written by: paul zbyszewski and graham roland. this pair also wrote this season's 'sundown,' which teased us via its title and season 1 centricity pattern into thinking that episode would be this season's sun/jin episode. the title was ominous - and apparently foreshadowed the dire events soon to befall sun in both the parallel and original timelines.
directed by: paul edwards. well, edwards has done some good episodes in the past (the variable), but he now has the distinction of directing the two episodes i'm most disappointed in this season - 'what kate does,' and this one. there are certainly aspects that i loved loved loved (most of the island story), but as an homage to the two most overlooked characters on the show, i feel it failed both on writing and directorial levels. it's hard to follow up the sweeping epic of 'ab aeterno,' but that episode really highlighted how flat the show had become, and it was unfortunate to see it return standard tv lighting and coverage.
cinematography by: john bartley. man, it felt kind of flat. a lot of standard interiors in the parallel, shot in standard tv ways. where is the cinematic inspiration? the island featured some nice shots - sun by her beachside campfire, and the shot of windmore's pylons stretching all the way across hydra island beach.
basically: this episode gave me a lot of what i wanted to see - in the island story. i even cried.. twice! once for sun and once for jin. the island side of the story also featured every single major character on the show for the first time since 'la x.' while it felt like old-school 'lost,' i'm puzzled and annoyed by the decision to take sun's english away from her. on top of that, the parallel story left me as cold as jin in that meat refrigerator. however, once i let go of my expectations and accepted the episode i got, there is still much to appreciate.
- a sun/jin retrospective
- parallel sun/jin
- criticisms
- the button
- zoe and widmore
- aphasia
- jack vs. locke
- choices
- great lines
- preboomer
1. a sun/jin retrospective
i think it's really important to revisit sun and jin's backstory:
• in 'house of the rising sun,,' we learned that sun married for love, below her class, and that jin accepted a mysterious job with her father, one that resulted in him coming home late at night with blood on his hands.
• in '..in translation,' we see the story from jin's perspective - sun's father has shifted him from a factory job to being his personal hit man. jin goes to visit his fisherman father, who tells him to do one last job for sun's father: deliver the watches to sydney and los angeles, and then run away together.
• in '..and found,' we learn how jin and sun met by chance, their paths finally coming together after sun was set up with jae lee, who would teach her english, and who she would have an affair with later. jin worked as a doorman at jae lee's hotel, and quit when the job required him to turn away a poorer man and his son from using the hotel bathroom.
• in '..in translation,' we see the story from jin's perspective - sun's father has shifted him from a factory job to being his personal hit man. jin goes to visit his fisherman father, who tells him to do one last job for sun's father: deliver the watches to sydney and los angeles, and then run away together.
• in '..and found,' we learn how jin and sun met by chance, their paths finally coming together after sun was set up with jae lee, who would teach her english, and who she would have an affair with later. jin worked as a doorman at jae lee's hotel, and quit when the job required him to turn away a poorer man and his son from using the hotel bathroom.
• in 'the whole truth,' we learn that sun and jin are incapable of having a child. the doctor says that sun is infertile, then privately tells her that it is in fact jin who is the problem. the episode ends with sun discovering that she is pregnant on the island. she tells jin - then she tells him the truth about the doctor. and then she tells him that she's never been with anyone else. jin says that the baby is obviously a miracle. obviously..
• it's not until season 3's 'the glass ballerina' that we learn of sun's true deviousness. as a child she told a lie that got a maid fired, and she expressed no remorse. we learn that she did in fact have an affair with jae lee, who was teaching her english, and that her father discovered the affair, and asked jin to personally kill jae lee without telling him why. jin doesn't kill jae, but scares the crap out of him, causing jae to take a suicidal dive off his hotel balcony. on the island, sun shoots colleen in the stomach, an injury she dies from, and escalates the conflict between the others and the survivors. sun is all kinds of destructive here.
• in 'd.o.c.' we discover that the details of sun's affair and jin's infertility were all crucial information, since sun's date of conception will determine if her on-island pregnancy will kill her. the other crazy thing we learn is that when jin and sun were newlyweds (when jin was still working in the factory for her father), jin's prostitute mother attempted to blackmail sun. sun asked her father for the money with no questions asked. her father made a deal with her: he would give her the money but if she took it, it meant that jin would have to truly start working for him. which means that sun took the envelope of cash from her father's desk knowing full well that this action would transform her husband into a killer. wowzers.
• when sun becomes one of the oceanic 6, sun blames both ben and her father for jin's death - if the writing was more consistent, her father would have reminded her that she made the choice that turned jin into a hateful goon.
• 'ji yeon' established that getting off the island did indeed save sun from death by pregnancy. a flashback story about buying a stuffed bear served only to trick us into thinking jin was also a member of the oceanic 6, and to build some foundation for what sun might be willing to do to avenge his death.
• will sun's previous alliance with widmore assist her in getting off the island safely with jin?
the core of their original backstory was unraveling the circle of lies this couple built around each other. both actors play their scenes with such earnestness that each revelation was a genuine surprise - mostly because the actors played the lies as truth in each episode because at the time they had no reason to think they were lying. turns out they were being manipulated by the writers into becoming a pair of the best liars on television.
upon boarding flight 815, jin was planning for them both to escape sun's father once they reached los angeles, a plan that sun would be able to help facilitate since she'd learned english as part of her plan to escape jin. their backstory is so complicated, and we've spent so much time away from them as characters and as a couple, that i wish their parallel story wasn't so drastically different.
it appears that in the parallel, for some reason, sun and jin have made very different choices about how to pursue their relationship. one of the problems i had with the parallel is that this path was so different from the original, that it bordered on confusing. it raised too many questions about the alternate timeline that i didn't want to be asking while watching our first real sun/jin story in, what, two years?
so, in this timeline, sun and jin kept their relationship a secret from her father. sooo many questions:
- is jin still infertile?
- is sideways sun's pregnancy jin's or jae lee's? someone else's?
- how did jin get a job working for sun's father, when he's of such lower class? how would he ever get the job of being her 'bodyguard?'
- was an assassination attempt also awaiting sun and jin should they have arrived in los angeles in the original timeline?
the parallel works best when it contrasts the characters we know with who the characters could become - it also works best when it acts as an homage and emotional closure for each character. the juxtaposition for sun and jin is that in this universe, the couple that has been defined by their marriage for six seasons is now not married. it shows us a couple who attempted an alternate route to be together, and it's pretty much a toss-up as to whether the parallel is an improvement over the original timeline for them. while their relationship is happier (jin isn't controlling - in fact, she's totally in control), they must face equally difficult obstacles to remain together, and sun may perhaps even pay with her life, or lose the baby.
in any universe, sun and jin are about the tests a relationship must face - as keamy says, 'some people just weren't meant to be together.' i expected that sun and jin might get a happily ever after in the parallel, but face ultimate tragedy on the island. will we instead have the reverse? or will they face similar fates in the two worlds, regardless of the decisions they make?
3. criticisms
• neither character was really faced with any kind of choice in the parallel world - yes, they spent the entire time dealing with the consequences of choices they made in the past, but it felt like these are 'characters' who events happen to, but never make anything happen for themselves.• i would love to have seen a much simpler parallel story that focused more directly on the dynamic between them as a couple. in the original timeline, it took their experiences on the island to eventually trust each other again. i wanted a story that more simply expressed their emotional shift. my ideal jin/sun parallel story would have shown how each of them harbors a lie, but then shows how each reaches a new level of maturity by truly, finally, choosing to come clean with each other - because ultimately their love is unconditional. that to me is beautiful, and that's what jin and sun should be about. they may still be about that - it's just not what we got in this episode.
so i hope parallel sun's baby is actually jae lee's. i hope parallel sun is still a liar. i hope parallel jin has secrets too. they need a place to go emotionally. they can be about so much more than just separation.
i think my favorite sun/jin episode is '..and found,' which has perhaps the simplest island story: sun loses her wedding ring, allowing each of the main characters to visit her and share a story about loss. it's simple, but the brief stories revealed to her, and us, what each character was about. meanwhile, in the flashback, we discovered how sun and jin eventually 'found' each other through an elaborate combination of luck and timing. the simplicity was gorgeous, and when sun finally found her wedding ring (by not looking for it, as locke had suggested), the relief and joy on her face is real and beautiful. i know the show is still capable of delivering that level of emotional punch.. i'm just disappointed that they chose to throw an excess of plot at sun and jin in lieu of character exploration.
4. the button
there was some fun mystery in the way the episode unfolded - and it answered many questions that were hinted at in 'la x,' like whether or not sun and jin are married, or if sun speaks english and was choosing to lie to the customs agent.
in the first scene we leared that jin still works for sun's father - then we quickly found out that they're not married, and jin seems insistent that they not be mistaken for married. are they divorced!????
my mind suddenly raced to wonderful places the episode could have gone. are sun and jin here on a business trip as co-workers? will they have a snappy irene dunne/cary grant divorce battle between them before finally realizing that they love each other, like in the awful truth? that could have been wonderful!! - give them the same scheming, somewhat unlikable character traits, but put them in a smaller scale setting, and then have the characters prove they love each other by making them fight. oh, i would have loved to have seen that.
but we learn that jin and sun are actually a secret couple - and sun seems to have ridiculously thought that booking a 'shopping trip' to the exact same place and on the exact same flight and in the seat next to an employee of her father's wouldn't raise any suspicions. parallel sun seems pretty naive. girl can't even hide a bank account.
sun teases jin by unbuttoning her top. it is simply amazing how much character and weight can be contained in a single button. the beauty of the writing in this scene was in how it recognized the symbolic implications of the initial 'button moment' and then completely subverted them. the original moment painted jin as a villainous husband, and revealed the controlling, borderline abusive nature of their relationship, not to mention sexual repression. the new button moment established sun as completely in control of the relationship, teasing him for having the audacity to give her an order while on the plane, and the unbuttoning became an expression of total sexual freedom.
it was fantastic setup. i was really excited to spend an entire episode with these people, finally! even the scene the next morning was great - sun is fast asleep, and jin is wide awake, worried - pretty much the girl in the relationship. inversion of traditional sexual roles - bravo parallel universe! but then that knock on the door and in comes the money plot and the hitman plot and a string of events that lead to sun being shot. will she die in the parallel? will juliet save her baby? will ethan come back into it? this time around, will juliet have to give sun 'bad news?' ugh, that would be heartbreaking. where are they going with this parallel world?
5. zoe and widmore
some interesting things here. widmore has tasked zoe with capturing jin - but is really pissed that she did it ahead of schedule - 4 days ahead of schedule. we've only got 8 more hours of story, so whatever's going to happen in 4 days is probably going to be whatever happens in the series finale. some questions:
7. jack vs. locke
this episode so clearly laid out that the season is building toward the reunification/rivalry between jack and locke. like sun and jin, the show is very deliberate about keeping them separate, and slowly lays groundwork to bring them back together again. let's look at the history between jack and locke:
4. the button
in the first scene we leared that jin still works for sun's father - then we quickly found out that they're not married, and jin seems insistent that they not be mistaken for married. are they divorced!????
my mind suddenly raced to wonderful places the episode could have gone. are sun and jin here on a business trip as co-workers? will they have a snappy irene dunne/cary grant divorce battle between them before finally realizing that they love each other, like in the awful truth? that could have been wonderful!! - give them the same scheming, somewhat unlikable character traits, but put them in a smaller scale setting, and then have the characters prove they love each other by making them fight. oh, i would have loved to have seen that.
but we learn that jin and sun are actually a secret couple - and sun seems to have ridiculously thought that booking a 'shopping trip' to the exact same place and on the exact same flight and in the seat next to an employee of her father's wouldn't raise any suspicions. parallel sun seems pretty naive. girl can't even hide a bank account.
it was fantastic setup. i was really excited to spend an entire episode with these people, finally! even the scene the next morning was great - sun is fast asleep, and jin is wide awake, worried - pretty much the girl in the relationship. inversion of traditional sexual roles - bravo parallel universe! but then that knock on the door and in comes the money plot and the hitman plot and a string of events that lead to sun being shot. will she die in the parallel? will juliet save her baby? will ethan come back into it? this time around, will juliet have to give sun 'bad news?' ugh, that would be heartbreaking. where are they going with this parallel world?
5. zoe and widmore
- at what point did widmore figure out that jin was alive?
- did widmore know that jin was still alive when sun went to him to form a pact to kill ben as retribution for jin's death?
- is widmore using desmond's foresight ability to form his plan of attack against smokey?
sun clearly doesn't know that widmore is coming - or else she would have no problem with richard's plan to blow up the ajira plane.
we learned that zoe is a geophysicist. which means that we are about to get a geophysical explanation for the island's properties - finally! is widmore's goal to sink the island? is zoe here to facilitate the sinking of the island? was this widmore's same goal in season 4?
in season 4, widmore sent the freighter specifically to capture ben linus, and purge the island of his followers. widmore's mission seems different now. as zoe sarcastically pointed out, he has not hired mercenaries this time, and his tactic for extraction is very different than it was three years prior. now he's using tranq darts and making non-lethal extraction. if he wanted to, he easily could have wiped out all of smokey's followers. why didn't he? what changed him? the deliberate shift in his motivations needs to be addressed.
we learned that zoe is a geophysicist. which means that we are about to get a geophysical explanation for the island's properties - finally! is widmore's goal to sink the island? is zoe here to facilitate the sinking of the island? was this widmore's same goal in season 4?
in season 4, widmore sent the freighter specifically to capture ben linus, and purge the island of his followers. widmore's mission seems different now. as zoe sarcastically pointed out, he has not hired mercenaries this time, and his tactic for extraction is very different than it was three years prior. now he's using tranq darts and making non-lethal extraction. if he wanted to, he easily could have wiped out all of smokey's followers. why didn't he? what changed him? the deliberate shift in his motivations needs to be addressed.
i just love zoe's character. she feels like a lost fan inserted into the show: someone like the fans who waited in line at comiccon to ask damon and carlton who ordered the season 2 food drop. zoe seems like an analytical conspiracy theorist who has followed a mysterious trail that doesn't make total sense, but has an elusive deeper structure. she's a science geek, but she's also a little bit like marion from 'raiders' and a little bit chloe from '24.' she's been put in charge of the whole operation, but she's only actually good at one thing: science. it's quite interesting that widmore has put someone like her in charge.. big contrast from keamy.
6. aphasia
why the decision to suddenly afflict sun with a very specific form of aphasia? did she look in the mirror too long and have a piece of her alternate consciousness transferred through the stream of time? are the writers trying to poetically 'punish' her for the lies she told and secret advantage she held during the first season? the plot turn disappointed me, but i do have to give the show credit for dealing with it well - jack's scene with her by the beach where he gives her a notepad and pen was beautiful. it echoed '..and found' in that though sun isn't reunited with jin by the end of the episode, she still experiences both a loss and a recovery, giving her (and us) hope that she will also recover jin.
7. jack vs. locke
this episode so clearly laid out that the season is building toward the reunification/rivalry between jack and locke. like sun and jin, the show is very deliberate about keeping them separate, and slowly lays groundwork to bring them back together again. let's look at the history between jack and locke:
- the two first butted heads after boone's death, and locke finally revealed that he had been secretly trying to get into the hatch for weeks.
- their next confrontation occurred near the start of season 2, when they feuded over whether or not to continue pushing the button in desmond's absence.
- tension between jack and locke really escalated in season 3, after locke blew up the submarine the day before jack was supposed to go home in it.
- locke devoted all energy to preventing rescue, throwing a knife into naomi's back
- at the cockpit, the survivors took sides over whether to join jack's group - who will meet the freighter rescue party, or whether to join locke's group - who would remain on the island, and begin living in the dharma barracks. jack puts a gun to locke's head and pulls the trigger. it doesn't work.
- the two do not see each other again until a week later, the day that ben pushed the frozen donkey wheel. locke asked jack to stay on the island - telling him that he has a destiny there. jack tells locke 'it's an island. it doesn't need protecting.' jack walks away, gets on the helicopter.
- jack watches the island vanish.
- three years later, jack's life has fallen apart. he's seeing the ghost of his father. he's on drugs.
- locke suddenly appears in jack's hospital. locke tells him, again, that jack needs to go back, that it's his destiny, then tells jack that his 'father says hi.' jack walks away, shaken. this is the last time jack saw locke alive.
- jack realizes locke was correct, and begins flying across the ocean, hoping the planes will crash, hoping to go back to the island. on one of these flights, jack learns that locke has killed himself.
- jack, believing his only way back to the island is gone, attempts suicide.
- he spirals, yells at kate 'we have to go back!'
- ben tells jack that he knows how to get them back to the island: jack must collect the oceanic 6.
- jack is told by mrs. hawking that he must use locke's body as a 'proxy' for the body of his father on the original flight 815.
- jack swallows all logic, chooses blind faith, and puts his father's shoes onto locke's dead feet. this is the last time jack saw locke.
the thing to remember about jack's relationship to locke is that jack was driven to suicide upon hearing that locke had died. everything jack has done since then has been because he finally put his science aside and allowed himself to believe that what locke had told him was true: his destiny and purpose in life is to return to the island.
once jack figures out that this same blind faith is the exact cause of locke's murder and avatar abuse - it must fall on jack to avenge the wrongs done to locke by jacob's nemesis. if jack can't defeat nemesis, then locke's entire tragic life was nothing more than an endless cycle of being used and taken advantage of because of his willingness to believe in something. if jack can't defeat nemesis, then both locke and jack's lives were meaningless.
this could be the genius of the endgame: locke will actually have saved the world by having converted jack into a man of faith; the same philosophy that subjected locke to so much abuse, and positioned him to become the vessel for evil. jack's purpose in returning to the island will be to ensure that locke did not die in vain.
jack will simultaneously be fighting against the false 'locke' in the name and spirit of the true 'locke,' in order to administer cosmic justice. post-island jack was willing to die for locke - i feel certain that he will show that same willingness again.
the reversal is fantastic: now it's nemesis (in locke's form) who says 'it's an island, it doesn't need protecting,' and it's jack who believes he's 'here for a reason.'
once jack figures out that this same blind faith is the exact cause of locke's murder and avatar abuse - it must fall on jack to avenge the wrongs done to locke by jacob's nemesis. if jack can't defeat nemesis, then locke's entire tragic life was nothing more than an endless cycle of being used and taken advantage of because of his willingness to believe in something. if jack can't defeat nemesis, then both locke and jack's lives were meaningless.
this could be the genius of the endgame: locke will actually have saved the world by having converted jack into a man of faith; the same philosophy that subjected locke to so much abuse, and positioned him to become the vessel for evil. jack's purpose in returning to the island will be to ensure that locke did not die in vain.
jack will simultaneously be fighting against the false 'locke' in the name and spirit of the true 'locke,' in order to administer cosmic justice. post-island jack was willing to die for locke - i feel certain that he will show that same willingness again.
the reversal is fantastic: now it's nemesis (in locke's form) who says 'it's an island, it doesn't need protecting,' and it's jack who believes he's 'here for a reason.'
8. choices
while sun and jin weren't given many choices in the parallel, they did have choices to make in the island story - locke approaches sun in her old garden, and says to her the same thing he said in '..and found' when he saw her rip it up, tearfully searching for her lost wedding ring: 'bad day?' that original scene is so great, it's worth examining:
will sun find jin as unexpectedly as she found her wedding ring? when she's not looking?locke: bad day? [he hands her a handkerchief] it's clean.sun: thank you.locke: you mind if i sit? [she motions for him to sit.]sun: did you see me?locke: rip apart your garden? no. [she laughs.] sometimes i wish i had a garden to tear apart.sun: i don't think i have ever seen you angry.locke: oh, i used to get angry all the time. frustrated too.sun: you are not frustrated anymore?locke: i'm not lost anymore.sun: how did you do that?locke: same way anything lost gets found -- i stopped looking.
this time around, locke comes to her offering the exact thing she's lost. he stretches out his hand for her to take. he is perhaps evil incarnate, but he also has jin.. that is one tough choice. fortunately, sun saw the carnage at the temple first-hand, and decides to run - everyone is asking 'why didn't locke just turn into smoke to catch up with her?' i think it's because locke makes a point of giving her a choice, the same way jacob does. he needs her to choose his side willfully, the same way sawyer chose it - she may or may not be a candidate, and her potential candidacy protects her from interference from him. unfortunately, her candidacy doesn't protect her from running straight into trees.
later, jack comes to sun with a curiosity about locke. jack doesn't know exactly what or who locke is yet (he didn't see the temple destruction), and it sounds like he's willing to give locke the benefit of the doubt. jack even seems surprised that sun didn't just up and run off with locke. jack has finally figured something out: other people can be right! after the failure of jughead, jack won't be playing leader again without some very clear direction of what needs to be done.
jack extends his sand-covered hand to sun, offering her the choice to join him. because sun chooses to put her faith in jack, his promise to reunite her with jin comes from a place that has nothing to do with his pride, or need to fix anything - it comes only from a desire to live up to the faith she's willing to place in him. jack's promise to her was a beautiful expression of a new jack who is finally finding peace.
'hey, don't talk about bacon'
10. preboomer
9. great lines
'hey, don't talk about bacon'
'because that would be ridiculous'
'because you're speaking'
'asks the man who communes with the dead.'
'a wise man once said that war was coming to this island. i think it just got here.'
10. preboomer
seamus: how much did you give him?zoe: obviously i gave him too much but we needed him knocked out for the trip. i'm not a nurse. come on, get him up.seamus: let's go mr. hume.(boom)
ok! not surprising that desmond was in the sub.. i love zoe's line about not being a nurse. she can't do anything right. this preboomer is really just a teaser for next week. most sun/jin episodes end on hopeful notes, either with silent preboomers, a single pluck of a bass harp string. the best one was '..in translation,' where after finally revealing that she speaks english, she allows the wind to blow her towel away, no longer imprisoned by jin's controlling behavior. i get the feeling that the show wants to do another preboomer like that, but needs to keep the momentum going as we head into the home stretch. i think they're saving the quiet, hopeful ending for the grande finale.
11. next episode
but here's what i'm expecting: answers. desmond became 'special,' and an 'exception to the rules' after he turned the failsafe key. it's time for the show to tell us exactly what happened when the key was turned - why did the sky turn purple? what exactly happened in that moment? what was going on before the purple sky, and what exactly changed after the purple sky? it's also time to answer basic questions about the failsafe itself: if you can just turn a failsafe to make everything ok, why did dharma go to such extreme trouble to keep the hatch operating, and the electromagnetic energy at bay? did the island become unstable after the failsafe? is it about to sink into the ocean on its own accord?
desmond's episodes usually feature narrative rulebreaking - will we see more of this? was he actually on the plane in the parallel? what is his alternate story? was penny even born in the parallel? will his consciousness bounce between the parallel and the original timelines? will we get a clearer picture of the relationship between the two timelines? we betta!
i do want to remember desmond's amazing story. here are his episodes:
i do want to remember desmond's amazing story. here are his episodes:
- his introduction in the season 2 premiere, as button pusher, who also once met jack while training for a race around the world.
- the season 2 finale, in which the failsafe key was turned, and his love for penny was revealed.
- 'flashes before your eyes' which revealed his consciousness time-traveled after turning the failsafe. he met eloise hawking, who told him that he must not change his path - he must go to the island and push the button.
- 'catch-22' in which he has a vision of penny arriving by parachute. instead, it is naomi.
- 'the constant,' where desmond finally makes contact with penny again.
- 'jughead,' in which desmond suddenly 'remembers' that faraday visited him years ago when he was manning the hatch. at faraday's request, he goes in search of eloise hawking. faraday didn't realize that eloise had already been working her whole life to prevent the terrible things that would happen.
- in '316' eloise told desmond 'the island isn't through with you yet.' which apparently means 'my old boyfriend is going to kidnap you.'
we last left desmond in the marina del rey hospital, recovering from having been shot by ben. both eloise and widmore were at the hospital - is eloise also on the sub? how was the sub able to find the island when it took all kinds of crazy shoe-swapping and proxy-ing to get ajira 316 back to the island? answers! i am wanting them.
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We need Widmore to have a consistent higher goal backed up by both missions or he will be nothing more than an antagonist whose only role is to forward the plot.