She hangs up, gets the gun, and walks out of the car and over to where the others are. She aims the gun at Ben and tells Kate that Aaron is in the car. She says, “If it wasn’t for you, Jin would still be alive,” to Ben. Ben very calmly says that he didn’t kill Jin. “Neither did anyone else – because he’s not dead. Jin’s still alive and I can prove it.”

Jin is on the beach looking out at the water. Rousseau and her crew are getting organized on the beach. Danielle comes to talk to Jin. She tells him that she and her crew sailed from Tahiti on November 15, 1988. Jin says he needs to find his camp, and Danielle and her crew are confused. “You’ve been on this island before?” Robert asks. Jin asks if they saw a helicopter, and Montand, who it becomes more and more apparent is a real jerk, says, “First a boat, now a helicopter – next thing you know he’ll be talking about a submarine,” (a LOST inside joke for the fans, of course) and tells them they need to get going; he wants to find the antenna on the island that is broadcasting the numbers. Robert asks Jin if there’s a radio tower on the island, and he says yes. Danielle tells Jin to come with them to the radio tower, and then they’ll find his camp. Danielle looks back at Jin with concern. “Who are you hoping to find?” she asks him. “My wife,” he replies. Next, we see Danielle and her people walking with Jin in the jungle, and she collapses in pain. Robert says he regrets taking her along with them, but Danielle tells him it was just a little kick (I guess Alex was good at soccer at Dharma High), and then they have a playful conversation about the name of the baby. Danielle knows it will be Alexandra, while Robert believes the baby is an Alexander. They all want a water break, and Nadine has the canteen...but Nadine is missing. If we didn’t know something bad was going to happen the minute we saw them cluelessly tramping through the jungle, we know now. Montand makes another winning comment about not bringing women on the trip – “she’s probably off chasing butterflies” – and they start looking around. Then they hear the sounds of the island wildlife slowly quieting, until Jin hears that familiar clickity-clicking sound off in the distance. It grows closer. Robert asks Jin what is making the noise. “Monster,” he says.

After the commercial, they are looking around for Nadine. Jin insists they leave, but Montand tells him to shut up. (He'll regret that.) They walk a little ways and find Nadine’s backpack. Suddenly, a tree is ripped out of the ground, we hear the clicking and a growl (which I don’t ever remember hearing before from the monster...) and Nadine’s body flops to the ground. She is dead. Jin yells “RUN!” They do, and we see Montand, who is leading the way, stop at a clearing. He hears the sound, which seems to surround him. We then see Smokey moving like a hump-backed sea serpent just above the ground and behind the foliage, and then he rises up, towering in front of Montand. It roars with enough force to blow Montand's hair back, and then grabs him by the legs and drags him into the jungle.



We hear that sound of a chain being pulled in as it drags him along, and Jin and Danielle’s crew run after him. They manage to grab him by the legs only to get dragged along with him, until they all reach some sort of ancient ruins. Here they make their stand. As Smokey tries to pull Montand into a hole in the ground under the ruins, the others have a hold of Montand’s arm and are trying to pull him back out while bracing themselves against the rocks. Something’s gotta give. And it’s Montand’s arm. Smokey wraps a tentacle around his shoulder and pulls him down into the hole, leaving the rest of his crew with his appendage. We hear Smokey’s trumpet of victory while the crew is in shock. Then they hear Montand’s voice from inside the hole: “Help me! It’s gone! I’m hurt!” Robert wants them to go down into the hole after Montand, despite Jin’s warning not to. Danielle is about to follow Robert down, but Jin stops her and tells her, “No! You don’t go. The baby. No.” She listens to him, grabs a gun, and aims it at the hole. We then hear the piercing sound of a time flash beginning. Jin looks up, then grabs his head in pain. Danielle doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, since she can’t sense the flash. Jin flashes, and Danielle is gone. But Montand’s arm is still there, though it has decayed, so we know Jin has moved a little further in time. He looks at the ruins, and we see some of the hieroglyphics carved on the outside. People across America run to the internet and look for hieroglyphic translation websites. He runs through the jungle, takes a pretty good mouthful of water from a large leaf (and we notice a curious off-center red star on the back collar of his shirt...which is probably meaningless), and looks out in the distance and sees a pillar of smoke rising into the sky. He runs to it, and finds a beach that has a small camp set up that includes a music box, which we recognize as Danielle’s from the Season 1 episode, “Solitary,” when Sayid fixed it for her while he was her captive. As he looks around some more, he sees an open case with a violin inside, and then comes across the dead, rotting bodies of two of Danielle’s crew. They’ve been shot in the chest, and they smell. Then he hears voices down the beach, runs over, and sees Danielle aiming a gun at Robert. Robert is pleading with her, “Put your gun down! Please, I love you, why are you doing this? I only want what’s best for you...and our baby,” while she is telling him, “You are not Robert! That monster made you sick!” He manages to convince her to put the gun down, but then raises his, takes aim, and fires. But nothing happens. Danielle is shocked for a moment, but quickly recovers, takes aim again herself, and shoots him in the head. Jin then runs out, but she aims at him – “You! You disappeared! You’re sick, too!” - and starts shooting at him as he quickly runs away. Then another flash, just as he falls down a small ledge. He lands, only to be greeted with the sound of a gun being cocked, and a voice telling him to “turn around slowly.” He does, only to see that the man with the gun is Sawyer! They can’t believe the other is there, and embrace. Then Jin asks, “Where is Sun?” and the smile on Sawyer’s face disappears.

- There’s been a theory that the reason Robert’s gun didn’t fire is because the firing pin was taken out. This is what happened when Sayid tried to fire a gun at Danielle in “Solitary.” She tells him that she had to take the firing pin out, and I think people are saying that she mentions that it's because of “the sickness” and not being able to trust Robert and the others. A lot of people went back this week and rewatched “Solitary” to see how much of Danielle’s story in that episode was seen in the flesh in this episode, and it all matches up. Many people, including me, had been waiting for a Danielle flashback episode, and in a way, we definitely got it this week.

After the next commercial, Faraday, Miles, and Charlotte are watching Juliet, Sawyer, and Jin talking. Miles asks where Jin came from. “I thought he was on the boat.” Faraday explains that the blast must have thrown him in the water, and “he’s been moving with the flashes, just like us.” Sawyer is trying to explain to Jin how the flashes work. Jin gets upset and starts shouting in Korean, and tells Charlotte to translate for him. Sawyer thinks Jin is referring to Miles (for somewhat politically incorrect reasons), but Miles calmly says, “He’s Korean. I’m from Encino.” Sawyer is shocked to learn that “Red” speaks Korean. Jin asks through Charlotte how they are so sure Sun is off the island. Locke says he’s sure, but “none of it will matter if they don’t get to the Orchid.” Charlotte tells Jin this, explains that the Orchid is a way off the island, and that Locke is trying to get their friends back to the island to stop the flashes. “Bring Sun back? Why?” he asks. John replies, “Because she never should’ve left.”

Sun is still aiming her gun at Ben. “I've spent the last three years believing that he’s dead. You say you have proof – I want to see it.” Ben tells her to put the gun down, but she gets even more upset. “How do you know he’s alive?!” Ben calmly tells her that there’s someone in L.A. who he can take her to who has the proof. “The same person who knows how to get us back to the island.” Kate, who has gone to get Aaron, perks up at this comment and says, “Is that what this is about?” and says to Jack, “You’ve been pretending to care about Aaron just to get me to go back?” Jack denies this, but she says they’re all crazy and gets into her car. Sayid also leaves, saying, “I don’t want any part of this. And if I ever see you,” pointing to Ben, “or you,” pointing to Jack, ”ever again, it will be extremely unpleasant for all of us.” Ben, turning to Sun and sticking to his guns, tells her that they can be there in thirty minutes, "and you’ll have proof, or you can shoot me and never know." Of course, she says, “Let’s go.”

Back on the island, the Remainders are walking toward the Orchid. Jin offers to go off the island with Locke, but Locke says only he can go. When Jin asks why, he says, “I don’t know why, Jin, but it’s a one man job. But I promise I’ll bring Sun back.” Dan and Charlotte are walking and talking. Charlotte isn’t doing too well, but keeps on keepin’ on. She asks Dan if this plan is going to work, and Dan says that it makes “empirical sense” that if the flashes started at the Orchid that they can be stopped there, “but as far as bringing back these people that left in order to stop these temporal shifts – that’s where we leave science behind.” Interesting comment from a physicist. With that, another flash happens, and based on the reactions of the Remainders, they seem to be getting more intense and more painful, especially to Charlotte. They flash to the nighttime, but the second they recover, another flash happens. Again, Charlotte can’t take much more of this. They are back to daytime. But Charlotte collapses, and looks either comatose or lifeless. Sawyer points out to Juliet that her nose is starting to bleed, but she returns the favor. Dan is trying to get Charlotte alert again, and she suddenly snaps out of her trance, but sits up and is speaking urgently to Jin in Korean. She tells him, “Don’t let them bring her back, no matter what. This place is death!”

After another commercial break, Ben is driving Sun and Jack in the van. Jack tells Sun he is sorry that they left Jin behind on the freighter. “Everything was just happening so fast...we should’ve waited for him.” Sun asks why he’s telling her this now. “Are you going to ask me not to kill Ben if he’s lying about my husband?” Jack says no – after what he just did to Kate, “I’ll kill him myself.” With that, Ben slams on the brakes, turns to them and says, “I’m helping you, and if you had any idea what I’ve gone through to keep you safe, to keep your friends safe, you’d never stop thanking me.” He tells them they can either go with him or shoot him right there. Jin tells him to drive.

Back in the jungle, Charlotte is on the ground, and it’s very clear the flashes have taken their toll. “Why can’t daddy come with us?” she asks no one in particular. Daniel asks if she can hear him. She turns to him and says, “I know more about ancient Carthage than Hannibal himself.” Locke tells them they have to keep moving, and when Daniel asks for help carrying Charlotte, Locke says no; she’ll hold them up. Even though Charlotte seems to be back to current reality and tells him to leave her there, Dan decides to stay there with her. Another flash happens. Charlotte starts to tell Dan again to leave her, but all of a sudden, she looks blissful and says, “Turn it up – I love Geronimo Jackson!” citing our favorite fake LOST band. The others are about to leave Daniel and Charlotte behind, when Sawyer asks Locke a very good question: “If we don’t even know when the hell we are, what if the Orchid isn’t there when we get there?” Locke looks truly puzzled at this possiblility, but Charlotte says, “Look for the well. You’ll find it at the well.” They don’t seem to know what to make of this, if it’s current Charlotte or some past version of her. They continue walking, while Dan stays with Charlotte.
They get to the remains of the Orchid, which is basically a free-standing wall. Juliet says, “Thank God! What are the odds we’d end up at the same time as this thing?” and not a second later, another flash happens, and the Orchid is gone. “You had to go and say something,” Sawyer says in disgusted bemusement. Locke looks around and heads back into the jungle, and discovers the well. It looks just as ancient as the ruins that the Smoke Monster disappeared into. Miles asks, “How the hell did Charlotte know this was here?”

Charlotte and Dan are talking, and at this point, she reveals something big. She tells him, “I’ve been here before. I grew up here, on the island. There was this thing, the Dharma Initiative, and then we moved away with my mum, just my mum, and I never saw my dad again. Then when I got back to England, I would ask my mum about this place, and she’d say that it wasn’t real, and that I made it up. That’s why I became an anthropologist – to find this island again. It’s what I’ve been searching for my whole life.” Dan asks her why she’s telling him this, and she says, “Because I remember something now. When I was little, living here, there was this man, a crazy man, he really scared me, and he told me that we had to leave the island and never, ever come back. He told me that if I came back, I would die.” He tells her that he doesn’t understand. “Daniel, I think that man was you!” He looks shocked. So do we.

Another commercial, and then we are back at the well, where Locke is getting ready to climb down the rope hanging above the well. Sawyer asks him what he expects to find down there, and John tells him, “A way off the island.” “Expecting a subway?” Sawyer asks. Locke laughs, and says, “Goodbye, James. Juliet. Miles. I’ll see you when I get back.” But Jin stops him. “You don’t bring Sun back.” John says he has to bring them all back because “that’s how it works.” “How you know?” Jin questions him. “I just know.” Suddenly, Jin grabs the rope and threatens to cut it unless Locke promises that he won’t bring Sun back to the island. “This island is bad – you promise you don’t bring my baby!” Locke promises, but adds that Sun might ask him to come back to find Jin - what should he tell her? “You tell her I’m dead. You say I wash up. You bury me.” He takes off his ring and gives it to John. “Proof.”
Locke climbs down into the well and grabs the rope. Sawyer offers to help lower him down, but Locke says, “What would be the fun in that?” and laughs. Juliet tells him, “If whatever you’re attempting to do actually works...thank you.” Locke begins to climb down, but a flash begins. We see the white light moving up from the bottom of the well (which could very well be a clue as to the nature of the flashes – as we now know, they seem to be due to the frozen donkey wheel moving erratically). Locke starts to panic, Sawyer grabs the rope and tells Locke to hold on, and as the flash fully develops, we see John fall. After the flash, John completes his fall to the bottom of the well, and lands painfully. His leg is broken. Of course.
Above him (at some point in time, at least), Sawyer is still gripping the rope tightly and pulling up. Miles drolly says, “I think you can let go now.” Sawyer is pulling on a rope that is stuck in the ground. He starts to dig in desperation with his bare hands, but Juliet gets him to calm down and realize that there is nothing they can do.

Charlotte is coughing. Dan is telling her to stay with him. He tells her that when they were back at the hatch, he talked to Desmond and told him to find his mother to help them. Charlotte doesn’t understand. After one last coughing fit, her face relaxes, a smile comes across her, and she says, “I’m not allowed to have chocolate before dinner.” And then she passes away. We move away from the scene with Dan crying over her.

After one last commercial break, Locke is at the bottom of the well. We see that he has a nasty compound fracture. This cave looks awfully familiar... He calls out, “James, can you hear me?” but there is only solid rock above him. Sawyer's rope is gone. Suddenly, he hears slow, loud footsteps coming toward him. A man enters his view, lights a lantern, and turns toward Locke. It’s Christian Shephard. “Hello, John,” he says. John recognizes him from Jacob’s cabin. “I’m here to help you the rest of the way.” John says he doesn’t understand. “You came to see me in the cabin. You asked me how to save the island. I told you you had to move it. I said that YOU had to move it, John,” implying that Ben was not the one intended to move the island. Locke says, “But Ben said he knew how to do it. He told me I had to stay here and lead his people.” “And since when did listening to him get you anywhere worth a damn?” Christian argues. Good point. “The good news is that you’re here now. You ready to go?” he asks. “I don’t know what to do once I get there,” Locke replies. Christian tells him, “There’s a woman, living in Los Angeles. Once you get all of your friends together – and it must be all of them, every one of them who left – once you’ve persuaded them to join you, this woman will tell you exactly how to come back.” John asks who this woman is. “Her name is Eloise Hawking,” says Christian. “What if I can only convince some of them to come back?” Locke asks. “I believe in you, John. You can do this.” Locke continues, “Richard said I was going to die,” and Christian says, “I suppose that’s why they call it sacrifice.” Locke seems to struggle, but then make peace with this idea. “Alright, okay. I’m ready.” Christian gets up and points out the frozen donkey wheel in the adjoining chamber, “a wheel that’s slipped off its axis, and all you have to do is give it a little push.” Locke tries getting up with his broken leg and asks for Christian to help him, but Christian says he can’t. Locke drags himself over to the wheel, and sees it moving erratically, each time sending out a flash of greenish-white light. Christian tells him good luck, and John lifts on the wheel, popping it back in place and then turning it to the left. The light starts to get brighter, and we hear the same high-pitched whining sound that we heard when Ben turned the wheel. Christian tells him to “say hello to my son.” “Who’s your son?” Locke asks, but the flash takes him away before he gets an answer.

The van arrives at a church. Ben, Jack, and Sun get out. Ben gives her Jin’s wedding ring. “How do you have this?” she asks him. “John gave it to me.” Jack points out that Ben said that John never came to see him, and Ben agrees; “That’s true, Jack. I went to see him.” Ben says that Jin gave it to John before he left the island. Sun asks why Locke didn’t give it to her himself, and Ben doesn’t know. “Maybe he never had a chance before he died.” He apologizes for not giving it to her sooner, but he tells her that all those people on the island – Jin included – need their help. The woman in the church can help them get back to the island, and Sun to her husband, but he needs Sun to decide right now if she’ll come with him. She looks at the ring, and says yes. Suddenly, Desmond appears. “What are you doing here?” he asks them. Ben says he assumes it’s the same reason he is there. Des says, “You’re looking for Faraday’s mother, too?” Ben looks upset at this, and quickly walks into the church, with the others following him. “Hello Eloise,” he says. Ms. Hawking is lighting candles. “Hello, Benjamin.” (Des looks surprised to see her, but not as surprised as I expected – I was looking forward to seeing his reaction to seeing her, but there wasn't much to see.) “I thought I said all of them?” she says to Ben. “This is all I could get on short notice,” he replies. With a sigh, she says, “Well, I guess it will have to do for now.” The others looks thoroughly confused. “All right,” she says with a regal smile, “let’s get started.”

LOST

- When Charlotte said, “I remember something now," did it sound familiar? Like when Desmond suddenly, out of the blue, had a new memory pop into his head when he was with Penny on their boat in "The Lie"? Her memory is of a “scary” Daniel Faraday telling her not to ever come back to the island, or else she’d die. So did he go back to a time, maybe when we saw him in the tunnel that would become the location of the Orchid, a time when Charlotte was a girl on the island, and tell her not to come back, knowing that this moment would come? But there he is, watching her die. So if he went back, this moment shouldn’t have happened. Unless you truly can’t change the future. Unless the universe really does “course correct.” This is the true test – will we see him go back to a young Charlotte? Or will he try again, try something new, keep trying until something actually changes, something actually works and she survives?

– There was a very popular theory out there this past week about the numbers as we heard them read over Danielle's crew's radio. If you listen carefully, the theory goes, the voice of the man reading them sound just like...Hurley! Could Hurley be the one who read the numbers into the recording? Hurley, who is deathly afraid of the numbers? Could he be the one that made them cursed simply by associating them with the island? Did the numbers that he heard from Leonard in Santa Rosa, who heard them from Sam Toomey when he was in the Navy with Leonard, actually come from...Hurley?

- Looking back, as it turns out, Locke was never supposed to lead the Others, as Ben told him he would, was he? He never really even saw them. It could be argued that this was Ben’s way of getting off the island himself, instead of having John turn the frozen donkey wheel. We find out that Locke was supposed to turn the wheel all along, and that things have gone bad because he didn’t. But why did Ben do it? Why, when all Ben does off the island is try to get the O6 back on the island again? Is it an elaborate ruse to get to Penny somehow? Hmmm...

- One more thing: here's a translation of the hieroglyphics as seen on the outer wall of what everyone seems to be calling the Temple. Is this the Temple? Part of it? Or just some random ruins where Smokey lives?



Okay, I doubt most of you are reading this before you see tonight's episode, "316," so if you are, enjoy the episode! If you read this tomorrow morning, I hope you already enjoyed it!

Namaste, and Good Luck,
Matt