Lost S05E05 This Place is Death

Welcome back to the fray. Apologies for the lapse in reporting . As is typical for me, I arranged my birthday celebrations to be more like a week-long festival which left me little spare time to watch and review last week's episode, This Place is Death. In addition, I finally set myself up with HDTV and was pretty hasty about setting up all my shows, and missed recording my first HD Lost which I was really stoked about. I kept myself in a Lost bubble for the week, hoping to catch the popup rerun while hearing as few spoilers as possible. I set up my recordings fully and I'm hoping to figure out this weekend the fancy feature of configuring my recorder remotely, so I shouldn't run into these issues again. Now I'm back, one year older, so let's see how my newfound wisdom plays into Lost analysis, shall we? :)

I'll just hit on a few things on last week's episode since there's a lot to cover. First, the show looks amazing in hi-def. If anyone's shuffling their feet about upgrading, I strongly recommend it. Second, the popup shows are pretty cool. As HD advances, hopefully popups like these will be a feature we can turn on and off with any show. Sometimes they're a bit obvious - I know the time flashes are coming faster with greater intensity without even having watched any previous episodes. They are however helpful when referencing shows from way long ago. Especially this episode when we see the French crew, Danielle, the smoke monster, and the reunion of Desmond and Eloise Hawking - the reminders they offer are helpful.

Quick notes on This Place is Death:

• A popup stated the numbers are broadcast by Dharma. I haven't thought about the numbers radio broadcast in a while; when I heard that I wasn't sure if that was a reveal or not.
• The French crew heard the numbers and felt the wrath of the smoke monster immediately when they arrived on the island, similar to the very first episode (Anyone remember who the pilot was? :) The French team had much worse success however.
• So that's how Montand lost his arm :)
• The French team and Jin end up at the Temple. A popup reminder: Ben said this was the only safe place on the island. This is from Through the Looking Glass, the place where Rousseau, Alex and Karl were going for refuse (though it didn't work out so well for Rousseau). Also, moments before his death, Robert stated that the smoke monster is a security system guarding the temple.
• Interesting note from Lostpedia: In the official press release for this episode, she [Melissa Farman] was only credited as "young Frenchwoman" as to not reveal her identity.
• So, at some point in her 16 years fending for herself on the island, conditions were so bad that Danielle Rousseau's eyes changed from brown to green? :)
• Charlotte's ramblings. A popup stated they were similar conditions to the "cabin fever" the crew members of the Kahana exhibited. That hasn't come up in a while. Also, they seemed to me more similar to those of Theresa Spencer, Faraday's unfortunate college experiment who I think we'll hear more about. Both Charlotte and Theresa where flashing to earlier periods in their life.
• A random popup fact: in her ramblings, Charlotte mentioned Geronimo Jackson, an obscure 70s rock group. This is an inside joke with Lindelof and Cuse, and marks the fifth time the band has been referred to on the show.
• A popup refers to the wheel being in an "ancient chamber". That's lucky for Locke or he would have been flashed to being stuck in solid ground. I'm glad to see the return of Christian Shephard, I've been waiting for him to take on a more prominent role in the island's mythology. Skipping ahead really quickly, looks like Ray Shephard, Jack's grandfater, will be roped in too. Seriously, they could have had Jack get something of his father's from anywhere, but they had him visit his grandfather, a man who wants to escape his retirement home, stating "they won't ever find me, either."
• Eloise Hawking, the woman who everyone is talking about (Widmore, Christian Shephard, Faraday). It's finally revealed that she is Faraday's mother, though we all saw that coming.
• Good reveal on Charlotte's back story, and that she grew up on the island. The bigger reveal is that Faraday was the "Scary Man" who warned her never to come back to the island. Boy, Faraday is breaking his own rules left and right! And I'm curious to see how Faraday can go from endearingly nebbish to "scary". It's possible Faraday's time with Dharma may be revealed pretty soon, seeing as how the latest episode showed Jin in a Dharma uniform, though I still hope that Faraday purposefully travels back to the Dharma time and doesn't just happen to flash there.
• That's sad about Charlotte. There's still a lot of mystery behind her character - who are her parents, why did her mother lie about the island. There's plenty of theories about her parents - Widmore? Ben? Faraday?

All right, let's get this out there, then get right back into it with 316.