It’d be nice if someone can tell us for sure. “On the way” seems a really bad time to ask a dangerous stranger, “So, why am I following you into the dark jungle?”
-Joe
Anyone else think Juliet has fudging the data about the D.O.C.? How can a sonogram be accurate to within one day?
It shouldn’t be hard to get Kate to take a pregnancy test. Juliet can easily convince her that she needs to know. Maybe they don’t want her to know, though, since they probably want her to do experiments on once she does get pregnant.
I liked this episode overall. I’m glad to see Mikhail’s not dead – he may be an Other, but he’s a decently cool character. I’m not sure Jack would have been able to save Naomi’s life so easily.
The real highlight for me, though, was Mr. Kwon. Best acting I’ve seen on this show bar none. The look of contented happiness with the world, the sheer joy when he met Sun, the pain when she told him Jin goes around saying he’s dead…I nearly wanted to weep in sympathy. It’s a real shame Jin feels he has to hide his background, because I don’t think I’ve seen anyone on Lost as deserving of acknowledgement and kindness as Mr. Kwon.
As I said above, they can get it within a week in real life. The doctor told me the exact date of conception - but admitted that it was an approximation that could be off by as much as a week.
Take it was you will. Maybe Juliet’s Fertility Ninja Skillz are so good she’s even more accurate than my mundane doctor was.
-Joe
I’m not defending Sun, because I agree with wasson that she’s a pretty bad person. However, I don’t think she was happy about the baby being Jin’s so she can feel better about herself or believe she’s a good person. She knows she’s not. I thought she was relieved that she doesn’t have to keep lying to Jin, and that she can carry this baby without the added guilt of knowing Jin will suffer as his father did, raising a kid who isn’t his, with a cheating bitch of a mother. She doesn’t have to keep hurting Jin, in other words, with this pregnancy.
At least, that was my take on it-- she’d rather die, at this point, than keep deceiving Jin or hurting him more. She loves him now in a way she didn’t before they came to the island, and that’s her motivation in this situation. Doesn’t make her a good person, just one that wants redemption, which all our Losties are, aren’t they?
Yup. Especially in early pregnancy like Sun is, sonogram is quite accurate. More so than in say, the third trimester. They may be exaggerating a little to say it’s accurate to the day, but within a few days is possible. Certainly enough to figure out whether conception happened before or after landing on the island. They have been on the island what…about 90 days? And by Juliet’s estimates, Sun is supposed to be (IIRC) 53 days along, about 8 weeks or so. (Incidentally, that is 8 weeks pregnant “from date of conception.” Usually nowadays Dr.'s give you a due date based on day 1 of a woman’s cycle, which adds 2 weeks or so on to the pregnancy. So she would be considered 10 weeks along by those estimates, and that is usually when a woman has her first Dr. visit and can often hear the heartbeat. So that appears to all check out.)
So whether or not she is off a few days really doesn’t matter, I think. The important issue is before or after landing on the island, and that seems pretty clear.
Yes! I agree with this. No one in this show (with the possible exception of Hurley) is a “good person” who has never made bad or selfish choices. Not Sawyer the con artist and cold blooded murderer. Not Locke, the submarine-destroyer who got Boone killed in his quest to open the hatch. Not Kate the bank robber and daddy-blower-upper. Not Charlie. Not Desmond. Heck, I don’t exactly see how Jin’s actions - engaging in acts that he knew were wrong in an effort to hang on to the woman he loves, and eventually becoming resentful of her because of it - differ that much from Sun’s - taking money from her father in an effort to spare the man she loves shame and pain, and eventually becoming distant from Jin because of his resentment.
Everyone slips. Everyone is selfish. Everyone lies.
I think the point is that each person is defined by what they do after they slip; that’s what the island is all about.
No one in the real world either.
I guess the difference is that Jin’s “mistakes” were things he was forced into because of Sun. He didn’t make the choice to become the enforcer… Sun made it for him and resented HIM for it. Jin knew the consequences for trying to leave Sun’s father, and he sure wasn’t going to do that. They were living a good life before Sun messed it up.
Not trying to be argumentative, but have we seen Desmond lie or be selfish? I mean, temporarily getting Charlie into the jungle, but he redeemed himself quickly by saving his life even though his selfish part wanted Charlie dead.
He acted poorly toward Penny, but that was, again, because of “the greater good” and what he felt he was destined to do, not necessarily because he was selfish. If he was selfish, he wouldn’t take on his duty to save the world and dump Penny. Or for that matter, dump (whatever her name was… Ruth?) to become a monk.
He did do something that landed him in jail, but we still don’t know what that was.
Desmond and Jin are my favorite characters, mostly due to their selfless and “good” behavior, on and off the island.
Desmond’s flaw is that he ran away. He may have had good reasons, but he still ran away from Ruth and Penny. Difference between the two is Penny doesn’t want to let him go. Hell, I wouldn’t, and I’m straight. 
I agree, though, Desmond and Jin rank up with Sayid as the three coolest characters on the show IMO. They’re all level-headed and good people who aren’t trying to ahem con anyone, and I’ve been so very pleased to see Jin gradually gain acceptance over the course of the show.
Desmond is a bit of a coward, that’s true. I think it’s a mistake to call him selfish, though.
Well, except that Jin was so concerned about his own reptuation that he denied his own father, depriving his father of the chance to meet his new daughter-in-law, and told everyone his father was dead - including lying to his wife - rather than admit to his paternity. That is both selfish and ungrateful (to his father). Had he not demonstrated by his actions that his own honor was so important to him that he would lie to defend it, Sun likely would not have felt the need to protect him from the revelation that his mother was a prostitute (remember, Sun didn’t care whether Jin was son of a fisherman or son of a king; she genuinely, if wrongheadedly, believed she was protecting her husband by signing him up to work for daddy).
Desmond? Well, perhaps your view of what he did in re: Charlie in last week’s episode differs from mine. He was lying, and also being selfish. That he repented his deceit and selfishness before their consequences became irrevocable is not exactly the point, is it?
And I don’t believe that Desmond really left Penny because he thought he needed to save the world. I think he wanted to leave her because he was scared - after all, he left her on his “first” trip through that time period without any island flashes or creepy jewelry salespeople to push him in that direction - and felt “I have to save the world” would be a good enough excuse.
That’s Professor Sayid to you!
Rose and Bernard seem pretty clean to me. OK, Rose lied about having been cured by Isaac of Uluru, but that doesn’t strike me as too badly selfish, and Bernard doesn’t seem to have lied at all.
And Arzt was quite selfless. There was a man who gave of himself.
All over the place, certainly.
Yeah, the lying about the father (especially after seeing how great the father was) is about the only thing I can fault Jin for. That was a bad call.
I see that as Desmond planning to be selfish because he wanted Penny back so much. When he was lying to Charlie it was almost forced. When he knew Charlie was going to die, he was torn between wanting to see Penny so badly but wanting to do the “right thing”. Eventually “right thing” won, even though he felt he was being tested and felt sacrificing Charlie was what he was “supposed” to do. It seems like he’s constantly being forced to do things he doesn’t want to do but feels are “right”.
I’m going to have to disagree with you on this one. Desmond loved, and loves, Penny more than anything. But even with Ruth, he felt he was “destined” to do something. I think his meeting with Ms. Hawking was the confirmation he needed that he was supposed to move on to bigger and better things, as much as it hurt to leave Penny behind. That was what he felt he needed to do. I don’t feel that leaving Penny and Ruth was selfish. I think it was a little cowardly the way he did it, but I would call it selfless. It certainly wasn’t the easy way out, as Sun has taken time after time after time after time…
Thanks. I didn’t know that it was that accurate. Still, everything Juliet has told the Losties is suspect, so we don’t know if the 53 days is what she really determined. All we know is that’s what she told Sun. The question is, would she have more reason to want Sun to think she was in danger or not? If Sun thinks she’s in danger, she may be more willing to let Juliet do more work on her. OTOH, she may also contemplate abortion. Or maybe Juliet signs her up for an abortion, but really does a “baby transplant” to one of The Others.
Who the frack knows what the writers are planning!
BTW, why is the spell checker flagging “sonogram”? Is that such an odd word…?
Something I haven’t seen mentioned yet: the flare gun.
The only reason I can think of for Naomi to be packing a flare gun is as a backup signalling device in case the phone won’t work.
And Hurly fired it.
So…who was waiting to see the signal? Just the helicopter pilot? (“I’m ready to go now, come pick me up.”) Or possibly someone on a large ship standing by far enough off shore?
One of the things she said (in Portuguese) is that she wasn’t alone. That’s the thing that Mikhail mistranslated as “thank-you” or something. That was posted earlier.
I think you could argue that Sun felt forced into giving Jin’s mom the money. Mr. Kwon also seemed to think sparing Jin from shame was pretty important - I think we’re supposed to understand it as an aspect of Korean culture (I don’t know if it’s really like that there or not…)