'Lost': Course Corrections for 'The Package'
It's roughly 24 hours later, and fans of "Lost" are still buzzing about the meaning contained within "The Package." Luckily, I didn't venture my first instinct as a guess for the title (a "Crying Game" scenario involving Zoe) beforehand, so as far as you know, I correctly predicted Des as the titular reference in this week's episode. But I'm not here to brag. I'm here to look again at the episode after a night's sleep and some time to digest views and opinions from Zap2it readers and various and sundry folks all around the interwebs.
So, without further ado, here are eight more things about "The Package."
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Given the amount of Dharma-related data in the possession of Charles Widmore, I'm going to make a prediction: he was behind the pallet drops in Season 2. Like many of you, I'm waiting for all the pieces of the Des puzzle to fall into place (and it looks like that will happen sooner rather than later), and I think the pallet drops were part of the plan to keep Desmond fed during his initial stint on the Island. Another prediction: Des was picked for his "special assignment" long before he met Penny, who threw a major wrench into Widmore's plans. But just who set Widmore in motion in the first place to send that Scottish bruthah on a one-way boat ride to the Island, eh?
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Speaking of Des, I think a lot of people are over-analyzing the title of last night's episode, suggesting that the title refers to Sun/Jin as the Combo Kwon, if you will: a package deal of a candidate. And sure, Jacob touching them both at once is worth noting and analyzing. But to literally think the episode was called "The Package" was a reference to them seems a bit far-fetched. If anything, the title is a misdirect in a more mundane way: you're led to believe for most of the hour that it refers to either the watch, the $25K, or both. Instead? It's a MAN, baby, YEA! Sorry, had to let out my inner Austin Powers for a moment. Won't happen again.
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One thing that struck me while reading various recaps of the episode: people sure like to apologize for liking Sun/Jin. I found this weird, as I was unaware that these were not characters that fans enjoyed. I can see fans not enjoying the directions in which they have been taken by the writers, but disliking Sun and Jin? Really? Would love to hear thoughts on this. Clearly, I'm a fan of the couple, with Jin's initial goodbye to Sun before boarding the raft in Season 1 as emotionally stirring as his seeing Ji Yeon would have been had the ABC promo monkeys not botched it by airing that silly "V" countdown on the bottom right of the screen. Speaking of that...
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It's hard to unite "Lost" fans about anything, but boy, they universally loathed that countdown. We're talking Nikki/Paulo levels of hate. I feel bad for both "Lost" and "V," since I'm fairly sure neither show had any say in this countdown. (Actually, I'm pretty positive at least Damon Lindelof had no idea.) And I'd love nothing more than for Elizabeth Mitchell to be a huge freakin' star. I'm not a fan of the show, but I wouldn't actively dissuade anyone from watching it. But that countdown irked the very people ABC was hoping to keep around after the conclusion of "The Package," and essentially sabotaged a long marketing campaign designed to bring fans back into the fold after its long absence. Just a debacle.
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In light of last night's episode, I think I'm going to fire up "Do No Harm" this weekend, which features Jack/Sun at their Season 1 finest. As I wrote in the recap last night, I really loved their early interactions on the show, and having Sun overcome her Season 5 hate for Jack last night made my heart happy. As I hoped before Season 6, we're starting to finally see Hero Jack return, and while it's a slow burn, it's organic. After all, what would you rather have: a deliberate build-up to true heroism, or insta-hero post-Jughead detonation? Exactly. Looking back, his rock-bottom moment was telling Dogen that he didn't even trust himself. Since then, it's been a gradual build-up of confidence, and that will only increase as the season continues.
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All season, I've been droning on and on about how I've been waiting for the moment in which someone in the sideways timeline looks into a mirror, only to see someone looking back. Naturally, it happened last night, and I totally missed it. In related news, I'm awesome. When Sun looks into the mirror after we see Island Sun run into the tree, she puts her hand up to her face slightly. I was focused on Island Sun's sudden lack of English, and failed to consider that Sideways Sun could have also been feeling the bump from the other timeline.
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Sun's aphasia also bore a striking resemblance to another mundane, medical malady earlier in the season: the "disappearance" of Sideways Aaron inside Claire's womb. Now, he didn't technically "disappear"; as Dr. Ethan Goodspeed noted, the lack of heartbeat wasn't an abnormal occurrence. And aphasia's not exactly an unheard of condition. in a show in which cancer comes and goes, the crippled can walk, and the healthy suddenly suffer appendix attacks, can we really just chalk these events up to simple biology? Examples such as these are what make "Lost" an endlessly fascinating show to analyze. (I'm contemplating a future article analyzing the stripping of Sun's voice as indicative of the stripping of her agency and independence, thereby cementing her importance and level of threat in Smocke's eyes. But I need to do a little more background on that before I get lambasted by any women's studies majors for mucking up the lit crit behind this analysis.)
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Finally, I'll end as I always do: with this week's mix tape. But I'm also going to start off each of these from now on with a TV series suggestion, based on the most recent episode. This week, inspired by Sun's notepad, I'm suggesting that people watch "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," start to finish, once "Lost" is over and you need something to fill the gaping hole of quality television in your life. As mentioned in the recap, that notepad instantly called to mind my second-favorite episode of "Buffy" ever, "Hush." If you saw it, you know why. If you didn't, it's about halfway through Season 4. So start watching!
Onto the tunes: Sun/Jin have a lot of epic, romantic songs from which to express their torment in two timelines. U2's "With or Without You," Dusty Springfield's "I Only Wanna Be With You," and Travis' "Love Will Come Through" all fit nicely into this category. Keamy might throw Beck's "Lost Cause" in the jukebox if he ever caught the two canoodling, however. A better title for tonight's episode might have come from Pearl Jam's "State of Love and Trust," which pretty accurately describes the tone and tenor of the hour. But since that's mere wishful thinking, A Perfect Circle's "The Package" will have to do. For Sayid's nautical journey, R.E.M.'s gorgeous song "Nightswimming" works...well, swimmingly. And in honor of the pylons standing between Widmore and Smocke, I dedicate Belinda Carlisle's "Circles in the Sand." (Don't even front. You LOVED that song when it came out. And if you're too young to remember it, um, don't tell me.)
Those are my thoughts 24 hours after "The Package" aired: what are some of yours?
Ryan invites you to join the hundreds already in Zap2It's Guide to Lost Facebook group.
Photo credit: ABC
Circles in the Sand!! I love it. Haven't heard that in a LONG time. Something is wrong with me that I automatically can call up the chorus...
She was just adjusting her hair. I'll be honest, the comments in the recap actually got me to go to my DVD and rewatch the scene. Very obviously fixing her hair. At no time does her hand go anywhere near her actual forehead.
As for the mirror scenes, they're just symbolism IMO. Nothing magical going on (at least any more than what's going on with all of Sideways in general) or it would have already been detailed more.
Jin also had his mirror shot reflected in the cold steel of the refrigerator.
I don't believe ComboKwan is "The Package". I'm leaning Ji Leon is the second meaning of the package because she was crucial in both timelines.
The V countdown during the camera scene didn't bother me at all; I don't think I even registered it. But it was really annoying when Sun was writing responses to Jack - I couldn't read some of what she wrote! Yes, I could figure it out, but it really detracted from those moments for me.
I have a question - In "The Incident" didn't Ilana tell Bram, et al, that Frank was a candidate? What up with that?
Oh, and I don't remember Sayid having a "mirror shot" in "Sundown"....guess it's time to revisit that ep for me!
You all heard it here first: Desmond Hume is Jacob's son.
I know it sounds crazy, especially now that the Christ imager from season 3 has signficantly slowed down, but I think that the signs are pointing to this still being a possibility.
Think about how important Desmond's role has been on the island. And yet, why have we never seen a moment where Jacob touches him? Also, why is Desmond not listed as one of the numbers? This could mean that Des was never meant to be a replacement so much as he was meant to perform miracle-type jobs for his father.
This leads me to another interesting question my wife and I had last night: What should we make of the fact that all of the candidates, aside from Kwon, are unmarried? I think its significant that Jacob is choosing people without significant ties to a mainland life. And the one case where we do have a married candidate, Sun and/or Jin, they are both along the ride together and therefore won't have to sacrifice their relationship in order to fulfill Jacob's request. Could this be why Des is not listed as one of the numbers? Maybe his deep ties to Penny void him from being able to take control of the island.
Delicious food for thought.
Man, I sure love Sun and Jin, and thanks for bring up the raft goodbye moment, because that was one of my favorites. Heartstrings definitely went tug there, and I admit that I got all girly inside during every Sun/Jun episode, and I'm far from ashamed. Probably one of my better qualities.
So, no apologies, I love Sun and Jin, dude.
Yeah, I agree that Widmore was always working from a Des/Island perspective, Ryan, rather than an anti-Des/Penny perspective. That's why he gave Des her address--which was totally out of character for him--during The Constant. It was because once Widmore got Des to the Island, then he had to keep him alive so he could use him.
Question is, how is he to be used? I think it's to be the guy who remembers everything when they all end up in Sideways World. Des is the backup plan. Widmore's going to use him sort of the same way Faraday, Widmore's son (who he sacrificed), used him: to send a message through time and space.
It seemed to me that we got a lot more truth than we could accept in last night's episode. It reminds me of Michael Emerson's quote while on Kimmel: "What if you saw what the show meant but couldn't recognize it?"
I think Emerson was talking about how hard it is to believe anything we see on Lost after six years of double-switches, so perhaps we will be slow to realize it when they start giving us unvarnished answers. So, for example, I've seen a lot of people who think that maybe we can't take Ben's redemption seriously, but I just think it's too late for massive flip-flops like that anymore. Stuff is now for real.
I think the funny lines from Sawyer, Miles and Ben last night all pointed this idea up, rather than being them trying to joke about the sometimes seeming silliness of the story. I think they were very straight with us last night, and I think they kept pointing it out, as people being truthful kept being met with comic disbelief.
So we got Ben getting ragged even though he was being totally truthful, which I took as meaning that we should start accepting what we are hearing as true, but that maybe we aren't doing so because we are so preconditioned to look for the fake-out.
And Smocke needs a boat because he can't fly over water. Why else would he need it? I was one who kept wondering about that, refusing to just look at the straight answer, so Sawyer making a joke about even needing to ask that question was aimed at me, I think--and I thought it was funny as hell. I'm as guilty of pretentious subtext analysis as much as anyone.
This Island story seems to be ending just as the Sideways story is amping up. Episode 13 is supposed to be the beginning of what Darlton has called the final chapter, and I don't see this current Island war lasting past that. It looks to me that Smocke's getting off this Island and creating the Sideways world. Then it will be up to our Sideways Losties to pick up the ball and run with it.
This is where I lean on things today. Ask me tomorrow. I may change my mind.
I have to say I agree about Jack's character in season six. I have not liked Jack since season 1. He seemed to force decisions because he felt like he always had to do something as the leader of the Castaways. But his journey as led to a quite confidence and sense of purpose Locke wanted him to feel from the start.
Mikhailllllll!!!!!
Speaking of the one eyed wonder, do you believe Mikhail is still on the island? "The package was his first appearance since the Season 3 finale and we have not seem him die (well at least on island). Do you think we will see him this season? And if so, what roles do you speculate he could have?
Thoughts: Sun is pregnant and has been shot. Get her to the hospital! Quick we need a BABY DOCTOR to help the baby and maybe a SPINAL SURGEON to fix the wound, stat! Paging Dr. Juliet Burke and Dr. Jack Shepherd. I'm also calling an off the cuff moment between the doctors after a job well done: "want to get coffee sometime? We can go Dutch."
Also hurley is going to go see a doctor for whatever emotionally traumatic reason and Libby will be his doc!
Also jacob touching both Jin and sun didn't mean they had a gift, but it was given to their child! FakeLocke needs all of the candidates to die before he can leave the island but he doesn't realize that not all the candidates are on the island.
Hey everybody, sorry I've been offline for almost a week but I've been sick. But the fever finally seems to be gone as well as most of the other symptoms (except the cough), so hopefully I'm almost well.
But before I even read Ryan's recap and course corrections -- much less get started on all of the reader comments -- I have to say how upset I was with the episode Tuesday night.
Not so much with the episode itself (though I thought it was sub-par), but with ABC for having the utter, unmitigated gall to have a HUGE "V" countdown timer taking up a good chunk of the lower right-hand portion of the screen for virtually the entire episode!
And if you tried to just block it out with something (which I did), then you missed a whole bunch of subtitles and other important things (such as what Sun was writing on the tablet)!!!
Now granted I was sick, and never had any intention of watching "V" no matter what (I thought it was lame the first time around decades ago), but I really got angry when I realized that there would probably little outcry amongst LOST fans who would probably still watch it because of the one actress being in it or because they are so desparate to watch something to fill the coming void.
But I, at least for one, do not plan to watch any more ABC shows ever... and I'm not even sure I'm going to watch the rest of LOST. I may just decide to wait until it comes out on DVD rather than continue to have to put up with not only the insane amount of inane commercials, but then when we finally get a few precious minutes of show we have to have these pop-up advertisements all over it.
NO WAY. Not any more. I hope everyone else will boycott ABC until they change their ways too.
Okay, I'm going to go read Ryan's recap and such now... I hope it turns out that I'm not only only person who was outraged about the countdown timer (and the less than top quality of the episode overall).