The Lost Rewatch: 1x17 "...In Translation"

Last week's blog recieved quite a few poor reviews. It was a busy week for me last week, and I had very little time to write the recaps, but I suppose that since I made the commitment, I should put the rewatch first and foremost in my list of priorities. So without further apologies and excuses, I present to you the rewatch recap for episode 1x17, "...In Translation." An arsonist torches Michael's raft, and when Michael sees that Jin has burnt hands, the conflict between them escalates. Meanwhile, Boone begins to interfere in the growing relationship between Shannon and Sayid. Flashbacks in this episode are of Jin's point-of-view of the same events focused on in "House of the Rising Sun".

• Mr. Paik convinces Jin to work for him. This event occurred because Jin's mother, a former prostitute, bribed Sun into giving her $100,000, which Sun took from her father. Her father, in turn, would make Jin pay back the debt by working for him. In this same conversation, Jin claims that his father is dead, though in reality his father is a fisherman, as we find out later in the episode. Jin has convinced Sun that his father is dead as well, though she actually knows that his father is alive, having visited him during the events of "D.O.C."

• Jin is suspicious of an affair between Michael and Sun. He seems to sense that Sun has been unfaithful to him (as she was with Jae Lee), but she assures him that she has no relationship with Michael, even though they would have kissed had Vincent not interrupted (this is from the mobisode "Buried Secrets"). Jin goes and lets off steam at the golf course, a place where, nine days later, he will have a complete temper-tantrum about his lonliness on the Island in front of Michael and Hurley after he misses a putt. This can be seen in another mobisode, "Jin Has a Temper-Tantrum on the Golf Course."

• Michael mentions the Flat Iron Building in New York. While this isn't really relevant to Lost, many of you have probably seen this building before, even if you've never been to New York: it's the location of the Daily Bugle offices in the Spider-Man film series, a notable comic-book adaptation which has featured Daniel Dae Kim

• Kate asks Sun why she's letting Jin treat her so badly, and Sun replies that it's because she loves Jin. I immediately think forward to Kate's crime, when she killed her father because he was abusive to his wife (and her mother), Diane. However, once her mother found out what she did, she turned Kate in to the authorities. Why? Because she loved Wayne. Not an exact correlation, but the situations are very, very similar.

• Here's an oldie but a goodie - when Jin goes to visit Byung Han, his daughter is watching the news on TV. And guess which lucky lottery winner is the star of the show?

• Locke says that "everyone gets a new life on this Island." After Ajira 316 crashes, he'll be getting an even newer life -- but not as himself.

• The irony in the flashbacks is blatant when compared to the events on the Island -- in flashbacks, Jin is trying to hide a secret from Sun, but on the Island, he is angry at Sun for keeping secrets from him. You can also find parallels between both the flashback Jin and the on-Island Sun's wishes to start over.

• Locke says that none of the survivors would hinder an attempt to leave the Island, even though he had earlier sabotaged Sayid's transceiver, and would later blow up the Flame and the submarine in order to do just that. In another twist of irony, he'll end up dying off-Island.
  

• Locke mentions that his dad is not cool to Walt, the full extent of which we won't realize until "The Brig," although gradually we'll find out more and more about his destructive lifestyle as a con man, the ramifications of which were shown at the beginning of the last episode, "Outlaws." Locke's next flashback, in which we'll learn more about his father, will pop up later this week, as episode 1x19, "Deus Ex Machina."

• The episode ends with Hurley's CD player dying, a lead-in to the next episode's Hurley flashback, "Numbers."

And that's it for the episode. Look for the blog for the next episode, "Numbers," soon. You can discuss this episode in this forum thread, read others' posts about it at the rewatch hub, and edit the episode's article.