Jacob's Touch

In Dr. Linus, we learned from Richard that Jacob's touch brought about changes, changes that can be seen as either blessings or curses. We know that Jacob's touch made Richard never die (at least, by his own hand) and never age. It also appeared to me that Jacob's touch revived John Locke after his father pushed him out of a window eight floors above ground. We don't know if Locke would have aged, but we do know he could be killed - just ask Ben.

So, what are the rules of this touch? Are there rules? Clearly, some who are touched by Jacob can age, or else Kate and James Ford would be the oldest children ever. Actually, I can hear some of you say that Kate is a child, but you know what I mean. We know that those who have been touched by Jacob can be "claimed" or "infected", as we saw with Sayid.

Can Sayid, Jin, Sun, Jack, and Hurley age? Is it possible that they will never die? Or can they never die until Jacob or the Island is done with them?

Is it Jacob's touch that makes a Candidate? notLocke seems to think so. If so, then Kate is surely a Candidate, as are both Kwons. Is it the touch that makes the Candidate worthy? Or is it just an acknowledgment of their worthiness? Or perhaps the touch is just to make the Candidate safe?

And what about Ben? I don't remember this, but apparently, Jacob actually touched Ben as Ben stabbed him to death. Did this touch pass on to Ben any of the qualities we're looking at? Could it have possibly turned him into a Candidate? Wouldn't that be funny?

We have to adjust to the fact that not all questions will be answered, but I sincerely hope that we get answers to some of these questions. It might help explain why these people were brought together to the Island.

Sun-Hwa Kwon and Jin-Soo Kwon, Season Five

Well, I've covered the Dreaded Quad, the men who changed the most over the season, and lastly, the comedians. Now, I'm going to cover the couples. Sadly, there wasn't enough that happened to them in the past season for them to warrant their own individual entries. Even the couple that died really don't have enough to warrant something separate.

I debated whether I would start with Penny and Desmond or with Sun and Jin, but I decided that the iconic couple of the show should take center stage.

I've been misled by the couples in the past, thinking that Penny and Desmond were the iconic couple (see The Constant), but this past season, with Sun desperate to find Jin and Jin desperate to prevent Sun from returning to the Island, I've rethought it, and I now believe that our Koreans are the iconic couple of the series.

Granted, we never saw the couple together this season - with one important exception, which I'll talk about later. Instead, Jin and Sun spent three years apart, separated by geography and time.

Sun started the season clearly bent on revenge. When she watched the freighter explode she believed that Jin exploded with it. In her heart, she blamed two people for his death: her father and Benjamin Linus. She also wasn't very happy with Kate or Jack, either. We know she had some sort of plan, which involved surveillance photos and private investigation reports, but we're not sure that the plan was more sophisticated than a hostile takeover of her father's company and the murder of Ben Linus.

But wasn't she scary before the Ajira flight? She scared me. Her question of Kate, "How's Jack?" made the hairs on my neck stand up. I wanted to scream when Kate left Aaron with Sun. As Sun talked with Ji Yeon, I was nervous when Sun said she had a new friend for Ji Yeon to play with.

But scary, sinister Sun changed the moment Ben handed her Jin's wedding ring. Taking the ring as proof of life, Sun agreed to follow Ben on the crazy plan to return to the Island. After all, she tells Jack in 316, "If there's even a chance that Jin is alive, I have to be on that plane."

For reasons unknown to us, Sun did not flash to the 1970s like Jack, Hurley, Kate, and Sayid. She remained in 2007 with Ben and Frank. She watched Ben sneaking around, so she followed him. She agreed to follow him to the Island, telling Frank she had to trust him. However, once she had all the information from Ben she needed, she whacked him on the head with an oar. It was the last bit of spirit we saw in Sun, and I must say I'm sure I wasn't alone in cheering. At last, someone beat Ben at his own game!

Sun and Frank traveled to the main Island, where Sun met Christian. Christian showed her a picture of Kate, Jack and Hurley in the Dharma Initiative in 1977. He then told her to wait for John Locke, a man she thought was dead. The moment Ben and John find her in Ben's old house, Sun turns from a woman of strength to a woman who asked questions, mostly about finding her husband. Instead of being manipulated by Ben, she was manipulated by John. We last see her in the shadow of the statute, looking down at John's corpse, asking, as if anyone around her knew the answer, "If this is Locke...who's in there?"

Jin had even less screen time than Sun. He didn't even show up until the very end of the fourth episode, The Little Prince. His biggest moment was the episode This Place is Death, in which Jin meets Danielle Rousseau. It was a little amusing watching the Korean Jin and the French Danielle talk in English in an effort to understand each other. Sadly, Jin's English isn't that great yet. Somehow he understands the French are looking for the radio tower, and he gets across that he knows how to find it. Thus, they follow him into the jungle. He then gets to watch the French meet the Smoke Monster. Nadine is killed, and Montand is dragged into some vent, losing an arm in the process. The French hear Montand's voice and all follow, save Danielle, who would have followed, but Jin, traditionalist that he is, suggested the heavily pregnant woman stay topside. Jin then flashes away.

Jin flashes just a short time later, to find Danielle pointing a gun at Robert. He observes the interaction between the two, and cries in alarm when Danielle shoots Robert dead. Fortunately, Jin flashed again before Danielle's bullets could find him.

When Sawyer finds Jin, he is clearly thrilled to be with his friends, but devastated that Sun is not with them. He understands Charlotte when she tells him to leave Sun where she is, because "This place is death." Knowing that, he extracts a promise from John that he will not approach Sun, and if Sun asks, John will tell her Jin died.

After that, Jin maybe had a line or two per episode. He followed Sawyer into the Dharma Initiative, and joined security. His English greatly improved, and he appeared to be an accepted member of the Initiative.

You might have thought that Jin's finding of Kate, Hurley, and Jack would have increased his visibility on the show a bit, but instead, all we got was Jin demanding Radzinsky find the airplane that allegedly crashed on the Island. Jin's lucky day - he also was the first to find Sayid, probably saving Sayid's life. Jin also found the young Ben after Sayid shot him, bringing him back to the barracks. He stayed with Miles and Hurley when their ruse was revealed, but never took a very active part. He even stayed behind to take care of Sayid while Jack dropped Jughead.

The only time we saw Sun and Jin together was a flashback to their wedding. And a sweet wedding it was. One of their guests, unknown to both of them, was a man we know as Jacob, who touched both of them, giving his blessings. Jin commented on his excellent Korean.

I'm sure that we are all excited about what we are all hoping for - the reunion of Jin and Sun. I suspect that it will put Sawyer and Kate's reunion to shame, though it might not surpass Desmond and Penny's. But I certainly wouldn't want to be the producers if the series ends without Jin and Sun at least being together for a time.

The Actress

The Korean Julia Roberts has apparently been filming a movie called Harmony, scheduled to be released in 2010. I was not able to find much information about the movie or Kim's role in it. Yunjin Kim also was #72 in AskMen.com's Top 99 Most Desirable Woman Countdown of 2009.

The Actor

Daniel Dae Kim broke the Lost DUI curse. He was arrested on October 25, 2007 for a DUI. Unlike previous DUI offenders, however, Kim was not fired, his character was not shot to death, and he continued to have a role on the show. Just a very very small role.

He apparently has a role in a movie called The Adjustment Bureau, which stars Emily Blunt and Matt Damon and is set to be released in 2010.

The Temple

Here it is, another Lost-eve, and I’ve a few thoughts to share about the Temple. The Temple, of course, is where we saw Richard Alpert carry the unconscious young Ben Linus at the end of last week's episode. We don’t know a whole lot about the Temple, so I thought I’d compile what we know here, and then ask my questions.

We first heard of the Temple in Meet Kevin Johnson, when Ben gave Alex a map to the Temple, saying it might be the last safe place on the island. Oddly enough, the map has a Dharma logo on it. When Karl suggested that the survivors go with them to the Temple, Ben refused, saying, “It’s not for them.” We didn’t see the Temple until This Place is Death. Remember when Montand was dragged by the smoke monster/security system into the hole, losing his arm in the process? And remember that Robert, Lacombe, and Brennan followed Montand into the hole, after he called to them? Danielle would have gone into the well too, had Jin not been there to stop her. This occurred at the Temple – or its outer walls, at least. We saw the walls, covered in Egyptian hieroglyphs (there’s another line of thought –all the Egyptian symbols this season). Apparently there was an official podcast after This Place is Death, in which the producers reported that the walls we saw are just an outer perimeter. The Temple is inside these walls.

We know nothing else about the Temple. But after seeing what happened to Robert, Lacombe, and Brennan, and then after hearing what Richard told Kate and Sawyer about what would happen to Ben, it just elicited a slew of thoughts. In case you need reminding, Richard said:

If I take him, he’s not ever going to be the same again. He’ll forget this ever happened and his innocence will be gone. He will always be one of us. Do you still want me to take him?

Is it the Temple that turns people into “Others”? How does it alter them? Were the Frenchmen turned into “Others”? What about being an “Other” made them so deadly to Danielle? Who built the Temple – the “Others”? The Dharma Initiative? Who or what decides who goes to the Temple and who doesn’t? Why was it not for the survivors? Has Juliet been to the Temple? Has she been irrevocably changed?

Who are the “Others”, anyway?

I use quotation marks around the word “Others” because it appears that there are two kinds of Others. Ben and Richard are privy to the Temple, but Karl and Alex were not. And I don't know what the differences are.

I am thoroughly intrigued.

A Primer on the French

I’d heard that we’d learn about Danielle Rousseau this season, but I couldn’t figure out how. Turns out, skipping through time is the perfect device, now that Keamy has killed her. But I was a little concerned, because I couldn’t remember much about what we’ve learned about Rousseau’s team. So, I did a little investigating, and found the following:

Danielle arrived on the Island in 1988 with a scientific team of six members. She was seven months pregnant by Robert, another scientist who was on the same team. In Solitary, Danielle told Sayid that her team was 3 days out of Tahiti when their instruments malfunctioned. Their ship crashed into rocks and the team made a temporary camp on the island.

In Numbers, Danielle told Hurley a different story. Her team picked up a transmission of a voice repeating the numbers and the team changed course to investigate. It took them weeks to find the radio transmission tower near the Black Rock.

The team was on the island for two months when five became “infected”. They were apparently near the Black Rock, in “The Dark Territory”, where, apparently, Montand lost his arm. Rousseau claimed that the sickness took the members of her team one by one, but she did admit to killing Robert. Maybe she killed them all. She claimed she did this because of her fears of spreading the infection should they be rescued. She told Sayid that she believed the Others infected her team. She also claimed she never met the Others, just heard their whispers.

After the sickness came on the team, Rousseau changed the transmission. In French, it says, among other things, that they are all dead, it (or he) is outside, that Brennan took the keys, and if anyone can help, she’ll try to make it to the Black Rock.

Around the same time, she gave birth to her daughter, named Alexandra. She told the survivors that she delivered the child herself. Mother and child were together for a week, when Rousseau saw a column of black smoke. That night, her baby was taken from her.

We’ve now met all the members of the team mentioned: Danielle, Robert, Montand, and Brennan. I’m hoping that we spend some time in 1988 to learn more. And I have to wonder, will their rescue of Jin change time? We’ll find out. Soon I hope.