THIS WEEK ON LOST: The Package

After last week’s episode, anything was going to be The Great Comedown. That’s scientific fact. Half the people I’ve come across have considered the Dicky Alpert as Spanish Jesus episode one of the best episodes ever, and I’m in agreement. So yeah, I was expecting this week’s to be a bit of a drag.

Man, was I right.

Let me pose a question to you: What is the only thing more boring than Jin and Sun? Jin and Sun in LAX. Jin and Sun eating up an episode of LOST during its final season. This episode aggravated me to the point where I said “Fuck this” in the middle of some weepy, strained LAX moment and went upstairs to grab a Diet Dew and a string cheese. I was beginning to go insane with anger. I went upstairs from my nerd cave, grabbed the caffeinated bliss, and returned downstairs. Do you know what I missed? Absolutely nothing.

I can’t be the only one who is utterly apathetic towards Jin and Sun’s storyline, can I? I’ve never gave a fuck about them. I wrote about LOST for an entire month, and I never touched on them. And while my disregard for them may be more than most peoples’, I can’t imagine why I should care about them. As my friend Tommy Rock pointed out at the beginning of the season, Sun’s main purpose is to ask questions. Pay attention next time she’s on screen. The writers have used her as a mechanism for shitty exposition since I he dropped this knowledge on me.

How? Why? Blah blah blah.

And Jin? Jin’s a hot Asian dude in a tight white t-shirt.

So no, I don’t care about them on the Island, or in LAX. Sorry! They’re both candidates, but they’ve barely spent time on screen together. I mean, I’m a sucker for a good romance, but even I can’t rouse any emotions over whether or not they’ll wind up together.

But let’s get down into it.

On LAX, Jin and Sun ain’t married. But the dudebro is still working for her father. Sun’s gone from an annoying plot device on the Island to an annoying prissy chick in LAX. The two of them land in LAX under the notion that Jin has to deliver some money to Keamy (who is still awesome) in some sort of deal. Right. This is totally cool. Snore.

Across shitty LAX, Jin and Sun pine for one another. They roll around in bed and say sweet nothings and I resist the desire to barf and scream. Maybe scream while I’m projectile barfing.

At one point hunky Jin rolls out of bed after it is implied that he just got done making the sex. Let me ask you a question? Who puts their boxers on after sex? Usually I’m half-dead, laying there puffing, grasping at life. I’m a pathetic man. But even if I had the ability to move, I wouldn’t put on my dumb boxers. That’s the best way to get the human equivalent of Elmer’s Glue all over   the inside of the boxers. Not buyin’ it, yo! But it’s ABC, so yeah, I understand why. I’m just complaining.

Meanwhile on the Island, actually awesome stuff is occurring. In what was a truly genitals-tickling moment, Widmore and MiB have a showdown. These are two seriously old dudes with a high-enough Bad Ass Quotient to blow your mind. It is only contained by the power of the Island. Widmore is a particularly intriguing character, since it’s hard to figure where he fits into everything. We know that he wants the Island. We know that he was the leader of the Others before he was unfittingly displaced by Ben.

But is he acting on behalf of Jacob? Is he a third-party? What’s going on here. While I was racking my little ineffective brain over where he fit in, I couldn’t help but ponder the irony of him creating a trinity of people vying for the Island. I may be stretching. Whatever.

Widmore denies that he totally zapped Jin with a tranquilizer and stole him, and that really cheeses Smokey off. And then Smokey is like, you just fucking declared war, you old gorgeous British fuck. Wait, huh? I’m pretty sure that Smokey declared war when he destroyed an entire temple of people.

Much is   made throughout the episode that MiB needs all of the Candidates before he can leave. Why? Therein lies a question. Widmore and Smokey both seem desperate to collect them all like they’re fucking Pokemon cards. What exactly is the significance of all of them? Is it the threat of one of them replacing Jacob should they be left behind on the Island?

Or are they going to form some sort of sick Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers type-thing and kick-ass as a Meat Machine? That would be dope as hell.

Eventually it turns out that Jin’s been sent by Sun’s dad to LAX to be murdered by Keamy. Wait, huh? Why the fuck couldn’t Sun’s dad just have him killed Korea? Oh wait, I know why! Because then they wouldn’t be in LAX and it wouldn’t be totally convenient to bore me to tears with their storyline. Yeah, that makes sense. Send Jin overseas with $25,000 to pay his own murderer instead of not putting that sort of money into his hands and risk getting it confiscated. I don’t mind plot devices. However, I don’t like when situations are so contrived to create artificial tension that it becomes absurd.

Then Jin pulls the omega dumb-ass move. He fires a bullet in a confined space near a loved one. Doesn’t this dude watch any television? I can’t count how many times I’ve watched this scenario unfold. A man gallantly defends his loved one, fires off like fifteen bullets, and shoots the woman he’s trying to protect.

Seriously.

The moment he discharged his gun, all I could think was “This fucking idiot just shot his girlfriend.”

And what did you know? I was right.

Shitty Plot Device Count: 1

Not to be outdone by LAX however, the writers decide to fill Sun’s storyline on the Island with a shitty plot device. She bumps her head and loses the ability to speak English. She bumps her head and loses the ability to speak English. Are you fucking kidding me?

The literature nerd in me wants to prattle on about how Sun’s loss of the ability to speak English is a synecdoche for Sun’s inability to express her feelings over missing Sun. She goes from being emotionally unable to express them, to literally manifesting her inability in her loss of the ability to communicate. I GET METAPHORS AND SHIT.

It’s interesting, but whatever. In non-intellectual terms, it was fucking boring.

Let me sum up the rest of Jin and Sun so I can get to the cool shit. Sun goes all bitchy and refuses to help Richie Alpert. Then Jack makes he scrawl on a pad and convinces her to trust him. Jin gets locked up in a cage for no reason, if only to reference the Clockwork Orange room from Season 3. Then Jin talks to Widmore, who wants to show him The Package. There you go.

Shitty Plot Device Count: 2

How do you stop the Devil? With the package, brotha! I always thought that Desmond was going to fit into this confrontation somehow. There’s been too much made of his ability to ride the timestream like a fucking turtle shell in a Super Mario game. He’s special, yo. How exactly does he solve all of this? I have absolutely no idea. But having felt this way, as soon as Widmore made reference towards The Package being not a “What” but a “Who”, c’mon, you know it had to be our boy the Constant.

Oh, by the way, wordplay to dance around reveals creating annoying delayed tension?

Shitty Plot Device Count: 3

But how can you not be excited about the return of Desmond? I’m banking on Desmond’s ability to wade through different moments in time translating into his ability to walk through different dimensions as well. Maybe? I don’t know. There was a definite moment of recognition between Desmond and Jack at the beginning of the Season Premiere. And I mean, if he’s unstuck in time, why can’t he be unstuck also in uh, Transdimensional Space?

How does this equate to preventing Smokey from leaving the Island? I really have absolutely no clue. Can Desmond somehow jump Smokey into a different time/place/dimension? Is he going to merely lull the Smokey into happiness with his sexy accent?

As crazy as this sounds, I felt like Kate by the end of the episode. No, not in the sense that I was wondering if Smokey could fill me up with a ethereal dong or twelve. I mean, c’mon, you know that strumpet is contemplating how she’s going to seduce and ruin yet another guy. And why not the Devil?

No, I felt like Kate because I spent the entire episode sitting around. Nothing really happening. Just Kate, her venereal diseases and myself, sitting around in the calm before the storm. Waiting. And waiting. And waiting. While there were cool moments this episode, it felt like a lot of filler. Sure some of this is because last week’s episode blew me away. But also because this episode centered around characters I didn’t really care for, and more posturing.

The build-up towards the confrontation could have taken an episode. Maybe two. But yeah, they have a full season to fill. And while I appreciate and have acknowledged that this show has redefined our viewing expectations, I’m sort of exasperated.

Let’s go! Let’s do something. There’s seven episodes left. At some point everyone on the Island is going to have to stop sitting around and talking to one another, and actually engage in some conflicts. Seriously, the majority of this season has been sitting. And walking. Jack sits here. Jack sits there. Kate sits here. Kate seduces a Tree Branch there. Sawyer flings his mullet around in the Temple. Sawyer sits drunkenly in his house.

Sitting, walking, and waiting.

I’m ready for something else.