Lost Rewatch on VHS: This Place Is Death

 

VHS Rewatch Notes:  Some of the commercials for this episode at the

time involve trailers for series that were going to debut soon. Among them were an ad for Castle which would premiere in a few weeks and become one of ABC’s biggest hits. We also see ads for the brilliant but cancelled far too son Better Off Ted, whose fate is still bemoaned more than a decade after it was cancelled. And we see a preview of what would be the first Grey’s Anatomy/Private Practice crossover, which involved a complicated brain surgery on Addison’s brother and the first part in a storyline that would led to a mental breakdown by Derek.

There are also previews for several upcoming films. By far the most significant was Zach Snyder’s Watchmen a box office failure at the time, now considered a masterpiece. My north star Roger Ebert thought so when it debuted and time has proven him correct.

Now a note on the episode. There is a disagreement between Finding Lost and Lostipedia as to which characters are the center of it. Nikki Stafford says that it is Rousseau centered as well the catch-all ‘Everybody’. Lostipedia says that it is Jin and Sun centric. Their argument is that every time the episode flashes to and from the island it is always on Jin on the island and Sun off it. In this case I am inclined to believe that this episode is based on Sun and Jin overall and that Rousseau’s story is one of the stories that the island is telling.

One of the focuses of this episode was that the writers were following through on their promise to tell the story of Rousseau, something they’d apparently been promising since Season Three and had kept pushing even after Rousseau’s death. They kept their word as the first two time jumps on the island show us how Rousseau came to the island and much of what happened to her that led to her becoming the shell of the woman that Sayid would meet in Solitary. There are inconsistencies between her narrative and what we see but while that could be a flaw in the writers approach, it could just as easily be due to her state of mind. In the space between the first two jumps, only a few weeks have gone by and it’s pretty clear she’s been driven close to insane already.

The story unfolds from the perspective of Jin, and there’s something appropriate about that. Not only does Jin not know enough English to tell them what’s going to happen in the future (assuming he ever knew, that’s never been clear) when the crash happened he was isolated from the other survivors because he couldn’t speak or understand English. Rousseau was similarly an outsider from the moment we met here and while she would occasionally ally herself with the survivors her objectives were always different from theirs. Furthermore when Jin finds the French team, he has lost his wife and is looking for her and Rousseau spent the first three seasons looking for her daughter.

As we watch the team go into the jungle, tracking the  radio signal that is the numbers we see the parallel between the first excursions into the jungle by the Oceanics, most significantly the six survivors who were trying to get the transmitter to work in the second half of the pilot. Both teams have four men and two women, both are hoping to get a signal and both encounter a creature in the jungle. The difference is all the Oceanics survive their encounter with the polar bear. The team runs right into the monster.

When Nadine disappears Jin knows what is coming but like a Korean Cassandra his warnings go unheeded. Melissa Fairman is brilliant in her scenes as the young Rousseau. There’s innocence in her eyes at the start, compassion towards Jin and protecting him as well as the love she clearly has for Robert and the child she’s carrying. The moment Nadine disappears, she is concerned and when she sees her body, she’s clearly shattered.

Then the monster grabs Montand and pulls him towards the wall of what turns out to be our first glance at the Temple, which we’ve heard discussed since the end of Season 3. Montand’s arm is pulled off, and when the team hers him speaking in a voice for help, they go in after him. The fact that he just says, “I’m hurt,” and is not screaming in agony should have been a clue but no doubt everyone is stunned by what just happened. Jin manages to keep Danielle from going underground – and then there’s another flash.

Here we see the scene Danielle described to Sayid in Solitary about how ‘the sickness’ has infected everybody. It plays out just about as she describes and there’s a good indication that no matter how quickly she killed Robert, it must have been a huge blow emotionally. There’s a very good sign this helped push her to the very edge: later this season we’ll seen the final push.

Jin ends up reunited with the remaining survivors and there’s genuine joy at this – followed by the fact of what happened to Sun. Locke tells Jin that they have to go to the Orchid to bring Sun back and Jin is understandably baffled by this. Locke’s argument: “Because she never should have left’ clearly doesn’t convince him and it’s telling that the person in the group who should really want the survivors to return is fuzzy on the issue even by the time the flashes start to come faster and furious.

All of the performances in this episode are strong, but it’s hard not to say the ones were seeing on the island are far more powerful. Charlotte begins to mentally degenerate, and she seems to be feel an accelerated version of what Minkowski and Theresa are going through. She is clearly flashing back to her childhood and beyond, but it’s worth noting that in her final moments when she shouts the title of the episode, she is giving a warning to everyone else, Locke in particular. That Locke chooses to keep moving regardless is revealing both in his certainty of his mission – as well as the blind faith.

Dan stays behind, telling Charlotte she will be all right when he clearly knows better. Jeremy Davies gives a truly incredible performance as the woman he loves tells him why she came to the island, that she was part of Dharma – and in the biggest shock, that Dan may have warned her not to come to the island as a child. Their final scene together is a masterpiece for both Davies and Mader, as Charlotte has a moment of lucidity, then returns to her childhood…and then dies. Daniel is clearly broken by this in a way we’ve never seen this calm scientist be  - and it will change his actions for the rest of the season (though he’s going to be absent for much of it)

When what’s left of the group reaches the Orchid – and then another flash erases it, they are left clueless. Until they walk through the jungle and find a well – just as Charlotte said. The scene that follows is one of the best for Season Five for all concerned. As things have gotten worse Miles has lost his sarcasm and he increasingly becomes serious and afraid for the first time all season. Josh Holloway is superb all episode (he’s been upping his game a lot) but he’s increasingly becoming nervous and when the next flash comes (from inside the well) he grabs the rope and when the well isn’t there anymore, he’s genuinely scared and starts frantically digging in the dirt. Elizabeth Mitchell manages to remain calm through most of the episode, and when John is about to go into the well she tells him that if this works, thank you. This is a big deal both for Locke and Juliet; Locke has been standing in the way of rescue since she became aware of him and now she decides to put her trust in him. It’s an even bigger moment for Locke, though he tries to hide it. For the last four seasons he’s been so sure that everything he has done has been in their best interest, and even when he was helping the group he was frequently taken for granted or shamed. Now finally someone simply thanks him for doing something that he knows all too well may get him killed. It clearly means a lot.

But the major scene is between Daniel Dae Kim and Terry O’Quinn. As much as Jin wants to see Sun, he does not want her to come back to die. It’s not clear if he’s thinking of her pregnancy killing her or Charlotte’s words, but in either sense he knows how deadly the island is. He loves Sun so much that he is willing to pretend he is dead in order to ensure her safety.

Locke’s final scene before he leaves the island is, in a way, a microcosm of everything he’s already gone through. He falls to the ground and checks his legs. This time, getting up seems impossible: he’s shattered one of them. (Eww!) He seems helpless and alone. Then Christian, who is the representative of the island, shows up mysterious and tells him he’s here to help him. John does not question how he’s here. Christian does not actually help him stand and get to his feet. He berates John and says that he failed in his instructions and tells him he trusted the wrong people. He reminds John of his mission, emphasizes it must be everybody and tells him where to find someone – Eloise Hawking. He tells John that he believes in him, and when Locke says he tells him he might have to die, not only does he not deny he says: “That’s why they call it sacrifice.”  Locke is brave, I have no doubt of that but this is yet another example of how much this bravery is based in a blind faith.

In the present we resume right where we left off. Sun says hello to her daughter, tells her family she’ll be back the next day and takes out a gun. She has every indication of killing Ben. But Ben doesn’t seem at all surprised, and indeed he tells her husband is alive. He says he will show her proof if she comes with him to see someone to take him back to the island.

Kate and Sayid do the smart thing. Kate walks back to the car, and calls everybody crazy. Sayid follows her and says he doesn’t want any part of this. The fact that Ben, even with a gun in his face, still thinks he can persuade Sayid to do anything, shows just how desperate he is.

Much has been discussed about how after Jack says if Ben is lying he will him himself that Ben slams the brakes and says with fury that everything he has done has been in their best interest and if you knew what I’d been doing the past three years, “you would never stop thanking me.” The thing is, we’ve heard this tone before. He said it to Mikhail when the man doubted him about jamming the signals in the Looking Glass was what Jacob wanted. He said it to Locke when he went into the Orchid where a team of mercenaries was waiting and said: “I always have a plan.”  Ben is always good at persuading people who should know better to let their guard on just long enough to trust him. And it’s not like Sun is the first person in this series who’s had a gun to his head or that Jack hasn’t threatened to kill him before.

I think Ben’s frustration is built more on the fact that he’s lost two more of the people he has to bring back and he has no clear idea how to do so with time running out. He’s a little irked that Jack, having been following him by the nose for the last few episodes, is actually angry at him but he figures it’s a temporary condition. He also knows that much as Sun wants to kill him, as long as there’s even a chance Jin is alive she’s going to play it out. He knows something about wanting to avenge a death, but he also knows how to hold hope over a person’s head as a carrot always out of reach.

And when he produces Jin’s ring when they reach the church, we are now certain of how far Ben will go to achieve his ends. We’ve suspected for a while than Locke’s death wasn’t a suicide, but this is the first clear indication Ben knows more than he’s telling about it. Locke did keep his promise and never went to see Sun, meaning as far as she knows Jin’s dead. Ben clearly lied about not seeing Locke, and he’s clearly not keeping up the story Locke told. That Ben is doing what Locke swore not to shows that Ben has no interest in going back to the island to help anybody but himself.

But he’s not the only visitor at the church. Desmond has just arrived. It’s clear the moment Ben sees him that he realizes that he can check one last thing off his to do list before going back to the island. But something very telling happens when Desmond says that Eloise Hawking is Faraday’s mother. Ben is struck silent. This is a man who seemingly knew every detail of the freighter folks biography but he clearly did not know who Faraday’s mother was. (There’s a good chance he didn’t know who his father was either, but we’ll get to that later.) Yet again we wonder why Ben, who never trusts anyone blindly, has decided to put his faith in a woman who is clearly knows more about what will happen then he does.

And it’s striking that when the group assembles in the church in the final scene (and Desmond clearly recognizes Hawking the moment he sees her) she doesn’t seem the least bit bothered that Ben couldn’t complete his task.

It is the last scenes that actually do begin to make us question Ben for the first time in a while. Throughout the nearly three seasons we’ve known him, Ben has always seemed to be the one pulling the strings of the survivors. He clearly did it on the island, he did it to Sayid in the flashforwards and we’ve seen him manipulating them to get back to where he needs them. But there has always been signs that Ben has had less control than he thought, and where on the pecking order he was. Richard was clearly willing to let Locke supplant him when he thought Ben was weak, Ben spent much of Season Four claiming that Jacob wanted him to do things even though we still haven’t seen him, and now Ben is willing to answer to a strange woman who speaks in ominous tones but refuses to explain how she knows anything. Ever since we’ve met Ben we’ve known we can’t trust a word he says and that he always has a plan. This is the first time (but far from the last in Season Five) where we begin to wonder if he’s as much a puppet as the survivors whose strings he’s been pulling all this time. And it terrifies you about what may happen when they get back to the island.