"D.O.C."

DECEMBER 5, 2010

FOCUS: SUN
EPISODE: 3.18
AIRED: APRIL 25, 2007

Why are all of the Sun and Jin flashbacks really just Sun flashbacks? Was S1's "In Translation" the only one that was truly Jin-centric? “D.O.C.” is no different; Jin is only in like 2 of the flashbacks, and it’s a sort of romantic comedy version of the guy, where he’s the perfect husband and tells her how beautiful she is pretty much every time he speaks. Meanwhile, Sun’s off playing hardball with her dad, getting icy with ex-hooker mothers, and enjoying tea with Jin’s dad (who is easily the most understanding and forgiving man in the world – “your son told me you were dead.” “I don’t blame him. Tea?”).

Anyway, it’s one of their better episodes, thanks to one of the first signs of post-Island Sun, who was angry and defiant all the time. I love when she talks to her dad, and the threat to the blackmailing mom is pretty scary. Hell, she’s even like that ON the island for once, charging at Juliet and such. Go Sun! Apparently Yun Jin Kim is a huge star in Korea; this is one of the episodes where it’s easy to see why.

Also, it’s the 2nd episode this month to have a female driven island plot, with Sun and Juliet going off to the Dharma station with all the medical equipment so they could give Sun an ultrasound and determine the date of conception. It’s a bit of a stretch – we know she was screwing around with that bald dude, but he died, was buried, etc – even if that was the same WEEK as their plane crash, wouldn’t she have noticed she was pregnant long before she did? There’s about 40 days’ difference between the time the baby was conceived from the last time she hooked up with Lee (again, assuming that their affair/his death occurred the week of the Oceanic plane crash, which seems rather unlikely), if he was the father then she’d be in her second trimester by now.

Meanwhile, Desmond and the others are trying to deal with Naomi (aka Not Penny), who has a branch in her lung. Luckily Mikhail runs in from somewhere and saves her. And it’s here that Desmond says “you’ve killed more of them than they have of you”, which is a line I remembered vaguely but couldn’t recall if I had missed it. I certainly didn’t remember that it was Desmond who said it – which now sort of confuses me: how did HE know that? He wasn’t around for S1 or most of S2 – did someone fill him in with all the details of their conflict with the Others? I can just picture Hurley and Desmond eating mangos with Hurley bringing him up to speed. “So Ethan killed Scott (or Steve), but then Charlie killed Ethan, so we were even. But Sawyer and Kate shot a couple of them on our way to get kidnapped, and Sun killed Colleen, so we’re ahead now.”

Another nitpicky thing I never really thought about – how does Naomi have that particular photo of Desmond and Penny? It was taken by a guy on the street and given to Desmond, who has seemingly held onto it through thick and thin. How’d they get a copy? And why THAT picture? This is the drawback of having a well written cast of characters – mishaps stick out a lot more. Mistakes like this on something like 24 I wouldn’t even notice, let alone care about.

According to the Lostpedia, this is the last traditional episode of Lost in terms of flashbacks, as the rest of them would include flashbacks to things that happened on the Island (or flash forwards, or flashes to the most complicated and rule-heavy afterlife of all time). I will miss them! Sometimes the flashbacks were more interesting than the island adventures (I could always use a few more stories of Jack and Christian butting heads), and more often than not it kept an episode from being a total waste (i.e. “The Long Con” – terrible island story, but a decent Sawyer flashback). Adieu.

Where are we?