Preview: The Little Prince

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Don’t touch that address bar! You’re here! It’s us! We’re us! I’m me! Welcome to the Dharma Blog 4.0 (if my count is correct). Restlessness and sleeplessness have led us to revamp the site. We’d love your honest feedback in the comments section. Majority rules, so speak up.

Week Three…and….go!
Okay, guys. You’ve made it to the third week of Lost’s fifth season. Congratulations. Already this year, we’ve had our ups [Baby Charlie! Awwww.] and we’ve had our downs [the return of Expose! Gag.]. I figure if you’re coming back to the Dharma Blog this week, you might be like me – still pretty confused about what the hell is going on, but love the show enough that you won’t let a few tiny questions about wormholes and relativity get in the way of your weekly Wednesday night routine.

Tonight: The Little Prince
So far this season, we’ve had two episodes where the title provided an obvious clue on the pending story development [“Because You Left” and “The Lie”] and one episode where the title was so ambiguous and strange that no amount of research could have lead us even close to where the story was going [“Jughead”].

Tonight, we have “The Little Prince.” D’accord, mes amis! Mettre vos chapeaux de pensée!

Ah HA! I got you! That wasn’t English! How’s a little rudimentary French to get the blood moving this morning? Mua ha ha. That’s right, kids. “The Little Prince” is a classic French children’s novel, written by famous French aviator and author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

“The Little Prince” tells the tale of a little boy (the title character) with a head of gold curls who is stranded in the middle of a desert. His home planet is an asteroid called B-612, which has three volcanos and a rose. The lonely Prince spends his day picking the baobob trees that keep rooting; if he doesn’t remove the baobob trees, the trees will kill the single rose and turn his planet to dust. He leaves his planet after awhile to visit the rest of the universe, which is comprised of six other asteroids. On each asteroid, he meets a unique character who displays a different personality trait. Finally, he decides to visit the planet Earth, which he finds mean and sharp, and meets a snake who promises he can send the Prince home to his planet. In the end, however, the Prince is eaten by the snake, never to return home.

Okay, Maggie. Enough storytime. What gives?
Well, my little friends. “The Little Prince” is based on an actual experience of Saint-Exupery. During an aviation (that means plane) race from Paris to Saigon, Saint-Exupery and his copilot crashed in the middle of the Sahara desert. Their maps were primitive and ambiguous. All they had were a few grapes, a single orange, and some wine. After consuming these items on the first day, they quickly became dehydrated. Both men began to see mirages, which were followed by more vivid hallucinations. On the fourth day, a Bedouin on a camel discovered them and administered a native dehydration remedy that saved their lives.

So, between the actual events and the story, does anything remind you of Lost? A little boy with golden curls? (Check; his name is Aaron.) A deserted plot of land with volcanoes? (Check; we know there are volcanoes on our island.) A plane crash? (Check; are you watching the right show?) A Bedouin on a camel? (Check; that is, before Ben killed him.) Primitive and ambiguous maps? (Check; remember the ridiculous days of Sayid and Shannon combing over the maps in season 1?) Vivid hallucinations? (Check; lotta dead people walking around on this island.)

Looks like we might have a few parallels on our hands. However, there might be something more obvious than just a few plot details…and her name is Danielle Rousseau.

“But Maggie! Rousseau scares me!” - Charlie
The guest star list for tonight’s episode has four French characters listed (and I quote): “Young Frenchwoman”, “Frenchman #1”, “Frenchman #2”, and “Frenchman #3”. For those of us who watch Lost, any mention of “French” reminds us of good ‘ole Danielle Rousseau, also known as Crazy French Lady. Let’s review.

Danielle claimed that she (while pregnant with Alex) was part of a six-person science expedition that crashed on the Island in 1988. Allegedly, after putting a distress signal on the radio tower, her crew came in contact with the Others which made them “sick”, forcing Danielle to kill them all. At some point after her crew died, she gave birth to Alex, who was subsequently kidnapped by the Others. Before Sayid was caught in her freaky bear trap, Danielle had not communicated with anyone since Alex’s abduction, which left Danielle pretty messed up. Danielle’s untimely end last season came at the hands of Keamy’s crew, in front of her daughter, and at the same as Karl’s death. She is buried in a shallow grave in the middle of the jungle (which Miles found…nasty).

There are still tons of questions surrounding Danielle. First, she told Sayid she never seen the Others, only hearing them whispering – which is strange since our survivors barely made it a month on the Island before having numerous confrontations with them. We’ve also seen no signs of anyone else developing this “sickness”, even though there have been a multiple references to vaccines and quarantines on the Island. Gosh, it sure would be nice to have a flashback to 1988 to clear up a few of these loose ends.

Wait a minute, Maggie: this isn’t season 1! There’s no need to flashback when we can time-travel instead! Perfect!

And folks, I think this is where we’re time skipping tonight: back to 1988. Glory days, my friends. Glory days.

But what if someone’s nose starts to bleed?
(Then they die. It is that simple.)

But seriously. Last week, my least-favorite semi-main character got herself a little nosebleed. Charlotte was in quite a predicament in the final scene and it will be interesting to see what happens to her. No matter where you fall on the Charlotte debate (either you hate her or you really hate her), I think we can all agree that, dead or alive, Charlotte’s storyline is far from over. I mean, the whole digging-up-polar-bear-bones-in-the-desert-and-recognizing-the-Dharma-logo thing was nuts. And what’s the thing about her wanting to find her birthplace? And since this is Lost, does her past intersect with any other characters?

(In addition, Charlie and I are wondering: do we hate the character of Charlotte or just the actress who plays Charlotte? Or both?)

One final note: Do you think it is just coincidence that the time jumps we’ve seen coincide with periods of time that outsiders arrived on the Island? So far, we’ve seen 1954 (when the U.S. military arrived), the 1990’s (when Yemi’s plane arrived), and 2004 (when 815 arrived). If they skip back to 1988 tonight (Danielle’s boat crash), maybe there is something about outsiders that ties into the time jump phenomenon. Then again, maybe that’s the only way to provide a frame of reference to the viewer as to when the survivors are. Just something to ponder.

See Kate Run.
According to the official ABC release, after an island-only episode last week, we’re returning to our Oceanic 6 survivors this week…and it appears Kate will get a lot of air-time (much to our Charlie’s delight). Kate’s discovery that someone knows about Aaron’s parentage (the lawyer guy is also on tonight’s guest star list) seems to be the perfect way to drive Kate to actually want to return to the Island with Jack. Actually, it may be the only way. Clearly she still hates John Locke, I can’t imagine she would be friendly to Ben, and Jack broke her heart. Although she’s friendly with Sayid, Hurley, and Sun – one is a depressed assassin, one is a crazy person, and one reminds her that she was sort of responsible for her husband’s death. Not a lot of strong-and-healthy relationships to tie Kate to the group, huh?

But she has Aaron. Kate’s life is Aaron. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that she will do whatever it takes to keep Aaron. Seems like that might might might mean she needs to go baaaaaaaack.

My Crush on Marty McFly
If you watched and rewatched the Back to the Future trilogy back in the late ‘80s as often as we did at my house, then you are acutely aware of a key principle in time travel: you can’t run into yourself when you time travel or else you’ll cease to exist in the future. With all this time traveling and the Oceanic 6 soon to be on their way back, I’d like to go on record with the prediction that Lost is setting up to address this principle in some form or another before the end of the series.

If you have seen a preview for this week’s episode, it looks like Juliet, Charlotte (who isn’t dead yet, apparently), and Danny Faraday are using a canoe to paddle away from the island. All seem healthy enough to be paddling (read: no visible nosebleeds). But where are they headed? I see two options:

Option A: During “The Lie”, Juliet suggested they take the raft and “head to a shipping lane.” Daniel immediately disagreed with her, saying he needed to calculate a new bearing, and that in order to do that, he needed to determine where they are in time. This seems to hint that there is a mathematical formula to figure out what bearing you use to enter or leave the Island once you determine the current date. Interesting, huh?

However, if they skip to a time period and run into their fellow survivors from 815 (Sawyer’s quote from tonight’s preview? “I saw Kate in the jungle.”), they’ll know exactly when they are – which would allow them to hop on board a canoe and paddle off the island at the 2004 bearing. Yes, they’ll be a few months in time behind where they are supposed to be (does that make sense?), but it would be an easy solution to their current situation.

Option B: They are heading to Alcatraz / The Hydra / The Secondary Island. There are numerous reasons to head there. There could be supplies, or it could just be a safe haven that the Others didn’t frequent until after the Dharma years – which would keep our skipping survivors safe until they can determine how to, well, stop skipping.

Honestly, Option B sounds more logical to me. However, I’m sure they will run into some sort of obstacle that sends them back to the Island in the end. Let’s face it: that’s where the action is, that’s where the Orchid is, that’s where Locke is, and that’s where everyone needs to be if they’re going to find any resolution to this crisis.

Dr. Maggie says…
My three pieces of advice for this week: always keep a tissue handy for those pesky nosebleeds, ask a special someone to be your constant on Valentine’s Day, and add the Back to the Future movies (all three, mind you) to your Netflix.

Namaste,
Maggie