SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, sit down in the room with the big projection screen you used to use for subliminal-messaging experiments and watch last night’s Lost.
If many of the final-season storylines of Lost have been a trip down memory lane, reprising the first season with a twist, then “The Package” did that doubly for Sun and Jin. Practically, we had an aphasia-stricken Sun losing command of English while being able to understand it (where she had previously understood English but pretended to have no command of it). And thematically, we had a return to Sun and Jin’s relationship in the shadow of her father (but this time, with Sun trying to escape with Jin rather than from him).
It was, in many ways, an episode like the flash-sideways we’ve seen earlier in the season, and again we don’t quite know how it relates to the whole. But why I really enjoyed “The Package”–besides its bringing back Desmond as the eponymous cargo–was that the season now feels like it has a definite sense of momentum building toward a climax.
My concerns earlier this season, as I mentioned, was the lack of a defined objective–not in some philosophical sense, but in the simple practical sense of, “What are the characters trying to do?” Now we have an answer (at least partly): they’re trying to get off the Island while leaving Smokey behind (though Team Jack and Team Sawyer differ on their strategies).
It’s as if last week’s episode, the striking “Ab Aeterno,” was not just the center of the season but its center of gravity; it was like the planet a deep-space probe slingshots around to gain momentum toward its final destination.
“The Package” was also a welcome showcase for Yunjin Kim, who too often for the last season or so has been dragged around with the Ajira passengers without enough to do. We know that she came back to the Island to find Jin, but it’s been a while since we’ve really felt her drive, and the reason for it. Ironically, losing her (English) voice seemed to give Kim her voice back, as she showed the fierce, independent and determined woman Sun has become in the three years since she last saw her husband. (Daniel Dae Kim has some nice moments as well, particularly Jin’s look of aching happiness at seeing the pitcures of Ji Yeon as a girl.)
Which is one reason, whatever other purpose they end up serving, that the flash-sideways are useful: there’s so much story in this show at this point that sometimes it helps to have a little reminder. And speaking of reminders, this episode brought back not only Desmond–returned, drugged, to the Island for some purpose–but also the Worst Father-in-Law Ever, Charles Widmore, now returned to wage war, not against Ben this time but Smokey.
Meaning we’re looking at a showdown between the Island’s most dangerous monster, and Lost’s biggest off-Island monster. How did Widmore know to return now, and is he really the cavalry? Do we really have to root for either of them? I don’t know, but the renewed narrative momentum of “The Package” left me eager to find out.
Now the hail of bullets:
*Speaking of faces from the past, there’s Mikhail–new and improved, with two eyes! (At least until Jin rectifies the situation in their showdown.) It’s a fun callback, but since we know, in this version of reality, that the Dharma Initiative still existed, how did he come to be working for Mr. Paik?
*And speaking again of familiar faces, Kevin Durand is just playing the hell out of his role as alt-Keamy the hit man. Who’d have thought he would turn out to be one of the highlights of Lost’s last season?
* After the very serious “Ab Aeterno” episode, “The Package” returned with some choice, and generously distributed one-liners, from Miles (“Unless Alpert’s covered in bacon grease, I don’t think Hurley can track anything.” ) to Locke (“”I didn’t mean to startle you. Bad day?”) to Sawyer (“You think if I could do that I’d still be here on this Island?” “No, because that’d be ridiculous”) and even to Zoe (“Maybe you should put a mercenary in charge instead of a geophysicist”).
* While we got relatively little from Sayid and Claire this episode, what there was was chilling: Sayid’s horrified admission that “I don’t feel anything,” Claire’s being told by Smokey/Locke that once Kate has served her purpose, “Whatever happens, happens.”
* I say that it seems the central characters’ goal is to get off the Island without Smokey, but does one of them need to stay behind as Smokey’s jailer, replacing Jacob? If so, who’s it likely to be?
* Has there been a more annoying on-screen ad than the “countdown clock” ticking down the seconds until it was time to change the channel and watch Justified for the midseason premiere of V?
