Following the third episode of season 5, "Jughead", an episode which could've been much better than it ended up being but still gave us some great reveals, this week's episode of "Lost" proved to be almost the opposite of "Jughead", an episode without much of a great story to tell, but one which does a great job telling the story. Melinda Hsu Taylor and Brian K. Vaughan did a great job writing this episode, which is far and away the best Kate-centric episode of the entire series, though that admittedly isn't saying much.
The episode's flaws are immediately apparent: since the person who demanded the blood test from Kate was Ben, the storyline ends up being largely pointless. Sure, the motivation is obvious: Ben wanted to make sure Kate would return to the island, and could use Aaron to force her to. Still, this didn't need a scene in the season premiere and the bulk of an episode to resolve, especially since there are several other ways the writers could have more efficiently written the story, and the scene with Claire's mom was of absolutely no importance to the show whatsoever, and a complete waste of the few minutes it took up. Beyond that, there is not actually much progress plot-wise this week. All of this doesn't matter too much, however, since the episode is thankfully very well-written.
The dialogue is consistently good, there is a nice element of mystery to the (ultimately pointless) proceedings which makes the episode quite enjoyable throughout, and there's also some of the best Jack/Kate interaction we've seen since season one. It's quite obvious now that the obstacles in the way of the Oceanic 6's future return to the island are relatively minor, and that there is almost no way in hell that they will stretch this out beyond the next two episodes, three at most. That's a good thing. The episode's action scenes were excellent, especially the boat shootout which preposterously ended up being a very good scene, and the episode isn't short on solid emotional content as well. For the first time in season 5 Sawyer is actually given some really good one-liners, but most pleasingly he was also given a couple of really good emotionally-driven scenes. His witnessing Aaron's birth has an odd sort of poignancy, and it's not only because he saw Kate again, and his scene with Juliet later was excellent.
"The Little Prince" does what it should and keeps things moving, it definitely has more filler than the first three episodes of the season, but that isn't a big problem because it's pretty good filler, and there's loads of other stuff to enjoy in the episode. More of a linking episode than anything else, this is a very well-written and enjoyable episode. Not a classic, but still almost surprisingly good considering the story being told and the character centricity of the episode. The ending goes on a bit longer than it should have, but it was a great way to end the episode and promises some great storytelling to come this season. Jin's fate wasn't surprising, but it was a relief to learn that he was, after all, alive.
The episode's flaws are immediately apparent: since the person who demanded the blood test from Kate was Ben, the storyline ends up being largely pointless. Sure, the motivation is obvious: Ben wanted to make sure Kate would return to the island, and could use Aaron to force her to. Still, this didn't need a scene in the season premiere and the bulk of an episode to resolve, especially since there are several other ways the writers could have more efficiently written the story, and the scene with Claire's mom was of absolutely no importance to the show whatsoever, and a complete waste of the few minutes it took up. Beyond that, there is not actually much progress plot-wise this week. All of this doesn't matter too much, however, since the episode is thankfully very well-written.
The dialogue is consistently good, there is a nice element of mystery to the (ultimately pointless) proceedings which makes the episode quite enjoyable throughout, and there's also some of the best Jack/Kate interaction we've seen since season one. It's quite obvious now that the obstacles in the way of the Oceanic 6's future return to the island are relatively minor, and that there is almost no way in hell that they will stretch this out beyond the next two episodes, three at most. That's a good thing. The episode's action scenes were excellent, especially the boat shootout which preposterously ended up being a very good scene, and the episode isn't short on solid emotional content as well. For the first time in season 5 Sawyer is actually given some really good one-liners, but most pleasingly he was also given a couple of really good emotionally-driven scenes. His witnessing Aaron's birth has an odd sort of poignancy, and it's not only because he saw Kate again, and his scene with Juliet later was excellent.
"The Little Prince" does what it should and keeps things moving, it definitely has more filler than the first three episodes of the season, but that isn't a big problem because it's pretty good filler, and there's loads of other stuff to enjoy in the episode. More of a linking episode than anything else, this is a very well-written and enjoyable episode. Not a classic, but still almost surprisingly good considering the story being told and the character centricity of the episode. The ending goes on a bit longer than it should have, but it was a great way to end the episode and promises some great storytelling to come this season. Jin's fate wasn't surprising, but it was a relief to learn that he was, after all, alive.