Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Sacrificial Ham
By Cindy McLennan | Season 5 | Episode 5 | Aired on 02.11.2009
Mainland; Long Beach Marina Slip 23; Evening: We pick up where we left off last week. Sort of. Here's how I recapped the last scene of last episode: Kate gets in his face and demands to know why Ben doesn't just stay away and leave her and her son alone. And maybe Ben needs to die to get back to the island, because he takes his life in his own hands when he answers: "Because he's not your son, Kate." The music intensifies and we zoom out from this not-so-tender scene, and then in on Sun. She's sitting in a nearby car, with a sleeping Aaron in the backseat. Upon the front passenger seat sits the surveillance photos of Jack and Ben, the investigative report and her purse, from which she removes... THE GUN! She opens the car door and we jump to... Notice the part in bold: "She opens the car door." I stand by that. I stand by it, because I watched it about five times before I wrote it, then checked once more after I wrote it, and just checked again, now. There's definite door movement. It's quick, but it's there. I've even checked in slow-mo. But that was then...
This is now.... Sun -- nostrils flaring -- watches Kate rip Ben a new one. Her cell phone rings. She picks it up with her right hand that is so not holding a gun. What the heck, Show? That's cheating. Did you neither read nor watch Stephen King's Misery? I hate that. Discontinuity aside...or wait. Was it? See, this is what time travel stuff does to me. Maybe this is a totally different visit to that moment at Slip 23 and maybe this time the phone rings because someone who can break the rules does and influences the caller to...oh frak. I can't go there or I'll never finish. Let's pretend, at least for now, that it was just cheating. Please?
Anyhow, Sun's caller ID picture shows a beautiful little Asian toddler. Sun picks up the phone, and it's her mother, who isn't actually a toddler. Age-appropriate Mama Paik is back in Korea, holding actual-toddler Ji Yeon on her lap, and asking Sun where she is. Asking that question over the phone was more in fun pre-mobile phone days. Sun tells her mother she's still in L.A., finishing up what she came to do, and will be on a plane home -- tomorrow. (Whenever that is.) Then Mrs. Paik puts Ji Yeon on the phone and oh my word I am DED of the CUTE.
The subtitles inform me that Sun tells little Ji Yeon, "I met a new friend for you in America. His name is Aaron." And let me tell you, the fandom is in a tizzy, thinking Sun means something more sinister by that -- something like taking little Aaron from Kate -- but I don't think so. I think she was just telling her daughter one of the few things about her trip that you could tell a three year old. I mean, what is she going to say? "I got a box of chocolates with a gun in the bottom layer, and I'm just about to blow out the brains of one of the men I hold responsible for your Daddy's death. Talk to you later, sweetie. Tell Halmoni to give you an extra hug and kiss from me."