A Heartbreaking Loss on Lost
My reactions to
Lost are almost always extreme. Extreme excitement, nervous confusion, fear and joy and wonder all mixed up in one spectacularly emotional bundle. This week,
Lost earned the ultimate compliment in the Roush playbook. It made me cry.
Yunjin Kim and Daniel Dae Kim have long been among my favorite actors on the show, and their backstory is among the most romantically resonant. The island saved Sun and Jin's rocky marriage, a union tested by class differences and the self-loathing Jin suffered by having to perform bad acts in the employ of her father. Her surprise/miracle pregnancy was a blessing, but also (given the fate of pregnant women on this island) a curse. In their latest audacious spotlight episode, a gimmicky and uneasy collision of flashback (for him) and flash-forward (for her), we learn that Sun did make it off the island to have her baby: a daughter named Ji Yeon, per Jin's wishes. Jin, however, was not so lucky. His race to get to the hospital with a giant panda toy was not to celebrate their own blessed event, but was merely an errand years earlier as a lackey for Papa Paik, sucking up to an ambassador with whom his father-in-law was seeking favor.
Nice trick, but by keeping Sun and Jin apart for all the off-island scenes - her in labor, he desperately trying to get to the hospital - it begged the question (since we are already predisposed to expect the unexpected on this show) that we were being bamboozled here. And given how solicitious he had become toward the love of his life - he was willing to pack up and go to Locke's barracks no matter what, just because that's what Sun wanted - it was hard to believe he wouldn't be at her side throughout her delivery. He was there, all right, in her heart and mind, but only as a phantom.
I was already a puddle of emotion before the climactic reveal, when on the island Jin reconciled with Sun, bringing her dinner (after Juliet had spilled the beans about Sun's affair, an attempt to keep her in Jack's camp). Having seen the karmic light in a tender tete-a-tete with Bernard, Jin acknowledged that her affair was in response to the man he used to be, a man who withheld affection. Not the better man he became on the island. "I thought I had lost you," Sun wept, thankful to be forgiven. (Although the fact of the matter is, Sun was the first to forgive, which is why their bond is so strong.) "And you will never lose me," Jin promises.
A sentiment that made Sun and Hurley's visit to Jin's grave so wrenching. "I miss you so much," she weeps, and right there was Yunjin Kim's Emmy reel. Heartbreaking.
If I'm ambivalent about the narrative trickery it took to get to this point, with the gimmicky surprise setting up the tragic ending, there's no denying the emotional impact of these performances.
Of course, like anyone else who's watched this show, I'm not convinced Jin is actually dead (though I'm at peace if he is, because we sure got the full impact of his absence in this episode). We still don't know why there's only an official "Oceanic Six," and the circumstances of how and why anyone left the island are still clouded in mystery. He could still be on the island, along with many others. On
Lost, there's always hope.
As for the episode's subplot on the freighter, some good exposition with the captain. But the revelation of Michael as janitor "Kevin Johnson" was no doubt an anticlimax to many, since the show and the network decided as long ago as last summer to reveal the return of Harold Perrineau (who absurdly has been in the cast-regular credits all season long). I'm dying to know how he got there, whether he's Ben's onboard "spy" and all that, but this is an example of when the industry's need to satisfy an audience's appetite for advance spoilers works against the show's best interests.
For another take on
Lost, see [
http://community.tvguide.com/blog-entry/TVGuide-Editors-Blog/Cheers-38-Jeers/Lost-Sun-Rises/800035514]Cheers & Jeers[/url].
