LOSTIN' THOUGHT: PAIK'S PIQUE

Verisimilitude is far from an absolute value in my literary cosmos. I don't think Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR is less a work because the Bard has clocks striking the hour back in ancient Rome, and it doesn't matter to me that whenever Batman gets captured, his captors stick the hero in some death-trap and leave him to his devices rather than putting a bullet through his Bat-skull. In fact, verisimilitude is a secondary value next to what Frye calls the work's "total vision."

Still, some logical lapses are more annoying than others.

Take LOST's 10th episode, THE PACKAGE. We learn here that on Lostearth-2 Jin and Sun have come to America but are not married as they are on Lostearth-1. The genesis of the trip is a little hard to suss out but from their dialogue it seems as if Sun got permission to go on a "shopping trip" to the States and to take Jin along as apparent bodyguard. Sun has a ulterior motive, though, as she and Jin have slept together out of wedlock and she's hoping to talk him into staying in the States to escape her father, sinister crime-boss Paik. To that end she's even established a secret bank account to facillitate their escape.

However, Daddy Pike knows all about the liaison prior to the trip, and boy, is he piqued. (I just had to repeat the pun for any pun-haters reading.) Apparently having figured out what Sun has planned, he lays plans to give his little girl an object lesson of his power. To this end he both closes Sun's secret account and gives Jin an errand to perform during the trip. This errand, rather like Bellerophon carrying the letter that is intended to provoke his execution, is to deliver a sum of money to a group of assassins who plan to whack Jin. (One presumes that they would then send Sun back home duly chastised, though this isn't stated.)

But the money intended for the hoods doesn't get to them-- allowing for more narrative tension and necessary delaying of the execution-- because the money's confiscated by airport security when Jin and Sun enter the country.

So--

Why?

Maybe Jin knows nothing about the laws about proper declaration of money entering another country.

But why wouldn't Mr. Paik know, or have experts who would so advise him? The LOST writers want the delay, of course, but there's no reason for Paik to want it. He wants the gangsters to get their money expeditiously so that they kill Jin dead.

And it would have been such a simple fix! Instead of Jin trying to check through the money with no paperwork, how about he comes through with the requisite paperwork but it's been screwed up in some minor fashion. (It's not like Capricious Fate has ceased to operate on Lostearth-2 just because Jacob seems to be gone!) Then the same scenario plays through the same way, but nobody has to think that the ruthless crime boss Paik doesn't know the proper way to get someone killed.

I mean, jeez-- at least when the Joker puts Batman in his latest trap, the villain wants not just to kill the hero; he also wants the satisfaction of knowing the Bat dies without managing one of his vaunted escapes.

I'll note that on the whole the episode was pretty well executed. I enjoyed the fact that Sayid didn't simply cut Jin free, but simply enabled Jin to escape on his own. Sayid had enough to worry about with his own setup, and had no reason to borrow someone else's troubles.