UNBELIEVABLE! I thought I'd seen everything in regards to these webisodes, but that "Jin loses his temper" takes it to a whole other realm of terrible. I honestly thought I was watching a joke parody of the LOST webisodes. I thought I must have selected the wrong page, and someone was making fun of it. How is this possible? I have a feeling that when LOST returns they will have lost a lot of fans.

all of you who comment that there's nothing wrong with the webisodes, and say you'll accept anything Lost related obviously have absolutely no concept of good and bad screenwriting, and you do the rest of us injustice with your ignorance and low standards. They have an obligation to us as loyal viewers, and they sold it to us as revealing and important. Don't you understand that when someone posts an angry comment of how bad these webisodes are that you take all the air out of it by saying they're not that bad, and take a chill pill. We might have got them to raise their standards and give us something better, and pertinent to the story if superficial morons weren't willing to settle for any old bone they could throw you. Do you want season 4 to be as lazy and apathetically insignificant as the webisodes? Maybe they can even write an ending that makes no sense.

It's called character development. This just confirms what has been suggested throughout the show about why Jack doesn't trust concepts like destiny, or why he doesn't want to go into the hatch. He's lived his whole life trying to please his father, and the only thing that his dad makes clear that he's proud of Jack for is his marriage to Sarah (the marriage also happens to be the only thing in Jack's life that was suggested to him by something supernatural, i.e., the miraculous healing of her spine). Jack doesn't believe in Locke's magical Island because the only time he's ever experienced anything supernatural or anything that made him feel like his father loved him was his marriage to Sarah, which, as we know, went horribly wrong, and Jack no longer trusts in fate or God or anything of that nature any longer.

Good heaven's what a bunch of complainers. They tossed us some freebies to keep us occupied and not staring at the walls until February and hopefully keep some of the fan base during this show drought. They aren't meant to be equal to the series. Enjoy them or don't watch them but quit complaining. There might actually be something of interest in some of the 13. I will take whatever they want to throw my way to help keep me interested and busy.

Everything the writers write ties things together in one way or another. It gives you Jack and Sarah's wedding setting. It shows one of the few affectionate moments shared between Jack and his father. It brings Jack's grandfather into the equation. It tells us Christian and his father had a poor relationship, which gives insight into why Christian is not very good at parenting, and it keeps with the ongoing "daddy issues" theme. And, because it is titled "The Watch," we know that the watch is the most relevant aspect of the clip.
Jin and Sun are traveling to Sydney and LA so Jin can deliver very specific watches for Sun's father, Mr. Paik. Jin attacks Michael in season 1 because he sees that Michael is wearing Paik's watch. This leads to Sun having to admit her secret, which is that Sun had learned English. This, of course, took the characters' storylines in new directions. Watches have appeared in other episodes, such as the watch given to Sawyer so he could "monitor" the pacemaker supposedly implanted by the Others. "Watch" is symbolic, too. I know this is getting too long...
My point is that the clip was never meant to be LOST's entry for next year's Emmy Awards; it is meant for true fans who follow the show's deeper meanings- like those behind the characters' names --John Locke, Mikhail Bakunin, Rousseau, David Hume, Sawyer, Jacob, Rachel, etc. -- and those behind the specific novels -- and those behind the mythological/religious references, and so on.
Yes, the acting is bad (and you can tell the two men know it), but the WHOLE POINT of LOST is for the viewers actually to use their brains and discover 1)everything happens for a reason and 2)what is on the surface is often not what it seems to be!

It wasn't terrible (although at first I thought it was a joke outtake with them mocking some other american show/movie that I wasn't aware of), it was just sort of, pointless.

I'm not hating on it yet, (I'm sort of just glad to listen to that familiar musical theme), but I do believe it's sort of the wrong time to release these. I have complete faith in Damon Lindelof, but he hasn't said a word about these recently, so maybe they haven't been pulled out (or marketed) according to his plan.

Matt, I'm guessing people were hoping for something interesting. More boring father/son crap about the drabbest character on the show makes the show look like a joke. I heard next week's is no better. Things feel so depressing for Lost all of a sudden, with the strike, and seeing how dull and pointless the mobisodes are. Is Lost played out? This felt soooooo tired.

What exactly is so awful about this short? Sure, the writing is a bit stilted; but, overall, it a concise little 2 minute short that includes a main character, and provides a short glimpse into a father-son relationship.

What were you expecting?

The Jack army is here. These same boring people who adore any mini moment of their insanely dull "main character" - they have to keep drumming that into our heads, sounds like they don't believe it themselves. If you say the truth about this annoying, bland character, they'll stalk you and judge you and whine. Sound exactly like their dear "main character".

Regarding the writer's strike:

TV series writers don't get compensated for writing these online videos. For these LOST online episodes, it looks like Bad Robot paid for these themselves, and the producers (who are also writers) wrote them.

Under the current WGA deal, the studios don't have to pay writers for online videos -- but under the current SAG deal, they do. So if Disney had commissioned these, they wouldn't have been required to pay the writers but they would have had to pay Matthew Fox, et al who appear in them. And yet, the SAG will probably strike next year over this matter, as well -- they feel that their members are not being compensated ENOUGH for acting in online videos.