I'm My Me

LOSTaways-

Greetings, salutations, and namaste! I forced myself to churn this week's Pants re-cap out quicker because if I let it slide for a few days I loose my creative edge. So here goes...

Are you kidding me with the ending of this week's episode? Adolescent Ben gets capped in his clavicle by disgruntled and embittered Sayid? Really? He's Our You, the 10th of 17 episodes in Season Five, was one of the most climatic finishes to a LOST ep since the Flash-forward surprise of Season Three's finale. We'll get to that epic ending soon enough, but first things first:

The show began where all good tv shows should...Tikrit, Iraq and we got to see the early makings of Killer Sayid when his older brother couldn't pull the trigger on off-ing a chicken in the family's front yard/desert. Eerily familiar to the scene in Mr. Eko's first back-story that revealed he had been willing to shoot a man his younger brother Yemi was supposed to shoot to spare his brother the painful and jarring experience of taking a life. The continuing theme of purpose and fate can be seen in characters like Sayid and Jack and Locke who all have had to struggle throughout their lives with what they wish they were, and what they actually are.

Sayid is for the most part a nice and honorable man, but he is also very good at and torturing people. He thought that maybe by joining the military, where such things are condoned and often necessary, that his guilt would be asuaged...but it hasn't. And what is worse, since losing his wife after escaping the island, he gives back in to that killer instinct by agreeing to be Ben's personal whack-a-guy specialist.

After we witness Sayid ending chickens, we're wisked away to Mother Russia where, according to Ben, the "last of Widmore's people" that needed to be taken care of is executed by our favorite Iraqi. Sayid couldn't even be bribed by the Russkie. This shows a deeper pathological need to kill than even just "protection for his friends back on the island". Sayid is a troubled dude.

So Ben leaves Sayid in Red Square with no direction or purpose left. We know Sayid then eventually finds his way to a group called Build Our World in the Dominican Republic. This is his attempt to make amends and literally/figuratively rebuild his emotional/spiritual life. But even here, eventually Ben finds him and has a new assignment: go kill a guy. So not really that new. We saw last season that the man parked in front of Hurley's mental institution is eventually shot in the dome by Sayid, who then rudely interrupts a magical game of chess between Hurley and invisible Mr. Eko.

Ben is obviously using Sayid, but I don't really get the whole "all Widmore's people are " line from Linus back in Russia. There's tons of people involved and we know that Widmore keeps pursuing the matter and has other people at his disposal. And what about "the rules" Ben and Widmore talked about last season? I feel like he knew that he couldn't keep pushing Sayid forever, that every person would have their breaking point of not being able to just keep nameless people around the globe. So Ben says, "Take a breather, big guy...we'll get back to this soon" and lets Sayid go do his best Jimmy Carter impression in the Caribbean.

Sayid, after ing the guy in the parked car, and after having it out with Jack and Ben and the rest on the marina, goes for a drink of MacCutcheon Whiskey at a local watering hole. Now this is like the 5th time that brand of booze has been referenced on the show. Widmore had it in his office when Desmond was told to never see Penny again. Charlie used it to get Desmond drunk on the beach. Etc. Etc. There's something important about it, and I think eventually we'll learn that some character we know already will end up being the guy/gal who makes the stuff. There's too many references to ignore its importance/significance.

At that same bar, he bumps in to Ilana, the chick from the second plane crash who brought Sayid eventually to that plane in hand-cuffs. She is a bounty hunter, hired by the family of the guy on the golf course Sayid capped last season. But what gets me is why the family requested Sayid be brought to Guam? That dude Sayid shot, Peter was his name, is Italian and was playing golf in the chain of islands known as Seychelles which is a Republic just north of Madagascar. Guam is on the other side of the world practically, part of the chain of the Mariana Islands (also the general location the fake Oceanic 815 was found). Either Ben or Widmore had hired Ilana, not the family of the victim.

If Ben hired her, or had someone hire her for him, it would make sense because it would be a great way to "convince" Sayid to come on the Ajira Flight 316 with the rest of the gang. If Widmore hired her, that would also make sense because he wants Sayid also to be back on that plane with Locke's body because, if you'll recall with me, Widmore told Locke that if he and the others aren't back on the island when "the war comes, the wrong side will win." Wrong side = presumably Ben and crew. So Ilana is there for a reason, not just returning a killer to the victim's relatives. Which would be weird anyway.

So Sayid is put on the plane with Ilana and ends up being one of the four that makes it off the island and sent back in time. But he is separated from the pack and ends up caught and in Dharma jail awaiting his fate.

So back in 1977, Sayid is questioned by Horace and Radzinsky in his cell but basically refuses to divulge anything worthwhile. Young Ben keeps bringing him sandwiches and even explains why he is helping who he thinks to be a "hostile." We see Ben's dad, Roger, abusing his son physically and emotionally and even Sayid seems to express some concern for the young boy who would grow up to ruin everyone's life. After refusing to talk though, Sayid is brought to some old dude's tee-pee in the jungle. Oldham (not Chad) the r has some secret potion that acts as a truth serum. The title for the episode comes in this scene when Sayid asks who Oldham is and Sawyer says, "He's Our You."

I was shocked at how much Sayid gave up and how little the group seemed to care. I mean, these guys have been threatening that Oldham would make Sayid talk, Sayid talked, and they all dismissed what he said. They're just mad he knew where/what the Pearl and Swan stations were. You'd think the whole "I'm from the future and you will be off-ed by your enemies in the near future cause I've seen your dried up bones in a pit-o-death 30 years from now" thing would have gotten their attention. Either way, the result is a community vote to execute the er Sayid. Like Sawyer says, "Even the moms want you ."

But when Sayid is informed of his fateful fate, he refuses to let Sawyer allow him to escape, insisting he has found his purpose for coming back. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense at first because chances are, at the current rate, he'll be ski before that purpose is realized. But that was before we found out Baby Ben was in cahoots with Sayid to spring him from the Dharama jailhouse. Here we seen Ben's first con: flaming Dharma bus distracts people while he frees "hostile" prisoner Sayid.

Off to the jungle the pair flees, where they run in to Jin-bo out on security detail. See now here I felt that Sayid should just explain to Jin what is going on and ask for his help. For that matter, Sayid really ought to have just talked things out with Sawyer back in the cage and come up with a plan together. Everyone is weird and awkward now back in 1977. Not that this group of castaways has ever been fully able to communicate with each other, but you'd think now would be a good time to start. But Jin gets his wallet handed to him by cut-throat Sayid, and then Young Ben gets a bullet to the chest. Sayid prances off in to the jungle, and the audience is left with mouths agape at the fact that Benjamin Linus, the bug-eyed creepster who has been so central and key to the LOST saga thus far, is likely ....or is he?

There was some other stuff with Kate and Sawyer and Jack and Juliet and Hurley making waffles with weird dipping sauces...but who really cares in light of what happened in this episode, right? All of that Gossip drama will sort itself out and Sawyer and Kate will kiss with either Jack or Juliet walking in on it and by the end Ross and Rachel will get back together anyway. The Love Rhombus will be a site to behold in future episodes, I'm sure.

So let's get to some thoughts/theories:

-Ben hired Ilana to get Sayid on that plane. Since typing about this earlier, I've decided I think it was for sure Ben.

-As Sayid is leaving the Russian's house at the beginning of the episode, the sign on the building he exits is translated to say in English: "Oldham Pharmaceuticals." This is the name of the torturing dude from 1977 Dharma time. Is this just random LOST fun-facts placed to drive people like me insane...or does it have a deeper meaning? All I know is that the dude was listening to a phonograph and that's odd enough for me.

-Juliet mentions that she and Sawyer have been "playing house". Kate said the same thing to Sawyer three years earlier before the Oceanic Six left and the island moved. Juliet actually did stay and play house (even though she has had the chance to leave on a submarine). THIS is what is going to make the Sawyer-Juliet-Kate-Jack connection so complicated. Sawyer finally found a woman who, to quote Blessed Union of Souls, "like's me for me" and hasn't abandoned him.

-Always wanting to get interesting and classic pieces of literature referenced in the show, LOST referenced a book called A Separate Reality by Carlos Castaneda written in 1971. It is supposed to be a work of non-fiction, but that point is contested by many. It is the self-accounted story of Castaneda's time as something of an apprentice to a self-proclaimed sorcerer named Don Juan Matus. This sorcerer claimed that by taking mind-altering he could see realities that no one else knew about. By ingesting "plants" (drugs), Matus was shown a perspective on things few had experienced. Think: Alice in Wonderland. Or, think: Oldham's truth serum he gave Sayid. Take a look at the wikipedia link I have above and see if you can find any more LOST connections to share.

-I know there is a lot of questions surrounding the biggest moment of the episode (and perhaps season so far): Ben getting shot. Basically, we don't know enough yet to make any real predictions. Faraday has said that time cannot be altered, that whatever happened, happened. We saw this with Charlie's fate as Desmond tried to save him repeatedly. We also know that when the island wants someone to stay alive (i.e. Locke being shot, Michael trying to off himself), they cannot perish. But until we know for sure that things can't be altered, until we know if Faraday was right or just quirky...I'll leave the Ben theories alone. It was an awesome scene though.

-In last week's Namaste episode, Sun and Frank are told by Christian Shepard that they are in the future and that, "I'm sorry, but you have a bit of a journey ahead of you." Who wants to bet that they will have to "move the island" themselves and that by doing so it will cause time to skip like the record player analogy and the two groups separated by some 30 years will be brought back together? Just a thought.

-How long till we see Patchey the Russian again? I still think he's alive somewhere.


That's it for now, folks. Wednesday night's upcoming episode is entitled "Whatever Happened, Happened" and should be a real doozy. There will be 17 total episodes this year and the season five finale will air on May 13th, In The Year of Our Lord 2009 and has already been titled "The Incident." If you remember, there has been numerous references in previous seasons to an "incident" that occurred in the original hatch (The Swan). Sounds boring, right?



Love,

The Pants of Locke, John