Lost Rewatch on VHS: The Economist

 

VHS Notes: There will be less information on ads for TV shows as there are for previous seasons because of the 2007 WGA strike. By the time Season Four premiered on January 31^st 2008, the strike had been resolved. However because of the strike almost all scripted series had stopped filming well before that period. Lost had only completed eight episodes when the stoppage began the previous October (and we’ll get to the ramifications later) and by the time of the season premiere the only shows that were still airing new episodes on ABC were Eli Stone and Brothers & Sisters and the latter would run out of episodes in late February. Most of the ads of this period deal with reality shows that were filmed to fill in the gap and quickly discarded later on; I suspect the Dancing With The Stars spin-off Dance Wars and Oprah’s Giveaway (which air promos in this recording) would not have been made under any other circumstances.

Similarly because this episode aired In February while there are ads for the Academy Awards, there are few ads for films of merit. The most interest commercial is for the DVD release of American Gangster a superb film that earned Ruby Dee an Oscar nomination and a SAG award for Best Supporting Actress.

 

 

You’d think an episode where we learn that Sayid is not only one of the Oceanic Six but seems to have returned to civilization a ruthless assassin would be the biggest revelation of The Economist. There are, as always, more to be had, particularly in the final minute of the series which is one of the biggest shocks in series history.

After starting out the first two seasons as one of the most dominant characters in the entire roster, Sayid spent much of Season Three not nearly being utilized to his full potential. Considering that so much of his arc in Season Two was about his hatred of the Others and Season Three dealt with them by far the most to date, this was one of the biggest flaws of the third season. The show more than makes up for it from this point on in the second half of the series Sayid becomes integral to the show in a way he hasn’t been and his arc, always one of the saddest on the show, becomes arguably the most tragic of the cast. Naveen Andrews said in interviews during Season Four that he was thrilled by the change in direction, and it can be seen in every aspect of his performance not only in this episode but the rest of the show: Andrews would never earn another Emmy nomination for the rest of Lost’s run but every season he dominates the screen every time he’s at the center of the action.

On the island Sayid seems to have taken a role of leadership he hasn’t in a long time. He’s loyal to Jack but he is harboring suspicions that Locke might be fundamentally correct about the stories the freighter folk are telling them. He decides to get on the helicopter as much to get answers as out of hope for rescue, and as we’ve seen, he’s willing to do whatever it takes. He decides to make a deal with Frank that if he returns Charlotte, he’ll get passage back to the freighter.

(In Finding Lost, Nikki points out that Frank’s exact words are: “he will take Sayid off the island.” She points out that this could just been dropping Sayid in the ocean. I never bought that at the time because even in just two appearances Frank sems more honest than Ben ever was about anything. That may be a low bar, but it is worth noting in this case and practically every other one going forward, Frank is a man of his word.)

Sayid also knows that Jack can’t be trusted to go on this mission, and his terms are very diplomatic about what Jack did the last time he saw Locke. Sayid’s reaction was angry but he restrained Jack from doing what he did, and we know Sayid who is far more capable of violence would have been more diplomatic. For all that Jack says about Sayid not being a diplomat, he’s always been more measured in his approach than Jack or Locke has been, and his experience in interrogation helps him lure people into a false sense of security. Miles clearly thinks he’s going to have to threaten Sayid to take him with him and when Sayid immediately acquiesced, his bluster collapses immediately. When they are walking to the barracks Sayid’s manages to get to the core of Miles far better than anyone else - though it’s worth noting that Miles is the only one of the freighter folk who everybody seems to view with hostility. (When Sayid returns with Charlotte but not Miles, Frank seems more amused than betrayed about the treachery.) And he tells Miles the truth about the ‘fundamental conflict’ in the group and does not give away his position one way or another.

Miles’ approach throughout this episode is of the arrogance we saw before. He treats everybody with complete disdain and gives no reason for why he wants to go get Charlotte since he doesn’t care about her. We are quickly getting the sense that everybody on the freighter has their own agenda and that all of them are keeping their own secrets. In the case of Miles his agenda gets him into one that he ends up a hostage, and though he will try to make it seem he’s in control in the next episode, not long after he begins to realize that he is in over his head. It won’t do much to affect his snark – and frankly there’s quite a bit in this season where we think his agenda may be hurting people – but he’s going to realize that he might have been safer if he’d stayed with the chopper.

That’s not to say that things are going much better in Locke’s group. We’re already beginning to see the doubts in what Locke is doing and he’s clearly at a loss when he goes to where the cabin was and nothing is there. Ben’s remark that ‘John’s looking for someone to tell him what to do’ is dead on and everybody immediately senses it. And it begins to show in his own behavior as a leader right away. When Hurley begins to raise pertinent questions, Locke – who would not have a group to lead without him – immediately begins to bully him. I actually find it hard to believe that Hurley would willingly go along with Locke’s plan, and based on his attitude when Sayid, Kate and Miles falls into his hands, it’s clear Hurley was never truly on board with it.

I have to say, however, that I would have taken Ben’s side on the wager. Sayid is always more savvy about not taking things at face value; we’ve seen him do it on the island over and over. It’s only because Hurley is incapable of deception that his guard goes down and he ends up falling for it in the first place.

And it’s worth noting that Jack manages to outsmart himself when it comes to asking Kate to go with Sayid. As it turns out Sayid is perfectly capable of manipulating Locke to give him what he wants with no assistance from Kate at all. The two of them have a civilized conversation even while one is holding the other prisoner and Locke has no problem accommodating Sayid when he hears his terms. Jack as we know doesn’t like being left behind and clearly thinks Kate will do what he tells her and he’s willing to use Sawyer’s attraction to her as a weapon.

  I don’t know whether Kate changes her mind after she sees Sawyer at the barracks or if she’d always planned to stay once she got there but as we all know Kate has always been a protector of her own interests. That said, it’s worth listening to their conversation. Sawyer makes it very clear that he’s not with Locke and we’ve already seen enough scenes between the two of them to know that he doesn’t trust Locke more than any one in Jack’s group. When he tells Kate something that frankly someone should have pointed out at least two seasons ago  - that the only thing that Kate is going to find if she gets rescued is a life in jail – she actually seems to take him seriously. (Admittedly that idea is spoiled by what we ended up seeing in Through The Looking Glass, but we’re still not sure how that happened yet.)

The flashforwards are where Andrews truly shines because, just as we’ve seen with Jack and Hurley, there doesn’t seem to be any happy ending for Sayid when he is rescued. We see him cold bloodedly kill a man we don’t know but he seems to in the opening flashforward. In the three that follow we see Sayid encounter a woman named Elsa, who claims to be a personal shopper for someone who we only know as an ‘economist’. Sayid spends the next several weeks and months in a long con to get to Elsa’ employer but it’s clear in hindsight that he too is being conned and doesn’t know it – or refuses to let himself.

This episode reminds us very clearly what we might have forgotten when Sayid became less prominent in Season 3: Sayid is a capable of deep love and humanity and also a cold brutal killer. He has never been able to reconcile those two parts of his nature and far too often, his capacity for love can stop him from seeing the obvious. Sayid has spent weeks, possibly months, conning Elsa so that he can learn who her employer is. The moment she suggests that she loves him, he completely forgets everything he’s doing and is determined to tell her the truth. When the pager goes off, he decides to do the same and is so blindly by her despair at his betrayal that he lets his guard down and she nearly kills him. And because we have seen that Sayid is capable of turning on a dime, less than a minute later he kills her. It’s clear it hurt him to do it – there are tears running down his cheek, and just as he did with Naomi at the start of the episode, he closes Elsa’s eyes – but he does it just the same.

Yet that is by far from the biggest shock. Throughout the episode we have wondered why Sayid killed the man at the golf course and why he has decided to kill the Economist. All he tells Elsa is that ‘his name is on a list’ as well as that he has a boss. And then in the final minute when he‘s getting his wound treated, we see that boss – and it’s not just because we now see that Ben is off the island that causes the viewer’s collective heads to explode.

Not since the two of them met nearly two seasons ago has Sayid trusted Ben Linus for a moment. He seemed to have bonded with Juliet over the fact you can’t trust Ben about anything and when the two of them are in the same cell, he still shows nothing but contempt for him. So the idea that Sayid would be willingly working for Ben is incomprehensible to us. In the final scene it’s clear Sayid has nothing but contempt for him and Ben’s words that “do you want to keep your friends safe?” would seem reasonable from anybody but him. In a scene with Locke, Sayid tells Ben the day that “the day I trust this man is the day I sell my soul.” The question is now, what was the price of his soul? We already know it can’t be for a good reason and when we learn the truth, it will utterly break our hearts in two.

That’s for later, and right now we have more pressing concerns. Some of them seem to truly be what do the freighter folk know about anything. When Desmond comes to see the helicopter and shows them the picture Naomi has of him and Penny together, Frank deflects as to why. He refers to her as ‘senior management’. Considering what we heard Abaddon tell her about how important it was this team got to the island, you would think she would have willing to brief them as to why. We’re going to find out very soon that almost everybody on the freighter has been told a very different story about why they were sent on this voyage in the first place. Given what we find out when we get there, it quickly becomes clear that none of them were remotely briefed about what they signed up for.

Dan seems to at least have an idea now that something is very odd about the island. He performs an experiment which for the first time indicates that there’s something strange about this island beyond what we have seen on it. When the payload arrives more than half an hour after it was supposed to get there, none of us know what it means but Dan seems to have an idea of the consequences. When he tells Frank before he goes on his return trip, he makes it very clear that he must follow the exact bearing he took to get to the island and not make the slightest deviation from it.

We’ve already seen signs giving how Naomi’s helicopter crashed and the electrical storm that nearly brought down this one that it’s never an easy flight to the island. This episode is the first one to make an argument that time seems to have something to do with it. This will be a major theme in the next two seasons and make it fundamentally clear what the genre of Lost exactly is.

At this point we now know that the people on the freighter have come for Ben but we’re not sure why or who has sent him. It’s also becoming clear (though we never find out this mystery) that despite the rules that no one can leave the island, Ben has been violating that rule for a while. We know that Ben has enemies but they’ve all seemed to be on the island. Who did he piss off when he went to the mainland? There’s a good chance that Dan and Frank know this but are deflecting. When Desmond asks if they’ve heard the name Penny Widmore, the two of them look at each other but pointedly don’t answer. It’s going to become clear very soon why they’re lying.

At the end of the episode Sayid and Desmond get on the helicopter with Frank. As they fly off the music soars and Sayid looks over the island as it disappears into the background. It should be a moment of triumph. But even if Sayid doesn’t know what the future holds, you can see in his face while the helicopter is flying away that he doesn’t know what awaits him on the freighter but he’s not convinced its anything resembling rescue. The flashforwards make it clear that he will get that, but salvation seems to be something he will never get either.