I’ve been reading a good deal of posts and tweets and other sorts of status updates about this episode, all from people who were absolutely devastated, reduced to a blubbery mass of tears, over what transpired in the second half of this episode.

Me? Not so much.

It upset me, for sure (my refrain last night was “THAT WAS NOT OK”), but just as I wasn’t terribly moved by Sun and Jin’s reunion a couple weeks ago, their deaths didn’t have much of an emotional impact on me. I couldn’t really figure out why until Alan Sepinwall offered a succinct reason: “the show lost sight of the two as individual characters.” (Read the rest of his review here. After I read it last night I had half a mind to simply link to it for this post.) I’ll add this: after they were brought back together, the show didn’t have anything else for them to do. Ji Yeon, as with so many TV babies, is a complete afterthought (the second-most popular reaction to this scene, after “noooooooooo!”, is “What about your daughter?”). I had a feeling in the last episode that one or both of them were doomed. And the show could not sustain just ONE of them dying. That would’ve been worse. So while I don’t think killing of Sun and Jin was fair, I do recognize it as a sort of necessary thing. And while I don’t think it was the most amazing piece of storytelling that Lost’s ever done, Yunjin Kim and Daniel Dae Kim were both incredible.

There were other things that got to me more, including but not limited to:

Hurley breaking down on the beach. That was more gutting for me than watching Sun and Jin die. (Conversely, Jack crying at the ocean? Seemed gratuitous and strange.)

The brief glimpse of Jin in the hospital in the Sideways world, just after he dies in the real world.

Sayid’s exertion of free will. That was a noble death. Or second death. All the zombie-like behavior he’d been displaying paid off in that brief moment when Sayid was himself again.

Sideways Jack and Locke’s scene at the end of the episode, when Jack quotes Faraday (“what happened, happened”) and Locke (“I wish you had believed me”) and talks about how it’s OK to let go even though he hasn’t quite figured out how yet. I could watch that scene over and over. It’s just beautifully acted.

And other things that I thought were awesome:

Sideways Cooper’s fate was more satisfying to watch than Real Cooper dying. Even though Sideways Cooper was apparently a helluva guy. I love the spin that the Sideways world gives that fraught relationship, making Locke responsible for his father’s condition rather than the other way around.

The bomb countdown SPEEDING UP after Sawyer removes the wires. For all the times that countdowns stop at 2 seconds to go, to have a bomb programmed to fast-track detonation is something I’ve never seen before, and I laughed out loud.

The return of Action Jack. As with Sayid’s zombie existence, I’d gotten so used to Jack’s passivity, which appears to be in full swing even at the beginning of this episode, that when he pushed Locke into the water I punched the air and whooped. It’s possible, though I feel strange saying so, that I am fully on board with the return of Jack as the show’s hero.

(Huh. I just remembered my dream last night involved getting chased by zombies in some sort of mountain village and barricading myself and others inside a school. I’m going to blame Buffy, Lost, and my addiction to Plants vs. Zombies for this.)

Yay, Bernard!

And seriously, for all my meh-ing about Sun and Jin dying, the submarine scenes were truly Lost at its best. They recalled Charlie’s death, they reminded us that the water is always ominous on this show, and they were excellently dramatic and intense.

I am a little pissed off that Frank seems to be dead, though.

And I only have one question/potential problem: a few episodes ago (“Everybody Loves Hugo,” to be precise) Richard and Ben and Miles trooped off to blow up the plane. Clearly they didn’t accomplish that goal. So what the hell happened to them and where the hell are they?

UPDATE: OK, I can’t believe I went and posted this thing without mentioning the biggest part of this whole episode, namely that now we know for sure that a) Smokey always intended to kill all the candidates and b) that he can’t actually do this himself. I think I neglected to include it earlier because it’s something that we all pretty much already knew, right? Or at least suspected? I’ve been working with that theory from the beginning, so. Yeah. Still. That’s pretty huge. And it looks like next week is going to be more about Jacob and the Man in Black, perhaps giving us more from MiB’s perspective. Can’t wait.

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Meh?

Am I right?

Mostly meh, anyway. I don’t think it’s wrong to expect Lost to follow up one kickass episode with another, because they’ve done it many times before, but this was so far from kickass that now that I’m sitting down to write this I find myself mostly disappointed in it. But anyway. Some good things did happen, and some fun callback stuff happened, but some pretty ridiculous stuff also happened, so. Onward.

Let me get this straight: In the Sideways world, Sun and Jin are secret lovers but not married. Mr. Paik learns of this tryst and sends his daughter and her lover as bodyguard to LA for Keamy to kill Jin. That seems extravagant, even for Paik. I call contrivance.

I did like that Keamy and Mikhail were working together — the two guys who just! won’t! die! (And Keamy STILL didn’t die! Hilarious.) It took me a couple scenes to figure out why Mikhail looked different — he didn’t have his eye patch. And then Jin shot him in the eye at the end. Ha!

Also liked that Sayid gave Jin the means to free himself, but didn’t cut him free himself. Kinda Jacob-like, to only give someone the means to free oneself. Even though Island Sayid is an Apocalypse Now soul-dead zombie.

Knew Sideways Sun was going to get shot, and it stands to reason that she would be pregnant — that would’ve been the something she wanted to tell Jin at the hotel. Nice for the Sideways plot to end there on such a cliffhanger — will Sun survive? Will the fetus? Might JULIET make an appearance?

On the island — I don’t know how I feel about the whole aphasia thing. I think it’s mildly ridiculous but I don’t really mind it so much. I like the symmetry inherent in the way it’s Jin who speaks fluent English now, and Sun who can’t. I like that Sun’s speech was taken away so that the full force of her objections to Richard’s plan to blow up the plane couldn’t be understood. And of course, Island Sun loses her ability to speak English as we learn for sure that Sideways Sun never learned English at all. So that’s a nice connection. Even if the whole thing felt like something better suited to daytime soaps.

I thought Jack’s talk with Sun was well done as well, tomato metaphor notwithstanding (that was more than a little ridiculous. “No one told this tomato that it was supposed to die.” All I needed was a reappearance of the moth from S1). Jack seemed very Jacob-like. On a more shallow note, I like how shaggy Matthew Fox’s hair is right now.

So Widmore’s people took Jin because Jin had mapped out the terrain for the DI in 1977 and they need him to help them find other pockets of unusual energy. Because . . . they can’t read the maps themselves? They’re maps! Whatever. I don’t like Zoe (or maybe it’s the actress — either way, I don’t like her at all) so I don’t have a problem with the idea that she’s a freakin’ geophysicist but she can’t read a map.

And the electromagnetic pockets — this is what’s going to keep Smokey on the island, channeling that energy into something larger than the pylons? To use as a weapon or means of moving the island? How moving the island keeps a cork in things I don’t know. Is Widmore looking for something specific? Maybe he’s looking for something off those maps, which would then render my disdain for Zoe’s lack of map-reading skills moot. Still don’t like her.

But then Jin sees pictures of his daughter for the first time and if you hadn’t prepared for this like Jenn had then you don’t know Lost, my friends. That was very, very sweet. Also nice to see Bpo Bpo again.

Oh, and of course, DESMOND. So Desmond is “the package” (I’ll say!), which means I was right! Sort of! when I guessed it would be Desmond that Jacob was referring to in “The Lighthouse.” Because he is special, the rules don’t apply to him, etc. so it stands to reason that he would be instrumental in stopping Smokey/aligning these timelines. And man, the look between Desmond and Sayid was like an episode in itself.

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