I know that I’ve been a little overly critical with my weekly analyses recently, so let me just begin by saying that tonight’s episode was nothing short of amazing. There was about two shows’ worth of information crammed into a single hour, and although the writers introduced some interesting subplots along the way, they weren’t nearly as good as the complementing stories featuring Jin and Sun. I love these two so much, and yet they seem perpetually stuck as secondary characters who only get their time in the limelight once a season. Nevertheless, their Earth-2 storyline has been one of the best so far, particularly because it marks the first time that one character’s alternate reality overlaps with another. I speak, of course, of Sayid’s discovery of Jin (bound to a chair and locked in Keamy’s walk-in fridge) at the end of “Sundown.”
The events that led to Jin’s rescue, however, weren’t exactly unforeseen. While the reveal that Jin and Sun weren’t married was a bit of a surprise, you’d be crazy to think they weren’t still romantically involved. The playful nod to the button during Sun’s seduction scene was a great callback to the first season, and though Sun wants Jin to run away with her using a secret bank account that she set up in her name (much like she originally planned to do on her own on Earth-1), Jin is worried that her father will disapprove of their “forbidden” affair. As it turns out, he was right, because the confiscated $25,000 that was stashed away in Jin’s luggage was actually payment for his assassination. Luckily for him, Sayid took out Keamy and his right-hand man before they could carry out the death sentence, although that didn’t stop Sun from still taking a bullet to the chest, courtesy of Keamy’s translator, Mikhail, who quite unluckily becomes the One-Eyed Russian in this reality as well after Jin shoots him in self-defense.
Of course, when it comes to bad luck, no one has had it worse than Jin. He’s been kidnapped by the Tailies, nearly blown to pieces in a freighter explosion, shot by Crazy Claire, and then kidnapped again in two different realities. On Earth-1, it’s Widmore’s crew who has done the abducting, presumably to use Jin’s desperation as a tool against Smokey. They know he’s a potential candidate and only interested in being reunited with his wife and child, so if they can convince him to join their team, they’ll have a major leg up in the impending war. How they plan to use Jin, however, is still unclear, but it obviously has something to do with some maps he drew while working for Dharma that details the electromagnetic areas of the island. And for anyone who thought that Richard’s scene with his wife at the end of last week’s episode was a tear-jerker, then you must have been positively balling over Jin’s emotional reaction to seeing his daughter for the first time. Talk about tugging at the heart strings.
Of course, one of the things that makes SXSW such a great place to watch movies is the venues. The theater experience in Austin is hands down one of the best in the country – from the historic Paramount Theater to the Alamo Drafthouse. While the Paramount is typically a more star-studded affair, complete with a red carpet and the opportunity to see a movie with its director and stars sitting just a few feet away from you, the Drafthouse (both the Ritz located on 6th Street and the South Lamar, which is a short drive from downtown) is a little more intimate. Star-crazed attendees will find little in the way of celebrity sightings, but the chance of seeing a hidden gem like Best Documentary winner, “Marwencol,” more than makes up for it. Plus, midnight showings of genre films like “
