LOST: Episode 5.10

He's Our You

Today's sort of a rough day around here, so I don't have the time or the mental wherewithal to do a full recap, and I apologize for that. However, luckily for me, this episode had some very straightforward storytelling - for a LOST episode - with one big dollop of WTF at the end.

This was a Sayid-centric episode, and we found out the following through flashbacks:

1. Sayid's final Job for Ben was the assasination of one of Widmore's men in Moscow, after which Ben "released" him and told him to go live his life.
2. Sayid then joined the Habitat for Humanity-type group we saw before and was living in the Dominican Republic and building houses for the poor when Ben showed up and told him that John Locke was murdered (but not by whom!) and Hurley's life was in danger from Widmore.  That explains how Sayid ended up rescuing Hurley and breaking him out of Santa Rosa.
3. Ben also told Sayid that he was a born killer, that he didn't end up in situations where he had to kill or torture people by accident - he implied that Sayid is drawn to those acts because he enjoys killing and is good at it.  He basically seriously messes with Sayid's head.
4. After Sayid refused to go back to the Island with Ben, Jack and Sun, he met a beautiful woman at a bar, and took her back to his hotel room.  She is Ilana, a bounty hunter hired by the family of the golfer he killed in "The Economist".  She has to take him to Guam, where the golfer's family lives, and that's how they ended up on Ajira Flight 316.

In 1974 Island Time:

Sawyer tries to convince Sayid to admit to being a Hostile who has defected, but Sayid refuses.  He wants Sawyer to release him into the jungle where he will fend for himself.  Sawyer refuses, saying if he does then the chances that the DI will discover who they really are will rise dramatically and everything he's built over the last 3 years will be destroyed.  Because Sayid will tell Horace nothing under a normal interrogation, they take him to the DI's resident sadist Oldham (the "He" to Sayid's "You" in the episode's title), who gives him some kind of truth-telling drug.  He tells the truth, but they don't believe him.  While under the influence of the drug, however, he reveals all that he knows about the Dharma stations (from his 100 days on the Island), and that leads Radsinsky and various other DI people to believe he is a spy for the Hostiles.  A vote is taken and the DI decide to execute Sayid.  Sawyer tries to help Sayid escape before he can be killed, but Sayid refuses now, telling Sawyer he has found his purpose, his reason for coming back.

A short time later, a burning VW bus - sans driver - barrels through Dharmaville, crashing into an occupied house.  It is a diversion, I believe, created by young Ben Linus, so that he can bust Sayid out of jail.  Which he does.  As they run through the jungle, Sayid encounters Jin, who he knocks unconscious.  He then takes Jin's hand gun and...I couldn't believe he really did this...shoots little Ben right through the heart.  Ben falls face first to the ground and a weeping Sayid races off into the jungle.

I thought this was a good, solid episode that really flew by.  Obviously, the final scene raises a slew of time paradox/closed loop questions that I cannot even begin to address right now.  I do think, however, that Ben is only "mostly dead", and he will somehow be revived by the Island/Richard/Others.  It's not like we haven't seen it before, and it would go a long to explaining why Ben thought he was so special.

One more thing - I miss Desmond.