The Lost Symbol Review: L’Enfant Orientation (Season 1 Episode 4)

On Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol  Season 1 Episode 4, “L’Enfant Orientation,” Katherine heeds Mal’akh’s warning and goes off on her own thing, leaving Langdon to work alone… except, that’s not exactly what he does.

He gets some help from Warren and Nunez at various points of his investigation. Sure, he travels to that cave alone, but Nunez is there to help catch him when he falls.

For us, it’s more entertaining to watch Langdon interact with people on his quest, especially when they’re characters we’ve gotten to know over the previous episodes. It wouldn’t be any fun to just sit and watch him talk through things himself.

So, Langdon isn’t really doing this by himself; he’s still defying Mal’akh’s orders.

Langdon is with someone the majority of the time. He is only alone when he’s traveling from place to place. Mal’akh got so bent out of shape with Katherine being there, and if he doesn’t make similar threats as a result of Nunez or Warren’s presence, it won’t make sense.

Unless Mal’akh is weirdly okay with Langdon rotating partners and his main problem was that Katherine went with Langdon everywhere, or maybe Mal’akh doesn’t believe that a woman should be helping solve ancient mysteries.

Whatever his reasoning may be, we’re going to need Ma’lakh to clarify his orders and/or make some new threats if he wants to maintain his villain credibility.

There are some TV shows that the week-to-week model really works in their favor.

One that immediately comes to mind is WandaVision where each week, there was so much discourse about the episode, everyone theorizing about what comes next. It was exciting to see what other people had picked up on and share your thoughts before the next episode arrived.

It’s starting to look like The Lost Symbol would work better if it was released all at once, and you could binge-watch it. It does have mysteries to unravel, but not in the same way that WandaVision did.

There’s no big discovery on “L’Enfant Orientation” to where you are dying to know what’s next.

Langdon and Katherine make some headway, but there’s not really any intensity behind them. There is this desire to keep watching to see how all of this plays out, but you’d also be okay if you didn’t watch the next episode as soon as it was out.

If Peacock released all the episodes at once, you could get swept up in the momentum of The Lost Symbol a bit better. Waiting for a new episode each week isn’t ruining the show by any means, but it probably would have been better as a binge. Do you agree?

Stray Thoughts:

• Langdon doing something physical and getting out of the library is wonderful and adds some suspense to the hour.
• I’d be okay with more of Sato and Katherine somewhat working together again. We need more women-only scenes.
• Langdon and Nunez are such a fun pairing. It’s like we’re watching Langdon actually make a friend.

What did you think of this episode of The Lost Symbol? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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New episodes of The Lost Symbol premiere Thursdays on Peacock.

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