Previously, on Lost: Sayid is shot by Ben Linus's dad! Then he dies. For two hours. Then he un-dies. Sort of. The bearded Temple Master is angry. Claire looks disheveled. The Thing That Looks Like Locke But Is Not Actually Locke glares at her. Hurley snacks on a Dharma Initiative-supplied, generic Toaster Strudel. People live similar, but significantly different, lives on the flash-sideways timeline. You wish no one would ever use the words "flash-sideways" or "timeline" again. In the Lost writers' office, a balding man in glasses draws a red line through a whiteboard entry for "Ep. 606: Sundown." The other writers nod ominously.
Please join us as we once again attempt to answer a fresh batch of questions baked up in last night's episode, pulled piping hot from the island's wood-fired mystery-oven. [Oh, yeah: SPOILERS. You know what that means by now.]
What would be a good job for someone of Sayid's, erm, interesting background in the flash-sideways timeline?
Given his Republican Guard torturer skill-set, he'd probably thrive as a prosecutor, as the "bad cop" in an inner city precinct interrogation room , or as one of those annoyingly suspicious people car insurance companies sent to inspect your vehicle after you file a claim. He'd get his answers.
Too on the nose. What if he translates contracts for an oil company? There's competitive pay, lots of international travel, he'd be into that.
Yes, great! It'd be a great cover for a hitman.
No, he's leaving that life behind, got it?
We give him twenty minutes, max, before he's cracking skulls. Don't delude yourself, we are what we are. Or are we?
Was Sayid's hair cut a little shorter, the curls wound a little tighter in the flash-sideways? Surely that means something profound has changed in his character.
Just stop.
Why did Dogen strap Sayid to that torture-looking machine thingy a couple of weeks ago? And then try to poison him?
The machine tells us how a person's balanced between good and evil. And Sayid tipped toward the evil side, so out came the hot iron and the electrified nipple clamps. The poison was to kill him, because Dogen thinks it would be better if Sayid were dead. Seems pretty logical. You don't want the evil-imbalanced running around the Temple, mucking up everyone's chakras.
So he's imbalanced because he's "claimed," right?
Dogen didn't say that exactly, but yeah, the imbalance is clearly claiming-related.
Going back to the poisoning, why didn't they just kill Sayid when they had the chance, instead of trying to trick Jack into giving him the pill?
Because then Dogen couldn't wait a couple of episodes to convince Sayid, mere minutes after his admission of homicidal intent instigated an epic fight in which his plants were knocked over and favorite baseball scuffed, to stab Smokey with the Blade of Smokey-Stabbing. Circumstances change quickly on the island, because of the frozen donkey wheel. (We've taken to calling any weirdly motivated behavior "the frozen donkey wheel," because we miss it so.)
So what's the story with the baseball?
Glad you asked! We have more details now! In another life, Dogen was a businessman, and like many businessmen who would eventually become Temple-dwelling mystics caught in the middle of a battle between godlike beings staged on magical island, had a son who played Little League. But then there was a terrible accident after a game, and as his son lay on his deathbed, Jacob appeared with an offer: he'd save his son, but only if Dogen would come to that magical island forever, never seeing his beloved child again. The savvy Dogen -- a shrewd businessman, don't forget -- countered by asking for a throw-in to sweeten his side of the deal. Not anticipating that Dogen would attempt a counteroffer with his son's life on the line, Jacob quickly scanned the room for ideas, and, seeing the World-Series-ending baseball that Red Sox first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz had momentarily left with the lucky Make-A-Wish kid sharing the hospital room while he ran down the hall to get a Snickers from the vending machine, offered the historic ball to his soon-to-be Temple Master. Dogen agreed immediately, and he and Jacob high-tailed it out of there before Mientkiewicz returned. And as the sound of the pair's fleeing footsteps quickly faded, the rhythmic pings emanating from Dogen's son's heart monitor grew louder and more stable. Indeed, Jacob had kept his promise, but Daddy was now gone forever, resigned to a life of maintaining a hidden sanctuary from a malevolent puff of truck exhaust, tending to exotic plants, and playing endlessly frustrating rounds of "Who's your favorite Beatle?" with a Lennon-obsessed underling, who, no matter how passionate your argument for "While My Guitar Gently Weeps,", would never budge an inch on George Harrison.
Isn't family the worst? You set up your brother with your dream girl, they have a beautiful family, and then he tries to pull you back in to the violent past you've tried so hard to leave behind, just because he's shitty with money?
[Sigh] But what are you gonna do, not whack some goons when the chips are down? You don't want your nieces and nephews growing up without a father, even if you could easily step in and replace him. Have we learned nothing from Brothers?
Besides that photo of Nadia that his nephews found, what other mementos signifying his unresolved feelings for her were in Sayid's bag?
A lock of hair he once cut from her head as she slept next to him, a Post-It note she left him reading "Miss you!" (with a heart over the "i"), and a pair of fur-lined handcuffs from their favorite lovemaking game, "Now It's My Turn To Interrogate The Big, Bad Interrogator Man."
These questions are very Sayid-heavy. Can we move on to someone else for a minute?
Hey, it was Sayid's episode. Fine, we'll move on, but we're coming back to him!
Where was Jack rushing off to in the hospital in that brief glimpse we got of him?
Probably to his kid's piano recital. Last week he said he was going to be there for him, and dammit, he's going to be there for him, even if he secretly never wants to hear another measure of f'ing Chopin. Oh, crap. His beeper just went off. Emergency spinal surgery. Not gonna make the concert. Oh, how doomed we are to repeat the dysfunctional father/son dynamics that Fate has proscribed for us!
Claire: Still hot, or just crazy?
According to Miles, still hot. But why not both? She wears crazy really well.
But would it kill her to comb her hair?
Why? It's totally working for her. Island-head's a sexy look.
Are Evil Sayid and Bad Claire gonna do it?
Yup. The great thing about Smokey's army of darkness is that no one's all hung up on monogamy. Everyone can be with whomever they want. Sure, sometimes feelings get hurt, and maybe Smokey will passive-aggressively whirl himself into a smog-tornado outside their tent while they get it on, but the next morning, cooler heads prevail, and everyone is evil-friends again.
What kind of a loan shark demands interest payments in perpetuity even after the debt's been paid off?
Why would you ever trust a guy who shot Ben Linus' daughter in the head right before his eyes? That happened in another timeline, but still. This is obviously a shady dude.
Why was Jin in the fridge?
Not only does Keamy run a successful, if morally suspect, loan-sharking business, but he has a black-market restaurant that specializes in sashimi made of Korean businessmen. Gotta keep the product fresh, especially at $50,000 per human-omakase seating.
Why did plunging the Blade of Smokey-Stabbing into Smokey's gut not kill him?
Dogen told Sayid not to let Smokey speak before the stabbing, but he still managed a "What's up, Sayid?" before he could drive the knife home. Clever smoke monster! (There are very specific rules that need to be obeyed to the letter for these enchanted murder implements to work.) Also, the whole thing was pretty clearly another needlessly convoluted set-up, wherein Dogen sent Sayid to be murdered by Smokey during his own botched murder attempt, allowing Dogen to get back to badgering Lennon about how Harrison's Ravi-Shankar-tutored sitar work helped raise everyone's musical game.
But isn't pissing off Evil Sayid like that just going to turn him to Smokey's side, who'll send him back half-cocked to kill the Temple Keeper, opening up the once-unbreachable sanctuary to a full-on Smoke Monster massacre?
Dogen probably should not have pursued that Master's Degree at the Jack Shephard School of Disastrous, If Well-Intentioned, Decision Making. Hindsight, etc etc.
Are Dogen and Lennon really dead?
Sayid did kill them in the Temple's Miracle Jacuzzi, so it's possible its burbling, filthy water still has enough residual Jacob-essence in it to resurrect them. But they're probably really dead-dead, not Evil-Sayid-dead. There are only ten episodes left, we're running out of time for more reincarnation shenanigans.
Can someone check in on Sawyer? It's been two weeks now.
He's fine. He found Ben's secret cache of Cure records, so he'll be moping out his grief just a little while longer.
Do you think Sayid would be a good stand-up comedian?
No.
If the Lost characters were cast in the upcoming Gilligan's Island movie remake, how might that look?
Hurley = Gilligan
Jack = The Skipper
Kate = Mary Anne
Locke = The Professor
Juliet = Ginger
Jin and Sun = The Howells
Sawyer = Wisecracking special guest-star Don Rickles
The original seven-castaway format really doesn't leave a lot of room for Lost's densely populated universe (squeezing Sawyer in there was cheating), but we bet we could find spots for Charlie, Claire, Ben, and a bunch of our favorite Others by having the survivors of S.S. Minnow Voyage 815 discover the boat's stern section, and maybe throw in some kind of secret WWII bunker. (Where a mysterious Scottish guy has to relight tiki torches every 108 minutes or some life-sustaining orange trees will die.)
But no time-travel, we promise.