Blog 6; Lost

"Sundown," the fifth episode in this 6th and final season of Lost, is what I will call a transition episode into the next phase of season 6 (hopefully). Lost is and always will be a show that is driven by its characters, and I’m glad this so far formulaic season hasn’t drifted away from that principle. While the objective of the ‘flashsideways’ is not yet clear, I have faith in the writers that it will all make sense in the end and will make each episode of the season better after having found out the end result. However, for now, we have to sit through the repetitive episode breakdown of focusing on one character on and off the island, and then there will be a major disclosure at the end of the episode (with some subtle hints or revelations sprinkled throughout). Some people may be against this, considering the slow pace this season is going at, but I am okay with it as long as it all makes sense in the end. As for "Sundown", the character of focus and the main theme was the emergence of the two sides: good and evil, light and dark, Flocke and Jacob, and the realization as to which side Sayid is on.
The flashsideways wasn’t as intriguing as the past two have been about Locke and then about Jack; however, it seemed to parallel what was happening on the island more so than the previous episodes have. The episode opens up with Sayid in a taxi in front of a house. He takes a while to get out of the cab but eventually does and walks up to the house and who other than his love Nadia opens the door. For any Lost fan, this seems to finally be the gratifying reunion of Sayid and Nadia; however, once again the writers stabbed us in the heart and revealed that Nadia was already married to someone else, Sayid’s brother Omer. This can only suggest that Sayid and Nadia truly are not destined to be together because every time they are close, something splits them apart. Whether it’s Sayid getting in a plane crash, Nadia getting hit by a car, or Nadia already being married, it seems like while they obviously share a love for each other, fate does not allow them to work out. Even Sayid’s brother can see this attraction, and therefore uses it to get Sayid to help his brother out by “taking care” of some people who Omer owes money to (and when I say, “take care” I mean Sayid destroying them). Sayid claims he isn’t that person anymore and refuses to do it. However, when Omer is “mugged” by the people he owes money to, Sayid decides to take care of some business. He ends up in a kitchen talking to some men and their boss to try to resolve this debt. We see this boss man cooking up some eggs, and it is later revealed that this man is Martin Keamy. He is the same man who came to the island in the other timeline to find Ben Linus, and kill everyone else on the island. He was then stabbed by Ben setting off the C4 on the freighter. This is because of Keamy’s “life insurance policy” of having a trigger on his arm that sets the C4 off if Keamy’s heart rate hits zero. On the subject of destiny, it seems that people on Lost who are bad, end up bad, no matter what timeline they are in. Keamy may not have ended up on the island, but he ended up as a boss of what would appear to be an organized crime group. As for Sayid, he claims he’s a good man yet he is an assassin at heart. Sayid in the past ends up going against his “values” and kills all of the men, including Keamy, who surrendered. We’ve seen this in the past many times. Sayid came to the island with a new slate and claimed he would never torture again, only to torture Sawyer. Then claimed to never do that again, only to torture Ben in the hatch. Then got off the island and seeked revenge on the men who killed Nadia by killing ALL of them. Then refused to go with Locke back to the island, only to return and break Hurley out of the mental institution and killed everyone else in his way. Then he came back to the island, realizing he is a killer no matter what, and shot Ben as a child. And now, in this episode, he is once again claiming that he is a good person, only to once again end up on the dark side, and this time for good (more on that later). After killing all of the men in the kitchen, Sayid hears screaming and follows the noise to the freezer to find Jin locked in there tied to a chair with tape over his mouth. Um ok? I guess we’ll find out more in a later episode.
As I mentioned before, this episode seemed to parallel the flashsideways story in a way that the previous episodes have not. Sayid’s “on island” story opens up with him marching into Dogen’s office to get answers as to why they tortured him and what they were finding out. Dogen tells him that they were testing to see if he was good or bad and that he failed the test. Sayid proceeds by saying that he is a good person, only to end up fighting Dogen for a good two minutes and would have lost the fight if not for Dogen’s mysterious baseball falling to the floor (possibly a signal from Jacob that Sayid is a candidate and Dogen can’t kill him). Dogen tells Sayid to leave and never return but on his way out, Claire comes marching into the temple to tell Dogen that HE wants to talk to him. Naturally, Dogen uses Sayid to prove that he is in fact a good person by sending him out there to kill “HIM” (who we know is Flocke). Dogen gives him a knife and tells Sayid that he will come as someone he knows to be dead and that he must dig the knife into this man’s chest before he even speaks or it will already be too late. Sayid treks into the jungle, hears the familiar smoke monster noises, stops to take a drink, and then sees John Locke. Flocke speaks to Sayid and Sayid immediately stabs Flocke in the heart, yet nothing happens to Flocke (uh-oh!). Flocke doesn’t kill Sayid, yet tells him that if he comes to Flockes side (presumably the dark side), then Flocke could give Sayid anything he wants, even raising Nadia from the dead. Sayid goes back to the Temple and warns everyone that Jacob is dead and that HE (Flocke) will come at sundown and whoever is still at the Temple at that time will be killed. Sayid again has a conversation with Dogen, and this time Dogen reveals why he is on this island. Jacob promised him that he could bring his dead son back to life if Dogen comes to the island and does EVERYTHING that Jacob says. The baseball is significant of how his son died. Sayid talks about the similar offer that Flocke made, and then grabs Dogen and drowns him in the special pool. Then Lennon comes in and tells Sayid that he has doomed them all because Dogen was the only thing keeping HIM out. Sayid says, “I know” and slits Lennon’s throat and throws him in the pool. Meanwhile, Kate finds Claire in a pit in the Temple and tells her that she has been taking care of Aaron, not “The Others.” Claire doesn’t seem to have listened to Kate, but warns Kate that HE is coming and suggests that Kate hide in the pit with Claire to be safe. At that moment, the smoke monster comes roaring over them both and tears the temple apart. After what would seem to be another episode continuing at this slow pace of Lost, things finally come together in the final ten minutes of this episode. Flocke, as the smoke monster, comes roaring through the temple and killing everyone in his way. The group from the statue, led by Ilana, also arrive at the temple and Sun, Frank, and Ben are with her as she is leading them to safety. Miles finds them and tells them that Sayid is in the pool room. Ben runs over there to find Sayid sitting on the steps and tries to convince him to come with them, as Sayid says, “It’s too late” signifying that he has already been converted to the dark side. Ilana finds a stone on the Temple wall and leads the group into a secret room as the smoke monster zooms past it. The final scene is a slow motion scene set to a creepy version of Claire’s lullaby “Catch a Falling Star.” The scene shows Sayid walking out of the Temple as everything is burning to the ground. He looks very dark (showing the “sun” has also set on Sayid and he has not more “light” in him anymore, he has completely turned evil and truly has no more good in him). He finds Flocke and a group of followers, as Claire (with Kate) also meets up with them. Flocke gives a head nod to Sayid, a head nod and smile to Claire (and she creepily smiles back), and then looks at Kate. Kate is confused as Flocke turns around and leads his group of evil followers, and of course, yet again, Kate does what she does best and follows the majority.
As I mentioned before about the parallel between the flashsideways and the on island story, the flashsideways had Sayid progressively getting closer and closer to doing the deed that was asked of him by his brother. On the island, he gets progressively closer to being completely evil, and it seems that as things happened to him on the island, they pushed him into being bad again off the island. This is a very, very dark installment to add to the intriguing yet slow moving sixth season. However, this episode finally has everyone coming together and as I said before, is a transition into the next phase of the season. What is the objective? I have no idea. What I do know is that the writers insist the show is about the characters so I have faith that this show will not end as good (Jacob) prevailing over evil (FLocke), which would be unrelated to everything we’ve seen over the past 5 years. Overall, "Sundown" was a good episode with a lot of action and an incredible ending. It seems to have set the tone for the rest of the season. Once again, I have no idea what is going to happen next but I could not be more excited. Until next time, I guess all we can do is ponder like was have for the past 5 seasons.