Lost Episode 10: The Package

I’m enjoying some of these double and triple meaning titles that the writers of Lost are coming up with. Last night’s episode was titled, “The Package”. Now there were two clear references to a “package” in the episode. There was the package of money Jin was supposed to deliver to Keamy and never did, and there was the package being held on the ship which we find out to be Desmond. However there is also another possibly more important “package”. There has been speculation about which of the Kwon’s is the one written on the cave wall, signifying their candidacy. But maybe it isn’t one, maybe it’s both, maybe they’re a “package deal”. Kind of corny, but wouldn’t that make sense?



While the plot was of this episode felt a little disjointed, we’re slowly seeing how all the pieces fit together which I think makes everything much more exciting. While Charles Widmore may have never been a “good” guy, he is on the good side, fighting with Jacob and friends to keep Smokey on the Island and prevent him from infiltrating our world. Smokey needs to take all of the candidates off of the island with him, I guess so there’s no one remaining to stand as guardian and keep him on the Island. We also learned a little from this encounter of what it might possibly mean to have Smokey enter the world outside of the Island. Widmore said that Penny, Jin’s daughter and everyone they care about would cease to exist. (BTW, loved that scene with Jin looking at his baby girl on the camera.) I guess Widmore’s statement can be taken two ways: 1. That Smokey being unleashed would result in death across the world or 2., And I think this is more plausible, Smokey being unleashed would result in a state of soulessness across the world. Like Sayid is now, that’s how everyone else would be, and so they would be just as good as dead.

As I’ve said before, I think a lot of this comes down to the idea of choice and the choices we see our characters making. Jacob is all about freewill and while he wants people to choose the good side, he is going to leave the choice up to them. What good is having a world of robots? Smokey on the other hand doesn’t care and would just rather have a world of soulless robots like Sayid is now. So I think that’s what we’re up against with the MIB/ Smoke Monster. I thought his conversation with Sun fed into this. While he said that Sun had a choice, that he wasn’t going to force her to do anything, he clearly is trying to do just that. Locke pretends to present options to people but really doesn’t, as seen with the temple. If you’re not going to follow him, you’re dead. Jacob presents options to people and then leaves it at that, it’s up to you.

There was also one minor detail that really stuck out to me in this episode, and I’m not sure if it might be a clue to what is eventually going to happen on this show. After Jin shot at Mikhail at the end of the episode, we saw a shot of his eye all bloody. Same eye that he would wear the patch on in the timeline that we have been witnessing. That made me wonder…does everything that happened in the regular timeline, eventually happen in the alternate timeline too?

I guess that can’t make sense because then people like Charlie and Boone and Alex would have to die, and I don’t know if the writers are going to make us witness their deaths all over again. I mean how horrible would that be with Alex considering her alternate timeline story. But I just kept thinking of Desmond and Charlie’s interaction in the third season. Desmond kept on having premonitions of Charlie dying—he saw ahead in the timeline—and so he did what he could to try to stop it. But eventually he realized that there was nothing he could do, it was Charlie’s destiny to die, (“You’re gonna die Charlie.”) And so Desmond’s attempts to change the timeline worked for a little while, but eventually it went back to the course it was supposed to take. Charlie died. HOWEVER…

Desmond’s attempts to change the way time played out weren’t for nothing. Charlie didn’t die some ridiculous death like getting shot by a poison arrow. His death was heroic and was instrumental in getting our characters off the island. So that means that while you can’t completely change the effects of a timeline, you can change things slightly. So what does this mean for that alternate timeline? We see slight changes, but everyone is basically still on the same path? Again, a lot of what these characters are realizing in their alternate timelines—acceptance, love, selflessness—are realizations that they came to on the island over the past three years as well. But then how does Sun getting shot and possibly losing her baby fit into that? Doesn’t really work, so I’m not sure.

Next weeks episode looks like it’s going to focus on Desmond, and so I think it is going to (or I hope this episode is going to) be huge in helping us understand these two timelines. One other thing about Desmond—he is the one character with the ability to travel back and forth in the space-time continuum in a non-linear way. We’ve seen that 3 or 4 times with him already. I’m guessing this is why he is going to be instrumental to reconciling the two timelines. Is he the one who is going to be able to retain memories of both timelines and so be able to somehow bring the characters together? We’ll see…

Couple of other notes:
• Loved the witty banter on the beach after Sun got hit on the head. Especially Ilana’s line to Ben about why she doesn’t trust him, “Because you’re speaking.”
• Does anyone feel like there are way too many commercials during these episodes? I feel like we’re getting more commercial time than show time.
• I’m getting kind of nervous about the approaching end. I’ll be so sad without this show.
• I keep forgetting to mention this, but Hurley wearing the red shirt, not good, not good at all…
• Sun needs a doctor to take care of her and her baby…does this mean we get to see Juliet?!