Found in Lost: Thoughts on "Ji Yeon"

Another interesting episode. Only one left before the break! :( Read our thoughts here, and leave your own in the comments. As usual, beware of spoilers! Only continue if you're up-to-date!

TOPH TUCKER '08

Hmm... OK, so nothing has really matched the splendor of The Constant yet. But next week will be a sort of mini-finale, so that ought to be very interesting.

The main plot dealt with Sun and Jin. I was originally unsure of whether Jin's scenes were flashbacks, but I'm now almost certain. The old-fashioned cell phone was the first tip-off...

It was pretty terrible of Juliet to reveal Sun's affair like that... she has an "ends justify the means" philosophy that I really dislike...

What was up with Hurley's ultra-creepy "good"???
HURLEY: Is anyone else coming?
SUN: No.
HURLEY: Good.

The tombstone is interesting. It lists the date of death as September 22, 2004--the day Oceanic 815 crashed. My guess is that the Oceanic 6 are just telling the world that Jin was one of the many who died in the crash, so clearly Jin hasn't made it off, but I'm not so sure he's dead. He could very well be one of those to whom Jack thinks "we have to go back!"

There was also some interesting stuff going on on the freighter. First of all, where's the helicopter??? Apparently Frank has taken it somewhere, and Ray-the-doctor implied that he was heading back to the island, but managed to dodge the question. Judging by next week's preview, maybe he's, y'know, getting ready to storm the beaches or something... or maybe there's something else out there, something he could land on other than the island, that the doc doesn't want Sayid knowing about.

Regina was weird. First with reading her book upside-down, and then with her suicide. And no one seemed surprised by that stuff. Clearly there's something maddening about the island, or at least there's something maddening about the snowglobe barrier.

And the captain didn't seem that bad. He implied that Ben was in on the faking of 815, which is interesting. The black box was also interesting. But was it the box of the real 815, or the planted 815? Here's the dialogue:

GAULT: That's exactly what it is. Now here's the funny thing. This black box comes from Oceanic Flight 815. A salvage vessel recovered it from the bottom of the ocean. It took a considerable amount of Mr. Widmore's resources to procure it. It was found with the wreckage of the plane, along with all 324 dead passengers. (to Sayid) That's not the complete story, as you are well aware, Mr. Jarrah, given the fact that you're standing here, breathing... The wreckage was obviously staged. Now can you imagine what kind of resources and manpower go into pulling off a feat of that magnitude? Faking the recovery of a plane crash? Putting 324 families through a grieving process based on a lie? But what's even more disturbing... where exactly does one come across 324 dead bodies? And that, Mr. Jarrah, Mr. Hume, is just one of the many reasons we want Benjamin Linus.

So it seems it's from the fake 815. But then what good is it? It's not like you're going to track it back to Ben's secret off-island HQ landing strip. It would be much more useful if it were from the real plane, and it would help explain how the freighter had found the island. But then how in the world would anyone have recovered it? Recovering it would presumably mean finding the plane, unless it had somehow escaped and floated off to Fiji or something. And we don't know of anyone finding the plane, the real plane. So, what, did Ben find it and sell it to Widmore? Seems unlikely, given how much he hates the guy. Did he find it and give it to Michael to take it to Widmore and lead him into a trap or something? Haha, nah. If Ben was the one who planted the fake, then maybe he took the real black box and planted it with it, but that'd just be stupid. Doesn't make any sense.

Also, it seems like one of the Oceanic Six remains unknown. Could it be the one in the newspaper clipping? It's odd--you'd think it'd be the funeral of someone Jack & Kate knew from the island, right? But if it was one of the Six, they'd be a celebrity, and of course their death would be a big deal and lots of people would go. So, non-Sixies who they knew from the island who made it off... um, Ben? I'm not sure anyone would go to his funeral, and he's sort of been operating in secret. We know it's a man, don't we? For Sixies, that leaves Hurley, Sayid, or the one yet to be revealed. Hm. Out of those choices, and knowing nothing about the sixth Sixie, I'd have to say Ben, however sad it would be to admit that the man we love to hate is mortal. Hey, he could always be faking it.

Anyway, back to the sixth Sixie--I still think it'd be really interesting if they took one of the random background extras and made them the sixth. We'd be in a flashforward with no one we recognize, and someone would recognize the guy as one of the Six and we'd all go "huh?" And then they could go and explain what happens between Day 98 and whenever-they-get-off that made that guy important enough to land a ticket off that rock. Or maybe it'll just be Michael--I mean, uh, Kevin Johnson.