Lost 4.7: Ji Yeon

What a surprise--no, not about Michael. I was surprised that the story of our favorite married couple, Jin and Sun, was both a flashback and a flashforward. I'd heard this was going to be happening but I was so sucked into what was happening, I also forgot...and boy, they really got me! I also knew there was going to be the death of a "major" character and once I was relieved it wasn't Desmond or Sayid, my next worry was Jin. The actor who plays Jin, Daniel Dae Kim, was arrested last fall for DUI and that's been the kiss of death for so many of the actors on the show.

Now we know the identities of all the "Oceanic Six". There was a lot of speculation about how Claire's son, Aaron, fit into the equation. Did he count since he was just a little boy? In the beginning of this show, Sun realizes that the freighties are not there to rescue them and that it might not happen. She begins to panic, worrying about her unborn baby and decides she and Jin need to leave and join the Lockettes. Juliet, the fertility doctor, is horrified. She knows all the pregnant women die on the island and when Sun won't listen to her, Juliet blurts out to Jin the secret Sun's been hiding: Sun had an extramarital affair. Jin storms off. Uh oh.

Foreshadow: There's a scene where Jin and Sun are talking about names for the baby. Sun doesn't want to discuss it because it would be bad luck and could bring a jinx down onto the baby. Still, Jin goes ahead and says what he'd like to name a baby girl: Ji Yeon.

Now we flash forward.

Sun seems to be getting ready to go somewhere. She's putting on lipstick and hesitates, seems like she's going to cry. We realize it's a flash forward because she doubles over in pain and we see how very pregnant she is. She's in labor but doesn't seem to realize it and thinks something's wrong with the baby.

We see Jin going into a toy store, frantic to buy a giant stuffed panda. He's rushing, like he's late for a very important date...and he is! What's he doing in the toy store when his wife is about to deliver their baby? As I'm watching, I'm looking for one of Sun's father's henchmen. I figure that's how Jin will die--pushed in front of a car. It turns out that, through a funny series of mishaps, someone else gets into the cab with Jin's panda and drives away. Jin rushes back into the toy store for yet another panda. Something is very weird here, I'm thinking.

When Sun has the baby alone, I realizez Jin must have died on the island. So what's with the pandas? Is he a ghost? And then we learn we has bringing the panda as a gift to the daughter of the Chinese ambassador--Jin is having a flashback while Sun's is a flash forward. Pretty neat trick the way those two stories worked together!

Hurley arrives at Sun's place after her baby (a girl, named Ji Yeon by Jin) is born and the two of them go to the cemetery. I think it can't be the actual day of the funeral, just can't be, because no one else is there. Hurley's glad of that...why? There's a stone already up for Jin so their return had to have happened a while back. You don't get a stone overnight, right? And the date on the stone? September 24, 2002...the date of the flight.

Things can be faked though. Back on the freighter, Sayid and Desmond finally get to meet the captain. The "mole" on the ship leaves them a note warning them not to trust the captain. The crew members all seem to be quietly flipping out. A woman, dressed in heavy chains, walks to the side of the ship and jumps. No one looks around or tries to help except for Sayid and Desmond. When the captain shows up he says something to the effect that there's no point trying to save her because she's already gone.

The captain also tells them Charles Widomore, Penny's father, is financing the ship and that the boat is stuck where it is because of the saboteur. They'd like to go to safer waters so that people stop going crazy but they just can't. So why did the nefarious Mr. Widmore send these people to the island? What are they really after?

Sayid and Desmond finally meet the mole and it is Michael Dawson, only now he's calling himself Kevin Johnson. Where's his son Walt? Why did he tell his friends (assuming it was him that left the note) not to trust the captain? He himself is totally untrustworthy--he betrayed his friends, led them into a trap and then blithely drove away with his son.

The captain's last name is Gault. There's been so many literary references during the series that I thought right away of "Who Is John Galt?" about the millionaire genius who decided to "drop out" of society rather than continue supporting people who don't contribute and sit around whining about how badly they're being treated. This is from Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged.

I read the book when I was about 19--my boss recommended it to me and said it would change my life. It didn't but I remember it well. Rand had a preachy sort of tone and some of her characters were very stereotyped. Basically, this was a group of industrialists led by John Galt who became so disillusioned with the way things were going in the country that they all dropped out one by one and moved to a utopian sort of society. Does that sound familiar? Meanwhile, back in the real world everyone and everything began to break down because the "gimme gimmes" either couldn't or wouldn't fix the system. Meanwhile, in industrialist utopia, everything ran smoothly. At about the time there was going to be total collapse else where, John Galt and his people decided to make a move.


I didn't see anyone comment about this possibility but you never know, right?