S5E4 - The Little Prince

LIFE IS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES…
You never know what you’re going to get. Like a coconut chew, or a pecan cluster, or a Beretta 9mm semi-automatic. I’m not sure where Sun ordered that, but one thing’s for sure, it ain’t your grandma’s Whitman's sampler. Sufficed to say, she’s about to have a big throw down with Ben in the next episode.

DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID
So Sun lends Kate a sharp looking lady suit and convinces her to have a sit down with the lawyer to see if she can have a face to face with his mystery client in exchange for a blood sample. The answser: No.

ORCHID BOUND
Locke tells Sawyer that the Orchid is where all of this started so the Orchid is where it will end. Not to mention he needs to get there so that he, too, can get off the island, convince the O6 to return, then die (for whatever reason). I wonder if Locke turning the Orchid wheel is what will finally put a stop to the time jumping since it’s what started it. Seems too easy. With everything else we learn in this episode concerning Ben, I wonder if Locke’s death is just an elaborate ruse to make it seem like people are out to hunt down the O6 when really it’s just Ben pulling people’s strings and trying to scare them into going back to the island. More support on this theory to come…

DON’T FORGET YOUR MEDS
Meanwhile some dude tries to tag Sayid with yet more horse tranquilizers, but fails miserably. In his pocket, the address of one Kate Austen. A worried Jack calls to meet with her. Okay, so knowing what we know about the lawyer’s “true” client, this is REALLY suspicious to me. Ben would do whatever he can to get the O6 back to the island, even if it means threatening them. The first set of folks that tracked Sayid and Hurley back to the “safe house” had tranquilizers too. Obviously, whoever sent them doesn’t want them dead. I’m sure Ben would be fine if he could just tranq everyone and haul their bodies back to the island on his own. Seems a little heavy-handed and obvious, but the only other person who could potentially be “after” them is Widmore and he seems more interested in getting Ben than them.

“REALLY BAD JET LAG”
That’s definitely going around this episode. We finally find out why the “time sickness” is only affecting Charlotte. The answer is, it’s not! It’s affecting everyone, depending on their length of exposure to the island. This piggy backs on what Charlotte said at the end of last season about looking for the place of her birth. She’s definitely spent some time here in the past. Later on we see Miles sporting a blood mustache of his own and Daniel asks him if he’s sure he’s never been on the island before. This lends heavy credence to the Miles-is-Marvin-Candles-baby theory. NEAT. I wonder if Dr. C ever got off the island at some point or if he’s buried along with his fellow Dharma buddies in that mass grave? Obviously his son made it off. Sure enough, third place for the Longest Exposure To The Island Award goes to Juliet, since her time as an “other” was at least a couple of years if I remember correctly. Next up, Sawyer and Locke, then only Daniel can save them all.

STALKER
So Jack meets Kate, they make a little small talk about his facial hair and then follow the lawyer to meet with his “client.” It turns out to be none other than Claire’s mother! That makes sense, right?

PSYCH!
No, not Claire’s mother. Apparently she’s there to collect her settlement from a lawsuit against Oceanic Airlines and has no clue that her grandson may still be alive.

AND THE CLIENT IS…
Ben. Of course. I’m giving myself $5 for an early prediction on that one. The thing is he seemed pretty straight forward when Kate finally called him out on that in the end. It’s certainly un-Ben-like to come clean so easily. I think he still has something up his sleeve. Also, apparently from his clandestine meeting with the lawyer in the parking lot, we are to believe that Hugo will be getting out of jail the next morning.

BOSOM BUDDIES?
Here’s my beef with all this. Sayid is adamant… ADAMANT… that Hurley not trust Ben and do the opposite of whatever he says. Obviously Sayid and Ben had a falling out between when we last saw him knocking folks off Ben’s list and the present day. Yet we are to believe that Ben claims to want to get Hurley safely out of jail and Sayid is just going to accept that and chauffer him around? Perhaps Sayid thinks the best way to protect Hurley is to watch Ben’s every move, but he seemed way too chummy for someone who distrusts the man as much as he claims. Surely we’ll see why Sayid hate’s him (again) soon.

“TIME TRAVEL IS A BITCH”
Too true… I couldn’t have said it better, myself, Sawyer. That was freakin’ hilarious. That and when they discovered the kayak washed up at their “old” campsite he said, “Who are these people? Other others?” I actually find that particular blip through time very interesting. We know that whenever they were, it was after the LOSTies set up camp, but it seems it was at some point “in the future” because no other boat washed ashore that we know of. So it was kind of an event that has yet to happen. Juliet said the logo on the water bottle left in the boat was from “Ajira Airlines.” Perhaps yet another plane crash that happens in the future? Was that who was chasing them in the other boat and shooting… survivors from another plane crash? Surely we’ll see who it was sometime down the line.

HEART TO HEART
Locke grills Sawyer on who he saw during their most recent time blip and he gets stonewalled. Later, when paddling the kayak, he admits to Juliet that he saw Kate. After dodging bullets and blipping away again, Juliet asks him why he didn’t speak to her and he says, “What’s done is done.” You can tell he’s heartbroken. All this is good therapy for the inevitable relationship he and Juliet will have. I can see it coming like a freight train.

THE KOREAN VERSION OF MICHAEL PHELPS
A life raft of Frenchies washes ashore, but just before they do they recover the body of none other than Jin Kwon, passed out on a rocky outcropping. Though I never bought in to his death, it was still a pleasant surprise to see him safe and sound-ish. One thing, though, just how far out did the effects of the island’s “move” reach? We know that the freighter disappeared because it was no longer there after the first flash of light. This means Jin had to have jumped clear and started swimming like a mad man in order to get close enough to be carried along. Whatever, though. He made it. Good enough for me.

DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD
Ahhh... time travel. You offer great things, such as the possibility to learn more of Rousseau’s backstory, yet I inherently hate you for it because you have to throw Jin in the mix, making it obvious that Rousseau should have remembered him sixteen years “later” when she meets him after his crash landing on the island. The only way I can see them explaining that away is that she essentially goes crazy after having to kill her team members (something I’m morbidly curious to see) then never having human contact outside of her kidnapped baby for over a decade and a half. That surely does a number on your mind.

To be fair, sixteen years ago I was a sophomore in high school so I’m not sure I would recognize one person that I had a chance encounter with either. Then again, I didn’t shipwreck onto a tropical island and find a near-dead Korean that had washed ashore. I don’t feel like I’m going out on a limb when I say that would be a memorable moment for anyone.

If I remember her story right, Rousseau explained all of the other members of her team “got sick” and she had to kill them. I could be remembering the she-killed-them part wrong and perhaps they just died of the sickness on their own. It seems likely that “the sickness” is the time sickness going around, but the French people aren’t jumping around in time, at least not yet. Curious…

Anyway, I’m just happy that we potentially get to see what really happened with her and her crew. Outside of Jin being confirmed alive, it was the best news of the episode.