Episode Report Card Sobell: B+ | 0 USERS: N/A YOU GRADE IT Married people never talk anymore
By Sobell | Season 1 | Episode 17 | Aired on February 22, 2005
And then Jin goes and has himself a flashback. He's in the apartment he shares with Sun and she's got her hands over his eyes, giving him directions on how to navigate through the apartment. When she finally sits him down and takes her hands off his eyes, we see that she's set up a romantic dinner by candlelight. Jin is appropriately awed and pleased. He kisses Sun on the cheek and she looks a little disappointed. She tells him she was hoping they could have a meal together; Jin tells her he's glad she went to the effort. As they prepare to dig in, Jin's cell phone goes off. Sun's face falls. Jin pulls the phone out, checks who it is, and then turns it off, telling Sun not to worry -- "No work tonight." He smiles, clearly intending to be reassuring, but Sun's only halfway to buying it. She gets back into the spirit of the meal and puts a morsel on his plate -- and then their landline rings. She and Jin have an entirely unspoken conversation, neither of them able to communicate to the other what they want: she wants him to ignore the phone and put her first; he wants her to understand that he's under a tremendous amount of pressure to please her old man. It's only because both actors are so good that this scene comes off. Of course, when you've been designed by a CAD program in the year 2525 and sent back in time, superior acting skills are a given. We'll just have to assume Yunjin Kim is ahead of her time.
In the next shot, we see that ruining a romantic dinner is the least of Jin's concerns. Mr. Paik is glowering at him. Somewhere in Calabasas, California, Nick Lachey has a flashback and begins rocking back and forth on his couch. The upshot of the Jin/Papa Paik conversation: that message Jin was supposed to convey had to absolutely, positively be delivered via a brutal beating or murder, and not via a simple statement. Mr. Paik's factory is currently closed (one presumes for environmental violations), and he's ordered Jin to accompany the new and improved messenger to Byung Han's house.
Cut to a shot that appears to take place entirely in the dark. Or maybe it's just that this show has a habit of obscuring important visual details in nighttime scenes. Jin's driving, and watching as Nameless Thug #1 snaps on some latex gloves, checks his gun and its silencer, and instructs: "Keep the engine running. I will be inside less than two minutes. When I return, you will not drive faster than the speed limit. You will take the car to the riverbank eight kilometers away. Do you understand?" If Jin doesn't, he's keeping that information to himself.