By Jeff Jensen Mar 31, 2010
The dream of a happy ending for Jin and Sun died in me last night. Maybe it was the dispiriting experience of watching Sun's systematic deconstruction across two different worlds in a story in which it seemed the God of all possible worlds had declared war on her. On the Island, she lost her voice — the consequence of dark magic that stripped away her English. In the Sideways reality, she was brought to the brink of losing her very life, plus the life of her unborn child, and was left to dangle there, her fate to be determined another time, in someone else's story. Maybe it was the discouraging experience of watching Jin get so easily jerked around by some very powerful, very charismatic villains who could cloud his mind by playing to his heart. On the Island, it was Charles Widmore, promising him reunion with his family and deliverance from evil. In the Sideways reality, it was Martin Keamy, who mocked his romantic ideals to his face and managed to get him to say ''thank you'' for doing so. But mostly, my despair comes from not knowing how the hell to parse the parable of the tomato, the lone living vegetable from Sun's ravaged Island garden. Is it a symbol of stubborn hope? Or is it just a symbol of stubbornness? Is it a symbol of valentine red love? Or is it a symbol of blinding red rage? Do Jin and Sun need to learn to hold on to their dreams at all cost — or do they need to learn to let go lest those dreams damn their individual souls? Damn inscrutable tomato! Thou doest vex me!
This is all to say that for anyone who came to ''The Package'' to see the long-awaited reunion of Lost's long-separated husband and wife, it didn't happen. What ''The Package'' gave us instead was a Pandora's Box packed with paranoia, suspicion, squabbling and discord, plus a fiendish father figure or two. Or three. It was also an episode that communed ironically with one of my favorite season 1 outings, the Jin/Sun gem ''... In Translation.'' I enjoyed the episode's scope and energy. For the first time since the premiere, every single character was represented and all the major storylines were nurtured. ''The Package'' may not have advanced the plot of season 6 enough for some people, but it was plenty riveting for me. And it left me filled with dread that some seriously nasty heartbreaking big-time s--- is about to hit the fan. And hey! Desmond's back! Just in time for things to all go to hell, too...
The Sideways World
To Live and Die in L.A.
Jin-Soo Kwon. Peasant son of a poor fisherman and prostitute, ashamed of his poverty and his heritage. He dreamed of owning a hotel and restaurant. Instead, he fell in love with a criminal industrialist's daughter and became one of his goons to prove himself a worthy son-in-law. When he realized the cost of violence to his soul, Jin sought out his real father and begged forgiveness for rejecting him. His father, who had never stopped loving him, gave Jin some advice. Save your marriage. Take your wife and run away and start over in a new world. Jin resolved to do just that — right after he delivered two watches for Mr. Paik. One needed to go to Sydney, the other one needed to go to Los Angeles...
Sun-Hwa Kwon. She wanted to run away with the poor peasant with big dreams because she was sure her father wouldn't allow them to be married. Mr. Paik surprised her by giving his blessing — then crushed her when he began making Jin do goon work for him. With the marriage becoming increasingly troubled, Sun began taking English lessons as part of a plan to escape to America. In the process, she began an affair with her tutor, a former suitor named Jae Lee. When Papa Paik learned of her dishonorable infidelity, he had Jae tossed out a window. Now Sun wanted to run more than ever. But then Jin gave her a white rose, and Sun remembered why she loved him, and she found new reason to hope. She joined him on the Oceanic 815 flight to Los Angeles, not knowing the happily ever after he had planned for her there once they arrived...
''The Package'' took elements of the combined Jin/Sun narrative and scrambled them into a provocative, ironic new history for their Sideways counterparts. We met them as we left them in the season premiere. Jin — a Paik goon, still on a mission to deliver a watch in Los Angeles — had been detained at LAX after customs found $25,000 in undeclared cash in his suitcase. Sun was deer-in-the-headlights stunned. Had Jin packed the cash to bankroll a new life for Sun and himself in America? Could Sun speak English? And was the conspicuously identified ''Ms. Paik'' even married to Jin? ''The Package'' contained answers. The money was a late addition to the package Jin had to deliver to Mr. Paik's L.A. associates, Sun didn't know a lick of English, and while they were lovers, Jin made their marital status abundantly clear when he clarified they were to have separate rooms. ''No marry!'' he said, pointing to his bare ring finger.
Not that Jin was some hyper-traditional moralist like his pre-reconstructed Island world doppelganger. This Jin was just being hyper-diligent about keeping the secret of their illicit love. In this world, Jin and Sun were carrying on in private, as Sideways Paik had a rule barring employees from playing footsie with his precocious little princess. (All of this lent retroactive irony to Jin's earlier line: ''I don't ask your father questions. I do what he tells me.'') But my guess is that Sun instigated. Quite the assertive young woman, this deceptively doe-eyed sweetie! At the hotel, she invited him into her room and teased him for his paranoia (''Nobody is watching us,'' she cooed, her line ringing ironic in an episode in which everyone got in everyone else's business), then mock-scolded Jin for scolding her about that unbuttoned blouse on the plane. She reminded him of the moment by unbuttoning the button. Then another. Then another. She asked: Did he like? Jin, a Paik buttonman in more ways than one, liked very much...
They had sex, the kind of sex that's so good that it puts girls to sleep and keeps guys up worrying about What It All Means. (Was it just me, or did you get the sense that Sun was more of the dude in this relationship and Jin more of the chick? In fact, I found myself wondering if Jin wasn't the first Paik bagman she had bagged...) Big twist: Sideways Sun, romantic and yearning for freedom, had come to L.A. with Island Jin's run-away-from-Paik plan. She didn't have the English to make her way in the New World, but she did have a secret bank account stocked with cash. Jin said: I'll run away with you.'' Jin said: ''I love you.'' Sun didn't say it back. (Scoundrel!) Instead, she started to say, ''That's good, because there's something I have to — '' and then there was a knock on the door.
character to be given a long, lingering encounter with their looking-glass self. She answered the door. It was Martin Keamy, the creepy crook with the Mayan death-god last name and the Christopher Walken disposition. (In the Island world, he led the mercenaries employed by Charles Widmore to abduct Ben and torch the Island in season 4.) In ''Sundown,'' whose title now stands as ominous foreshadowing of Sideways' Sun's fate, we saw Sayid shoot Keamy dead in the kitchen of his restaurant and then find Jin tied up in the freezer. In ''The Package,'' we saw what brought both Keamy and Jin to that fateful junction — and what happened afterward.
Keamy entered Sun's room, oozing fake politeness. He identified himself as the intended recipient of Jin's delivery. He wanted it. Sun understood Keamy enough to hand over the watch. He liked it enough — but he wanted the $25,000 more. There was another knock on the door. It was Omar, Keamy's all business henchman. (In the Island world, Omar was a member of Keamy's mercenary crew, too.) Omar searched Jin's room and couldn't find the cash. Keamy saw the two champagne glasses and ruffled bed, put some things together, and soon Jin was rousted out of the bathroom. Where was the money? The Koreans could not understand and talked amongst themselves about what to do. The language barrier exasperated Keamy: ''I feel like I'm in a Godzilla movie.'' Offensive and factually inaccurate! (Personally, I got a whole Pulp Fiction vibe from this subplot. But I won't digress....)
Keamy had an idea. They would call in ''Danny's friend'' (Sideways version of Danny the dead Other, maybe?) The Russian who knew all the languages. The man known as Mikhail Bakunin.
Begin Mikhail Bakunin Mini-Dossier!
You knew him better as Patchy the Other. Man of many tongues and man of many lives. He seemed to die a couple deaths before detonating the grenade that blew a hole in the Looking Glass Station, precipitating Charlie's watery death sacrifice. Lost's Mikhail Bakunin is named after the historical Mikhail Bakunin, a philosopher and anarchist who believed in non-violent revolution and the abolishment of all government and religion. Leadership, if any, should come from an enlightened elite that benevolently and invisibly guided the masses. Famous sayings: ''Absolute freedom and absolute love — that is our aim; the freeing of humanity and the whole world — that is our purpose''; ''The idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, in theory and practice''; and ''If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.'' Basically, the real-life Mikhail Bakunin would have admired Jacob's kinda-sorta hands-off approach to human redemption and moral freedom — but he'd want Smokey to kill him, anyway. And then he'd want Smokey to kill himself and leave all of us alone.
Sideways Mikhail, who began the episode with two functioning eyes, behaved like a finely-heeled diplomat as he dutifully translated the Jin/Sun Korean. Sun explained she had money. She said she could get Keamy the money he wanted. Keamy said: Do that — but I'm keeping Jin as collateral. Then came the revelation that kicked Sun right in her nads. She was no rebel of the heart, no anarchist of the soul revolting against her father's tyrannical authority in pursuit of absolute freedom and absolute love. She was still very much his property and puppet. She was still owned. Darth Paik knew all about the princess' precious little rebellion and had quashed it before she had even launched it by taking away her secret weapon: her money. Sun was stunned. ''Why would he do that?'' Mikhail was cruel. ''Why do you think, dumbass?!'' (Note: The dumbass was silent and implied.)
Meanwhile, at Keamy's restaurant, aka Hell's Kitchen, we got a scene marked by a conspicuously perverse use of language. Omar hauled Jin into the cooler, but as he did, Jin's head banged against the steel door, making a gash. When we saw bound Jin sporting that cut in ''Sundown,'' we assumed torture. Wrong! It was just a party foul! Serves us right for assuming. Still, Keamy was upset with Omar for his sloppy attention to detail and banished his associate by ordering him to ''go get the Arab guy.'' (That would be Sayid.) Omar felt dissed by Keamy's casual racism, objectification, and Otherification. (Keamy had lauded Omar for his loyalty; I wondered why Omar would remain loyal to someone who made him feel so worthless.) Then, Keamy messed with Jin's mind by doing a very mean thing: He told him the truth, but in English, so Jin could never understand. He told Jin he had been hired by Mr. Paik to kill Jin for fooling around with his daughter. He told Jin that the money Jin had brought into the country was actually payment for the hit. Ice cold! Keamy's words said one thing — I'm going to kill you when I get my money — but his sympathetic tone was calibrated to say the exact opposite. He took fiendish delight with his knowing doublespeak, no more so than with his line ''the heart wants what it wants.'' Jin probably thought Keamy was trying to speak the universal language of love, that Keamy, like, understood him or something. Actually, Keamy was no doubt again indulging his unique brand of racially charged humor, as ''the heart wants what it the heart wants'' is most famous for being Woody Allen's infamous defense for cheating on his wife, Mia Farrow, with the actress' Korean adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn.
Jin's lost-in-translation response to all this? ''Thank you.'' Keamy just smirked and shook his head at Jin's total cluelessness. But he had achieved the intended effect of keeping Jin docile, pliant and agreeably quiet as he took care of business with ''the Arab guy.'' In other words, Keamy's brainwashing cooler in Los Angeles = the Room 23 brainwashing room on Hydra Island, which we visited during Island Jin's storyline. We'll get to that later, but let's note here that the only other time we saw Room 23 in use was when Karl was being punished by Ben for... dating his daughter Alex. Sideways Jin + Sun = Island Karl and Alex, both of whom were shot and killed by... Island Keamy and Omar.
FYI: During the Jin-Keamy scene, Jin got his own mirror moment, his image reflected in the steel of a freezer — but Jin didn't notice. Significant? Debate.
Then Sayid happened. Jin thought he had been liberated — deus ex assassina. But Sayid didn't really care, and told him so. Sayid turned to leave. Jin protested. Free me! Sayid spotted a box cutter and placed it in his palms. ''Good luck,'' said Sayid, the shruggy hero. Free yourself, comrade. I am otherwise indifferent to you. Now, I must go to my Ayn Rand book club. Ciao, Stranger. It was the most this Good Samaritan felt obligated to do.
While Jin cut through the tape, Mikhail arrived with Sun. They found a kitchen nightmare that would make even Gordon Ramsay curl up in a ball. Mikhail crouched down to examine Keamy. Interesting: Keamy was a still alive. And he was strong enough to tell Mikhail that there was a Korean guy behind him with gun to his head. Mikhail — who shrewdly deduced that Jin was incapable of the carnage around him but concluded perhaps incorrectly that Jin was no killer — smiled an angel-of-death smile and snapped into killing-machine mode. He spun away from the gun and they fought. The gun discharged twice. Jin — whose Island iteration had kicked Patchy's ass in ''Catch-22'' — got some distance on Mikhail and proved him wrong about his killer's gumption by popping a cap in Bakunin's eyeball. Ouch. Mikhail died one eye blind, Battleship Potemkin by way of Moe Green. Do svidaniya, Russian guy.
Had Jin escaped from evil? Yes. But Sun had been touched by it, perhaps fatally. One if not two of those discharged bullets blasted into her abdomen, threatening her own precious package. ''I'm pregnant,'' she told Jin, finishing the thought that had been interrupted by Keamy's fateful arrival into their lives earlier that afternoon. We left the lovers lost in Los Angeles, one them dying, the whole of their love imperiled. Cliffhanger. Paging Dr. Jack Shephard! Paging Dr. Jack Shephard! Stop picking Sun's Island tomatoes and report to your Sideways ER, stat!
This Island Earth!
Land of Confusion
In the Sideways world, Jin and Sun were at the mercy of those whose language they didn't understand. On the Island, their plight was slightly worse: They understood, but they couldn't discern the sincerity. If there was a sign that hung on the gates of this epistemological inferno, it should read: ''Trust no one — even someone you think might be telling you the truth.'' This wasn't just a Jin/Sun problem in ''The Package'' — this was everyone's problem. The theme was perhaps best articulated in the exchange between Ilana and Ben, whom she suspected of being deceitful. Ben: ''Why don't you believe me?'' Ilana: ''Because you're speaking.'' (Ilana may have been willing to take Ben into her company back in ''Dr. Linus,'' but she's clearly not yet ready to trust him.) And now we know why Dogen and the Man In Black advocate the policy of ''stab and kill with the weird ceremonial knife first, ask questions later.''
To me, ''The Package'' seemed to mark the true start of the Island endgame. Said contest will boil down to a competition among storytellers, long-conners, and unreliable narrators for the hearts, minds, and trust of the castaways/candidates. Whom to believe? Right now, the matter seems to be undecided. The episode itself mirrored that uncertainty with its very first scene. The opening shot — seen through night vision goggles — evoked the surveillance cinematography of reality shows like Survivor, Big Brother, and of course that mega-hit Dating In The Dark. (I will also accept the film Paranormal Activity.) We saw and heard Kate and Sawyer talk about faux cocoa. Then we saw Fake Locke stroll through his camp twirling his big stick — and then the shot broke off, as if Spooky Smokey's unreal visage had short-circuited the equipment. It was a very un-Lost bit of storytelling. Opening an episode on an eyeball fluttering awake? Yes. Seeing the world through an eyeball? No. I found the effect rather disorienting, which I think was the intention. Who's in control? Who's running the show? Whose vision will win out on Master Plan Island?
chats. First up: Fake Locke and Jin. Topic: Had Jin been informed of the whole numbered candidate thing? Yep. But was ''42'' Sun or himself? Unclear. But either way, Fake Locke vowed to reunite Jin with his wife. He also told Jin the tall tale that in order for everyone to get off the Island, all the living candidates had to join them. What he didn't tell Jin was what we learned last week about the Monster's true mission. In order to be free from the Island, he has to kill not only Jacob, but also all the candidates eligible to replace him. We'll be analyzing Fake Locke's actions from that perspective until we're given reason to do otherwise.
Next, His Royal Smokeyness talked with Sayid. Fake Locke wanted Sayid to watch his peeps while he went on a hush-hush errand. But all Sayid wanted to talk about was his feelings — or rather, his lack of feeling. He confessed that he felt profoundly numb. Actually, Sayid sounded like he was... dead. ''I don't feel anything. Anger, happiness, pain... I don't feel them.'' (Philosophy professors! Feel free to use this scene when you teach the concept of ''The Philosophical Zombie.'') Fake Locke's response was a mysterious as it was chilling. ''Maybe it's for the best, Sayid. It'll help you get through what's coming.'' I have to think that Fake Locke was flicking at his plan to somehow get Sayid killed, an experience which for a normal person would no doubt involve some pain and anger. But how do we explain Sayid's numbness? My theory of the week is that we're dealing with the controversial theological concept of ''soul sleep,'' the idea that the soul dies with the body, or at least falls into a slumber and doesn't awaken until Judgment Day. It would be fitting that this idea is embodied by Sayid, as the concept originated with a third century Christian sect called the Thnetopsychitae, based in Arabia. The concept later morphed into the word psychopannychia, or mind-soul/all night vigil. Wasn't Sayid singled out as ''an Arab'' in the episode? And didn't Fake Locke tell Sayid to stand vigil during the night while he was away? See? Soul sleep!
With Fake Locke gone, Jin tried to leave. He didn't care what Fake Locke was promising him, he wanted nothing to do with ''that thing.'' Sawyer tried to stop him from doing something rash. And then they were all stopped dead in their tracks. Taser/tranq/something darts plunged into necks of everyone at Camp Locke. They passed out, WIdmore's people, led by Zoe, swooped in and abducted Jin, and the game was afoot.
Meanwhile, it was just another day at the beach for Team Ilana. Which is to say, more milling around and mulling what they need to be doing. Was Richard coming back after stomping away from them last episode? Was he really going to join the Man In Black? Ilana advised them — or maybe more like ordered them — to sit tight and wait. Which was the last thing Sun wanted to hear. She had spent three years scrambling to get Jin back. She wanted to keep pushing toward that goal. To stop and to sit and to wait was anathema to her. Of course, it might also mean that she'd have to stop and reflect and think about her choices, maybe take responsibility for her emotional life and accept that things do change — wait. How did those thoughts sneak into this piece!? Damn that Room 23 and its subliminal messages! Anyway, Sun flipped. She stormed off to her refuge, her garden o' busy work, which fortunately offered her a great deal of mind-numbing manual labor to do since it had gone to weedy pot during her three years away from the Island. Jack showed up and wanted to know if Sun wanted to talk about destiny and stuff. No! Get out! Leave me to my pity party! And so he did.
Man put on his friendliest air and made her one of his devilish bargains. Join me, and I can reunite you with Jin immediately. Sun gulped again. She couldn't trust the counterfeit human, this unnatural entity, this inorganic veggie of a man, and so she made like Kate and ran. UnLocke got pissy and ran after her — on foot. Why didn't he convert into a raging column of smoke and blow past her? Hmmm... Sun looked back. Oops. You never look back when you're running from the devil (see: Persephone and Hades), and Sun smacked into a low-hanging tree limb, earning her a forehead owie to match the one her Sideways soulmate got from the cooler door. Matching ouchies! How romantic...
Sun's head trauma was much worse, of course. As she regained consciousness in the company of recovering rogue Ben, Sun realized she had lost her English and could only speak Korean. (The irony: Ben, the man she once tried to kill, now playing the role of her Good Samaritan. Ben's redemption arc continues!) Doc Shephard diagnosed her with aphasia; I diagnosed her with Genesis 11. The story of the Tower of Babel goes something like this: Once upon a time, there was a city unified by culture, language, and audacious human ambition: to build a tower that could reach heaven. God was alarmed by humanity's outsized hubris and decided to humble them — and divide them up — by ''confusing their speech,'' i.e. igniting an outbreak of foreign tongues. The denizens of the city dispersed into separate communities, cultures, and nations. Hence, The Bible's mythic explanation for a world of difference and Otherness. However, different religious traditions tell slightly different versions of the story. In the Kabbalah version, for example, the Tower of Babel isn't a tower at all — it's a giant flying machine.
The relevancy to Lost? It's all about Fake Locke's plan to get the candidates killed. Remember last episode that Richard had a spiritual revival in the Island's Garden of Eden, underneath a massive Kabbalah-esque Tree of Life. Remember that Fake Locke witnessed that moment. Clearly, he knew Richard would be returning to the beach with a new sense of mission — a mission that I'm now beginning to wonder if Fake Locke/Man In Black gave him. A number of you last week speculated that when Isabella was speaking to Richard via Hurley, she was being controlled by — or was a manifestation of — Smokey. I didn't want to believe that at the time, but I find myself believing in it now. Consider what Richard said when got back to the beach last night. He surmised that Fake Locke plans to flee the Island via a giant flying machine — the Ajira plane. The mission: Blow up the plane. My thinking? Fake Locke is basically running the same con that Sawyer's been trying to run on him. He's trying to bait Team Richard into making a move on Ajira so Charles Widmore will kill them. A more dastardly thought: Smokey is conspiring to get everyone onto that plane — specifically the candidates from his group plus the candidates from Richard's group — in hopes that Widmore will blow it out of the sky. So why take away Sun's speech? Because after she declined his offer, he knew she'd try to talk her friends out the plan — which she did try to do. Either that, or Fake Locke wasn't thinking short term at all by taking away Sun's English, but rather was planting a seed designed that will bare him fruit down the road when Team Richard executes its plan. In other words: Look for Sun's loss of English to prove costly at a pivotal point in Operation: Ajirasplosion.
on Lost in which a character mysteriously lost the ability to communicate verbally. The episode was ''Further Instructions,'' and the victim was Locke himself. The Island had taken away his speech in the aftermath of the Hatch explosion as a kind of punishment for his big season 2 sin: Straying from his Island mission and becoming obsessed with pushing the Button, abandoning the natural world of jungle for the unnatural environs of The Hatch. Stripping Locke of his speech was part of the Island's way of dressing down its unfaithful servant and reminding him of who he was and what he was supposed to being doing. Perhaps Sun was stripped of her English for similar reasons. After all, she learned the language in order to run away from Jin. Moreover, she learned it from a man that became her lover. Sun's English had once saved her husband from the false charge of setting fire to the raft. It helped her build bridges with the castaways. Otherwise, her English must be something of a bitter talent. To use a phrase from Dogen, she must ''hate the way it tastes on her tongue.'' Regardless, she doesn't need it anymore. Her future is in Korea, with her husband, with her daughter, and with a mother and father that need her forgiveness. So maybe losing her English wasn't a psychic assault. Maybe it was a movement of the Island to reminder her of who she is — and what she needs redemption for.
All this said, I think her outburst at Richard was the most telling — and possibly worrisome — development of the evening when it came to Sun. She blasted him for wanting to blow up what had been her escape plan: Find Jin, get Frank Lapidus to fly them off the Island. Moreover, she didn't want to ''save the world.'' She just wanted her lover back! On one hand, you could say it provided her with a much-needed opportunity for catharsis. On the other hand, it betrayed just how tightly she holds onto her past and her dreams of happiness, and the ideals she might sell out to make them come true. We've seen throughout the season that people who cling too tightly to dreams, who have an almost idolatrous relationship to their dreams — Claire and Aaron/motherhood; Sayid and Nadia/true love — they become easy to manipulate, easy to corrupt. Jack gave her the gift of a tomato. He found it in her dead garden, stubbornly clinging to life. I think Jack offered it to her as a symbol of hope in a moment in which she sorely needed it. Okay. But you could also view it as a symbol of... well, stubbornness. Of not knowing when to quit. Of not knowing when to let go. Does Sun need to learn these lessons? Maybe. But she should definitely be thinking about them instead of running away from them. Which is why the gift of the notebook was a gift indeed, for the work it will require will force her to reflect. ''It'll take you a little longer to get your point across,'' he said, ''but at least you have your voice back.'' (I just wish he hadn't made her that promise to get her back with Jin and get them off the Island. Yes, I'm sure he wants to atone for being partially responsible for separating Jin and Sun in the first place. But I'm not sure this recovering fixer is ready to be making messianic promises like that.) (Regardless, English kinda took a beating this week, didn't it? I want all you budding Noam Chomskies out there to write me a 10,000-word research paper on English as a metaphor for a corrupt culture that requires salvation from sophistry and renewed commitment to meaning. Be sure you cite things like ''memes,'' ''spin doctoring,'' ''Swift Boat,'' ''crisis management,'' and Stephen Colbert's philosophy of ''truthiness.'')
to his camp and found his peeps recovering from Team Zoe's taser attack. He was smokin' mad. As he later told Sawyer, ''I don't like surprises.'' It was interesting to see that Smokey wasn't omnipotent and omniscient as he sometimes appears to be... though again, I continue to wonder how much of the persona he presents to the castaways and how much of the information he gives them about himself is but a long con designed to lead them to wrong conclusions about his master plan and poor estimations about his ability and power. For now, let's say he was genuinely unnerved by the sneak attack. And he wasn't about to let the indignity stand. He zipped over to Hydra Island and casually strolled the beach, drawing fire from the spooked Widmore goons hiding behind the sonic fence. Widmore himself emerged from the brush and the two hair-challenged fiends had a summit. FLocke said that yes, he knew who Widmore was. Did Widmore know who Fake Locke was? ''Obviously you're not John Locke,'' he said. ''Everything else I know is a combination of myth, ghost stories and jungle stories in the night.'' Fake Locke eyeballed the sonic fences and called him out: Clearly Widmore knew a little more about The Monster if he knew to make use of the pylons. Pulling from the memory of John Locke, FLocke threw some of Wilmore's own words back at him. ''A wise man once said, ‘War is coming to this island.' I think it just got here.'' Question: Was Fake Locke talking about Widmore — or himself?
Charles Widmore had one thing in common with Fake Locke: both experienced complications in their master plans. We learned that Zoe had jumped the gun when she abducted Jin from the beach. Widmore fumed. Zoe retorted: ''Well maybe you should have put a mercenary in charge instead of a geophysicist.'' And why would Widmore need a geophysicist playing point guard for his newest Island incursion team? The answer fed the mystery of Wilmore's true intentions. Zoe's job is to locate one or more hotspots of electromagnetic energy on the Island. The reason why they needed Jin (sooner or later) was because he had apparently mapped those hotspots during his days in the Dharma Initiative. What might Widmore be looking for? Frozen Donkey Wheel? The Temple's resurrection hot spring? New Mythological Landmark TBD? Regardless, I stick to my long held theory of Wilmore's motivations: the quest for eternal life. (P.S.: Is Sheila Kelly working for you as Zoe? My guess is no. Me? Meh.)
send them home. Jin could get behind both those ideas. Widmore sealed the deal on procuring Jin's loyalty by giving him Sun's camera, which Wilmore's peeps had found on the Ajira plane. Jin choked back on tears as he saw for the first time his daughter, Ji-Yeon. I thought, Well played, Mr. Widmore. Well played. Maybe all his empathetic talk about also being a father who's suffering through separation and estrangement from his daughter was sincere. But I'm not buying it. The proof came in the form of the ace in the hole of his Island campaign: ''The Package.'' Not a what, Widmore said. A who. By episode's end, we were led to believe that who to be Desmond Hume. We saw him get hauled out of the sub, weak and sickly and trailing strings of IV tubing. Sayid saw him, too. Tasked by Fake Locke to finish the recon Sawyer couldn't complete a couple episodes ago, Sayid floated like a killer croc in the water as Desmond stumbled and fell and made eye contact with him. Hopefully we'll soon see what makes Desmond so ''special'' and why Widmore has always wanted on the Island. Whatever it is, it can't be good. Which means that Desmond has one thing in common with Sideways Jin: they both have fathers-in-law that want them dead.
Stuff we didn't talk about: How Mr. Paik's bid to block Sun's escape plan = the Jacob/Team Richard bid to block the Man In Black's escape plan; Sawyer sweating the viability of his own escape plan; Fake Locke's manipulation of Claire and plan to pit her against Kate; the return of Room 23; and whether or not you, too, are wondering if Desmond Hume might actually be Sideways Desmond Hume. But my time has run out, and you deserve a chance to talk back. Check out the new episode of ''Totally Lost,'' a four-part epic graced by the presence of Titus Welliver (the Man In Black) and some choice clips from the original Clash of the Titans. I'll be back on Friday with a new column. Namaste!
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