The Killers: Lost Recapped

I'm certainly not ready to give Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse a pass for the continuity flaws that have plagued this season--the latest one, over Charlotte's age, reeks of laziness, carelessness and just plain incompetence--but "He's Our You" felt like a big middle-finger to all of those Lost fans who thought we would never see how Sayid got on the plane. So to the untold number of irrationals fools who forgot what show they've been watching for the past four seasons, I give you a hearty raspberry. Whatever thought processes you use to watch Lost, try doing the opposite from here on out. I look forward to seeing how Kate and Hurley got on the plane in the coming weeks.

As it turns out, how Sayid got into handcuffs and onto the airplane was decidedly unimportant. Ben got him back from Habitat for Humanity in the Dominican Republic by spinning yet another lie--that Locke was murdered and the people who did it were waiting outside the mental institution that housed Hurley. Then, after leaving Sun, Jack and Ben alone on the dock, Sayid picked up a sexy girl who turned out to be Boba Fett--err, Illana--a bounty hunter ready to bring him back to Guam to face the family of the man he killed on the golf course back in the season four episode, "The Economist". However the chances that she was actually hired by that family are about nil. While Ilana didn't seem to know who Benjamin Linus was when Sayid asked if she was working for him, I find it hard to believe she isn't unknowingly in the employ of either Ben or Charles Widmore. And considering how surprised Ben looked when he saw Sayid on Ajira Flight 316, I'm thinking it's the latter.

And so, "He's Our You" hued closely to the Lost formula we've all come to know and love. Flashbacks filled in some of the important gaps, and one of the characters, in this case Sayid, got to experience a life-lesson that we kinda knew in the first five minutes. In case you hadn't noticed from the previous four seasons, Sayid is a killer. He's killed in war, he's killed for money, he's killed for revenge, and, in a flashback, he even killed a chicken. The dude is a bad ass. So once he got his bearings on the Island, and, with a little help from some LSD, he realized what his purpose was...

Sayid was brought back to the Island to kill Benjamin Linus. And that he actually accomplished this feat is one of the joys of Lost.

Last week I compared this predictable epiphany to an episode of 24--we all knew it was going to happen, and we all assumed it would resolve itself in a contrived and silly manner, with Sayid being talked off the ledge by either Jin or Sawyer. That this didn't happen, that Sayid literally murdered a teenager, was the first truly shocking moment of the season.

Of course, Ben's death in 1977 opens up a gigantic can of worms: without Ben, almost nothing that happened in the series would have happened. So that's weird. Plus, Daniel Faraday told everyone that the future couldn't be changed. Apparently though, like Doc Brown, he misunderstood the power of his Flux Capacitor.

Or! Maybe Ben isn't actually dead and Juliet or Jack will save him.

Or! Maybe he's dead like Locke, meaning he isn't actually dead.

Or! Maybe he'll survive a bullet wound through the chest, get saved by Richard and become the angry sociopath that we all know and love.

Or! Maybe Ben has a twin and Sayid killed the good twin, leaving the bad twin to take over the Dharma Initiative. (Keep this in mind for the lightening round.)

Anyway, you get the point. Where the series goes from here, I can't even fathom. What I do know is this: next week will be a frustrating watch, with our "heroes" all being accused of letting Sayid out.

Onto the lightning round!

1.) When history looks back on this season of Lost, the word that will be used to describe it most will be "diffuse". While "He's Our You" was pretty solid throughout, it was yet another episode that didn't feature Desmond, Sun, Locke or Daniel and had minimum use for Jack, Kate and Hurley. Even Juliet felt like set-dressing. (Does anyone actually soulfully look out a window while their bacon is burning? Wouldn't you notice either the noise or the smell?) I have a hard time believing that Messrs. Lindelof and Cuse completely forgot how to balance a narrative. Sure, this season might play out perfectly fine on DVD, but the series isn't meant for people to watch on DVD. It's meant for weekly viewing. Perhaps they can fix this in the coming episodes.

2.) Radzinsky is possibly the biggest douche in the history of the show. That he ends up blowing his brains out with a shotgun all over the ceiling of The Swan warms my heart. I just wish he would have died in The Purge.

3.) I found it quite amusing that the Dharma Initiative's idea of Sayid was a Timothy Leary-like burnout named Oldham, who lived in a tent and dosed Hostiles with LSD. Juxtapose that with the season one scene where Sayid and Jack tied Sawyer up to a tree and ripped his fingernails off. We've come a long way baby!

4.) Speaking of the interrogation scene: Oldham was listening to the old standard "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby" and it reminded me of the episode in season two when Sayid and Hurley picked up another standard, Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade", on the radio that Sayid fixed. That was on a jazz radio station though, so it probably isn't related. However, during that scene in season two, Hurley is reading the manuscript for "Bad Twin". Cue: thunderclaps! If they twist that into some kind of fake foreshadowing and Ben turns out to have a twin, don't say I didn't warn you.

5.) Am I crazy for actually believing that Ben was systematically having Sayid murder Charles Widmore's associates, and that said associates were bad news? Because as much as Ben is a ruthless murdering sociopath (swoon!), he still seems a lot more on the level than Charles Widmore.

6.) If anyone finds Rose or Bernard, please let me know.