RECAP: Lost - "The Package"

God I'm getting really sick of this show. I don't know why I bother writing these recaps, other than to vent my frustration. This week's episode was one of the more useless this season; infuriating because they only have like 6 episodes left to wrap up their storylines. These damned side-flashes are going nowhere fast, and I have no idea how they're going to resolve the problems they've created without pissing everyone off (oh wait, I forgot, it's Lost. They don't care whether they piss everyone off or not. Sigh). Anyway, read on for the full recap.

This episode centred around Jin and Sun, and the side flashes began with Jin being released from custody at the airport (if you recall, he had an undeclared $25 000 in his bag). The money has been confiscated, and Jin is worried because he was supposed to deliver it along with the watch to someone at a restaurant meeting. They go to their hotel, and we learn that in this reality, Jin and Sun are not married. They are still in love, however, and after they do the nasty, we learn that Sun has planned for them to run away together. She has an account full of money for them to start a new life in America. She is just about to confess something to them, when Martin Keamy shows up at their door.

Keamy brings in Mikhail (the impossible-to-kill Russian from season 2) to translate for him (evidently in this reality, Sun doesn't speak any English), and demands the money. Sun offers to go to the bank to get it out of her account, and Keamy takes Jin to the restaurant while Sun and Mikhail go to get the money. Unfortunately, Sun's father has closed the account and taken the money back. At the restaurant, as he ties Jin up in the storage room, Keamy reveals that he had been hired by Sun's father to kill Jin. Sun's father had learned of their relationship, and the $25 000 that Jin had been carrying was actually Keamy's fee for the assassination.

As we had seen earlier in the season, Sayid shows up and kills everyone. He then gives Jin a knife so that he can cut himself free. When Mikhail returns to the restaurant with Sun, Jin pulls a gun on him, and they struggle. Mikhail is killed, but not before he fires wildly into the air, hitting Sun. Jin picks her up to take her to the hospital, and she reveals that she is pregnant.

In the present (or 2007, or whatever), someone is spying on Evil Locke's camp with night vision glasses, although we are not shown who it is. Evil Locke leaves, and Jin tells Sawyer that he is going to leave the camp to find Sun. Before he can go, however, everyone is shot with tranquilizer darts, and Zoe and her associates take Jin away.

Back on the beach, Ilana tells Ben that they are going to stay there and wait for Richard to return and tell them what to do. Sun storms off to her garden, yells at Jack for spouting more bullshit about there being a reason that they are on the Island, and angrily gardens for a while (because if there's anything that can vent some frustration, it's angry gardening). Evil Locke arrives and offers her the chance to come with him to be reunited with Jin. She takes off running through the tall grass (God I wish some velociraptors would just show up and eat everyone--it'd almost certainly be a better ending to the show than the one the writers probably have planned), but she falls and hits her head. When she comes to, she only speaks Korean (because why the hell not, right Lost writers?).

Jin wakes up in the Hydra Station (in Room 23, where Karl had been forced to watch crazy TV in season 3), and Zoe tells him he is there because they found Dharma maps of pockets of electromagnetic energy on the Island, and the maps have Jin's signature on them (from when he was in the past).

In a discussion with Evil Locke, it is implied that Claire still wants to kill Kate, and that Locke will probably let this happen once he's done using Kate to collect the other candidates. He leaves with Sayid to go get Jin back, but when he arrives on Hydra Island, he is alone. He talks to Widmore (separated by the pylons that Widmore's people have set up on the beach), and says that war has come to the island.

Jack inspects Sun, and declares that she has temporary aphasia, because of course that makes perfect sense (shutup Lost writers). Richard arrives and says that they're going to go to Hydra Island to destroy the plane, but Sun starts ranting in Korean (with convenient subtitles although nobody in the scene can understand her), saying fuck that, she's only on the Island to rescue Jin, not to save the world. She storms off, and Jack follows her. He tells her a charming story about a man he conveniently met in his residency who had the same sort of temporary aphasia as Sun, and gives her a pen and paper so she can communicate (because she can still write in English, why not?). He promises that if Sun comes with them, he will help her find Jin.

Jin, meanwhile, meets with Widmore, who gives him Sun's camera from the Ajira plane. Jin gets to see pictures of his daughter for the first time (aww), and Widmore says that he's there to stop Evil Locke from leaving the Island. He tells Jin to come with him, because he's going to show Jin "the Package," which is "not a what, it's a who." The episode ends with Commando Sayid sneaking through the water toward the submarine, and seeing some of Widmore's people hauling someone out of the Submarine (presumably the Package?)--it's Desmond Hume.

Sigh. I don't even know where to begin tearing this episode apart; there are so many frayed edges. The side-flashes did NOTHING to further the plot (if anything, they only muddied it more), and the present scenes didn't really move anything along either. It's enough to make me wonder if the Lost writers are even aware that they only have a few episodes left, or if they're holding out for a series renewal or something stupid like that. Evil Locke is great, but he's not really doing anything productive, so he's getting annoying again. He just keeps going around the Island talking to different people, but nothing seems to be coming from his conversations, other than reinforcing the fact that he's now creepy and evil. Hurley and Miles are just taking up space in the background nowadays, throwing in the occasional comedic line, and even Sawyer was relegated to comic relief this episode (there was actually a pretty funny bit about whether or not Evil Locke could just turn to smoke and leave the Island). Kate and Claire seem to be heading toward another big confrontation, but it seems like a confrontation that's just going to happen without either of them actually doing anything to make it happen. Even Jin and Sun, the people the goddamn episode was centred around, did virtually nothing (Sun just sat and sulked, while the only significant thing that Jin did was to meet with Widmore, and we didn't need a full episode to make that happen). A lot more happened in the side-flashes, but again, they're completely useless (unless the writers are going to somehow have the two timelines interact at some point, and if they're going to do that, they need to do it soon).

Just hurry up and end, Lost. I need to move on to the next show that's going to ruin 6 years of my life.