Review: Lost 5.5: This Place is Death

Jin doesn't want Sun to return.

Jin and Sun are dull. So dull, in fact, that the writers had to rip them apart to provide any interesting story for them, and even that didn't work - they died the moment they met up again. This has irritated me since they did so near the end of Season Six, and so seeing this earlier episode doesn't really help me. This Place Is Death's only draw, really, is the exploration of Danielle Rousseau's history on the Island, something that's been boiling away since the sixth ever episode.
     In 1988, Jin found himself with Danielle Rousseau and her expedition, having crashed on the island in a storm. Jin is unable to help as he witnesses the expedition slowly picked off by The Smoke Monster. After a time-flash, we see that all of the stories Rousseau told was true; she believed that her expedition had caught A Sickness, and so executed the rest of her team. Melissa Farman is great as Young Rousseau, her character believably moving from cautious optimism to deap-seated paranoia. The events in this story would come to be much more important in Season Six. Jin goes through another time-flash as he runs from Rousseau, and ends up with the rest of the crew left on the Island. This is also a strong episode for Rebecca Mader, whose character Charlotte only seems to be useful at translating Korean. Her character's illness causes her to die, and her time-confused ramblings do provide her with her best performance in the series.
    After Charlotte's death, the team finally make it to The Orchid, and John travels down a Well to get to the Donkey Wheel that will set the Island back on a straight passage of time. Here he meets Christian Shepard (John Terry, Of Mice and Men) who often appears at these times. I've seen Season Six, and so I know that Sheperd is in fact The Smoke Monster, the embodiment of all evil. I think that his speech is so much more interesting in context; on the surface, it appears that Sheperd is encouraging Locke to bring back the Oceanic Six because that's what needs to happen, but from a Season Six perspective we can tell that Sheperd wants to bring back The Candidates (of which every member of the Oceanic Six is) so he can kill them.

THIS PLACE, IS DEATH!

      The present timeline is excruciatingly boring here, and it only feels worse because of the fact that it's all happening too soon. Here Ben gathered together the survivors that he could; only Jack and Sun eventually going with him, and took them to Eloise Hawking, who has discovered a way to return to The Island. This is a plotline that by rights should envelop an entire season's worth of storyline, and yet it's so painfully condensed into six or so episodes.
     This Place Is Death was a Jin and Sun episode that, for a lot of its time, forgot Jin and Sun. It interested on a variety of levels, and saw some great turns by Charlotte and Daniel, but the two characters in question didn't really make any impression. However, out of all things, I can say that Lost is the only show that can make me care about the death of a character as whiny and irritating as Charlotte Lewis.

Thanks.