603 – What Kate Does

Review:

Boooring.  No I’m just being mean.  Kate episodes are always meant to take things down a notch.  We can’t just go full blast through a season with Smokey destroying things in every episode.  Sometime we have to deal with characters and emotions.  This seems to happen in every season, we get a Kate flashback and it slows the story to a crawl.  I actually don’t always hate Kate flashbacks, but it usually takes me a few years to appreciate them.  Combine that with my general disinterest in Claire and hate for Sayid and we have the makings of a truly boring episode.

Here are the parts of the episode I did like: Aldo’s return, Hurley’s new leadership role, Ethan’s surprise return, and half of Dogen’s explanation of the Infection.  Claire’s Island return was also very surprising, but I’ll bet we’ll come back to that next week or the week after.

I’m still a little buzzed from the fact that Lost is back on, but not too excited to ignore the fact that this episode did almost nothing for me.  3.5/10.0

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505 – This Place is Death

Review:

Apparently I had very low and narrow expectations for this episode.  I expected to get Rousseau’s story, so when I got that before the second commercial break I was a little surprised.  This episode had it all.  I still can’t even believe it.  Smokey, Christian, The Frozen Donkey Wheel, The Temple, Charlotte’s death, Charlotte’s backstory, Mrs. Hawking, Desmond.  All I wanted was Rousseau, this is like buying a bag of chips and finding money inside (whoa, that was a weak simile, I really shouldn’t write these things so late.)

So we got to see what happened to Rousseau, it was surprising, and satisfying.  I expected to see more, but I can fill all the blanks in.  I wouldn’t mind seeing Ben take Alex, but that was hinted at in this episode so I guess that’s enough.  Did anyone see Smokey coming?  I never factored him (it?) into her story at all.  And the Temple!  Really shocking and interesting developments.

Charlotte dying was unfortunate.  Ironically I am accepting this death well.  I don’t even know if it’s definite, but it really felt that way.  The recurring guest star thing was way too much of a tip-off.  But I’m glad she told us her true backstory.  It’s something that we can guess about for a long time now.  I doubt we’ll be getting many answers, but it’s fun to have these guessing games.  (Why am I so OK with her death, I held out hope that Rousseau was alive for a long time, I even came up with many theories to keep Nikki and Paulo alive.  And now Charlotte dies and I don’t even care, I really liked Charlotte too.  I’m weird.)

The Sun and Jin jazz was pretty good too.  I actually felt bad for Jin, he just got back to the land of the living and he already laid his own life aside to protect Sun’s.  Sad.

And suddenly Mrs. Hawking is the last hope for mankind, everyone converges on her at once.

This episode was intense, and I won’t be forgetting it soon.  I’d have given it a high score for the first 15 minutes, but it just kept going and going.  And a huge improvement from the last episode.  10.0/10.0

(Note: This is one of those prolific episodes that you can base a lot of theories on, not unlike “The Man Behind the Curtain” or “Cabin Fever”.  If you have any theories about this episode, or if you know of any good theories about this episode on other sites please tell me about them in the comments.)

The Mysterious Danielle Rousseau

I wanted to collect some of the info and suspicions I have regard Rousseau before we find out everything in the next episode.  I have always found Rousseau to be terribly interesting, and tomorrow’s episode is a dream come true for me (hopefully).

So here’s where I got all my info, I looked at all the posts I have about Rousseau, and then I went to Lostpedia.

Rousseau’s back story is one of the most enduring mysteries of Lost.  It was introduced in the pilot episode and we still only have tiny hints as to what happened. 

Montand

The Crew

We know that they followed a transmission from the radio tower in.  The transmission was nothing more that The Numbers being repeated over and over.  This was hinted at before and confirmed in 504 – The Little Prince.  While we’re talking about that, here’s the full translation of what Rousseau and her crew were saying in that episode:

Storm scene

Robert: I told you! We should have never followed those damn numbers.
Montand: It’s not my fault, Robert. Brennan was the one in charge of the sonar.
Brennan: I was watching, Montand! I told you already, the instruments malfunctioned.
Rousseau: There’s a man in the water!
?: What?
?: I thought we were all here!
?: We are all here. He’s not one of us. So, who is he?
Robert: Paddle!
Montand: Paddle! Go!
?: Point the flashlight on him!
?: We must hold the light! Brennan, help us paddling!
?: Come on, hurry up! The stream is moving us!
?: No! It’s just him! There’s no boat, nothing!
?: Leave him! The waves will bring us to the coast.
Brennan: The wind will pass through here!
Female voice: For God’s sake, Brennan, shut up!
?: Come on, take him into the raft.
?: Help me!
?: He’s still breathing!

Robert

Beach scene

Montand: Robert, look. The signal comes from the island!
Robert: Can you find the source?
Montand: Of course I can. Look.
Robert: Do you think the island is inhabited?
Rousseau: Are you OK? How are you feeling?
…
Robert: Who is he?
Montand: Who cares. What is he doing here?
Rousseau: He said he came by boat.
…
Rousseau: Montand, leave him alone! He’s in shock. Do we have water for him?
Robert: Yeah. Here.
Rousseau: Thanks, Robert.

 From sl-lost.com

We now have faces for all those names that Rousseau talked about.

After landing on the beach the crew went exploring.  At some point they stumbled in the the Dark Territory and the Black Rock.  In the Dark Territory Montand loses his arm.  Soon after this the rest of the crew starts getting sick.  In the end she has to shoot her husband/boyfriend Robert. 

The Whispers

At some point she started hearing The Whispers on the island.  If my new Whispers theory is true then that could mean that she gets near the other survivors.  According to that theory, if she was near them she wouldn’t see them she’d only hear the Whispers. 

The Transmission

Brennan

After hearing the Whispers, watching her crew die and killing Robert Rousseau goes to the transmission tower to record her own message.  While trying to find exactly what she was saying I stumbled onto this page on Lostpedia.  Apparently Rousseau recorded multiple messages.  I don’t know if this is all canon, but it’s very interesting either way:

Iteration 17294530 : “If anybody can hear this, they are dead. Please help us. I’ll try to make it to the Black Rock. It [or he] killed them. It [or he] killed them all.”
Iteration 17294531 : “It [or he] is outside. It [or he] is outside and Brennan took the keys. Please help us. They are dead. They are all dead. Help us. They are dead.”
Iteration 17294532 : “It [or he] is outside. It [or he] is outside and Brennan took the keys. Please help us. They are dead. They are all dead. Help us. They are dead.”
Iteration 17294533 : “They are all dead. Help us. They are dead. If anybody can hear this-”
Iteration 17294534 : “It [or he] is outside. Please help us. Please help us !”
Iteration 17294535 : “If anybody can hear this, I’ll try to make it to the Black Rock. Please help us ! They are all dead. They are dead. It [or he] killed them. It [or he] killed them all. I’ll try to make it to the Black Rock.”

This was on the season 1 DVDs, and since there is a Brennan with the crew in season 5 I tend to believe that it’s real.

The Others

So that’s about it for her crew.  I wouldn’t be surprised if that was all we saw in this next episode.  That is a lot of stuff to happen.  But it isn’t the end of Rousseau’s story.  If we are lucky we’ll get to see what happens when The Others, Ben in particular, kidnap Alex.

Also it would be nice to see how Rousseau survives The Purge.  She lands on the island in 1988, and The Purge happens in 1992.  Kinda strange.

Jin

One of the biggest questions from that last episode was, how could Rousseau meet Jin way back in the day and not recognize him later.  I think the answer is quite simple, she went crazy.  After watching all the episodes again I really noticed how insane she really was, I used to hope that it was just the trauma getting to her, but that can’t explain all of her crazy actions.

Things to Look For

-Montand losing his arm

-Whispers (or our survivors)

-Danielle removing the firing pin from Robert’s gun

-Brennan getting some keys

-The Black Rock

-Others (I still find it hard to believe that she didn’t see them)

-Mikhail (Rousseau insisted that she hadn’t met him, but I don’t believe her)

-Smokey (Rousseau said she doesn’t believe in monsters)

– izi