the blast door map

are you pissed? or crying too hard to worry about being toyed with by the producers in much the same way ben toyed with juliet last week?



written by: edward kitsis and adam horowitz. from the way damon and carlton speak about these guys, and also from listening to their commentary on 'expose,' they seem to me like the teacher's pets of the writer's room.

directed by: stephen semel. stephen is an editor on the show, having been nominated for two emmys, and won an 'eddie' in 2006 for the episode 'outlaws.' this episode marks his directing debut. he also played one of the others, adam, who decried juliet's book club choice as being 'by-the-numbers religious hocum-pocum.' stephen is basically living my dream. edit, direct and then get verbally bitchslapped by juliet? pinch me.

the list:

1. trust
   
2. manipulation
3. death
4. michael
5. escapees
6. he said/he said
   
7. gripes
8. fun details
   
9. noboomer
   

alright. this episode had my mind twisting in many many different ways. but let's start at the beginning.

1. trust. the first half of this episode had me worried that we were going to be stuck in last week's same lackluster storytelling mode. it made up for it later, but i was really bothered by the opening beats of the sun/juliet storyline. sun decides, practically arbitrarily, that she's no longer trusting juliet and is going to join locke's crew. she bases her distrust entirely on hearsay regarding juliet's lie about the power/chemical station. one of the most beautifully performed scenes last year was juliet telling sun that the baby was jin's, and juliet revealing the truth of what happens to pregnant women. it was one of the big cry moments of season 3, and seemed to establish sun and juliet as at least trustbuddies thereafter. sun's 180 toward juliet felt forced by the requirements of the plot.

script doctor: last week, sun should have been a part of the decision-making process when deciding to go to the power station - then at least juliet would have been lying to sun's face. or, show us sun's train of thought. her main suspicion comes from how healthy aaron is, so show sun toying with aaron's abandoned crib, thinking about her baby, then let her overhear the juliet lie. the inciting incident for this entire episode was just too flimsy.



however, juliet blowing the roof off sun's affair raised the stakes, made my jaw drop, and brought the episode back to where we expect the show to operate.

2. alright. let's talk about how manipulated we were in this episode, with our first simultaneous flash forward and flash back. there were many levels of discovery as the true nature of this episode began to take shape:

• omg jin becomes a prick again in the future
• omg sun and jin broke up
• omg is that baby half-black?
• omg sun is with michael now. makes sense with the near-kiss missing piece.
  
• no. please don't let sun be with hurley.
  
• whew.
• ok, jin's baby.
• omg jin is dead.
• wait, that's the date of the crash on his tombstone.

celeste had wondered if there were wooshes between the jin and sun pieces of the flashes. nope. they cut directly between each other, as though they are part of the same timeframe. lies! lies! rulebreaking lies!

here's my problem with this - unlike 'through the looking glass,' this trick doesn't hold up to scrutiny. the ideal version of this episode would let us look at both the sun and jin flash scenes and understand the thought processes behind each of them.

when we flash forward, we see the effect that certain on-island choices have had.

when we flash back, we see pre-island choices, and how they have shaped the on-island character.

the flashes tell us what the character is thinking about as they are faced with choices. it makes sense that sun, having her baby, would be thinking about that one time on the island when she reconciled with jin.



what doesn't make sense is why jin, faced with the revelation that his wife has cheated on him, would be thinking about that one time he tried to buy a panda for that one random guy that sun's dad wanted him to get a present for.

which is why the episode stinks of manipulation. if we could look back and see how jin's flashback ties in with his actions, it would make more sense. jin needed to be more of an asshole - he tells sun that he understands why she cheated, because he was a different person. we should have seen more of that person in the flash - making him too assholish might have tipped the secret, but not if we believed that he was doing it for sun.

3. so. is jin dead? i re-read the transcript and there are no direct references to him being dead. yunjin kim certainly played her final scene as though he was dead, and i'm sure it was shot a couple different ways: "yunjin, play it like he's still alive on the island!" "now do it like he fell out of the helicopter!" "now do it like the smoke monster banged him against the rocks!"



she says that she misses jin a lot. a lot. i'm inclined to believe that he's dead. it's possible he's somehow alive, but unable to leave the island - if that's the case, it seems like sun would be trying to get back, with the same passion that penny has put into the search for desmond. it also seems doubtful that hurley would refer to the tombstone visit as 'going to see jin.'

but it could all just be smokescreen so that the producers can tease us with potential jin deaths (the same way we were teased for 3 years with a string of potentially crippling accidents for locke) only to have him -not- die and then say "but we never explicitly said he was dead!"

i have a feeling that this is the most recent flashforward we've seen thus far - if there isn't too major a time differential, the birth of sun's baby would fall at about july of 2005. hurley hasn't gone crazy yet, so neither has jack, and kate is probably still awaiting trial.

4. michael. well. there he is. and it was very savvy of the writers not to make his appearance the preboomer, which would have been as big a letdown (if not bigger) than 'see you guys at dinner.' so of course the big question is how is it at all possible that michael is planted on the freighter? is there even time in the timeline for him to get back to the mainland, have walt re-kidnapped by ben, and then coerced into joining the crew of the boat? because with his haircut and new identity, there's no way he and walt were intercepted by the freighter. and seriously, my friend melissa brought up how weak it is to have it be about walt again. now, perhaps when michael and walt drive away in the boat, they find themselves on the mainland a couple months in the past.. and this is how ben is able to get michael on the boat. if that's the case, the time differential thing has enormous potential to get really really confusing.



another point brought up by mike israelson: the freighter people studied and knew everyone on that plane. is a haircut really going to disguise michael?

hi this week's upcoming episode. i dare you to satisfactorily link all those pieces together.

i'm not a big fan of harold perrineau. i think a lot of his acting is riddled with indication. it was no secret that he didn't love his time in hawaii and asked to be written out of the show. the real shock about michael coming back is that harold came back. the promos for this week say that SOMEONE. WILL. DIE. i hope it's michael. in fact it could be - ever notice that the person who dies is usually the person whose episode it is?

5. escapees. now here's an interesting thought that i ran across on one of the talkbacks - each character revealed off-island in flash-forward thus far (except aaron), was far away from the swan station when it imploded and the sky turned purple.



kate, jack, and hurley were at the pala ferry (as was ben), and sayid and sun were on the boat, circling the island. is it possible that proximity to that event makes it impossible for you to leave? the exception is aaron. whether or not he is 'counted' as one of the six, he and claire were close enough to nearly be hit by the hatch door after it blew. maybe being born on the island makes aaron different?

6. widmore vs ben. according to the captain, widmore says that ben planted the fake wreck? really? from what we've seen, it seems far more likely that widmore planted the wreck - it would just be easier to manage from off-island. seems like we're going to see these two blaming each other for the same things for awhile now, and our heroes will have to choose who to believe. if both ben and widmore want to control the island, the planting of the wreck suits their united purpose - keep people from poking their noses around the island. really, ben and widmore should be working together. ben makes sure that none of the survivors leaves, and widmore makes sure that the world is misdirected. i am curious about the 324 bodies.. were they provided by mittelos bioscience? cloned like bunny 15 in the orchid video?



but of course, we have the note from michael, telling our heroes not to trust the captain. then again, michael is working for ben. then again, sayid eventually also works for ben. who the hell is telling the truth? who is the bad guy? i'm guessing we'll find out in season 6, episode 8.

7. i've already talked through my major gripes. here is my minor gripe: zoe bell gets one line and then dies??? wtf!?



have you seen death proof? the woman is a powerhouse! what a waste! it seems certain that we will be seeing her in flashback. hopefully she'll beat someone to death with a pipe or something.

8. details.



loved that nikki's death scene was playing on sun's tv, dubbed in korean.



oh. where did keamy and frank go on their 'errand' on the helicopter?



dude. there's an axe in the wall.

9. noboomer. 'lost' is an ambidextrious show. on one hand you have your mythological plot. on the other hand you have a character-based drama. the greatest episodes of this show balance both aspects with equal skill. yes, there are some brilliant minds behind the writing of the show, but there are equally brilliant people in front of the camera. yunjin kim is just astonishing. from bitchslapping juliet, to weeping at jin's grave, she hits every note.



and speaking of notes, lets talk about michael giaccino's music. listen to the scoring as we discover that jin has not been rushing to sun's bedside. listen to how he carrys entire scenes using a single note on a harp, or replays very subtle musical themes, as when sun and hurley arrive at jin's grave.

had the writer's strike not been resolved in time, this episode would have served as the season finale. i can see why they would make that decision. a classy, solid ending, and a performance that should get yunjin kim an emmy nod.

to closingspeed: thanks for the kind words! well, my readership currently consists of about 10 people, which is fine with me. i write this blog as much for myself as anyone else. i'm glad you find it enlightening!