Lost 6.10: "The Package"

“What? For the fourth time, I was gathering mangoes and she was already unconscious when I found her! Why won’t you believe me?”

-Ben

“The Package” had plenty of flaws, but the final scene more than made up for it. In fact, it made me downright giddy for the episodes of this final season of “Lost” yet to come. I’ve never really been a fan of Sun and Jin episodes (I’m a horrible human being, I know), so the luke warm reception to this one shouldn’t really come as a surprise. There were a few especially good scenes in this episode, but only one that made me care slightly more about Sun and Jin than I did before (which wasn’t a lot). By the end of the episode, though, I was bouncing around my apartment, because the final twist was a long, long time coming.

After a brief scene of Widmore’s sub spying on Locke’s group which I found kind of confusing at first, we see Locke turn his attention to Jin, who is taping up his leg injury. Jin wants to leave Locke’s camp and find Sun, but Locke (and Widmore, too, it turns out) has a different idea. Locke needs to keep the Candidates he’s got under his control, because as he explains to Jin, he (and they) can only leave the Island if they all leave together. I’m not at all sure why, but there it is. Locke promises Jin that he’s going to go find Sun and bring her to their camp, and he heads off to try and do just that. Jin still looks dubious. He’s going to try to make a break for it while Locke’s gone. Sawyer tries to convince him to stay, but Jin is just pissed that even Sawyer seems to be siding with Locke. Sawyer still insists he’s on nobody’s side. Before the argument can go farther, the camp is attacked by Widmore’s crew armed with tranq darts. Zoe confirms the identity of Jin, and they drag him off to Hydra Island.

Sun is getting similarly frustrated with all the waiting around for something to happen. Ilana says the plan is just to wait around until Hurley retrieves Richard, because she has faith that Richard will have a plan like Jacob said he would. Sun doesn’t want to just wait around when she knows that Jin is somewhere on the island. In her frustration, she runs off to her old garden, which is now very overgrown with weeds. Seeing the garden again is a nice bit of nostalgia, much like the beach reunion musical montage was a few weeks ago. Or at least it’s nice until Locke shows up. Sun’s got good instincts, and she doesn’t trust him even when he says he’s going to take her to Jin. She starts running, but she doesn’t get very far before she runs into a tree branch and falls down unconscious.

Sun is found by Ben, who seems genuinely concerned for her welfare. I hope this is a sign that his change of heart in “Dr. Linus” is going to stick, at least for a while. Ben brings Sun back to the beach camp, and it turns out that she can now only speak Korean. She can tell the group who hurt her, though- Locke. Jack thinks Sun has some kind of Ephasia, which should go away as the injury to her head heals. For now, though, it’s incredibly frustrating to Sun. Not only is she sick of waiting around and wants to get to Jin, she can’t really communicate that to anyone.

Ephasia has been used as a plot device on TV countless times, but it leads to a few good moments that make its use sort-of, although not entirely, worth it. The first of these moments is when Richard makes is triumphant return to the beach camp to tell everybody that he does indeed have a plan. They’re going to destroy the Ajira plane so Locke and his crew can’t escape. Sun is furious about this. She wants to find Jin and get the heck off the Island, not destroy her only means of achieving that goal. She fumes at everybody in Korean. I think Yunjin Kim’s performance in this scene was only made more powerful by letting her perform it in her native language.

This season overall, in addition to moving the overall story forward, has been about homages to the past. This episode in particular seemed to be a bit of an homage to my favorite season of “Lost,” season 3 (dodges rotten tomatoes thrown my direction). First and foremost, Jin wakes up from the tranq dart to find himself in…Room 23! The freaky subliminal messaging room from which Sawyer and Kate rescued Carl. It was a lot of fun to see that location again. Furthermore, Widmore’s crew really remind me of old school Others of the Season 2-3 vintage. Zoe tries to give Jin the illusion of freedom, but when he doesn’t do what she wants, she tasers him. Jin then asks to be taken to Widmore, and that’s one request Zoe is ready to grant.

Before meeting with Jin, though, Widmore has a little confrontation with Locke, who has gone over to Hydra Island with Sayid (who, sadly, says he no longer feels anything) to scope out Widmore’s crew. They’ve set up sonic fence pylons, and as soon as Locke hits the beach, rifles are pointed at him. Locke and Widmore meet at the edge of the sonic fence, and they pretty much just feel each other out, trying to figure out how much of a fight the other is going to put up. The upshot of this conversation is a feeling that the big conflict between the two sides is very, very immanent.

The scene where Widmore does finally meet with Jin is probably Daniel Dae Kim’s best work on the show to date. We know Jin spent his years with the Dharma Initiative surveying the Island, and Widmore wants to put that knowledge to use. To convince Jin to join his cause, Widmore shows him Sun’s camera, which was recovered from the Ajira crash. The look on Jin’s face as he sees Ji Yeon for the first time is just heartbreaking. Widmore warns Jin that if he doesn’t do what he’s told, everyone he loves, including Sun and Ji Yeon, will cease to exist.

Sun has a similar moment of realization during a beachside chat (sort of) with Jack. Jack remembered a past patient who was unable to speak, but could still right. He thought the same could be true of Sun’s English ability, and he was right. Sun apologizes for how she has been acting, and Jack understands. He promises Sun that he’s going to find Jin and get them both of the island, and in a moment that’s nicely symmetrical to her conversation with Locke, Sun decides to believe Jack and trust in him.

Over in the sideways-verse, Sun and Jin still traveled to LA together on Oceanic 815, but there’s one hell of a big difference. As they check into their hotel for two separate rooms, it’s revealed that they aren’t married. They still have some sort of a relationship, though. Jin visit’s Sun’s room to tell her he’s going to the restaurant to deliver the watch, even though Customs confiscating the twenty-five thousand dollars caused a delay in their planned schedule. The scene in season one where Jin wanted Sun to keep her sweater buttoned up is then turned on its head in one of the steamiest scenes Lost has produced.

The next morning, Sun tells Jin that she joined him on the trip to LA not to shop, but because she wants to run away with him. She’s got her own bank account and everything. The happiness is extremely shortlived, however, as they are paid a visit by one Martin Keamy. Omar soon joins the party, too, and Keamy tells him to go find an associate of theirs who can speak a bunch of languages, including Korean. That leads to another nod to season 3. The associate is none other than Mikhail, aka “Patchy.” He’s the surly Russian who lived in the Flame and whose deaths never quite seemed to stick. It was a lot of fun to see him again.

The plan was for Mikhail to take Sun to the bank to get the money Keamy and his goons are owed while Keamy and Omar took Jin back to the restaurant. This plan doesn’t go at all as intended. First Sun finds out that her dad closed her bank account (I’m not sure how that could ever really happen). Then, as we already knew, Sayid threw a wrench in whatever was going to happen at the restaurant. Before his death, though, Keamy told Jin that the twenty-five thousand was Mr. Paik’s payment for Keamy killing Jin. When Sayid finds Jin in the refrigerator, he doesn’t help Jin escape outright, but he does give Jin a razor blade he can use to free himself.

Jin gets free at about the same time Mikhail and Sun arrive at the restaurant to see the bloodbath. There’s a fight between Jin and Mikhail where shots are fired. One shot hits Mikhail right in the eye (a nice nod to how he’s “Patchy” in the original universe), and the other hits Sun, who chooses that moment to reveal to Jin that she’s pregnant. Jin carries the injured Sun out of the restaurant, and all I can think of at that moment is a line in Felicia Day’s song “The Art” that is part of “Commentary! The Musical” on the “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” DVD. “But my death scene pumps are really dreamy. Right when Billy dumps my corpse it’s steamy.”

So about that final scene that had me shouting for joy? As you’ve probably guessed, it involves one Desmond David Hume. He’s back! Finally! Although he’s been dragged to the Island and away from his wife and son against his will. Sayid is swimming towards Widmore’s sub to check out what Widmore has stashed there when he sees Zoe in the process of moving “The Package” from the sub to the Hydra infirmary. The Package just happens to be Desmond, currently drugged out of his mind. Des and Sayid exchange a significant look, but unfortunately for Des, his freighter buddy isn’t really all there anymore.