Lost Rewatch on VHS: Ji Yeon

 

I have rewatched this episode at least a half a dozen time since it first aired more than fifteen years ago.  So I know the fundamental structure of what we see going on involving Jin and Sun is only a flashforward for Sun and not one for Jin. I also don’t think I’m spoiling anything by saying that the final scene where Sun visits Jin’s grave is not a true interpretation of what happened. But that has never made the last ten minutes of the episode any more of an emotionally gutting experience every single time I watch it.

There are many reasons for that: no matter how many times you see the episode the scene with Jin and Sun in the tent is one of the most moving in the entire series.  The power of watching Jin not merely forgive Sun for her infidelity but also acknowledge his role in his part in the breakdown of his marriage is extremely emotional.  It reaffirms their love in a way that the viewer ignores the clear warning bell of the two of them affirming their love and saying they will never be apart.  By this point, the viewer knows that a confirmation of love is very much a kiss of death for at least one of the parties: we saw it when Sayid acknowledged he believed Shannon moments before she got shot, and we saw it when Libby went off to get the blankets and wandered into the hatch for Michael to accidentally kill her (and we’ll be dealing with the repercussions of that in the next episode).

But Sun and Jin have always been different: the viewer has been witness to the highs and lows of their relationship: the lows have mostly been in the flashbacks and the highs have been on the island.  We’ve also seen Jin be separated from Sun twice before, most recently at the climax of Season Three.  So the viewer genuinely wants to believe, despite all of the big warning signs we’ve been getting in the flashes that Jin and Sun did make off the island together. (They’ve been written about extensively in numerous places, including Lostipedia, so I won’t repeat them here.) Even when we see that Jin is representing Paik Automotive, the viewer is still clinging to some desperate hope until Jin’s tells us he’s only been married for two months.  And then of course we get to the last scene and we know what we’re going to find out and our hearts just break. Even knowing the truth about Jin doesn’t make this last scene hurt immensely: Sun believes it with every fiber of her being and we can’t look away from it.

For the first half of the season Sun and Jin have been more in the background then anything else. We’ve seen a few scenes of them in every other episode but we’ve been so focused on the freighter folk and the divide in the camp that they haven’t really mattered as much. Viewers complained about this problem last season, but we haven’t fundamentally objected this time because as has been the case for Season Four, the writers have managed to do a pretty good divide between the survivors and the newcomers.  This also helps because with all the attention on everything that’s happening we have forgotten that Sun needs to get off the island more than any of the other survivors: as we were reminded in just the previous episode, her pregnancy is a death sentence. (I also think that’s another reason the writers chose to make the last episode Juliet-centric: they were prepping us for this.)

Sun and Jin have also been mostly absent from the action, which means they are basically the last regulars to find out that the freighter is not here to rescue them. Jack is still fundamentally in denial on this point but Kate has no intention of lying to Sun and Jin and Sun confronts Dan.  Dan is still trying his hardest to avoid telling the truth but Sun knows immediately that they can’t stall.

It does take courage to go to Locke’s camp given everything that’s going on and in a sense, it takes a lot of effort for Juliet to tell her not to go.  A lot of people criticize Juliet for how she chose to stop Jin from going and it is worth noting that had she just told Sun what was going to happen to her in exactly those ways it would have averted a lot of tension. The thing is, I don’t entirely blame Juliet considering she’s probably still reeling from everything that happened in the last episode and considering she saw Harper, her own infidelity is very fresh in her mind.  Juliet also isn’t in denial like Jack is she knows the freighter isn’t bringing help, she even told Jack as much. But she wants to get off the island far worse than anyone here, except maybe Desmond. (I’m a little shocked she didn’t ask to get on the helicopter herself. Then again, considering what we learn on the freighter…) She’s clinging to hope as hard as she can. And as we will see in one of the Missing Pieces, the whole reason she agreed to switch sides was because she felt she had to save Sun.  She doesn’t want to lose another mother and child, which is as pure a motive as many of the other people here.

I also don’t object because that leads to a scene between Jin and Bernard. Having basically neglected them until the end of Season Three, the writers do a better job putting Rose and Bernard into a more active role for the rest of the series. The scene in the boat is also moving. For one, Bernard does something that hasn’t been done for nearly two seasons: he confides a deep secret to another character. (It’s pretty clear Jin understands what Bernard is saying, even if he doesn’t respond.) And he also makes something fundamentally clear about a question that we’ve had every reason to ask. Considering that we saw in S.O.S the two of them would never leave, why did Bernard and Rose go with Jack at the start of the season? Bernard makes it clear that both he and Rose essentially view him the same way as everyone else: Locke has lost his moral bearings and is untrustworthy. For Rose in particular to feel this way speaks volumes about how much she feels Locke has lost his moral compass.  Bernard has decided to stay with Rose because he loves her and Jin makes the decision to stay with Sun because of his love for Sun.

It’s worth noting, for the record, that Juliet’s action almost certainly saved the lives of Sun and Jin. At the start of the episode Keamy goes to talk with Frank and tells him to get ready. The helicopter is gone by the time Sayid and Desmond go to talk with the captain and we all know what will happen soon after.  However, by the time this episode is over we are beginning to seriously wonder if getting off the island is going to bring safety either.

There are many shocking deaths in the long tenure of Lost and we don’t know Regina at all. (We’ve heard her voice three times over the season but when we see her guarding Sayid and Desmond, this is the first time we actually see her.) We already know that she’s not doing well, considering that she’s reading her book upside down and doesn’t seem to know it. But it doesn’t make the fact that her wrapping herself in an anchor and throwing herself overboard any less astonishing -  or the fact that none of the crew does anything to stop her or save her.

By this point we have met the Captain – and have been told not to trust him. Ironically, despite the note almost everything Gault tells us is accurate: Sayid is not lying when he says he was forthcoming.  His term of ‘cabin fever’ is a euphemism but time-sickness doesn’t seem accurate either.  The crew is clearly suffering some kind of symptoms from proximity to the island and it is clearly deadly: we’ve already seen Minkowski perish, he told us what happened to Brandon and judging by the blood stain in the room Sayid and Desmond end up, Regina is not the first person to kill herself. He also tells the truth that the engines have been horribly wrecked and that repairing them may be hard. He even acknowledges that rescue may not be on the agenda and that this ship is in fact Charles Widmore’s. (The look on Desmond’s face is everything we expect it to be.)

He also tells us that Oceanic 815 was found at the bottom of the ocean with all 324 bodies confirmed dead and that he knows the crash was staged.  Some might question whether he is lying when he tells us Ben Linus is the person who staged it, but he never says that Ben is responsible, only that Widmore wants to get a hold of him, which is also true. He may even believe that Ben did put the plane at the bottom of the ocean: its now very clear that the people on the mission have been giving conflicting information as to why they were brought here and what they have to do.

So why was the note left? Well consider who left it. Michael is revealed to be Ben’s man on the boat.  (I will get to my exact issues with Harold Perrineau’s return to the series in the next episode: there are far too many obstacles to deal with at once.) We don’t know yet why Michael is here, but since he is Ben’s man he is part of at least some of the problems. He must have wrecked the radio room and he clearly did the same to the engines.  He also clearly got Sayid and Desmond out of the sick bay and he knows very well these people are lying about the reason they’re here.

But he also knows that the moment Sayid learns about his presence he is in danger. Not the mission, him.  Michael doesn’t fear exposure from the crew as much as the passengers of 815: they have, if anything, more of a reason to want him dead than the people on this boat.  We know that Sayid is very good at hiding the truth in his face but even as he keeps his tone perfectly blank, you can tell as he shakes the hand of ‘Kevin Johnson’, he wants to rip it off with his teeth. That Michael made a deal with the devil to save his skin is bad enough; that he’s still honoring it even after saving his skin is worse. We know bad things will happen the moment the two of them are alone, and we’re absolutely right on that.

 And we know those things are going to happen to everybody very soon. At the end of this episode we know who the Oceanic 6 are. The writers made it clear that one of them was someone who didn’t fit in the traditional narrative so now it’s clear: Jack, Kate, Sayid, Sun, Hurley and Aaron. We also know that it doesn’t look like that there lives off the island are any better: Hurley is in Santa Rosa, Sun is raising Ji Yeon alone, Sayid has become Ben’s personal hit man and Jack will end up becoming a drug addict and suicidal. 

There are details still to be worked out on this score, not only as to how the six end up getting off the island but some of the gaps do need to be filled in. How exactly did Sayid end up being Ben’s hitman? What drove Jack to drinking and drugs? Perhaps more importantly, why is everybody who got rescued so divided in the flashforwards? This is made the most clear when Hurley travels to Seoul to see Sun and Ji Yeon. Hurley asks if anyone else is coming and we hears no, he is clearly relieved.  In the flashforwards we’ve seen a distance between Jack and Hurley in the Beginning of the End and even though Jack testified at Kate’s trial, in the last scene he was clearly uncomfortable being around her.  There is a distance between them all that seems to have nothing to do with survivor’s guilt.

If you were paying attention in the final moments when you saw Jin’s grave, there’s clearly a hint. According to his headstone, Jin died on September 22, 2004. We already knew that the Oceanic Six was lying about what happened to them and that they are lying about how many of them survived before they were rescued.  This tells us that they are saying that Jin died instantly. 

Perhaps that’s one of the reason Hurley comes to see Sun. We already know from his flashforward he was never onboard with the lie and it’s clear Sun isn’t either. With good reason. By denying that Jin survived, the Oceanic Six are forcing Sun to say that the love that flourished anew on the island never happened and since their daughter was a product of that love, her father. This would be a sin that would be hard for any mother to accept.  For the daughter of Mr. Paik… well, we’ve already seen the things Sun was capable of before the crash and we saw she was capable of violence on the island. There are clearly outside threats to the Oceanic Six after they were rescued. Is Sun now one of them?

VHS Notes: Some interesting movie ads. We see commercials for somewhat misguided disasters as The Ruins and August Rush. We also see a DVD for that marvelous Disney satire Enchanted on DVD, which among its other joys made the world officially aware of Amy Adams.