Season
4, Episodes 7 and 8- “Ji Yeon” and “Meet Kevin Johnson”
Summary:
In
flashback, Jin struggles to get a stuffed panda to a newborn baby as a business
gesture. Sayid and Desmond receive aid from Lapidus and an unknown stranger. After
Lapidus takes Keamy’s team to the island, Regina commits suicide, and Captain
Gault reveals his boat is being sabotaged by someone, and that this freighter
belongs to Charles Widmore. He tells them that the plane wreckage, and the
bodies found inside, were faked and that is why they want Ben Linus. They then
learn that Michael is onboard working as a deckhand. Distrusting the freighter
crew, Sun plots to move to Locke’s camp, and Juliet tries to stop her for her
safety. She reveals to Jin about the other man Sun slept with, causing a rift
between them, and convinces Sun of the consequences of not leaving. In
flash-forward, Sun goes into labor and the baby is delivered, which she names
Ji Yeon. Hurley arrives and they visit Jin’s grave marker.
Ben
tells Locke’s group that if he is captured by the freighter people, their next
orders are to kill everyone else – and that Michael is his spy. Danielle, Alex,
and Karl decide to leave for safety. On the boat, Michael is sent to work on
the engine, and Sayid and Desmond confront him about how he got here. In
flashback, we see Michael trying but failing to kill himself, and seeing
visions of Libby. He is forbidden by his mother to see Walt, and runs into Tom
on the street who says the island won’t let him commit suicide and that he has
to go back. Tom says Widmore staged the flight wreckage, and that Michael must
redeem himself by infiltrating Widmore’s freighter and stop it from killing the
people on the island. He arrives on the boat and meets the crew, finding Keamy
practicing with his firearms. He receives a call from Ben telling him that he
is on the good side that protects innocent people, and Widmore is not. After
learning the story, Sayid and Desmond bring him in front of Gault. In the
jungle, Karl and Danielle are killed by Keamy’s mercenary team, and Alex is
taken hostage.
Review:
Let’s start with the bait-and-switch. It
seems obvious now that Jin’s flash story couldn’t have been in the future (it’s
too irrelevant and contained no references to being an Oceanic 6,
notwithstanding the need to get to a birth), and to be honest I’m not even sure
what my initial thought was on it. I may have seen a spoiler confirming Aaron
as one of the O6 but I don’t even remember anymore. Some people loathe it, but
I find it harmless, and even a little bit funny. The reveal of Jin being “dead”
is almost completely limp now that you know he survives the explosion – and
there’s an odd interaction between Sun and Hurley when he arrives and says, “Is
anyone else coming?” and she responds “No.” He then smiles and says, “Good.” It
seriously looks like they’re about to bone. Always skeeves me out when I see
it.
The on-island drama between Sun and Jin
is mostly a dud, although it gets some needed information out there. The
episode is kept alive by the freighter interactions, where we meet Captain
Gault, and Michael’s warning to “don’t trust the captain” still doesn’t really
make sense to me. We’ve got Keamy forcing Frank to take his team to the island,
and Regina commits suicide by wrapping chains around herself and jumping into
the ocean. There’s just a lot of madness going on, and if we didn’t already
know of Harold Perrineau’s return, I’m sure Michael’s reappearance would have
made me giddy.
Finally we get to fill in the gaps of
Michael’s adventure, and the uninterrupted flashback format is served well. We
focus mostly on his anguish at not seeing Walt and grappling with the murders
he committed. I would have liked to see him try to reintegrate, and explain to
his mom how the hell he is still alive. How much does she know? It’s not
relevant in the bigger picture, so we can’t spend time on it, but that would
have been interesting. We have to hit a few different points, so there’s not
much time for Perrineau to give us a strong emotional scene, unfortunately.
Libby’s appearance has very little impact.
It initially seems like Ben’s fake-bomb
trick is pointless, and conceived just to impose some tension. But with Ben’s
call, it actually makes sense. He needs to convince Michael that they are the
good guys, and would not kill the innocent people on that boat. (Ironically,
Ben gets an innocent – Alex – killed in the next episode.) Keamy’s oafish
infatuation with his firearm practice serves as the tipping-point for Michael
to carry out the mission, and reinforces the perception of Team Widmore as reckless
and bloodthirsty. So with all the information at hand, the bomb scene legitimizes
itself. The harder pill to swallow in “Meet Kevin Johnson” is the sudden exit
of Danielle (and Karl, but how many of us really cared about Karl?). She was
such an integral part to the island mythology, was a presence from the
beginning, and didn’t appear enough to overstay her welcome, but she’s killed
pretty dismissively. And without a proper backstory; which we eventually get in
season five but it was something that I think needed more time. She also barely
had any development with Alex, which was the whole point of her character.
Connecting the Dots:
Jin is thought to be dead after being on
the freighter when it blows up. Of course, he is not.
The bodies that Widmore placed in the
staged wreckage came from dug-up graves in Thailand.
Tom seems to suggest early in season
three that the discharge prevented the ability to come and go from the island,
yet we see him here in New York after that statement was made. He never fully
says that they are unable to leave, because he is cut off, but that’s what was
implied. However, given that it’s never explicitly said, we can’t exactly say
that it’s a plot hole.
Ranking:
1.
The Constant
(10/10)
2.
Confirmed Dead
(9/10)
3.
The Beginning of
the End (8.5/10)
4.
Meet Kevin
Johnson (7.5/10) (It’s a piece-mover/plot-filler episode but it covers a lot of
ground and unravels more dynamics of the freighter.)
5.
The Economist
(7.5/10)
6.
Ji Yeon (6.5/10)
(The freighter mysteries are about the only interesting thing here, as the
beach story is wheel-spinning.)
7.
The Other Woman
(5.5/10)
8.
Eggtown (5/10)
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