LOST 5.05 metareview

This week’s metareview of Lost 5.05 “This Place is Death” features a ton of new review/recap sources for your reading pleasure. There are no less than 19 reviews linked and excerpted. Enjoy!

Entertainment Weekly’s Doc Jensen: …let’s swipe one of Ms. Hawking’s votive candles and light one for Charlotte Staples Lewis, whose bloody passing was charged with mythic buzz.

Variety’s Cynthia Littleton: Oh, but this show knows how to throw curve balls. I think this episode of Lost is jarring because the many plot developments that were just thrown at us for the most part seem so darn… straightforward. It must set a record for a Lost episode in the characters’ use of clear and explicit language.

E! Online’s Kristin Dos Santos: There was so much going on in tonight’s episode of Lost, it almost felt like a good six episodes of revelatory goodness packed into one hour…

Zap2It’s Ryan McGee: I feel like Wayne and Garth: “I’m not worthy! I’m not worthy!” This is the second masterpiece of the season, rivaling Jughead for Top Episode of the Season honors so far. I feel bad for people who gave up on this show years ago. They’re missing something truly special.

Televisionary, aka Jace Lacob: All in all, a fantastic installment that once again ramped up the tension and drama and pointed the way for the Oceanic Six to make their way back to the island… I’m even more anxious than usual to wait another week for a new installment.

The Star-Ledger’s Allan Sepinwall: “This Place is Death” is a very fun episode of Lost, and a very necessary one. So much is happening, so many blanks are filled in, so many other answers are alluded to, and yet even more questions are raised that it’s easy to simply buckle in and enjoy the plot-moving ride.

Popular Mechanics’s Erin Scottberg: Last night’s episode of Lost, “This Place is Death,” brought us inches away from blowing open the island’s time travel secrets.

Huffington Post’s Jay Glatfelter: After hearing Rousseau’s transmission at the end of the first ever episode of Lost, Charlie posed the infamous question, “Guys, where are we?” After last night’s episode “This Place Is Death” I think the question has now become, “Where are we going?”

Film School Rejects‘ Adam Sweeney: This Place is Death was a bit choppy, largely because it needed to display the increasing time shifts, but it still brought mystery, manipulation and many scenes of characters looking around with an expression that said, “what the hell is going on?” In other words, it passes the litmus test for Lost episodes. We can’t stop saying it. Damn, we love Lost.

TV Squad’s Jonathan Toomey: “This Place is Death” roared… and didn’t let up once during its 60 minutes of perfection.

Film.com’s Drake Lelane: In an episode that brought back both the frozen donkey wheel and the smoke monster, it was inevitable that the big Lost ball of string would start to unravel to give us glimpses that confirmed previous suspicions.

Paste Magazine’s Rachel Dovey: …what with the islanders’ time-travel every minute-and-a-half, and the shifting story-lines, the story was (surprise!) a bit hard to follow. But c’est la vie: the directors have bitten off a huge chunk, and now they’re chewing it, quickly (which makes digestion a bit of a pain) but effectively.

If Magazine’s Emerson Parker: …the best episode so far of the season and hopefully this will lead to grander things moving forward.

Cinema Blend’s Katey Rich: Can’t remember the last time I was so consistently surprised by this show — and so consistently thrilled with it.

HoboTrashCan’s Chris Kirkman: So… Eloise Hawking is Daniel’s mum. I think just about everybody had that figured out. Well, not everybody — Ben was honestly surprised. He’s usually pretty good at knowing everything that’s going on.

Pop + Politics‘ Courtney Reimer: We, as Lost viewers, are used to getting our treats in a mixed-up chronological order. It’s what entices us to sit through the equivalent of plot-line vegetables… and so greatly rejoice in those sweet reveals.

New York Magazine’s Emily Nussbaum: On the mainland, Ben wriggles his game board, tilting Oceanic balls toward the Island hole. On Lost Island, Charlotte coughs up backstory while Jin flashes through Rousseau’s tragedy. These Island sequences have the eerie weirdness of early Lost, and while the Charlotte stuff feels insanely rushed — we’d have liked to know the character before she became a victim-oracle — we can never get enough of Locke tortured by contradictory Daddy replacements.

io9’s Lynn Peril: After last week’s slow-by-comparison show, Lost came roaring back in top form with “This Place Is Death,” another fab episode in what’s shaping up to be a really great season.

mlive.com’s Troy Reimink: Season five of Lost has been frustrating, certainly not because it’s been short on action or information, but for precisely the opposite reason. “This Place is Death,” like the past few installments, was plot-dense to the detriment of its big reveals.

Image: CTV.ca.