On the boat, we meet the aforementioned Regina. I spent a lot of time wondering if upside-down book was significant, and it turns out, that was not time well-spent. I don’t know what kind of kitchen mishap they had, though I assume our soon-to-be-revealed saboteur had something to do with it. I think it’s really funny that Frank just brought Desmond and Sayid cans of lima beans. You know what’s delicious straight out of the can? Certainly not lima beans! And we’ve got the helpful note “Don’t trust the Captain”. As we’ll soon see, the Captain is the first person in four seasons of this show to give concise answers to direct questions.
Hey, we’ve got Sun in the future! Welcome to the Oceanic Six, Sun. Based on Juliet’s timeline, Sun had three weeks to get off the Island, so rescue (such as it is) is coming soon. Of course, Season Three takes place over about three weeks, so “soon” is relative here.
And then they start screwing with us, with Jin’s frantic search for a baby gift. Everybody really does love pandas, by the way. They completely suckered me once again, so I was waiting for the shopkeeper to suggest a polar bear.
The name Jin suggests, Ji Yeon, means “Heavenly Patience” in Korean. That’s actually kind of sweet. Usually the Sun/Jin episodes are good, but they stop the plot dead. What’s going on, with things actually happening in a Sun episode? Remember how they devoted an episode to the search for her wedding ring? Lost does not slow down these days.
*** All screecaps courtesy of Lost Easter Eggs and Dark UFO ***
Faraday, bless his heart, is the worst liar ever. I sort of get the feeling that he’s not totally on board with Abaddon’s mission statement. Miles and Charlotte, they’ll lie to your face and Charlotte will clock you over the head when your back is turned. But Faraday, he can’t lie when presented with a direct question. I’m pretty sure that somebody wants the Lostaways dead. Whether that’s Widmore, Benry, or both, there’s somebody who would be just as happy to kill them all and walk away.
I liked seeing Sun take charge – that’s a new role for her, and I liked how Jin accepted it. Those two have really come a long way since the borderline abusive relationship we saw in the earliest episodes. Season One Jin would never let her order him around like that. And he certainly wouldn’t have made friendly conversation with Jack. (Not so much for Jack to do in this episode, by the way. Made himself some breakfast and he moved on.)
I still can’t make up my mind on the subject of Juliet. I can’t decide if she’s evil or not. Theoretically, she seemed to be acting in Sun’s best interests, even if she does it in a somewhat destructive way. Still, I just don’t think she’s as pure as they’d have us believe.
Now, I thought the whole thing with Sun’s doctor being out of town and the replacement doctor scrubbing in was going to be a major deal. Like maybe Dr. Bae was going to steal the baby and present her to Widmore. Either that’s what they wanted us to think, or else the actor who played Dr. Park last season wasn’t available. I personally think that they threw in a couple of red herrings (The obstetrician switch, the upside-down book) to keep us from noticing the clues to Jin’s flashback. They put fake twists in to keep us from guessing the actual twist.
Speaking of fake twists, here are some of the clues that I noticed (after the fact) that Jin’s flashback was actually a flashback. First off, those were some pretty violent threats he was screaming. Much more like Enforcer Jin than the Jin we know and love. Also, his cell phone is an older model. That was one of the hints for Jack’s flash-forward last season, his modern cell phone. And now we have Jin using an old cell phone. Finally, Jin flashes some serious cash to buy that panda. You know, the kind of money he made back when he was working people over for money. Nicely done, and again, since I was waiting for Sayid to show up and shoot Dr. Bae, I missed all the clues in these comedic scenes. By the way, I think “I need the panda” makes for a good tough-guy catchphrase. Try it out the next time you’re trying to intimidate somebody, and let me know how it goes.
You know, Kate and Juliet are always going to be on the opposite sides of every argument. They sure do hate each other. That’s probably why Kate doesn’t come to Juliet’s funeral. (Yes, I’m sticking with my theory there.) Jack should probably be careful about trusting Kate too much, as she’s awfully happy to help people defect to Camp Locke. And speaking of trust, Juliet went a little too far there with blowing the affair. Again, is she trying to save lives or wreck them? Trying awfully hard to keep people on that beach to be rescued by the Fantastic Foursome, who’ve admitted that they’re not actually that interested in rescuing you…. I’m watching you, lady. Crap. Kate and I agree on something! You have to admit, Juliet deserved that slap. Of course, after she and Charlotte tried to beat each other to death, that slap barely even registered for her.
Hey, it’s Bernard! I always want him to look directly into the camera and say “Remember, folks, I’m still on the show!” We don’t see much of Bernard, and I like him. It was good to see Jin going back to his roots and fishing. And it’s good to see the way people talk to Jin now – he gets to take part in conversations and everything. It’s interesting that Bernard claims he can’t side with Locke because “Locke is a murderer”. Well, Jack killed the Marshall (technically it was a mercy killing, though) and the only reason he didn’t kill Locke is that Locke’s gun wasn’t loaded. He still pointed a gun at Locke’s head and pulled the trigger. And Bernard himself is responsible for the deaths of at least a couple of Others when he blew the dynamite at the end of last season. True, it’s all a little different from knifing somebody in the back, but in Locke’s view, that was absolutely self-defense. Still, his view of Karma is, word for word, the same as Earl Hickey’s, and that is awesome.
Frank’s on an errand, according to creepy Dr. Ray. Presumably he went back to the island, but we can’t be sure of anything these days. Plus, heading back to the island and actually getting back to the island are very different things. And who assigned him this errand? I find Frank more trustworthy than anybody on the freighter, and probably more dependable than the rest of the Fantastic Foursome. Especially Charlotte and Miles. Those two are part of the problem.
After exactly one scene of getting to know Regina, she kills herself. With all the buildup she and Minkowski got, their early deaths are strange indeed. And the crew certainly took it as very matter-of-fact. I can understand not jumping in after her, but nobody even tried to stop her while she walked across the deck covered in chains. (Is it just me, or was that sort of a funny visual? Just me? All right then.) Something is seriously wrong with these people.
And now we meet Captain Gault. Odd name. I’m thinking once we get his first name, I’ll be looking for an anagram. The only reference I can find for “Gault” is a type of clay native to a small part of England. Of course, if IMDB is wrong and his name is actually spelled “Galt”, we could have ourselves an Ayn Rand reference. (Just another of those things that I could fixate on so that I wouldn’t question that Modern Jin would know how important it was to be there for Sun and he wouldn’t have fixated on that panda.) I know we’re not supposed to trust him, but he was honest about Widmore, honest about the crew going insane, and honest about the saboteur. He also knows that Desmond knows Widmore, which means old Charles might have even more information than we think. Unless everybody who talks to Charles Widmore has to listen to a whole monologue about how much he hates Desmond. Which is possible.
You know, I have never once thought about Flight 815’s black box. It was weird to see it. And Gault poses a good question: Where the heck did those bodies come from? Somebody faked wreckage and put a lot of corpses in that wreckage. Now, I don’t believe that’s the reason why Widmore is looking for Benry. Widmore’s been looking for this island for longer than that (possibly since he bought the journal in 1996), and I don’t really see him as a crusading force for good, tracking Benry down to punish him for faking a crash and having access to corpses. I’m not even completely convinced that Benry’s the one who staged the wreckage. Hanso and Widmore are both possibilities too, both of them trying to lead people away from Lost Island. There’s a lot of stuff being blamed on Benry over the last two weeks, and I’m not completely sure. He’s no saint, what with all the lying and murdering, but you can’t blame everything on him.
Aww, Sun had a baby daughter. I’m told it was a cute baby, but I can’t really tell. Babies kind of look alike to me. Bonus points for covering that kid in placenta, though.
OK, clearly Regina was not the freighter’s first suicide, what with that smashed-head stain is Sayid and Desmond’s room. I liked the doctor’s reaction, too. “That shouldn’t still be there.” And then, it’s the introduction of Kevin Johnson, better known as Michael! You’ll be way more excited if you don’t think about how much you hated Michael by the end of Season Two. Where’s Walt? How’d he get on the freighter? Why is he working for Benry? How is he getting orders? I was sort of expecting Benry’s spy to be Michael, but I’m still perplexed as to how that works.
Now we find out that the Jin scenes were a flashback, which completely surprised me. I have been suckered so many times this season that I’m starting to take it personally.
I really liked seeing Hurley come to visit Sun. He’s a good man. But then comes that last scene at Jin’s grave. If that didn’t tear your heart out, you are dead inside and I worry about your mental health. Nice acting in this scene, by the way. I don’t have much else to say, because this scene really got to me.
Now, I’ve been arguing all along that Baby Aaron does not count as one of the Oceanic Six. If the promo monkeys are to be believed, all six have been revealed. That gives us Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Sun, and, well, Baby Aaron. However, in order for this episode to work, we all had to agree that Aaron wasn’t one of the Six, so we would count Jin. So I was wrong, but I was wrong in the way that the writers needed me to be, so I could get faked out. In a way, that’s almost like being right. In addition, per Jack’s testimony, eight people survived the crash but two died before the rescue. Sure, there are all sorts of lies there, but that means, at the least, there were two deaths they couldn’t hide. We now know that Jin is one of them. We don’t know when or how it happens, but it’s going to happen. Even though we know something bad is coming, having a specific detail like that really upsets me.
Next week, somebody dies! That’s right, as if this week wasn’t enough, we get a death. I’m kind of afraid to guess at this point. I will just spend all week fretting and losing sleep. Remember that time they told us somebody would die, and it turned out to be the little seen Scott (or was that Steve)? I don’t think we’re going to get off so easy this time.
