Broken Frontier

No English! Brush up on your Korean and your subtitle reading skills, because this week's episode of Lost brings back the language barrier like its going out of style. Even though last week’s “Ab Aeterno” is a tough act to follow, “The Package” succeeds in getting us right back into the action on the island after last week’s interlude into the past.

“The Package” brings back the flash-parallel format after the flashback intensive episode last week. This week the flashes center on Jin and Sun together, who are still separated on the island, but are in tandem in the strange parallel world. The first surprise in the flash-parallel is that Jin and Sun are not married, although they still are lovers. Jin’s problems with customs confiscating his undeclared cash soon become the least of his worries as Keamy shows up demanding the cash. Jin is held as collateral as Sun scrambles to find a way to scrounge up $25,000. We find out that the cash was ironically Keamy’s fee to remove Jin from the picture after Sun’s father found out they were involved. Sayid wastes Keamy and his gang, as seen in “Sundown”, and helps Jin escape. Sun arrives on the scene with Keamy’s Russian translator, who Jin dispatches in a gunfight, but not before Sun gets hit by crossfire. As Jin carries her out of the gangster’s hideout, Sun finally has the time to admit to her lover that she is pregnant.

Things are starting to heat up on the island-timeline between Un-Locke and his acolytes and Widmore's sub-club. The episode begins from the night-vision perspective of Widmore's attack squad, lurking as Locke tells Jin that he or his wife is a candidate. While Locke is off trying (and failing) to seduce Sun over to his team, Widmore's lackeys strike his vulnerable camp, succeed in capturing Jin and take him to Hydra Island. Elsewhere, A knock on the head leaves Sun only able to speak Korean, Un-Locke confronts Widmore on Hydra Island, cross wearing Richard starts barking orders like he’s possessed, and Sayid takes a swim and meets up with and old friend returning to the island against his will.

This episode is pretty par for the course for season six. The last-minute revelation was great, but was also rather expected. Sun’s linguistic reversion was a neat plot twist, but seemed far-fetched even for Lost. It will be interesting to see what will happen, as all three groups of characters seem set for a showdown on Hydra Island. Next week looks like it will be a doozy, so stay tuned to Lost.