Lost - "D.O.C."

Episode Title: “D.O.C.”

Andi’s Deeper Meaning Guess: The beauty of using a TLA (Three Letter Acronym) as an episode title is that it is laden with potential meanings. Death of Charlie, Day of Contact, Department of Commerce, Department of Correction, Drug of Choice, etc, etc. However, this week’s protagonists are Jin & Sun, and the only current unresolved storyline they are involved in is Sun’s pregnancy. I think you therefore have to conclude that D.O.C. most likely refers to Date of Conception.





At the end of the regular ABC preview, Sun says “I lose either way.” Referring back to the series title, what we care about is whether the date of conception occurred before the plane crashed or after. In “The Whole Truth” we learnt that Jin was infertile. So if the baby was conceived before the crash, then it’s obviously not Jin’s and likely to be Jae’s, her English teacher. However, if the baby was conceived after the crash, well, we know what happens to people who get pregnant on the island. It’s fatal. Claire survived because she was already eight months pregnant when she arrived on the island – providing the ideal control case for Juliet’s theory that something happens at conception to make the body attack the foetus. That’s why the D.O.C. is so important, but Sun loses either way.

NB – Unlike last episode, this is a real catch-22 situation. Jin wants a baby, but if it was conceived off the island, it’s not his. If it was conceived on the island, it’s doomed.

But let’s explore a few other meanings, for fun!

The potential Death of Charlie (or Claire) has been an ongoing topic since the very beginning. Either those characters are cursed, or the producers made them annoying to viewers on purpose so we would root for their demise. I don’t think any other character has been put into harm’s way as much as these two. I feel bad just thinking about it. But how many times has Charlie “almost” died?





NB – Charlie has been hit by one of CFL’s traps before:



How about Drug of Choice? The 4-81516-23-42 drug was injected into Claire by Ethan when she was captured. At the time, Ethan said it was a vaccine but there wasn’t enough for Claire and her baby. It was the same drug Desmond injected himself with when he was in the Swan for three years. There is currently some at the beach camp, as Charlie found some in a supply drop.

Is this a drug that Juliet developed to save the mothers-to-be on the island? Desmond told Claire the drug doesn’t do anything but maybe it doesn’t do anything for males – could it have been designed to prevent death from pregnancy?

Before Alex rescued Claire, she was being prepped for surgery in The Staff. They had injected the drug into her, which someone had prepped her for a Caesarean or baby-extraction procedure. Could this be Sun’s dilemma? Either she accepts that she and the baby dies, or she takes the Drug of Choice, which means the baby has a chance of living, but she dies in surgery. She loses either way.

To be honest, I feel like we moved on from the drug, the sickness and the numbers – I don’t see the producers raising all this again, especially with the season finale so teasingly close. It would be a Pandora's box...

Episode Description: After discovering that all of The Others' pregnant women died before giving birth on the island, an extremely reticent Sun allows Juliet to examine her -- and uncovers the identity of the unborn child's father. Meanwhile, Desmond allows an unlikely nemesis to help save the life of a new, mysterious island inhabitant.

Guest starring are Byron Chung as Mr. Paik [Sun’s father], Andrew Divoff as Mikhail [Patchy], Marsha Thomason as Naomi [Parachutist], John Shin as Mr. Kwon [Jin’s father], Alexis Rhee as older woman, Esmond Chung as Paik's associate and Jean Chung as Paik's secretary.

Episode Breakdown: Isn’t it funny how many things can crash onto the island? You’d think the Pacific ocean was about as big as my bath tub. So, Naomi is a new, mysterious island inhabitant. We know from the book she was carrying that she speaks Portuguese, which happened to be the same language the two researchers working for Penny spoke. And, she was using a photo of Desmond and Penny as a bookmark. This is a huge reveal for the ultimate storyline. It means that Penny and her team know how to get to the island now. It’s no longer off-the-maps. So, we now have a path for a rescue attempt in series 4 or 5 from Michael or Penny.

Who is the unlikely nemesis? Well, I’ve never been to Korea, but I bet there isn’t much call for Russians out there. So unless there is another crazy everyone-is-connected or others-are-always-watching moment in the flashbacks, it’s safe to say the Patchy is still alive and well. We all saw what happened to him in the sonic barrier, but no-one checked his pulse afterwards. Our crack team just left him for dead. I don’t think the producers are going to open the cloning can of worms just yet, so I’ll bet it’s the same Patchy. To be fair, he did patch up Sayid after he shot him, so he has some medical skills which could save Naomi.

Meanwhile, Juliet learns that Sun is pregnant. Incidentally, if your wife is pregnant, do you leave her to go camping with buddies who don’t understand you? Anyway, she tells Sun all about how mothers-to-be are really dead-in-waiting and so they have to find out when Sun got pregnant, and therefore who the father is. They both go to the medical hatch, The Staff, and Juliet gets to perform crazy tests. She’d obviously need DNA from the fathers to do a DNA test, and since Jae isn’t around, it’ll be something around checking out how big the foetus is, and determining how many months pregnant Sun is. Long shot guess: Sun’s life is endangered by these tests – Desmond gets a flash and tells Jin, who starts running across the island to save her. Either that, or he’s running away from Mikhail, having been strangled by him earlier in the episode.

The flashbacks centre around Sun and Jin. I have absolutely no idea what’s going on, but I expect Sun’s father to be overbearing and Jin’s father to be wise and moral. I’ve just watched the preview for the 600th time, and I’ve realised that Sun’s hair when she says “I lose either way,” is strikingly different. It’s clearly in her flashback! So here’s the new flashback theory. We pick up where we left off in the Jin/Sun back story. Sun’s father has to have words with his daughter about her infidelity shaming him. But he isn’t the kind of guy that wants to have his dirty laundry aired. It would bring massive shame on his family if it became public that Jin was sterile. So he tells his daughter, “Either you get impregnated by my associate [Esmond Chung] or I tell Jin about your infidelity.” She loses either way (bingo!) Jin believes that Sun has been faithful to him, so she clearly has kept her secret from him. Esmond’s character, feels bad about the whole thing, especially as he works with Jin, so he tells the secretary to hand Sun an envelope of money. Sun refuses. Is that all the characters worked in? Great!

And finally, we’re going to see a shot of the others camping out. They are staring up at something – maybe the flare that Hurley fires, the helicopter, or smokey? This’ll just be a tease, setting things up for next week’s Locke episode.

Phew! Thanks to Brian for this opportunity, but I’m not doing that much work again for a TV show! It’s made me appreciate Brian’s posts a whole lot more. Are you pumped for this episode? I think this’ll be a decent episode but the real fireworks will be next week…

Discussion has already begun over at the forum. Clicky!