Lost
One
of Them
original airdate: 02-15-06
4_8_15_16_23_42: Welcome to Lost
coverage, I’ll be your host. Oh
dear reader, where shall we begin? Anyone who reads this
site regularly may recall our previous attempt at covering
ABC’s cult obsessive puzzle serial, but our then reviewer
decided he had something called "a life." Pfeh.
So with
the Teen
Titans series having come to an end, the time has
come to dive into a new obsession, and Lost seems
to be the perfect candidate.
So let’s
dive in shall we?
Last
week’s revelatory Sawyer developments are a distant
memory with the onset of "One of Them," as Rousseau
returns to the beach in search of Sayid. Why would she show
her face around the “nosies” base camp after
attempting to pilfer Claire’s baby in last season’s
finale? Simple: a man in a net who could possibly be a member
of the ultra-secretive and uber-dangerous group of Others,
led by the super-friendly “Mr. Beard-O,” who
so far has managed to abduct Walt, hold Kate at gunpoint,
and say some extremely threatening things to Jack, Locke,
and Sawyer a few episodes back.
Rousseau
seeks out Sayid’s specific talents in the arena of
extracting information from people, perhaps because her
own methods of interrogation failed on the former Iraqi
soldier. Sure, Sayid has a knack for bringing even the toughest
men to tears, but where he acquired such a skill is an even
more telling tale, which is the subject of this week’s
flashbacks set during Operation Desert Storm. We learn of
his capture by American forces, who take a vested interest
in exploiting Sayid’s mastery of English to locate
a downed pilot by forcing him to interrogate his former
commanding officer.
Meanwhile
back on the island, Rousseau’s mystery captive, who
she skewered in the shoulder with an arrow while trying
to flee, is unwilling to share truthful information with
Sayid and Locke. The two formulate a plot to trick Jack
into allowing Sayid some time alone with their prisoner
so that he may work his magic.
Sawyer,
the self-dubbed “new sheriff in town,” seems
to have an affinity to island creatures of all sorts as
the sound of a tree frog slowly begins to grate away at
his patience. The gruff gun-toting grifter enlists the help
of Hurley after discovering that the big guy has been hoarding
a few choice food supplies for himself, namely an industrial
sized tub of Dharma Initiative ranch dressing.
Sawyer’s
connection to animals must be significant in some way, but
how? So far he’s had to deal with a feisty boar who
wouldn’t leave him alone, he came into contact with
the Polar Bear, and he’s the only other person on
the island to have seen Kate’s horse. There must be
a clue in there somewhere.
Attempting
to further tie together the characters’ connections
prior to their crash on the island, we are treated to yet
another Kate connection in Sayid’s flashbacks, as
her military enlisted father turns out to be a major player
in Sayid’s interrogation methods. Another American
soldier named Joe Inman (Clancy Brown) takes a vested interest
in Sayid’s education in the dark arts of pain, which
is a fitting bit of casting as Brown is the quintessential
hard-ass and all around tough guy. Brown is such an excellent
character actor that it just seems to beg for him to show
up on the island somehow or another. Sure, we can’t
pull every background character in, but it would be sweet
to see him amongst the growing tensions on the island.
Sayid
manages to get the man to explain that his name is Henry
Gale (the name of Dorothy's Uncle from The Wizard of
Oz -- ed.) from Minnesota, and tells Sayid and Locke
that he and his wife had crash landed on the island while
trying to cross the Pacific Ocean in a hot air balloon.
Sayid does not believe “Henry” however, because
when he explains that his wife “got sick” and
died, Sayid pushes for details regarding “Henry’s”
burial process. This is information he “can’t
remember” which leads to a gruesomely tense sequence
involving a finger and a pair of plyers.
While
on frog hunt, Sawyer’s chastising leads Hurley to
stand up for himself and threaten to refuse to help him
any further. It’s about time someone stood up to Sawyer
and his bullyish ways, it just seems surprising that Hurley
was the first to do it. Perhaps Hurley will start getting
a little more respect from Sawyer…or maybe not.
In the
episode's climax comes a scene that manages to utilize the
power struggle between hatch mythology and Sayid’s
torturous ways. Jack, while being forced to listen to the
sounds of Sayid pummeling Henry in the locked gun storage,
decides to put Locke’s faith in pressing “execute”
to the test.
As promised,
the counter does reach zero, and let’s just say what
happens is extremely creepy, involving the numerical tiles
turning red featuring hieroglyphics in place of the numbers.
Code breakers are already plumbing the depths of hieroglyphic
meaning to unearth possible messages or clues from this
tidbit of information.
This
episode sets up a considerable amount of material for the
next few episodes to mull over. In "The Long Con"
we were given a peek at Kate’s mother bumping into
Sawyer, and here we find her father interacting with Sayid
and even showing him a picture of young Kate taken before
she turned into the misunderstood fugitive. The big question
is, what do all these connections hold in store for dear
old “Freckles?”
Sayid’s
gut instincts prove effective, but ultimately his actions
are forcing people to think about what the Others are capable
of, and how far the newly merged “nosies” and
“tail-enders” are willing to go to protect themselves.
As he
explains to Charlie at the end of the episode, it seems
that both Jack and Locke have forgotten exactly what these
Others are capable of. If Jack took a turn a few weeks back
to formulate “an army,” his vision of one is
an idealized one and nothing more.
Jack
doesn’t have the stomach to do what is necessary to
carry out his plan, but in Sayid the island has someone
with the experience and the wherewithal to do so, no matter
how dirty things may get. If each of the characters are
there for a reason, as Locke mused so often in season one,
then perhaps this is Sayid’s destiny.
Finally,
the outcome of Sawyer’s tree frog hunt is about as
dastardly as anything the character has done to date. We
definitely seem to be returning to the rougher, tougher
Sawyer these days, and with him hoarding all the guns it
may make plans to build an army all the more difficult.
Tensions are flaring, and it looks as though we are set
to delve further and further into the island’s mythology
during the next new episode as the group discovers a new
hatch, and hopefully a few more pot-boiling answers.
For
more speculative analysis of possible theories and clues
from each episode, read my weekly Lost
blog, and join us back here in two weeks (March
1st) for a new episode of Lost entitled "Maternity
Leave."
|
