Season 3, Episode 18: "D.O.C."

The title of this episode is D.O.C. - "date of conception" - Juliette brings Sun to the medical hatch so that she can do an ultrasound to find out when Sun conceived - before or after she got to the island. She explains to her that if it was before she got to the island, she will live. But if she conceived on the island, she will most likely die, just as all the other 9 women who have gotten pregnant on the island have died.

Juliette leaves a message for Ben about what she has been doing. So she did tell Sun the truth about her date of conception and that she did in fact get pregnant on the island, with Jin (at first I thought she might be lying). She also tells Ben of her plan to do more tests and get samples from Kate, so there is obviously some question as to whether or not Kate is pregnant. Either the Others know that she is, or they want her to be. I am thinking now that the whole situation with Kate and Sawyer in the cages, may have been a setup to get them together. The Others obviously WANT for there to be pregnant women on the island, so they can continue with their research. That may have been a plan for Sawyer and Kate to get together. They obviously saw them together in the cages, and knew that Kate was able to get out of her cage and into Sawyer's, yet they allowed it to happen. I think that was part of their plan, hoping that Kate would get pregnant. Remember, Juliette told Sun that men's fertility on the island is "five times as high" - which means it's very likely that Kate could get pregnant being with Sawyer just once or twice.

I think that Juliette is actually sincere in that she wants to help Sun. First of all, we see that she truly is not working with Ben, as after she leaves him the message, she turns off the tape recorder and says she hates him. This shows us that she does not in fact want to be working with him. She is just doing it because she has no other choice, if she wants to be able to go home. So, although she has infiltrated the survivors camp, appearing to seem as if she and Ben and working together, she really is just doing it so she can go home. She truly seems to care about Sun, and she seemed sincere in wanting to give her some good news, for once.

On the other side, throughout the course of their trip to the medical station, Sun begins to trust Juliette. First she didn't want to answer her questions, and by the end she is speaking to her like a friend. She has never told ANYONE about her affair back home, and now here she is spilling everything to Juliette, about the affair she had, about her relationship with Jin, about his fertility problems. As she put it, the machine could tell her the date of conception, so it really was not necessary for her to tell Juliette about her sex life. But the fact that she opened up to her anyway, shows that she has come to trust Juliette. Just like Jack, Juliette has been able to make her feel like she is on her side.

Through Sun's flashbacks, we learn that she paid off Jin's birth mother (a prostitute) who was blackmailing her for money or she would tell everyone of Jin's family and cause him great shame. I thought it was very interesting that Sun went to her father for the money, who told her that if gives her this money that he will start having Jin work directly for him now (which Sun knew exactly what that meant), yet she still took the money. It was almost as if she made the choice that led him to becoming a hit man for her father, something that we always assumed she was deeply upset about, yet it was her who ultimately caused it. I think that Sun truly loved Jin and would do anything for him. As she said, she loves him madly. She would rather sacrifice her own happiness by having him become a hit man, than cause him the shame of being outed by society as being the son of a fisherman and a prostitute. Sun put her own happiness in front of his. Sun also learned the truth about his mother (that she was a prostitute) and does not tell Jin this either, as he has always believed his mother was dead. She does not want him to feel the humiliation of knowing that. Which is why she does not ever tell him that she went to see his father, and that she knows he really is alive. She finally understands why Jin lied, because he was ashamed of where he came from. And now, on the island, once she finds out that she is pregnant and the baby is in fact Jin's, she cries - not because she is going to die - but because she is so happy to know that it is Jin's baby. Once again, she puts her own self before him. She would have been devasted if the baby was not his, because once again it would have publicly shamed him. Sun truly does love him, and she puts herself - her own life, really - ahead of him to protect his honor. This reminds me of last week's episode with Desmond when we learned more about sacrifice and being "tested." Maybe this is all a test and the island will spare Sun's life because she is willing to sacrifice her own life for the love of her husband.

We learn very little about the parachuter who landed on the island. She appears to be speaking several different languages, though, which is strange. First she was speaking spanish, as Hurley was able to translate. Then we hear her speaking Italian, then Chinese (Jin says "Chinese - not Korean") and then at the end she is speaking English to Hurley. Why all these different languages? And the book she had with her "Catch-22" appeared to be Portuguese. Who is this woman?

So, after Hurley tells her that they are survivors of flight 815, she tells him "No, they found the plane, and there were no survivors. Everyone died." I think they put this in there to throw us off and make us question whether or not they are alive. The thought of them all being dead has been circulating for the past three years, however I just don't find that to be true. Here is what I think: This parachuter, wherever she came from, has been living back in the "real world" where obviously it was big news that there was a plane crash back about three months ago. The whole world probably heard about it. Let's remember that the Others, at the time of the crash, still had the ability to communicate with the outside world. Not only did they want to keep those people there (Jack, Locke, Claire, Walt, etc.) but they did not want anyone from the outside world to ever find their island. So, they created a "fake" plane crash site, along with the "bodies" to thwart off the world from thinking there were any survivors and that everyone died, so all rescue efforts of looking for the plane, or any survivors, would stop. The Others do not want them to be found. Remember the power that the Others have, they can make anything happen, it seems, so it comes as no surprise that they could have made the world think that Oceanic Flight 815 had no survivors.

And finally...the big mystery. Mikhail is alive???? Did we not see him die when he went through the Others fence? I think we have two possibilities here: (1) He faked his own death so as to keep Jack, Kate, Locke and Sayid from walking through the Others imaginary "fence." Clearly he did not want them to just walk into the Others camp, so when Locke pushed him through, he pretended that you would die, so as to keep them from trying to go in. Clearly he was trying to keep the Others "secrets" all along, so this would have just been another way to keep them from going in. Or, (2), the second possibility could be just as he described to Desmond when talking about the parachuters punctured lung...that wounds heal differently on this island. He indicated that one could be close to death, but would still recover. This makes me wonder if Ms. Klugh (who he shots and supposedly killed) is in fact alive? Remember she spoke to him in another language before he shot her, maybe she was telling him to shoot her because she knew she would live. As we have seen, the island appears to have "healing" powers. So if Mikhail truly was "shocked" when going through the fence, and close to death, he could have lived based on the powers of the island. This idea brings me back to what I was talking about after last week's episode, the idea of the island giving him somewhat of a rebirth, or "new life."

The one thing that is very perplexing, especially with all we have seen about rebirth and the ability to start over with new life - is that the one actual thing that gives NEW LIFE (a pregnant woman) cannot survive on the island.