LOST AGAIN: EPISODE 1x17 - ...IN TRANSLATION

This episode of Lost Again brought to you by Rosetta Stone...language learning for individuals who might want to avoid false accusations with foreigners.

Flashbacks reveal life in Korea from Jin's perspective in this episode. He tells Sun's father that he is willing to do anything if it means he can marry her. Mr. Paik requests that he give up his dream of owning a hotel and come to work for him instead. Jin accepts gladly because Sun is the dream he wants realized above all others. He quickly realizes that working for Paik Industries is much more involved than just spending long hours at the office. His father in law soon has Jin making a house call to an influential public official who has displeased him. When this visit did not produce the desired results, Mr. Paik sends an assassin with Jin the next time to really hammer home the message. Ironically, through the use of extreme violence, Jin is able to save the official's life. To savagely beat a man in front of his wife and child sends a pretty strong message that eliminates the need for murder. This is the explanation for the blood Jin washes from his hands at home. Sun becomes aware of the brutal nature of Jin's work for her father at this moment, but she doesn't realize all he has had to endure for her sake. He has even denied his heritage by claiming that his father is dead. His humble origins, being a fisherman's son, embarrass him, so it is easier to avoid any interactions between the Paik family and his own. For all the sacrifices that Jin has made, he receives nothing but scorn and contempt from Sun, though her own father is the real villain.

The other survivors are uncomfortable watching from a distance when Jin goes off on Sun for wearing a "scandalous" two piece bathing suit. Don't ever go to Miami, Jin! Michael decides to intervene on Sun's behalf since he's got a little crush on her. She slaps him for his trouble. She later explains that she did it for his benefit. Jin is not someone to be trifled with, and if she had not rebuked him, then Jin would have beat him again. Michael makes a decision to stay out of whatever marital problems exist between these two; Sun is on her own.

Michael has other things to occupy his time anyway. He has been busy building a raft that will take 4 castaways, including Michael and Walt, off the Island. Jack asks who else has reserved a spot and is annoyed to discover that Sawyer bought his way on with building material he'd been hoarding. All of Michael's hard work goes up in flames when the raft is burned by a saboteur. Everyone immediately suspects Jin, and Michael and Sawyer are eager to exact revenge. Jack and Kate try to cool them all down, and make the point that there is no way to know for sure that Jin was the arsonist. Sawyer does not dwell on this point, but instead goes to apprehend Jin on his own. He brings him back to the beach where Jack tries to broker some sort of a peace. He is told to butt out, and the rest of the camp stands by and watches as Michael lets his anger propel him to beat Jin's face in. Reaching a breaking point, Sun intercedes for her husband and explains, in English, that he is innocent. Shock registers on everyone's face, including Jin's. There is some doubt over whether she can be trusted since she has been pretending since day one that she can't communicate with anyone.

Locke pours some cold water on the hot tempers by reminding them all that there are other people on the Island that haven't been too friendly in general. It doesn't make sense to suspect someone who would benefit from the raft's success. Locke suggests that it was one of "them". Considering the kidnapping and murder that Ethan was responsible for, arson seems like a misdemeanor that the "others" wouldn't have a problem committing. With Jin no longer seeming like the obvious culprit, he is off the hook. But Sun is on the hot seat with him now.

Jin is most unhappy that he had to learn about her bilingual abilities in this way. She has betrayed him and made a fool of him in front of everyone. They were having problems back in Korea, and he had made a decision, with some encouragement from his father, to start a new life with her in hopes of getting back on track. That meant leaving the employment of her father after the delivery of some watches to Australia and moving away where Paik could not influence their lives anymore. The Island represents their chance to accomplish this, and it is what they both want. Sun is contrite about her deception, and begs for a chance to start over and go back to the way things were for them in the beginning. But Jin turns his back and chooses to separate himself from her saying, "it is too late." She celebrates being a bachelorette again by wearing that bikini and staring defiantly out at the ocean.

Starting over isn't working for Jin and Sun, but Michael is determined to start re-building the raft. He uses the situation as a teachable moment for Walt, and despite the setback, he pushes ahead with his attempt to get off the Island. Jin joins his effort, and thus the fourth spot on the raft is taken. What Michael doesn't know, that Locke does, is that Walt was the one who burnt the raft. Someone neglected to give him the don't play with matches talk. Guess he'll be learning about the birds and bees from HBO.

In other Island developments:

• Sayid gives Boone a heads up on his blossoming romance with Shannon. Boone gives him an embittered warning about Shannon using men to get what she wants then dumping them. The real warning should be: don't mess with girls who mess with their step-brothers. Ew.


• A news story on Hurley winning the lottery can be seen on the Korean official's tv when Jin goes to give him a warning. Must have been a slow news day.
  

LOST AGAIN: EPISODE 1x16 - OUTLAWS

This episode of Lost brought to you by Ducket's neighborhood shrimp truck. Shrimp so hot it'll make you wanna slap yo mama....or avenge her death.

The episode opens with a young Sawyer witnessing the death of his parents. As he hides under the bed, his father shoots his mother then shoots himself. There are a couple things I am thinking at this point. First of all, we know that Jacob will be paying young Sawyer a visit in the very near future at his parents' funeral. At the same time, on an Island far away, adult Sawyer is happy and content with Juliet and has opted not to try to prevent his childhood trauma from happening. But the other thought going through my mind is how easily little James Ford could have turned into a Dexter Morgan with trauma like that. Lucky for him he only became a con man named Sawyer rather than a serial killer with a conscience. He does have the desire for revenge on the man that was responsible for seducing his mother and stealing the family's savings though.

When one of his old scam artist associates informs him that he has located the man responsible for all of Sawyer's family angst, he hops a plane for Sydney to settle the score. Finding the man working a shrimp truck, he finds it difficult to actually go through with killing him. So he heads to a bar for either liquid comfort or liquid courage. It is there that he runs into a miserable Christian Shephard who is on quite a binge. Christian shares the story of his recent falling out with his son and his belief that some men are fated to suffer. Just like the Red Sox will never win the series. (Back in the good old days anyway!) It is his way of shirking his responsibility in fixing the situation. He encourages Sawyer to do whatever he has to in order to avoid being in the same frustrating situation. After this uplifting pep talk, Sawyer works up the nerve to gun down the man he believes to be the original Sawyer. He quickly discovers that he was mistaken. His old associate had used Sawyer's intense need for vengeance to carry out his own dirty work. Whoopsie. With the dying man's last breath he utters the phrase, "It'll come back around."

This phrase comes back to haunt Sawyer in the jungle as he chases the boar that has invaded his tent and carried off his tarp. Sawyer is very disturbed by the whispers, but the fact that they are saying this particular phrase carries a horror of its own for him. After getting attacked from behind by the boar, he makes it his mission to track and kill the pig. Since this is an Island trek, of course Kate feels the need to insert herself. She offers up her tracking skills in exchange for the privilege of being able to get anything she wants from his stash at any time. She's got her eye on the gun Sawyer refused to give back to Jack after their Ethan escapade.

During the course of their search for Pumba, Sawyer becomes more convinced of the idea that the boar has singled him out to punish him. Locke adds some fuel to this fire by sharing an experience from his childhood. After his sister died in an accident, a dog showed up and his foster mother took it as a sign of comfort and reassurance from her deceased child. She acutally believed the dog was her daughter. When Sawyer finally has the opportunity to shoot the boar he's been hunting, his guilt prevails, and he decides not to. If there is even a chance that this boar is a reincarnation of the man he killed in Australia, he refuses to kill again. He doesn't need any more bad karma.

Meanwhile Charlie is struggling in the aftermath of shooting Ethan in the chest four times. Hurley asks Sayid to help Charlie since Sayid has some knowledge of post traumatic stress disorder. Sayid reaches out to Charlie by sharing the issues he experienced after executing a criminal. Taking a life, no matter how necessary, comes with baggage, and the best solution is to lean on friends rather than seek isolation.

Fulfilling his bargain with Kate, Sawyer goes to give Jack the last of the Marshal's guns. He finds Jack chopping wood and can't resist flaunting his deal with Kate. This leads Jack to utter his dad's favorite saying about the Red Sox. Sawyer realizes that Christian is Jack's father, but he does not share the information with Jack. Not yet. This scene is mirrored in the Season 1 finale in which Jack finds Sawyer chopping wood and gives him a gun to take on the raft. Sawyer tells Jack about his run in with Christian at this point in a very touching scene. So many daddy issues so little time.

In other Island developments:

• Charlie and Hurley bury Ethan. Of all the corpses on the Island, he would be the best zombie!



• Sayid should consider giving seminars to the islanders entitled PTSD: Killing Someone Will Haunt You Even if the Zombie Never Does. There are lots of survivors that could attend!



• Kate and Sawyer play a flirty game of Never Have I Ever. Never have I ever had an airplane bottle that has enough alcohol in it to last for an entire game of Never Have I Ever. Drink up you two.

LOST AGAIN: EPISODE 1x15 - HOMECOMING

This episode of Lost Again brought to you by the Heatherton C815 Copy Center. Anywhere. Anytime.

Locke and Boone have found Claire wandering in the jungle and bring her back to the caves for Jack to examine her. It becomes obvious that she is suffering from amnesia when she has a panicked reaction to all the people around her that had once been her friends. Jack explains the situation and reassures her that she and her baby are going to be fine. Naturally Charlie is relieved to see her alive and well, and he rarely leaves her side. When she asks for some insight into what had happened to them, who Ethan is and so forth, Charlie over-simplifies the situation by merely telling her that Ethan is the bad guy. He doesn't want to upset her with all the details of the harrowing ordeal. But in a way, for Charlie, it is that simple. Ethan is the bad guy. The man abducted Claire. He doesn't need any more information than that.

This belief receives some major reinforcement when Ethan attacks Charlie and Jin as they made their way through the jungle. He takes Jin out with a slingshot then lifts Charlie off the ground by the neck. With a menacing snarl he tells Charlie that if Claire is not brought to him then he will kill one person for every day that she is kept from him. There is not an inkling of doubt that he means what he says. Ethan really sucks! Thanks a lot for helping to birth him Juliet. It is puzzling to me why Ethan has scratch marks on his face. Claire did not scratch him; she scratched Rousseau. If I remember correctly, Alex told Claire to escape, so she never had to have a confrontation with Ethan. She just snuck away. Maybe Ben was so mad that Claire got away that he scratched Ethan's face in a fit of anger!

Charlie reports the altercation with Ethan, leading Jack and Locke to disagree on the proper course of action. Jack wants to go on the offensive, but Locke prefers a more thoughtful approach. It's best to avoid panic, so Locke wants to keep the information to a select few and set up a defensive perimeter around the camp as a measure of protection. They have no way of knowing if Ethan acted alone, so going after him puts them at a disadvantage. Jack sees the logic in this, but is uneasy with the thought that they have to sit around and wait for something to happen. (Which is exactly what he does when he returns to the Island in Season 5.) Kate suggests that it might be time to use the Marshal's guns, but Jack is even more resistant to the thought of putting guns in the hands of novices. So a sleepy Boone keeps watch overnight in addition to all the traps surrounding the camp. Too bad he can't keep his eyes open. Not that it matters since Ethan came into camp from the water and killed Scott in a gruesome and cruel manner.

Time to break out the big guns now! Jack hands out the Marshal's 9s to the men who are experienced shooters. Using Claire as bait, they plan to capture Ethan and get some answers out of him. Kate manages to weasel her way into the club when Sawyer gives her the gun he took off the Marshal in the pilot episode. Jack isn't thrilled with Sawyer intervening on Kate's behalf. He probably would have preferred to have her safely removed from the situation, but Sawyer seems to have enough confidence in Kate's ability to be able to handle it. Too bad no one shared that confidence in Charlie. He was denied a spot on the Ethan Hunt (pardon the cousin Tom Cruise pun).

This is especially offensive to Charlie because the whole episode highlights his struggle to embrace responsibility. He needs to prove that he can take care of someone. His flashback shows his heroin addiction leading him to con a rich man's daughter, Lucy. Finding himself genuinely liking her, he tries to hold down a stable job working for her father selling copiers. This is his attempt to leave his former life behind and become a potential provider for someone. His withdrawal symptoms interfere with his success, and he gets caught stealing a valuable antique from her. He tries to make amends, but she tells him he will never be able to take care of anyone. On the island, he is out to prove Lucy wrong.

With Ethan in pursuit of Claire, the others corner and subdue him. No one notices that Charlie is there. He picks up a gun that got kicked away in the scuffle and repeatedly shoots Ethan in the chest. Charlie believes the only real way of protecting Claire is to kill Ethan. Everyone is distressed that the chance to get information from Ethan is not possible anymore, but Charlie has no interest in anything but the absolute safety of Claire. Back at the caves, Claire approaches Charlie and lets him know her memory is coming back. She remembers peanut butter. AWWW.

In other Island developments:

• Steve needs a nametag because even Scott's death is not settling the confusion on who is who!
• Okay it didn't happen on the Island, but how awesome is it that Lucy's dad was going to buy a paper company in Slough! The Office fans getting some love.