The Tail Section

Your Voice: Why “Ji Yeon” Must Not Happen Again

Lost Recaps — March 15, 2008 at 8:49 am by admin

Submitted by Giovanni

It says something about the generally high standard Season Four has set that Thursday night’s episode, “Ji Yeon”, should come as its biggest letdown.  The mistake that the writers made in penning it reminded me of a wrong turn that the Alien series took in its third installment, and which proved its killing blow. Thankfully, Lost’s writers have never shown any other such potent errors as to lose our trust, and as long as the mistake I shall illustrate here is never repeated, the show will go on just fine.


However, in the interest of preventing the article from seeming totally one-sided or negative, let me point out what went right in “Ji Yeon”.  The season-launching “Beginning of the End” and “Confirmed Dead” were a wisely-lauded break from the slow-to-start beginnings of the previous two seasons, and were both fantastic, action-packed, mythology-expanding episodes.  However, after the airing of the first few episodes of the season, I couldn’t help but notice that this newfound breakneck pace, while a welcome breath of fresh air, was uncharacteristically non-character-driven for the show.  That is to say, Lost’s narrative was beginning to feel more like “Robinson Crusoe-meets-24” than the intensely personal, interlaced story structure we’d come to associate with the show.  I for one didn’t want this tone to become a permanent change, but rather just a new weapon in the arsenal of the show’s writers, to be used when appropriate.  And episodes like “Eggtown”, and “Ji Yeon”, while perhaps lacking in the mythology department compared to “Confirmed Dead”, do feel like the Lost we know.

While Desmond-centric “The Constant” has undoubtedly become the standout of the season thus far, for masterfully balancing both the mythos of the show and the character arc of one of it’s heroes, it had an inherent advantage in that Des’ story is so very central to the heart of Lost, and has been ever since his first flashback in “Live Together, Die Alone”.  His is a dramatic tale of epic love across space and time — meaty stuff for any writer to relish the opportunity to dive into. (This “relevance of arc” is also why there’s been nary a weak spot in main man Locke’s anthology — and why I’m willing to bet, once we see more of it, there won’t ever be in Ben’s, either.)  On the other hand, Jin and Sun, our featured players in “Ji Yeon”, have always run the risk of feeling peripheral to the story of the Island.  Heck, at the onset of Season One, they seemed totally isolated, bystanders unable to communicate with anyone else until it was revealed that Sun, in fact, spoke English.  Although we couldn’t have understood it at the time, by introducing Sun’s pregnancy in Season Two, the writers had found a naturalistic way to weave the duo into the fabric of the mysteries of the Island, in a dynamic, drama-heightening way.  They’ve capitalized on that in both “D.O.C.” and “Ji Yeon”, and I give them props for that.

Also of note, it was nice to watch Bernard’s touching scene with Jin here, and it made me realize how Jin, having just stormed off away from Sun, is no longer as dependent upon her as he had been prior to learning any English.  A guy I know once directed a Lost musical he’d written as a student piece, which included a jab in one of the numbers about Rose’s cancer storyline disappearing.  It was nice to hear more about her and Bernard’s story, as “S.O.S.” is one of my all-time favorite episodes — just goes to show that an episode can be non-mythological and still be very memorable, on the basis of simply being moving, honest, well-written television.

And lest I forget about the return of Michael — although to say too much about it would be a digression — what an awesome, awesome moment.  It will be even better for people who watch the series for the first time years from now, and who won’t have been spoiled by the Harold-at-ComicCon appearance.

Now, onto the not-so-good:

I had mentioned the demise of Alien at the top of the article.  As you’re probably familiar if you’re reading this (let’s be real), Alien introduced us to a then-unusually-strong female protagonist by the name of Ellen Ripley, who killed an alien and blew up her own spaceship.  Aliens, subsequently, sees her decades into the future, after she’s lost everything she once knew due to the fact that she’s been in deep-space hibernation the whole time.  Over the course of the film, she rebuilds a sense of self being among a squad of space marines and becomes a surrogate mother to an orphaned young girl, rescuing her from a colony of the same killer bugs she fought off before.  In fact, James Cameron specifically lensed several shots in the film as three-person frames, to create the union of Ripley, the girl Newt, and one of the marine protagonists, Hicks — foreshadowing that they might have a life together in the future.  The dark settings of the series now had a counterbalance, the presence of hope and redemption — something which brought a thematic depth and honesty to the series that put it leagues above other horror flicks.

Then came Alien 3 – and within the first five minutes, Newt and Hicks are killed.  Not just off-screen dead, mind you, but graphically, tastelessly shown as horror-stricken (in Hicks’ case) corpses;  Ripley now finds herself among a bunch of one-dimensional aggro prisoner-types and performs an autopsy sequence on the child;  the movie suffers tremendously as a result.  Why?  Not just because their interesting dynamics had been unceremoniously cut off, but more importantly, because the viewer now had no reason to care about the proceedings.  They had experienced clear manipulation on the part of the writers, in a move designed to garner a shock-and-awe effect.  All that kind of thing ends up doing is turning the audience off thanks to its mean-spiritedness.

It was for this reason that ABC wisely warned the writers of Lost that killing off Jack halfway through the pilot episode was a terrible idea.

Thankfully, nothing so dramatically horrific occurred during “Ji Yeon” (Imagine if Claire and Aaron had both drowned and their bodies washed ashore — Yikes!).  However, what did happen is that we got ten minutes’ worth of flashbacks involving Jin — flashbacks that served no purpose other than to misdirect us and mislead us into thinking this would be a fairly uplifting episode.

Essentially, we’re lead to believe, up until the last five minutes that we’re seeing the birth of Sun’s child, and that we’re following Jin as he does everything he can to play the reformed husband and be there for his wife in a moving gesture of devotion and fatherly pride.  Instead, what we realize, is that the whole thing’s an elaborate contrivance that mushes together flashforward with flashback, for absolutely no purpose other than to make us think something wonderful is happening when in truth, Sun’s cries for Jin to be at her side are helpless delusions as he is, presumably, dead.  Meanwhile, our journey with Jin just turns out to be more of his pre-crash self performing his duty as a servant to Mr. Paik.  There’s no redeeming element, just getting our hopes up and then dashing them with a hollow twist.

It’s disappointing, seeing as how what makes Lost’s twist endings so great is their ability to add meaning to, not detract meaning from, what you’ve just seen.  The flashforward device the writers’ have begun to employ is an extremely powerful one, but one which by their own admission must be used carefully, lest it simply screw with the audience.  And in “Ji Yeon”, it did just that.

While it is an intriguing prospect, and one unique to Lost, to be able to tell a narrative in three different timespans concurrent to one another, with each added layer of complexity, the writers must become ever-more vigilant that they are not simply confusing the audience.  And bearing that in mind, it’s virtually inexcusable that they should try to intentionally misdirect the viewers with a ploy like this one.

True, they mislead us in “Through the Looking Glass”, but the reveal was phenomenal:  Watching, one was not focused on the fact that their perception had been twisted, but rather, one was excited for the realization that a whole new epoch in the story had been opened.  In that case, the tool was used responsibly to great effect, as it has been with the flashforwards of Hurley, Kate, and Sayid since.  But this was, to be frank, a cheap trick — something they flirted with (forgivably, in light of the rest of the episode’s shine) with Ben’s inexplicable voice-change in the final moments of “The Economist”, but unfortunately, “Ji Yeon” was simply a bridge too far.

Still, Alien had far less chances for redemption, as a movie franchise is made up of only a handful of films. Lost’s running time is enormous in comparison, and one bad move is certainly forgivable, considering the remarkable elements which they have given us for four years now.

Let’s just be glad it probably won’t happen again.

————————————–

"Your Voice" is a new TTS series in which Tail Section fans submit their articles, theories or reviews to be published on The Tail Section for all their fellow fans to read.  Have you spent far too much time pondering the origins of the DHARMA Initiative?  Have you alienated your co-workers by rambling about Daniel Faraday’s wacky time anomaly experiment?  If so, we want to hear from you.  Send your own Lost theories, reviews, or general thoughts to Editor(at)TheTailSection.com.  Please keep all submissions between 300 and 1,000 words.  We will read through all submissions and contact you if we publish your entry.  You will also receive byline credit on our site.

Which Lost Character Are You?

Exclusive Interviews

Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof LOST
Doc's Exclusive interview with Lost show runners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof.

Doc Interrogates Benjamin Linus himself!

Doc encounters William Mapother and gets the lowdown on the Ethan Vs. Locke cut scene.

Doc interviews the portrayer of his namesake! Daniel Roebuck!

Doc gets the truth out of Dr. Marvin Candle / Wickmund / Haliwax

Doc finds out what on of Lost's best writers ever is up to.

Doc catches up with TLE's Rachel Blake, Jamie Silberhartz!
Fans of America's Next Top Model | Big Brother | Big Brother 10 | Dancing With The Stars | One Tree Hill |

Powered by WordPress

Terms Of Use