TV Review: Lost 5.4 – The Little Prince
Posted by Adam Sweeney (adam@filmschoolrejects.com) on February 5, 2009
Lost, ABC, Airs Wednesdays 9/8c
Episode: “The Little Prince” (Season 5, Episode 4)
Synopsis: Kate (Evangeline Lilly) discovers that someone knows the truth behind Aaron’s (William Blanchette) parental lineage.
Review: It was a journey of nosebleeds, nostalgia and naughty babysitters for the members of Oceanic Flight 815. While The Little Prince didn’t focus much on Aaron personally, it did center around how important he was to Kate. Isn’t it interesting how we find ourselves rooting for a character that, at the moment at least, is pretty much a kidnapper? It’s easy to forget that the Oceanic 6 all have troubled pasts. Lucky for us, Benjamin Linus (Michael Emerson) is there to remind us of their imperfections.
The episode didn’t answer many questions, or pay attention to character development, as a few of the episodes before it had. The Little Prince was more focused on opening doors for us to walk through later in the season, a series of segues essentially. And that’s okay. It appears that many of the sequences we saw tonight, mainly the ones where the castaways were out at sea, will later be shown from another point of view. My question is whether the island is moving during the time-jump, or just the islanders? It’s a question worth posing since we saw a white flash occur during Sawyer (Josh Holloway) and company’s effort to win the gold medal in rowing.
The episode also gave us a sense of urgency both on and off the island, something other seasons (the 2nd, anyone?) didn’t seem to have, as we saw time-travel sickness start to impact some of the islanders. At the same time, the walls are closing on Kate, providing the perfect opportunity for Benjamin to get the Oceanic 6 all together for a reunion.
There were two scenes that stood out among the rest in The Little Prince, one being a quick conversation between Miles (Ken Leung) and Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies). When Miles complained that he shouldn’t get the sick because he hadn’t been on the island as long as the other islanders, Daniel gave a nice “A-ha!” moment by questioning how long Miles had really been on the island. Charlotte said she was born on the island, and got a nosebleed. Miles has them now. Could he be Dr. Chang’s son? For that matter, is Daniel Dr. Chang’s cameraman for the DHARMA Initiative’s orientation films? And why is Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) getting nosebleeds also? We love Daniel, as it seems like he is our resident “Are you sure about that?” guy in season five. He questioned Sawyer in a similar manner earlier in the season. God bless Lost for always finding a new mysterious character to follow. Is there any show that can compete with it in that respect? Hells no.
Quick side-tangent: We’re getting a little Luke and Leia vibe from Daniel and Charlotte (Rebecca Mader). Are they siblings? We’re going to assume the Star Wars parallels continue by guessing Charles Widmore (Alan Dale) is Daniel’s father. It would explain why he funded his research, and helped take care of Theresa Spencer’s (Sarah Farooqui) medical costs. And we already know baby boy is in the same military troop as Eloise, Daniel’s father. So there ya go.
The other gem came in a surprisingly striking and touching moment where Sawyer watched Kate from the past help Claire give birth to Aaron. Too often Sawyer has been portrayed as the angry shirtless guy that questions everything. His expressions and reaction to seeing the woman he loves gave us some perspective into how much there really is to him. I’ve always been a pro-Jack (Matthew Fox) guy when it came to the love triangle between he, Kate and Sawyer. This moment nudged me a little bit the other way, but not far enough that I don’t want Jack to end up with Kate. He was in freaking Party of Five, for Christ’s sake. And Kate showing her loyalty to Jack at the beginning of the episode when she told him, “I’ve always been with you,” says a lot too.
It’s great that the show brought back the characters of Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and Danielle Rousseau, as both are going to stir up the pot of the plot …. and encourage me to rhyme with the device of alliteration. Yes, we all had a feeling that Jin wasn’t dead from the freighter’s explosion, and it may seem a bit too convenient for some viewers. But his situation certainly presents a great contrast to Sun’s (Yunjin Kim) attempt to kill Benjamin, doesn’t it? We’re guessing that we will get to see Benjamin let Sun know Jin is still alive and well next week. Whether Sun will believe him or not is another story.
We know that Locke (Terry O’Quinn) is going to have to die in real-time to get the Oceanic 6 back on the island. The question is how will he do it? Unfortunately, we’re probably going to have to wait until the end of the season to find out. Still, it is a testament to the beauty of the show that there is just as much excitement following the trail of bread crumbs as actually getting home.
Up Next Week: Locke takes on the burden to stop the island’s increasingly violent shifts through time. Meanwhile, Ben hits a roadblock in his attempt to reunite the Oceanic 6.
Read More: Lost Recaps
Did you watch The Little Prince episode? What are your thoughts and theories on where Lost is heading?
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