Review: Lost 5.9: Namaste

Namaste!

Namaste is an Indian greeting used across the subcontinent, and as they welcome one another, and as our survivors are introduced to the Dharma Initiative, we welcome the second half of this series. A second half that brings with it a key change in Season Five's format that should feel rather jarring but instead blends in nicely. For one of the first times on Lost, there isn't any obvious character centricity, which makes the transitionary nature of this episode all the more apparent
     As a new batch of Dharma recruits came to the island, James used the submarine as a cover story for the newly arrived Jack, Hurley and Kate to create yet another lie. The three were inducted into the Dharma Initiatve, but Sayid was caught on the outskirts of the facility and was forced to admit that he was a "Hostile". He was thus locked up, as James was forced to treat him like a criminal. Jin looked for his wife, but found that she hadn't arrived in 1977 as her four Oceanic Six comrades had.
     In 2007, we see Frank land Flight 316 on Hydra Island, a smaller island off the shore of the bigger one. Ben wanders off towards The Island and Sun and Frank follow, Sun to find Jin and Frank to protect her. They enter an old Dharma building and find The Man In Black as Christian Shepherd, who shows them the crew roster from 1977, making Sun aware of her husband's present fate.

     There were some interesting discussions in the episode between Jack and Sawyer which I thought were quite interesting, particularly around the issue of Leadership. Jack, who had been the de-facto leader of the Survivors since the Pilot, was forced to become a workman under Security Chief James, who tells Jack that in his three-year stretch, he changed his attitude and decided to think things through before doing them, unlike Jack's reactionary attitude. This is rather ironic, really, as it's Jack who thinks that detonating a Hydrogen Bomb is a good idea in the finale and Sawyer eventually goes on with him. But that's an issue for in a few weeks time.

Sayid is caught as a "Hostile".

     Namaste touched upon a few of the characters' struggles but otherwise it served only to set-up this second half of the series set alternately in the Dharma Inititive in 1977 and with the Man In Black in 2007. Other than that it felt rather empty, and there wasn't anything that really stood out from the norm, very much contrary to last week's brilliant tale. There's certainly a lot of stupid to come on Lost, but Namaste was a fun bit of nothing.

Thank.

NEXT WEEK: The torturer is tortured in He's Our You.