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.