Season 4: Episode 7

A most boring episode with a confusing twist at the end.

Hard Facts

1. Sun is one of the Oceanic Six.

2. Jin’s tombstone marks him as having died on September 22, 2004, the date of Flight 815.

3. There were 324 dead bodies found on board the phony wreckage of Flight 815.

4. Michael is on the Barge and is now going by the name of Kevin Johnson.

5. Charles Widmore is paying for the Barge.

6. Regina commits suicide.

7. Not only has the Barge’s communication room been sabotaged but so have its engines been tampered with.

Clearing up some confusion

The last portion of the episode is somewhat confusing because it combined a flash forward of Sun with a flash back for Jin. To clear things up, the flash forward reflects that Jin has made it off the Island, is one of the Oceanic Six and gives birth to a baby daughter, believed to be Jin’s, in a Korean hospital. The flashback relates to events pre-crash when Jin was buying a giant panda as a gesture of goodwill to the Chinese ambassador whose daughter had just given birth to a baby boy. The presentation is somewhat confusing with the scenes from the lash forward inter-spliced with scenes from the flash back.

Analysis
This episode, aside from the confusion about Jin, in my opinion, was almost too boring to analyze.

1. Michael is Ben’s "man on the boat." No more analysis is required. We have been shown the key fact: Michael is on the boat; and he is utilizing an alias.

2. The identity of the Oceanic Six. They include: (i) Kate, (ii) Jack, (iii) Hurley, (iv) Sun, (v) Sayyid and (vi) a player to be named later. I am going to guess that Aaron is not included among the six. If that is the case, the sixth person I believe is Sawyer. A "LOST" reason to pick him is that the unifying factor among the five Oceanic Six identified to date has been that they were not on the beach at the time of the Pearl Station electro-magnetic blowout. Jack, Sawyer, Kate and Hurley had been led into a trap by Michael. Sayyid, Jin and Sun were on the boat exploring the other side of the Island. We now know that Jin will die. So, when you take him out of the equation, that leaves those six with a unifying fact of sorts between them. The importance of prior exposure to electro-magnetic radiation has been emphasized in Constants (Season 4: Episode 5) in which Farady attributed Desmond’s time consciousness traveling difficulties to potential exposure to electro-magnetic radiation.

3. Jin’s tombstone is consistent with Jack's testimony concerning the crash of Flight 815 entered into the record at Kate’s trial (Season 4: Episode 4). That testimony was that the Oceanic Six were among only eight people who initially survived the crash of Flight 815. It is uncertain whether Jin is counted among the eight. On the one hand, Jin’s tombstone seems to indicate that since he died on September 22, 2004 (i.e., the very date of Flight 815), he was not counted as an initial survivor. On the other hand, his having a grave site indicates that there were potentially some of his remains returned to Korea post-rescue.

4. The staging of Flight 815's remains. The Captain of the Barge attributes this to Benjamin Linus. However, in order to accomplish such a task Ben must have substantial cooperation with forces outside the Island. Oceanic Airlines’ complicity would seem to be needed in order to accomplish this task. After all 747's with Oceanic Airline markings do not grow on trees.

5. A current inconsistency in LOST relates to the purported need of Ben to have Jack operate on his spinal tumor. We now know that Ban can effectively travel at will around the World. One wonders, therefore, why he just didn’t check into the Mayo Clinic (or a similar institution) instead of placing his life exclusively in Jack’s hands. Is Ben a hunted man off the Island?