s4e08: Meet Kevin Johnson

Not much beating around the bush this week. Miles reveals to Locke's camp that he's here for Ben, and doesn't exactly deny it when Ben says that if he is captured, the Freighters will kill everyone else, per Widmore's orders. Ben then reveals at Hurley's prompting that Michael is his spy on the boat. It's off to the boat, then, where Sayid forces Michael to tell his story. And tell he does, over most of the rest of the episode.

Michael attempts to kill himself by crashing his car, with a note to Walt pinned to his chest. Walt is now living with Michael's mother and won't speak to his father - it is implied that at some point, Michael had to explain to Walt just what he did to get them off the island. Also, this way we don't have to see clearly-older Malcolm David Kelley for more than a second. Pretty crafty, writers. Michael tries again to kill himself, this time with a gun, until Tom steps out of the shadows. They fight, and Tom eventually points the gun at Michael, who urges Tom to shoot. Tom says that Michael can't die even if he wants to, because the island won't let him. Michael tries to shoot himself again but the trigger just clicks, even though it's fully loaded. After seeing that 815 has been found, Michael runs back to find Tom.

Tom (who is briefly shown to be gay, because why not, I guess) explains that Widmore faked
the Bali crash site so that no one would go looking in the right area and possibly stumble across the island. Naturally this contradicts with the suggestion in the last episode that Ben was behind the fake. Tom's explanation seems a little more convincing - he actually has evidence, and of course it's possible that Widmore would have lied to the freighter's captain - but who ever knows with the Others. At any rate, Tom tells Michael to join the crew of the freighter so that he can kill everyone on board. Michael tries, via bomb, but it's a dud - a little flag goes up saying "Not yet." Ben, pretending to be Walt, calls Michael on the boat (clearly the only way he could call without arousing suspicion) and tells him that the difference between Ben and Widmore is that Ben doesn't kill innocent people. Michael is instead ordered to make a list of the people on the boat, then sabotage the radio and engines.

After hearing the whole story, Sayid drags Michael in front of the captain and reveals that Michael is the saboteur and a spy for Ben. I guess Sayid really wants to get back to the real world, huh? Makes you wonder just how bad things have to get for Sayid to end up killing for Ben himself.

To wind up, Ben sends Alex, Karl and Rousseau towards the Temple, but, fulfilling the teaser's promise that someone would die, Karl and Rousseau are shot by unseen assailants. Alex jumps up and yells that she's Ben's daughter, and we go to Lost logo. The last scene was a little weird; was it perhaps intended to show that in spite of what he may want people to believe, Ben is just that dangerous? He seems to have sent them into a trap that would bump off Alex's boyfriend and biological mother, thus leaving Ben as her only family on the island - as verified by the fact that she leaps back to her connection to him to save herself. Pretty fucking diabolical, no? Kinda makes you wonder if we're supposed to end up rooting for either side in the Ben/Widmore conflict.

April 24: Lost is back. It sounds like it's going to spread over six weeks, with the finale coming in two parts over two weeks thanks to dumb-ass Grey's Anatomy. Should be pretty awesome. By the end of the season we're supposed to at least have some idea how the Oceanic Six get off. Works for me.

s4e07: Ji Yeon

Well, that was a fucking downer.

In the A plot, Sun decides she wants to go off to Locke's camp, because she doesn't trust the Freighters. Juliet warns her against doing so because it would lead to her death, due to the fact that pregnant women (at least those who conceived on-island) do not survive past the middle of the second trimester or so. Sun notes that Juliet doesn't exactly have the best history of veracity, and starts to head off with Jin anyway. Juliet pulls out all the stops and tells Jin about Sun's affair with Jae Lee, forcing them to stay at the beach. Jin goes off fishing with Bernard and, in a fairly nice scene, Bernard says he believes that staying at the beach is good karma. Jin forgives Sun for the affair, saying he knows that the person he used to be, pre-island, pretty much deserved it, and Sun confirms for him that the baby is his. They decide to stay at the beach, hopeful that they can get off the island soon.

In the B plot, Sayid and Desmond meet the captain of the ship, who shows them the black box from Flight 815 and tells them that Charles Widmore is financing the whole thing. He tells them about the discovery of the plane with all 324 dead bodies aboard, and asks them what it means to them that someone could have gone to the trouble of faking the entire thing - including presumably killing 324 people just to serve as dead bodies. And that, he says, is why Widmore wants Ben. We also see that the crew of the freighter is going nuts due to their proximity to the island, but the captain has been unable to move the ship because a certain someone has sabotaged the engines. As should come as no surprise to anyone, that someone is... Michael, now posing as the ship's janitor under the name Kevin Johnson.

In the flash-forwards, Sun is rushed to the hospital, heavily pregnant, and keeps asking where Jin is. He's in transit, but having some difficulty buying a large stuffed panda. Finally he makes it to the hospital... where we find out we're actually in flashback in his half of the flashes, as he presents the panda to the daughter of the Chinese ambassador on the birth of her new son as a way of helping to curry favor for Sun's dad, Mr. Paik. As Jin leaves the hospital, a nurse mentions that maybe someday he'll be a father too. "Don't rush me," he jokes. "I've only been married two months!"

In the final flash-forward, we find out where Jin was when Sun was calling for him at the hospital - the same place he'd been for a while, presumably, six feet under in a Korean cemetery. Hurley, who has come out to visit, and Sun visit Jin's grave with the baby, which Sun has named Ji Yeon, in accordance with wishes stated by Jin on the island at the start of the episode. Sun cries and tells Jin how much she misses him. I cried a little bit too. Lost logo.

Holy shit. Could that have been any more of a depressing ending? It's interesting that this was how they chose to kill a character - it's certainly in keeping with something William Mapother (aka Ethan) once said, about how he'd made far more appearances on the show after being killed than he ever had while alive. So is Jin one of the Six, and Mr. Paik had him killed for returning to Korea? Is he one of the eight mentioned in Jack's story at Kate's trial, supposedly surviving the crash but dying soon after? Neither? Damon and Carlton said that the Oceanic Six would be cleared up after this episode, but frankly I'm still not sure whether Jin or Aaron is supposed to be the last one. (I really don't think it's anyone else.)

I resented the storytelling a little bit, I have to say. Last year, with the initial flash-forward, there were at least ways to pick it up. The combination flash-forward/flashback seemed like kind of a cheap trick because even though there were, in retrospect, clues that Jin's half was a flashback, they were all negated by other evidence. Jin having large amounts of cash available - well, if he's one of the Oceanic Six, he would, wouldn't he? Jin having short hair again - big deal, maybe he got a haircut. And Sun kept calling for him, a similar trick to Jack mentioning his father in the present tense in last year's finale. Wouldn't it have been just as easy not to show Jin in the flashes at all, rather than having to pull the wool over our eyes like that? It's not that I don't like twists, but unlike last year's, which was amazing, this one just felt like a cheat.

Aside from that, though, it was a pretty strong episode. Like the best of past seasons, it was able to combine some good emotional character moments with other scenes in which information was actually doled out. With the rush being put on the final five episodes, I'm a little worried that some character bits are going to go by the wayside, so at least we got a couple good character episodes in (this one and "The Constant") before the flood of information starts in six weeks or so.

s4e06: The Other Woman

Coy start to this one, as it's briefly made to look like Juliet (wearing way too much makeup) has gotten off the island and is now meeting with a therapist. But oh, we tricked you! It's actually a therapist of the Other variety. We're on the island for the whole of the episode, as Charlotte and Daniel make their way to a power station where apparently there is a way to release a toxic gas that would kill everyone on the island - the therapist, Harper, appears to Juliet and tells her that Ben wants Juliet to go after Charlotte and Daniel and kill them if necessary. So that part of the episode is mostly split between walking/talking in the jungle and Juliet's flashbacks, where we see the trajectory of her previously-revealed relationship with Goodwin, who it turns out was married when he and Juliet met. To Harper. B'oh! Ben, who has a big crush on Juliet and is creepily possessive of her, sends Goodwin to his death at Ana Lucia's hands. (How could he have known that, some have asked? I say he just figured it was likely that eventually the Others were discovered. You could also make the case that he was just getting Goodwin away from Juliet, and then once Ethan was killed, not retracting Goodwin was Ben's way of leaving him for dead, when he had to figure Goodwin would also be discovered eventually.) Eventually we get to the Tempest station, where it transpires that Daniel and Charlotte are actually trying to turn the gas mechanisms off, presumably so that they can do their thing on the island without fearing that a loosed Ben could use it on them (we know he hasn't hesitated to gas his enemies in the past). Juliet and Jack kiss again, with Jack telling her that he's willing to take Ben on for her. Drew has said that one thing he didn't like about the flash-forwards from last season is seeing Jack at such a low, depressed point, and I guess I would agree in one sense - we know from the flash-forwards that Jack and Juliet don't end up together (at least not off the island), so the little courtship going on seems like kind of a waste. This episode wasn't "Eggtown" bad, but it did tread a lot of water in the main plot.

But then there was the "B" plot. In this case, B stands for Ben. Ben shows Locke a video with unsurprising master bad guy Charles Widmore, who Ben says has been looking for the island for some time. When Locke asks why, Ben compares the island to a piece of mold shaped like the Virgin Mary that drew 5,000 pilgrims to Gainesville, Florida - he asks Locke if that many people would go to see mold, how many people would come to see Locke, a man healed by the island's mystical properties? Locke has one more question - who is Ben's man on the boat? Ben tells Locke while we have to watch some commercials instead of finding out. Come on, show - we know it's Michael. Ben told Locke he had to sit down - it's not like it's going to be some character we've never met, and no one else got off the island. And we know Michael's coming back, and we know that next episode has a cliffhanger good enough that the episode split was made 7-6 rather than 8-5 even though the first eight episodes were produced. Are you really going to tell me it's not Michael? There's no way it's not. Everyone has suspected this since episode 2. Quit fucking around. Anyway, the episode ends with Sawyer and Hurley seeing Ben out walking around and expressing surprise and anger (at least on Sawyer's part). This combined with Locke's shutdown of Claire when she asked if she could talk to Miles and Ben's question of whether the revolution had started yet might not be so far off.

Next week: a Sun/Jin episode! We learn the last of the Oceanic Six - so, Sun and Jin, right? I mean, presumably Sun and someone. And a face we never expected to see again! Jesus. It's Michael. You are fooling nobody.