Lost Rewatch: One of Them

 

Even in 2006, I knew you could never take any character Michael Emerson played at face value.

I’d only seen him in a few major roles on television prior to Lost but they were significant enough to tell you everything you needed to know about him. In 2001, he had won an Emmy for playing William Hinks on The Practice, a man caught standing over the body of a dead woman who confessed to being a serial killer. His court-appointed psychiatrist came to Lindsey Dole convinced that not only was he not insane; his delusion was thinking he was the killer. Lindsey went along with it, and interrogated Hinks on the murders and pulled him apart on the stand. Then the DA made such a convincing closing that it actually sold Lindsey on what she was being told – and Hinks revealed he was right. On a series that was known for mesmerizing guest characters, most of whom fooled their attorney, Emerson scared the hell out of you and even when he met his end, it wasn’t the end of the trouble he caused.

Then, in what would be the penultimate episode of The X-Files Emerson played Oliver Martin, a young man who lives in a house that neighbors say looked like that of The Brady Bunch. Eventually we learned that he was actually Anthony who as a boy had been the greatest example of telepathy ever seen, the proof of the paranormal that Dana Scully had been looking for. Many of the changes in Oliver’s character over the episode would have been difficult to believe in a lesser actor, but Emerson completely sold them, this time showing a level of humanity.

So when we see Emerson screaming in a net that he is Henry Gale from Minnesota and that he is begging for help, naturally I was inclined to agree with Rousseau. No matter what any character he plays, I already knew outright that Michael Emerson never played straight with us. I don’t think I could have imagined how right I was at this stage (we will never know for certain if the writers had even figured that much out) but I was convinced as quickly as Sayid was that no matter how much he pleaded and implored with us, how frantic his cries for help were, how pitiful he seemed, that he just wasn’t being straight with us.

One of Them is one of the greatest episodes in Lost’s history for many reasons besides the introduction of Emerson to the cast of the show. Perhaps the most important is that it completely revitalizes the character of Sayid. For the first part of Season 2 he was underutilized, after Shannon’s death he basically went into morning, and he’s been detached from much of the action ever since. This gives Sayid’s character a complete new direction to take things and while it does much to unleash the darkest parts of him, it also gives Naveen Andrews a chance to flex his acting muscles at a whole different level. He will demonstrate it many times going forward in the series but few times to the level he does in both the flashback and the story on the island.

It's stunning to see Andrews in the flashback thirteen years before we saw him on the island: there’s an innocence in his face that we honestly did not think he ever had throughout the flashbacks and a sense of devotion and loyalty to his cause that we did not see even in his first flashback. We are in the middle of the First Gulf War and Sayid has been taken prisoner, and his fate will end up being determined by Americans and two faces, one that we have seen before, one we will see again and both times they have connections to characters that are vital to the island.

When Sayid is escorted from holding the man standing over him is Sam Austen, the man who at this point in time Kate believes is her father. Sam clearly knows differently, but its clear he still loves Kate with all his heart in the final flashback as he stares lovingly at a picture of a young Kate and asks Sayid if he has family. It is hard to put that in context with the man who has little trouble telling Sayid to interrogate his commanding officer to get the location of a missing pilot. There’s a very clear difference in his tone in both the beginning and the end of the episode.

The other character we meet is identified as Joe Inman. His face was familiar to me but from other roles: Clancy Brown was a fairly busy character actor.  To that point his most famous role was one of the lead characters in the flawed but fascinating Carnivale, an HBO mythology series that was cancelled before it could realize its potential (or maybe disappoint its fans, that does seem to happen a lot.) Inman seems to be a decent man when he talks to Sayid but it’s clear he intends to manipulate him early on. Looking back on it, I sometimes wonder if in a way Darlton was making a subtle political statement about the War on Terror in this episode. Was what the American military did to Sayid here just a rehearsal for what would be do a decade later without getting our hands dirty? I think of that quite a bit in the last scene when Inman leaves Sayid by the side of the road, telling Sayid he now has a new skill set that might come in handy.

Andrews is superb throughout the flashback: we don’t actually see him torture someone for the first time, only the aftermath when he emerges from the room, tells Inman about the pilot’s fate, and we see that his sleeves are stained with blood and the look of horror on his face. When he tells Inman at the end that he never wants to do anything like that again, we know that’s what he believes even though the viewer knows better. The fact that he is left alone at the end is perfectly fitting; Sayid has always been solitary and now we see he started out that way.

But his performance on the island is just as magnificent, surely his highpoint for Season 2.  He goes through a remarkable range of emotions throughout. It helps matters that Rousseau, who has yet to make an appearance this season returns to bring Henry to his attention. Despite what happened in the first season finale Sayid trusts Rousseau in a way no one else does. Sayid is shocked by Rousseau’s actions in the initial scene, but its worth noting that everything she tells him is absolutely true all the way through. We will not learn that they have a connection until much later in the series but Rousseau knows enough about him to know better.

And Sayid is suspicious about what he sees and keeps working slowly. He is quiet at the start in his approach, but its very clear that he’s got a plan and he knows outright that it’s easier to manipulate Locke by putting him at odds against Jack. He arranges things so that he can lock himself in the armory and its very clear what he’s going to do.

The scenes between Emerson and Andrews will be a highpoint in Lost from this point forward, particularly in Season 2. Henry will very quickly prove that he is good at manipulating the survivors of the crash but he never can quite pull it off with Sayid. He has answers to every question Sayid has, and there are no obvious flaws in his story. Even the fact that he claims not to remember just how deeply he buried his wife could be something that could be overlooked out of grief. But Sayid knows better.

And then there is the monologue he delivers before an act break when he ‘introduces’ himself to Henry. It is by far the fullest realization of who he is and in  a way, it’s acceptance. When he tells him that: “My name is Sayid Jarrah and I am a torturer” it is exhilarating, terrifying and heartbreaking simultaneously. I have never understood why Lost received no major acting nominations in Season 2; the fact that Andrews never got one for this one is by far the most blatant offense.

But as much as the episode is dominated by Emerson and Andrews, One of Them is also incredible because it puts a human face on the divide between Locke and Jack. They will spent much of the next several episodes divided on how to handle the situation with Henry, and I have to say that from the start Jack comes away looking worse.

Everything that both Locke and Sayid tell Jack about the situation is not only accurate but rational. Locke’s speech to Jack is perfectly sound: if Jack is raising an army, they are at war. Part of war means doing unpleasant and horrible things to people you consider the enemy and it also means making alliances with people you might not normally trust. But rather than take this as the sound advice it is, Jack gets self-righteous because someone else has taken the choice out of his hands. And when he decides to force Locke to open the armory or let the timer run on, he looks even worse. He chooses this opportunity to possibly risk the lives of everybody on the island to get what he wants and throw in a chance to mock Locke’s devotion to task he considers pointless.  When Locke gives in and runs to the computer – and the viewer gets their very first hint that something bad might happen when the timer runs out -  we get the feeling of how utterly reckless Jack is when it comes to getting what he wants.

Even when everything is all done and Henry spends the next several episodes in the armory Jack utterly refuses to admit he has made a mistake. I think his actions going forward have less to do with controlling the information – Sayid has already told Charlie there’s a prisoner in the basement – and more about exuding his dominance. Jack has to be in charge even if it’s not in the group’s best interest. I find it easy to believe why Locke ends up being manipulated by Henry; Jack has made it clear how little he thinks of him and he is looking for any support he can find.

Most of the other regulars are absent but there is another storyline that has a certain measure of importance. We learn that Hurley did not give away all the food and has been hoarding some. When the worst person possible – Sawyer – finds out his secret, it’s clear this is the chance he’s wanted to have something over him in a while but it takes another nuisance – a croaking tree frog – for him to let go of it. That this food might be more beneficial to the group doesn’t enter Sawyer’s head.

It's also noteworthy that Hurley, who has been willing to let most of the offensive nicknames Sawyer’s called him roll of his back, finally reaches his breaking point. He’s been relentlessly nice to everybody so far this season, so it says a lot about how angry he truly he is when he finally tells Sawyer that even he calls on it, he doesn’t care: “At least people like me.” I’d argue this entire episode illustrates better than the robbery of the guns just how unpleasant Sawyer can be. (If you wanted to be generous, you could say that’s the real reason the writers let Sawyer’s ‘threat’ diminish afterwards, but in this case I’m not willing to give them enough credit.)

If the episode ends with another storyline being proposed that doesn’t really go anywhere – Sayid’s alliance with Charlie is basically a non-starter, though its at least carried out a little better than Jack’s ‘army’ – it makes it very clear that Sayid has a true realization of the Others as a threat than Jack does that at this point. There’s an argument that the entire organization of an army was less due to protect his people than out of some sense of loss of control. Sayid knows how dangerous these people are, and for the rest of his time on the island will do everything in his power to protect the survivors from them and thwart their actions. Sayid has had no direction since Shannon’s death, and now he has one. But in doing so, whether he knows it yet or not, it is started him down a path that leads to darkness that he will increasingly find hard to climb out of.