After last week’s excellent outing, Lost‘s creative team was bound to stumble. But it’s no big surprise, really– much of the action this week largely involves the Oceanic Six slowly spinning their wheels, as Ben works to manipulate the group into going back to the Island with him.

The main plot point of the week addresses the identity of the person disputing Aaron’s parentage. Kate goes to cut a rather uninspired deal with the lawyers — “I’ll do the blood test if you tell me who you’re working for” — which is heartily rebuffed. She then decides to trail the lawyer, but Jack shows up and gets caught up in her wacky plan.

The lawyer leads them to a hotel where Claire’s mom is staying. The two obviously assume that she is the source of Kate’s legal trouble, and Jack decides to go talk to her on his own, to try to explain what’s happened. But surprisingly, Claire’s mom has no idea who Aaron is and is instead in town to get a settlement from Oceanic Airlines for the loss of her daughter. Who then could the evil lawyers be working for?

Elsewhere, Sayid and Ben are driving somewhere to meet a man about Hurley. That man turns out to be — the evil lawyer! He’s been working for Ben all along. He’s also finagled Hurley’s release from prison. Perhaps this Oceanic Six nonsense will be over soon?

With Kate out playing private dick, Aaron has been left with Sun. Sun receives a parcel that contains photos of Jack and Ben working together, and a special box of chocolates. Under the row of candies is a lovely new gun, which she will likely use to kill the people she blames for her husband’s death.

All of the (non-incarcerated) Oceanic Six are now planning to meet with Ben at a particular pier, where one assumes he’s going to shove them all on a boat and set out for the Island. That is if Sun doesn’t kill him first.

However, as dull as the Oceanic Six storyline is, the Island storyline continues to be fascinating. After awhile, Charlotte wakes up from her nosebleed, and the group decide to head off to the Orchid station, where Locke believes he can get himself off the Island. Sawyer is shocked to learn that Kate, Jack, Hurley and the rest are all still alive and well.

On their way to the Island, they see a beam of light erupt from the Swan hatch off in the distance, and Sawyer witnesses Kate delivering Aaron. After another time flash, they return to the beach where they find their old camp has been ransacked and their zodiac raft stolen. Someone, however, has left a canoe behind. Inside it is a bottle of water from Ajira Airways. The group takes the canoe and begins paddling around the Island.

On the water, Sawyer starts to tell Juliet about how he saw Kate in the past when someone on another canoe off in the distance begins shooting at them. The group paddle faster and begin shooting back with their World War II-era weapons. Luckily, another time flash pulls them away, but they end up in a torrential downpour.

The group pulls ashore and decides to go the rest of the way to the Orchid on foot. At this point, both Miles and Juliet are having nosebleeds. If Locke doesn’t get off soon, they’re all going to die!

Off in the downpour, a group of French people on a survival raft are introduced. It takes me two seconds to realize that this is Rousseau and her team in the past, but the writers treat the Rousseau reveal later in the episode as if it’s a huge surprise.

They come across a man floating on a board face down and pull him into the raft. At this point, I think it’s important to remind everyone that a certain TVZ team member (namely me) has long held that Jin survived the sinking of the Freighter last season. A lot of people (namely Chris Piers) were skeptical of this possibility. I hope that those people are willing to pay up, because my crazy “Jin’s alive” theory has proven to be true. Jin survived, and Rousseau’s people pulled him out of the water.

Back in the real world, the Oceanic Six begin meeting up at the pier. Kate is shocked that Ben is there and working with Jack, Sayid is generally pissed off, and Sun is pulling up with Aaron. Seeing Ben, Sun pulls out her gun and heads over to the group. There’s not going to be any further movement on this story this week, though. Bummer.

Now, I don’t recall if this happened in the episode, or if it was in the trailer for next week (it all kinds of bleed together), but upon confronting Ben with her gun, Ben informs Sun that Jin is still alive and that he has proof! Consider this a spoiler.

Back on the Island, the French scientists come ashore and work to revive Jin, who they learn doesn’t speak French, but does understand some English. A young woman in the group, who is obviously Rousseau (and pregnant), introduces herself to Jin. His eyes display the shock that we’re supposed to feel if we hadn’t already figured out the young Frenchwoman’s identity. You’re not writing Heroes, guys — Lost viewers expect our intelligence to be respected a bit more. Anyone who know the show’s mythology, or even watched it back in season one, could figure this out way in advance.

This week’s show is definitely not the strongest of the fifth season. Jin’s return is obviously the big event of the week, as is the introduction of young Rousseau. The rest of the episode is basically that part of the D&D campaign where the player characters are traveling to the dungeon and fighting random monsters to stop them from being bored. You know, just moving from point a to point b. Pretty dull overall. It should play fine on DVD, but having to wait another week for something to really happen will be excruciating.

As a brief aside, my theory about the Ajira Airways bottle and the hostile group on the other canoe is that in the fifth and final season, an Ajira Airways plane will crash on the Island, and our heroes — the survivors of Oceanic 815 — will now be integrated with the Others. Therefore they’ll get the Others’ perspective on the Island, and will finally understand just why they were treated the way they were when they crashed back in season one. The Ajira Airways survivors will be the “bad guys,” or our heroes will be the “bad guys” — it will probably be a matter of perspective. Expect season six to begin with the Ajira Airways crash, an the introduction of the Ajira survivors in much the same way that season one introduced the Oceanic Survivors. That’s my theory, anyway.

In any event, speculation aside, “The Little Prince” is hopefully a bridge to more interesting things happening next week. As such, I’ll give it a paltry 2.5 out of five Walts.