Lost – S05E04 – The Little Prince

Tonight’s episode: The Little Prince

If you were one of the unfortunate few who survived the crash of Oceanic flight 815, this season’s been a thrill-ride no matter where or when you are. Things on the island are in a topsy-turvy quantum flux and it’s doing no kind of good for Charlotte’s sinus infection. And don’t forget the H-bomb dangling overhead like a nuclear sword of Damocles. 

Back in civilization, the quiet lives of the Oceanic 6 are quickly unraveling. This week, Kate has some real baby drama on her hands. Who are the suits who’ve suddenly taken an interest in Aaron? Will Kate be able to use her fugitive skills to evade the cheek swab or the inevitable guest stint on Maury

 Speculations, theories, reactions, live blogs, you know the drill.

Comments

  1. Ugh it’s a Kate episode…….Just cause I love the show doesnt mean I cant hate on the character.

    Kate, without a doubt, is the worst character on the show.

  2. @ Conor: Nice Damocles reference there. You just know that the bomb is gonna play into the story later in the season.

    So keen for this. Lost just keeps getting better and better.

  3. @TNC: But this’ll be some Kate on the run stuff, which is way better than Kate being a mother.

  4. Avatar photo Paul Montgomery (@fuzzytypewriter) says:

    Looking at the preview clips, this episode looks to have something for everybody.  Including Sayid fans.  And if you’re not a Sayid fan, I don’t want to know ya.  

  5. How could anyone not be a Sayid fan. He’s totally badass!

  6. @reg: I just dont like her in general, no matter what the situation is.

    Overtime she turned into a whimpy girl, to an arrogant bitch. Maybe that was the writer’s intentions; but the more backstory we got from her the more worse of a person she becomes. It’s up to a point where I hope she has the little amount of screentime as possible. But with her having Aaron I know that anit gonna happen.

    I dont know, the writers need to have her do something incredibly noble or brave to win me over again.

  7. Only 1 hour to new Life on Mars!

     

    Oh yeah, Lost is on too. 

  8. Man they must’ve been on Desmond’s ship for a long time…..and what’s with Kate’s scar?

  9. ‘I’ve always been with you’…..

    Uh….pretty sure that’s not true.

  10. @RobAbsten: Watch the original BBC Life On Mars too. Brilliant.

  11. So….is it just me watching this or what?

  12. Avatar photo Paul Montgomery (@fuzzytypewriter) says:

    I’m always watching.  

  13. Yep, just you.

     I live in Australia so I won’t get too see it until I’ve obtained in some fashion.

  14. I’m watching

    and again I love Daniel

  15. I’m watching

     

  16. He should know, we did a whole episode about constants.

  17. at least Locke is thinking lol

  18. I can handle time travel, and polar bears, and teleportation, and a plane hitting the ground at 200 mph and people still living, but when complete ignorance of legal procedures and due process hits the screen I can’t deal. 

    Being a lawyer has taken the joy from my life. 

  19. That’s a bad nosebleed

  20. this seems bad…

     

  21. This show has the best fight scenes now.

  22. Wow 20mins, only 22 comments….and the majority of them are by me….I’m insulted by this site now.

  23. mmm…chocolate cake and Lost,  my night is good

  24. snow day + beer + lost = good

     

  25. It’s season one all over again…..all with the uncomfortable moments.

  26. beer! thats what i’m missing

     

  27. Hey! Michael is alive and works as a cop now….

  28. That’s a nice subtle jab at the early, philosophical Locke:

    ‘Did the light mean something?’

    ‘No….it was just a light’

  29. Canoe chase scene is very Last of the Mohicans.

  30. ‘THANK YOU LORD!’

    *flash*

    ‘I TAKE IT BACK!’

    Classic line.

  31. I’m glad Jack reminded us who that was. I had no idea.

  32. lol  and you can’t really be mad at Mrs Liddleton,  it is her grandson. 

  33. this show will never be able to answer all their questions cause evrytime they give an answer they ask 20 more questions.

  34. But it’s Jack’s Nephew right? Or does he even know that yet?

  35. So.. hands up for those sick of whiney mom Kate  *raises hand

  36. McDouchbag as God?…..That’s troubling in so many levels.

  37. Ok, so, maybe I’m not hardcore enough.. and maybe I should have known this already, but, in class tonight, my prof went off on a tangent about Jeremy Bentham.  I said… what was that first name again?  Anyway, what a great real life weird story and also, as usual, what a great tie-in-name for LOST. 

    From the Jeremy Bentham wikipedia entry…

    As requested in his will, his body was preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet, termed his "Auto-icon". Originally kept by his disciple Dr. Southwood Smith,[13] it was acquired by University College London in 1850. The Auto-icon is kept on public display at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of the College. For the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, the Auto-icon was brought to the meeting of the College Council, where he was listed as "present but not voting".[14] Tradition holds that if the council’s vote on any motion is tied, the auto-icon always breaks the tie by voting in favour of the motion.

    The Auto-icon has always had a wax head, as Bentham’s head was badly damaged in the preservation process. The real head was displayed in the same case for many years, but became the target of repeated student pranks including being stolen on more than one occasion. It is now locked away securely.

    Anyway, Jeremy Bentham = Weekend at Bernies.  Which tells me that Locke knew what was going to happen to him.  I’m sure he chose the name on purpose.    I know that has little to do with tonight’s episode, but I thought I’d share. 

  38. Well played Mr. Linus

  39. Avatar photo Paul Montgomery (@fuzzytypewriter) says:

    @DAvetron3k – He does know it’s his nephew.  Claire’s mom told him that Claire was his half sister at his father’s memorial service.  

  40. He must’be hired the lawyer to convince Kate to join them…..either way the idea of Aaron being taken away isnt that troubling. Once Kate goes with everyone it’s not that’s gonna be their big concern.

  41. So, Ben was just trying to scare Kate back to the island.

  42. @reg5000 (just read your post):

     

    Seen it via bittorrent in all it’s unexpurgated glory oh, I dunno, 3 times. Even adopted Man City as my football club. 

  43. Oh fuck yes!  ROUSSEAU!

  44. @PaulMontgomery – thanks, I totally forgot that.

  45. Holy shit! It’s Rousseau!

    AND JIN IS WITH THEM!?

  46. jin!

  47. Ok.. I guess I jumped the gun… I should have typed JIN!  but I still think french = Rousseau.  I thought we were about to get a surprise flashback.

     

  48. lol "no Jack, she’s right"  awesome

  49. What are the chances that Jin is unstuck in time as well?  Some?  None? 

  50. Zach Braff doing a puppy voice for tiolet paper accessories ad = armageddon.

  51. I think the flashes are happening everytime they try to mess with the past.

  52. Someday Mike Imperioli will not automatically equal Chris Moltasanti but that day is far, far away.

  53. so how confused do you think Jin is right now lol

  54. ‘Sorry’

    God Ben is so badass

  55. Poor Jin, after all that time learning english

  56. Mike imperioli will always look like a muppet to me.

  57. oh, nevermind.

  58. Poor jin he just learned english, now he has to learn french.

  59. Who was screamin Rousseau a minute ago? Gold star for you.

  60. What is LOST untangled?

  61. This was a very good episode, although the tension with Sun might seem to die off immediately next episode.

    I’m just glad that, right now, we’re not spending precious time to get all the people together. Four episode to get the Six together, the next 15 (again hopefully) getting them back on the island. Next season? All answers will probably be answered……probably a very strong word there.

    But I must say, this was the weakest participation for any live-blogging show on ifanboy. Not to the guys who did comment on here, but for everyone who didnt. If this was Heroes or Battlestar Galactica, there would’ve been 100 comments by the half hour mark….What happenend guys you used to be cool.

  62. Jin! Jin’s alive!!   But how in the hell does Ben know Jin is alive????  Or is he lying????  JIn is totally confused!!!   How long before he runs into Locke, Sawyer and company?????   

    HOW LONG TIL NEXT WEDNESDAY!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

  63. could it be we’re trying to foucs on the show?  I don’t come in until after the episode it over.  But hey, that’s just me.

  64. Lost untangled is a way for abc to make you have to look at Mike imperioli’s redonkulous mustache.

  65. Too focused on not missing anything to post during the show hehe.

  66. I’m claiming in the Gold Star.  Beat TNC  on the Rousseau call by a whole 2 minutes!  hehe 

    Am I the only one who was surprised at the Jeremy Bentham story?  I had never heard that one before.  Pretty wild story.  I love finding out what LOST character names mean. 

     

  67. Oh wow, that was hilarious.  LOST untangled = action figure scene re-enactments!  Not quite up to the level of Paul Montgomery’s awesome Hulk VS. video, but still pretty funny.

  68. Damn, I missed Lost Untangled.  I’m watching Top Chef.  

  69. So, one more Bentham thingie before I let it die…  again from Wiki..

    Hopeful to the last, at the age of eighty he wrote again to one of them, recalling to her memory the far-off days when she had ‘presented him, in ceremony, with the flower in the green lane’ [citing Bentham’s memoirs]. To the end of his life he could not hear of Bowood without tears swimming in his eyes, and he was forced to exclaim, ‘Take me forward, I entreat you, to the future – do not let me go back to the past

    Wow.  Could that be any more LOST?

  70. BenthamJeremy
    Feb. 15, 1748-June 6, 1832
    Biography from British Authors of the 19th Century (1936)
    Copyright (c) by The H. W. Wilson Company. All rights reserved. 

        BENTHAMJEREMY (February 15, 1748-June 6, 1832), philosopher and economist, was born in London. His great-grandfather was a pawnbroker, and his father, though an attorney by profession, gave more attention to what would now be called his real estate business; he was decidedly "on the make," and looked forward (vainly, as it happened) to profiting by the achievements of his brilliant son. For Jeremy was a child prodigy; he read Latin and Greek at three, like John Stuart Mill, and at five was known as "the philosopher." His parents tried to keep him from all sports or light reading–an ambition happily thwarted by summers spent with his grandmother near Reading. At seven, a sensitive, shy, undersized child, he was sent to Westminster School, and at twelve he entered Queen’s College, Oxford. There his first religious doubts made him reluctant to sign the Thirty-nine Articles, as was required for enrollment.
        Bentham detested Oxford. Nevertheless he attained his B.A. in 1763, was entered at Lincoln’s Inn, and succeeded to his M.A. in 1766, leaving Oxford finally the following year. As late as 1817 he was called to the bar, but he hardly made a pretence of practising law. Instead he experimented in chemistry, and began, with more fruitful results, to interest himself in politics and the theory of jurisprudence. His inimical commentary on Blackstone (the Fragment on Government) was almost the sole accomplishment of his professional legal career.
        For a time Bentham became depressed, and perhaps because of his extreme precocity, already felt himself to be a failure. An acquaintance, which speedily grew to intimacy, with Lord Shelburne (the first Lord Lansdowne) restored his self-esteem; as an habitue of Shelburne’s house he met most of the men who were later to become his followers–not the least one Etienne Dumont, his disciple and translator. A less fortunate result was a meeting with a lady, whose name is unknown, but who inspired a lifelong unrequited passion in Bentham, and kept him a bachelor all his days.
        Before 1780 Bentham had already worked out the details of his utilitarian philosophy (afterwards to be known also as philosophic radicalism), and had written, though he had not published, his most famous book, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. In a sense all that he did afterward was in the nature of a commentary. Its main thesis, set forth by him with force and brilliance, is that men act only to attain pleasure or to avoid pain, and that this should be the objective of the moralist and the legislator. Punishment is evil, and should be resorted to only to avoid a greater evil. The seeds of this philosophy are in Hume and Helvetius, but the developed creed is Bentham‘s own. It made him the founder of a peculiarly English philosophical and ethical school.
        In 1785 Bentham went to visit a brother who was, strangely enough, an official of the Russian government. His observations in White Russia led him to an intense interest in penology, and particularly in a device–a sort of watch-tower and control-post in the midst of a factory or a prison–called the "Pantopticon."Bentham espoused the Pantopticon ardently for twenty-five years; he almost persuaded the British government to adopt it, and to dispense with deportation to Botany Bay; but in the end all he achieved was a refund of his expenses.
        In 1792 his father died and left him independently wealthy. In the same year the French revolutionary government made him an honorary citizen, in recognition of his friendship, for from his original Toryism he had gradually become a radical. His health failed and he thought of going to Mexico. Instead he settled at Ford Abbey, near Chard. There little by little he became a recluse, a sage whose disciples sat reverently, although infrequently, at his feet.
        His labor was indefatigable, and his production enormous, but his methods of work were most peculiar. As someone said, he was "always running from a good scheme to a better." He carried out several projects at once, wrote voluminously on scraps of paper, rewrote books before they were finished, and in fact for the most part simply turned out masses of notes which Dumont, James Mill, and others reduced to order. Most of his books were privately printed long before their general publication.
        Bentham‘s last public action was in helping to found the liberal Westminster Review in 1824. Even in his old age he worked with passion, as if to do all he could for humanity. When feebleness at last overcame him, he died as calmly as he had lived. He left his body to be dissected for the benefit of science, and his skeleton, dressed in his usual rather eccentric clothes, is still in the possession of University College.
        Bentham‘s interests extended to ethics, jurisprudence, logic and political economy. His style, once witty and powerful, became in the end dry and formal, with clarity its only virtue. He was fond of inventing new words; one which has survived is "international." Immense masses of his notes and manuscript are still unpublished. He influenced almost every thinker of his time. He himself remained entirely unspoiled, serene, even-tempered, and genuinely a lover of his kind.
        (M. A. deF.)

    Suggested Reading: Bowring, J. Life (in Bentham‘s Collected Works); Everett, C. W. The Education of Jeremy Bentham; Ogden, C. K. Bentham‘s Theory of Fictions; Stephen, L. The English Utilitarians; Contemporary Review 142:213 August 1932; Queen’s Quarterly 39:658 November 1832.

    Selected Works: Fragment on Government (anonymous) 1776; View of the Hard Labor Bill, 1778; A Defence of Usury, 1787; Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789; Pantopticon, 1791; A Protest Against Law Taxes, 1795; The Pantopticon versus New South Wales, 1802; A Plea for the Constitution, 1803; Scotch Reform, 1808; An Introductory View of the Rationale of Evidence, 1812; A Table of the Springs of Action, 1817; Papers Upon Condification and Public Institution, 1817; Swear Not at All, 1817; Church of Englandism and Its Catechism Examined, 1818; On the Liberty of the Press, 1821; The Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religon Upon the Temporal Happiness of Mankind (under name of Philip Beauchamp) 1822; Not Paul but Jesus (under name of Gamaliel Smith) 1823; Codification Proposals, 1823; A Book of Fallacies, 1824; Rationale of Reward, 1825; Rationale of Evidence, 1827; Rationale of Punishment, 1830; Constitutional Code, 1830; Deontology: or, The Science of Morality (posthumous) 1834; Collected Works (9 vols., posthumous) 1838-1843.

    Citation:
    Original source: British Authors of the 19th Century
    Original publication date: 1936
    Editor: Stanley Kunitz
    Original publication type: Print
    Publisher of original publication: The H. W. Wilson Company
    Database publisher: The H.W. Wilson Company
    Database: Biography Reference Bank

  71. The New York Times
    June 18, 1986, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition
    ENGLISH THINKER (1748-1832) PRESERVES HIS POISE

    BYLINE: By JOSEPH LELYVELD, Special to the New York Times

    SECTION: Section A; Page 2, Column 3; Foreign Desk

    LENGTH: 1255 words

    DATELINE: LONDON, June 16

    Jeremy Bentham, the father of the Utilitarian school of philosophy and various strains of modern British thought on society and law, addressed himself a year before his death in 1832 to what might have seemed to him to be the ultimate utilitarian question: ”Of what use is a dead man to the living?”

    As he was accustomed to doing, he then answered his own question at considerable length in an essay that, like roughly one-third of the enormous corpus of his works, has never been published. A dead man could be of use to the living, the philosopher reasoned, if his corpse was made available to further the the study of anatomy; and also, in the case of men of exceptional intellect, if the remains were then embalmed and preserved in order to give the dead a physical presence that might inspire future generations of thinkers.

    Bentham, who liked giving names to things, decided to call his pickled, stuffed or mounted geniuses ”auto-icons.” A philosophical materialist who scorned organized religion, he then described how a preserved philosopher might be used in observances by a cult of rationalists.

    Finally, in the last draft of his will, the daring idea that was raised only abstractly in his essay finally emerged full-blown: the philosopher proposed that he himself be turned into an ”auto-icon,” to be found seated in a favorite chair in his own clothes ”in the attitude in which I am sitting when engaged in thought.” #154 Years Later, a Meeting He then suggested the design of ”an appropriate box or case” in which he might be kept. ”If it should so happen that my personal friends and other Disciples should be disposed to meet together on some day or days of the year,” he wrote, ”for the purpose of commemorating the Founder of the greatest happiness system of morals and legislation my executor will from time to time cause to be conveyed to the room in which they meet the said Box or case with the contents there to be stationed in such part of the room as to the assembled company shall seem meet.”

    Last week, 154 years after his death at the age of 84, the philosopher’s living admirers and students – it was not clear that there were any disciples – were present in force at University College, London, for the founding of an International Bentham Society. And so, almost precisely as he envisioned, was Jeremy Bentham, in his box in the form of an ”auto-icon.”

    It was a distinguished assembly. Even Bentham, a man of soaring vanity, would have been impressed. Two of Britain’s most eminent contemporary philosophers, Sir Alfred Ayer and H. L. A. Hart, were there. So were Lords Goff and Butterworth and the vice chancellor of Oxford University, Sir Patrick Neill. University College itself – sometimes thought erroneously to have been founded by Bentham but certainly an example of his far-reaching influence – turned out an impressive array of professors and scholars as it has done on various occasions since 1850 when the Bentham auto-icon came into its keeping.

    The new society is designed to promote Bentham. University College is home to a Bentham Club and a Bentham Committee, both situated in Bentham House. The club, the alumni association of the law faculty, sells Bentham neckties to its members that are decorated with silhouettes of the philosopher’s straw hat; the committee, which draws sustenance from the Jeremy Bentham Appeal, publishes a Bentham Newsletter that reports on the progress of the Bentham Project -an effort, already 25 years old, to publish the philosopher’s collected works. Twelve volumes have been published so far, but these include less than 20 percent of what there is to publish.
     
    It Looks Like Jack Benny

    The auto-icon, which bears a resemblance to the comedian Jack Benny, looked distantly pleased. In point of fact, the object contains less of the philosopher than he had hoped, for the embalming of his head was not a success and a wax reproduction by a French anatomist had to be substituted. For years the actual head was kept in a case inside Bentham’s box. Sometimes, as a photograph taken in 1948 illustrates, it was taken out of the case and exhibited on a plate-like object between the great thinker’s feet.

    ”Now it is kept in the cellar,” said Sir James Lighthill, the Provost of University College, outside whose office Jeremy Bentham normally resides. ”He encourages me to engage in utilitarian educational projects, which I do,” Sir James said.

    Bentham still wears his original clothes, except for his undershirt, which had to be replaced when the other garments were sent out for dry-cleaning in 1939 while the auto-icon was undergoing restoration and restuffing in the Department of Egyptology. The garments were cleaned again in 1979. When asked, Sir James said he did not know in whose name the clothes went to the cleaners.

    William Twining, the Professor of Jurisprudence at University College, said he customarily made points about the interpretation of evidence in his lectures by asking his students to consider a wide variety of possible interpretations of Bentham’s wish to be preserved. One of these, he feels, was certainly vanity. ”But he was also making a serious materialistic point about the taboos we attach to death and burial,” Professor Twining said. ”He was saying, ‘This is just a thing.’ ”

    It was not until the year of Bentham’s death that Parliament enacted a law he had advocated making dissection of cadavers for medical purposes lawful. Bentham asked that ”scientific and literary men” be invited to attend lectures on ”the actions of animal economy” when he himself was dissected as a demonstration against ”the primitive horror at dissection.” Among those who came was James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill and a philosopher in his own right.
     
    Benthamist vs. Benthamite

    Still, wasn’t it strange and noteworthy, Professor Twining observed, that it was materialists like Lenin and Bentham who had their physical remains preserved.

    The scholars sipped white wine and stood with their backs to the auto-icon as the president of the new society, Professor J. H. Burns, spoke about the significance of Bentham scholarship today. Those in the room were ”Benthamists” rather than ”Benthamites,” Professor Burns suggested, casting a theatrical glance at Bentham in his box to underscore the heretical point.

    Benthamists, he was saying, honored the philosopher for his dedication to orderly social change and a rational legal system; that is, they were committed to a thorough and systematic discussion of public issues but not to such Benthamite notions as the calculation that human rights might be dispensed with when that served the happiness of the greatest number in society, or his contention that torture was easier to justify on the same utilitarian grounds than imprisonment.

    Professor Burns, a historian who served for 18 years as the general editor of the Bentham Project, said that as a Scot he was bound to consider the philosopher ”a peculiarly English character.” Later, in conversation, he acknowledged that he sometimes disliked Bentham as a man, even though he valued him as a thinker; that this was one of the reasons he gave up the editorship. ”I could live with Mill, but I couldn’t live with Bentham,” he said.

    Bentham wrote that there could be a ”Temple of Fame” and that eventually this ”could be filled with a population of illustrious Auto-Icons.” But when the party at University College was over, he was left alone in his box.

  72. Thanks mattstee, interesting stuff.

  73. I think it’s amusing that the episode with the least comments on here is the one written by Brian K Vaughn.

    Good episode, the next one always seems so far away…

  74. The time travel is answering all our questions if you pay attention. I fucking love this show.