Lost: Sundown

BY BILLIE DOUX

Ben: “There’s still time.”
Sayid: “Not for me.”

I’m sort of in mourning today. I loved Sayid. He was my favorite character. And now he’s…um… Lost. That clever Man in Black; he picked the one thing that Sayid would sell his soul for.

Sayid has had such a shitty life. Always stuck with the dirty, morally corrupt jobs in both realities. If he’d been born in a peaceful place, if he’d been loved as a child, he probably would have been a truly good man. He wanted to be a good man, even while he was doing such horrible things. The fact that he did what Dogen told him to do makes me think there was still good in Sayid, right up until he met the Man in Black and got an offer he couldn’t refuse.

And doesn’t that add an extra possible dimension to the flash-sidewayseses? Jacob apparently promised Island Dogen that Dogen’s son would live on, and that’s exactly what he’s doing in the LAX timeline. Will Nadia live on in the LAX timeline, too? Did Jacob and the Man in Black collude on the creation of an alternate universe intended to satisfy their candidates? How could that be?

I wasn’t surprised that Sayid killed Dogen and Lennon. (Can you kill someone in a healing spring, though? Won’t they just pop back up?) I thought all through this episode that Dogen had set Sayid up so that Smokey would kill him, and it backfired. Of course, since this is Lost, the whole situation was so ambiguous that we’re left wondering what would have happened if Sayid had stabbed Smokey *before* he spoke. (And will that be the way to take him down in the end? Did they just set something up there?)

The massacre at the Temple was telegraphed way in advance, too, so it didn’t surprise me, either. Although I have to say that you don’t see a lot of massacres set to the tune of “Catch a Falling Star,” so that was new and different. That was the song Christian sang to Claire when she was little. Where is Christian, by the way? He used to hang around in nearly everyone’s backstories, and now we haven’t seen him in forever. Did John Terry get another gig? How’s his driving record?

LAX timeline

I think I’m enjoying the flash sideways more than the Island story; it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Sayid was, like the others, a better person, at least in the sense that he was more self-sacrificing and repentant of his former occupation in the Republican Guard. But he was also punishing Nadia as well as himself by pushing her into marrying his cowardly brother Omar. Sayid and Nadia were so obviously still in love and longing for each other, even though she’d had two children with Omar. And Omar knew it, too. Tragic.

Keamy showing up as the loan shark was just delightful. It was even a bit of foreshadowing, since Keamy’s guys were all slaughtered by Smokey. What the hell was Jin doing tied up in the freezer? (Which paralleled Claire keeping him in her shelter. For that matter, Claire was also imprisoned in the Temple. Parallel-a-paloosa.)

The Foot Group and the Temple Group together at last. Mostly.

So we have Claire, Sayid (*sob*) and possibly Sawyer (no! no!) on Smokey’s side. Hurley and possibly Jack are on Jacob’s. No news yet on Sun and Jin. I was worried Miles would be killed during the massacre since he doesn’t have a number; thankfully, no. Kate, whose name I missed on the big wheel at the Lighthouse in last week’s, was also the first one of the Losties that Jacob touched in “The Incident.” Her name wasn’t on the walls of the cave, was it? I think the cave belonged to the Man in Black. Is Kate going to be Jacob’s secret weapon?

I’m also wondering why Kate picked up that gun and followed the Man in Black’s merry crew. What was she thinking? What is she planning? And hey, did anyone else want to shake Kate when she told the infected Claire all about taking Aaron off the Island and raising him? But then again, how could she know she was being massively stupid?

What have we learned?

– The Man in Black has some sort of vocal power. I guess.

– The previews said they couldn’t show us stuff. I thought we’d get some answers. I don’t think we got answers. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention.

What I missed last week:

– The sign in front of the conservatory said, “Welcome all candidates.”

– Kate’s name was also on the big wheel in the Lighthouse, at (I think) number 51.

– According to the enhanced version, Faraday also played Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu, like David did.

– The enhanced version of last week’s told us what Dogen said to Hurley in the corridor, and I’m paraphrasing since I wasn’t recording it: “You’re lucky I have to protect you or I’d remove your head and feed it to the boars.”

Character bits:

– In the LAX timeline, Sayid was working as a translator for an oil company, and apparently had been for quite awhile.

– Massive Sayid/Dogen fight scene. Sayid always gets the best fight scenes, doesn’t he?

– In the Island timeline, Dogen was once a banker from Osaka and his son died in (yet another) car accident. I thought at first that Dogen’s baseball was his “object,” like the compass was Locke’s, but looking at the baseball appeared to remind Dogen that he had rules to follow and couldn’t kill Sayid.

– Sayid’s brother Omar was taken to St. Sebastian’s, and of course, we saw Jack walking down the corridor. He and Sayid didn’t acknowledge each other. But didn’t they “meet” on the plane when they resuscitated Charlie together? Maybe they had other things on their minds.

– Did Cindy and the kids make it? I didn’t see their bodies, but I don’t think I saw them with the Man in Black’s party, either.

– Sun and Jin have been apart forever. They’re now closer, geographically and chronologically, than they’ve been in three years. I’m just saying. It’s time, people.

Bits and pieces:

– Miles said that Sayid was definitely dead for two whole hours.

– The weirdo torture that they were doing in the Temple reveals where you are on the scale between absolute good and absolute evil. And I’m asking how?

– Keamy broke some eggs. A cliche comes to mind. And hey, Sayid was a cook in a restaurant in Paris in his other life.

– Another parallel. Sayid killed Keamy and his minions, right before the other Sayid killed Dogen and Lennon. Good Sayid killed the bad guys, and bad Sayid killed (possibly, although I’ve never been sure) the good guys.

Quotes:

Claire: “You’re going to hurt them.”
Man in Black: “Only the ones who won’t listen.”
Is that a reference to the MIB’s new scary vocal power?

Miles: “She just strolled in here a couple of hours ago acting all weird. Still hot, though.”

Sayid: “We had an unfortunate incident involving a boomerang. My apologies.”

Another three polar bear episode, and only ten episodes to go,

Billiedoux.com