Lost “He’s Our You “ Sayid Takes a Stand

Photo from ABC

This episode of Lost (ABC) titled “He’s Our You” put the focus on Sayid (Naveen Andrews). Sayid is one of the characters on this show that I have always been on the fence about. He has a very scary, dark side to him, and he always seems to be simmering inside. Yet, at times, he seems to be very reflective on certain aspects of his life, possibly wanting to change, but not exactly knowing how.

We see him as a young boy, who easily kills a chicken when his brother, after being asked by his father to do so, is unable to perform the task. Besides the flashbacks to Sayid’s childhood life, we also see some of his contact with Ben after his return from the Island when he kills others at Ben's request. He’s been tagged a natural for the task. The problem is, it seems Sayid doesn’t seem to want to be labeled that way anymore. He’s working to help rebuild a community that seems away from modern cities, and he seems content. Maybe it’s guilt, maybe it’s disappointment that the killings he did for Ben (Michael Emerson) haven’t changed anything. He doesn’t want to help Ben any more.

He’s now back on the Island in 1977, and has been captured by the Dharma people, as they think he’s one of the Others and qA sent there as a spy. They try to get him to talk, but Sayid knows how to be silent. A very young Ben Linus seems to have befriended Sayid, and Ben expresses his hopes that if he breaks Sayid out, that Sayid will take him with him. Ben apparently hates his father who is also on the Island, as his father seems abusive to Ben.

We also see a flashback to Sayid meeting up with a woman in a bar – the same woman we had seen him handcuffed to when he made his return flight to the Island. He thinks that she’s hitting on him, and when they get back to the hotel room, she overtakes him and holds him at gunpoint, saying she was contracted to bring him back to face the consequences for one of the killings he did at the request of Ben. He is stunned when he and this bounty hunter get to the waiting area for the flight, and he sees the other people from the Island making their return. He tries to convince the woman to change the flight but she won’t budge. Of course, they both end up on the Island, separated by location and probably time as well. Personally, I could have done without so much back story on the bounty hunter and Sayid. The whole bar scene seemed to take too long and seemed very forced, especially since the actress playing the bounty hunter talked with a poorly executed fake accent.

Meanwhile, Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly), and Hurley (Jorge Garcia) are trying to acclimate to their new jobs on the Island, and Kate seems to be trying to get used to the idea of Sawyer being with Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell). These characters seem to stay in the background this episode, which is fine with me.

When Sayid refuses to talk to Horace, and when Sawyer (Josh Holloway) – AKA LeFleur – can’t convince him to go along with a cover story, Sayid is taken to one of the Dharma men to loosen his tongue. When he asks Sawyer who the man is, Sawyer says, “He’s our you”, meaning that the man would torture and kill a the drop of a hat. Sayid is drugged and he spills everything, including information about Dharma that they said no one is supposed to know. They are convinced he is a spy. The problem is, no one believes him when he says he is from the future, and they start to believe they gave him too much of the drug. When Sayid is returned to his cell, the key people of the Dharma group meet and decide that Sayid should be killed. Sawyer/LeFleur is forced to agree – and seems to do so for appearances. He goes to Sayid, and tries to convince Sayid to escape, and Sawyer will let him make it look like Sayid overpowered him and took his keys. But Sayid isn’t buying it. Later, when one of the vans, set aflame, crashes into a building and the Dharma group fights the fire, young Ben arranges to get Sayid out of the cell, and they escape. While on the run, Sayid encounters Jin (Daniel Dae Kim), and when Jin gets a message on the radio that the prisoner has escaped, Sayid overpowers him, knocks him out, and takes his gun. And then, the unthinkable happens - Sayid tells Ben that he was right when he said that he was a killer, and then he points his gun at Ben and shoots him. Ben collapses, apparently dead. It seems clear that Sayid is, in fact, a killer, when the killing seems necessary. Sayid, I think, just wants to get off the crazy Island merry-go-round.

This is going to make things interesting. If Ben was shot dead as a child, how can he have lived on to create all the problems he did for the Islanders later? Is this the classic paradox, where it seems impossible that someone who has already existed in the future had already died in the past, and therefore should have no future? Will the Island’s healing properties bring Ben back to life as it did Locke? Will Ben’s shooting just escalate the tension between the Dharma people and the Others? And what suspicion will be cast on Sawyer and the other new arrivals? Sayid’s actions may have several unintended consequences…or are they intended? With “Lost,” it’s anybody guess.


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