“He’s Our You,” this week’s episode of “Lost,” was a sleepy one, with very little happening and even less revealed.
In Sayid’s backstory, we saw him as a young boy in Tikrit, Iraq, killing a chicken because his older brother could not (anyone else reminded of Eko?). We also learned that Sayid was killing all the people in Widmore’s organization that “posed a threat” to the Oceanic 6 for Ben until he murdered the last one in Moscow, after which Ben cuts Sayid loose.
Later we see the bug-eyed creeper visit Sayid again in the Dominican Republic to push his buttons, telling him that killing is in his nature. The most interesting revelation of the night was how Sayid ended up on the flight, in handcuffs, with Ilana. That’s saying a lot since it was rather boring: she was hired, on behalf of the family of the dude he capped on that golf course last season, to capture him and bring the torturer to Guam (via Ajira flight 316).
She reeled Sayid in at a bar where he was sipping on some MacCutcheon scotch (preferred drink of Widmore, Anthony Cooper, and several other Losties) and then, after seducing him, took him out with a kick-ass face-kick a la none other than Sayid himself. Perhaps the episode title should have been “She’s Our You,” but more on that later.
In island action, Juliet worried the return of Kate, Jack and Hurley meant the demise of her life with Sawyer and the Dharma Initiative. Her main man echoed Juliet’s sentiments. Sawyer’s actions and the reactions of other Dharma folk show that LaFleur has built himself quite a respected, high position within the DI, one that he is not prepared to let go of. I think the guys who were left behind do not necessarily want to be saved. Perhaps this theme will be explored further when Jin and Sun reunite (if they ever do) and we see how he feels about losing his DI life. Pre-pubescent Ben Linus continues visiting Sayid in captivity (reverse of season 2!) and Sayid sees Ben’s dad (aka Roger Workman) beat down on the little dude.
After Sayid refuses Sawyer’s plan to make amends, he is fed a Veritaserum-like drug by Oldham (“He’s our you,” explained Sawyer to Sayid, which explains the episodes title), which works but forces such a crazy-sounding story of time travel and plane crashes that the DI head honchos do not believe it. To solve the Sayid problem, a DI council then unanimously votes to kill him. Sawyer attempts to let Sayid go while still keeping his cover, but Sayid claims he has a mission on the island now and refuses his help. Before the DI gets the chance to kill Sayid off, though, a flaming VW bus runs into a Dharma building and during the commotion, little Ben releases Sayid and together they run into the jungle. Jin finds Sayid and the Iraqi attacks his friend, grabs his gun and kills little Ben.
Wait, what? Sayid killed Ben? What about future Ben? What does that mean? How can that happen?
Let me tell you how that happens — it doesn’t. I’m a firm believer in the “No one is dead until they are in the ground and absent from multiple episodes” notion of Lost. Ben shot Locke in the kidney, but he didn’t die. Locke stabbed Naomi in the back, but she didn’t die (right away). I’m still not even sure Charlotte’s gone for good!
Like Faraday said in the first episode of the season: “You cannot change anything. You can’t. Even if you tried to, it wouldn’t work. Time — it’s like a street, all right? We can move forward on that street, we can move in reverse, but we cannot ever create a new street. If we try to do anything different, we will fail every time. Whatever happened, happened.”
So I hypothesize that the next episode will show someone finding Ben shot and fixing him up and life going on as before.
Or, Ben is dead, but someone else on the island will take his place as the DI expatriate who will purge the DI, become leader of the Others, get captured by the survivors, and basically live out Ben’s life. Instead of seeing Ben with the Ajira survivors the rest of the season we will see his replacement as a grown man.
This is another example of my fixation with the notion of certain events being unchangeable but the circumstances surrounding them being able to fluctuate, as illustrated in season three with Desmond’s flashbacks about Charlie’s death.
Last night’s ep also emphasized Radzinsky and his obsession with the Swan and with people finding out what that hatch is about. In case you get the hatches confused, the Swan is Desmond’s hatch, where a button must be pushed every 108 minutes or else (the else was later revealed to be implosion). If Desmond’s original Swan partner, Kelvin, can be believed, Radzinsky committed suicide in the hatch he is so fixated on right now. But I don’t understand why Radzinsky would be working in a hatch if he is intelligent enough, valued enough, to build one? And what exactly is up with the Swan if he’s so worried about people finding out his plans for it? Clearly there is more to this hatch than viewers know thus far.
As far as other theories, go, I’m out. But there were some interesting tidbits from last night’s episode:
* Kate and Juliet working on cars and the gender-role-reversal in that work assignment
* Ben telling Sayid he thinks Locke was murdered. Good guess, jerk, he was murdered… by _you._
* Sayid’s character development and self-revelations — no matter how hard he tried to make up for his sins, he was always pulled back into killing. He finally admitted his true nature as a killer before killing little Ben, so where will Sayid go from there? Will he abandon his attempt to be a good person and leave his past behind or will he slide into life as a soul-less murderer? And where on the island does he plan on going now?
* Hurley as a cafeteria worker, and as the most awkward person on the planet.
And I would just like to point out that EW’s Doc J did not break “the news”:http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1550612_20245769_20267651,00.html about the creepy chick behind Sun until Tuesday, an entire day after I got “the information”:https://flathatnews.com/blog/54/tube-talk/70313/lost-mystery-girl out to you readers. He’s my Lost Blog Idol and all, but take that Jeff Jensen!
See ya in another week, brotha.
