Lost Rewatch on VHS: Sundown

 

VHS Notes: Not a huge amount of interest, though it is worth noting that we see Remember Me the, shall we say, problematic romance that featured Emilie De Ravin as a love interest for the fresh off Twilight Robert Pattinson. Both did American accents well, by the way.

It’s worth noting that the final season of Lost had been mirroring its first one in more ways than one. After the season premiere, the episodes that followed centered on, in order, Kate, Locke and Jack. If you’d paid attention after the Pilot the first three episodes of Lost  centered on those same three characters.

I remembering watching as the episode titles were released on various websites and trying to figure out which characters each one were centered on. In some cases it was a dead giveaway (What Kate Does) and quite a few of the other ones spell it out. But the writers played a trick on us here. The sixth episode of the first season was centered on Sun, and its title was House of the Rising Sun. So since this episode is titled Sundown, we naturally expect the same thing – and its centered on Sayid instead. The episode title takes a different context that we learn very soon.

In my first episode guide and in the first season of this one I mentioned how daring it was of the showrunners to make, around the time of the War in Iraq and the War on Terror, one of its critical characters not only an Iraqi, but a former member of the Republican Guard. Arabic characters were not getting the best portrayal on television during this decade; 24 would essentially spend its entire run making them the villains half the time, shows like Sleeper Cell had made them infinitely worse and in the next decade Homeland would do so much to turn them all into villains that Howard Gordon would apologize for it by the time the series ended for playing into this narrative. Sayid Jarrah was a radical character who should have been the worst archetype of all of these things – in addition to everything else, he would eventually call himself a torturer – but throughout the run Sayid was always one of the most sympathetic characters in the entire series. And looking back on it, there’s an argument he was also the most tragic.

I was always a huge admirer of Naveen Andrews work over the entire series but it was only until I began to write my commentary on the final season that I realized, unlike so many of the characters on Lost,  the arc of Sayid actually has a parallel with one of the major antiheroes of the era. And because that same show started entering the ranks of the Emmys the same time that Lost reentered it in 2008, I think its worth looking at the parallels.

To some fans of Lost it might seem like I am being radically unfair to Sayid if I were to say there are many parts of his character that parallel that of Dexter Morgan, who Michael C. Hall memorably portrayed for eight season and received five Emmy nominations for. But the parallels between the Miami Metro blood spatter specialist who moonlights as a serial killer who kills other serial killers and Sayid Jarrah is pretty obvious by this point in the series. The fact that in the first scene on the island Dogen is basically telling  Sayid that he  has been claimed by his own Dark Passenger  makes the parallel brutally obvious. So while I relate how Andrews’s portrayal of Sayid has changed over time, it’s worth describing the parallels to Dexter Morgan at this same point in the series run. (By 2009 Season 4 of Dexter had aired which is around the time the show reached its critical peak and because that ended by the time Lost went off the air, I’m only going to go that far in the latter series because that is where the parallels – and Dexter the show – were the strongest.)

Like Dexter, Sayid Jarrah knew even at a young age he was capable of great violence. Both men were influenced by their father’s behavior – Sayid’s encouraged violence in his son, Dexter’s tried to help him channel it -  but both knew at an early age of the darkness in them.

Both Dexter and Sayid followed in their father’s footsteps. We don’t know much about Sayid’s father’s background except he was ‘a great hero’ but Sayid may have gone into the military to win his approval just  as Dexter went to Miami Metro to earn his. During the First Gulf War Sayid learned his potential under the instruction of the U.S. Army. Unlike Dexter, Sayid initially refused to engage his dark side and the first time he did so, he was so horrified he swore he would never do it again. But that was an oath he broke and he ended up working as a ‘communications officer’ for the Republican Guard. Here we see the first critical difference: Dexter spent much of the first half of the series hiding his capacity for violence because he knew how much it would horrify the world. Sayid received advance in his career because his capacity was useful.

Like Dexter Sayid feels there are two sides of his nature: the torturer and the caring one. The difference is Dexter spent the entire series hiding that nature and pretending he was, to paraphrase Nadia about Sayid, someone he knew he wasn’t. He only showed his darkness under the cover of night and protecting himself. Sayid, however, has always been able to turn off his emotions and inflict violence when he needed to – he was even capable of doing it to the woman he loved before he helped free her.

Dexter started the series believing that human connection was part of his cover: he initially started his relationship with Rita Bennett and her kids because he thought they were safe. He was surprised when they became real over the first few seasons and more surprised to learn he was capable of love. But he always feared what would happen if his dark side ever came to interact with the cover. He spent much of the first four seasons making human contact and trying to find friendship only to find out his human side could lead him astray.

By contrast Sayid wants to belong to that world of humanity but it has always gotten him into trouble. He spent eight years searching for Nadia and when the CIA dangled her in front of him he sold part of his soul to do so. There is a parallel between Sayid and Essam’s story in ‘The Greater Good’ and Miguel and Dexter’s storyline in Season 3. In the latter, Miguel spend much of the season manipulating Dexter into a position of trust just as Sayid did with Essam. But when Essam learned of his friend’s betrayal, he committed suicide and his last words summed up so much of Sayid’s story: “I hope she makes you whole.” Sayid has never been whole and he knows that.

When the plane crashed, his skills as a communications officer made him useful – as did his capacity for violence. On the island his growing relationship with Shannon made him torture Sawyer and seriously wound him. He chose to exile himself from the group but when he got caught in Rousseau’s traps, he found a kindred spirit – perhaps one more kindred than anyone he ever knew. When Sayid learned of the Others he returned to the camp to warn them and swore he would never torture another person. He began a relationship with Shannon, only for her to be accidentally killed by Ana Lucia. He resisted an urge to kill her, and we thought he had grown – but it would turn out he only would direct his violence towards  ‘people who deserved it’, much in the same way Dexter sought his targets.

The first target was Henry Gale and despite the fact he never broke Sayid was certain he was ‘One of Them’. It was the start of the long relationship between him and Ben Linus, a man who was his nemesis even more than Locke’s because he always brought out the worst in him with his manipulations. He spent much of the next season and a half focusing his rage on the Others and while that didn’t play out as much in Season 3, in the season finale he stayed behind on the beach. It was in part to secure rescue to be sure, but you can’t help but wonder how much of it was to help kill off so many of the people who had tormented him.

Sayid’s story had always been filled with violence throughout the first three seasons but it turned truly tragic once he left the island. He found Nadia and the two of them quickly married. He thought he was getting his happily ever after, but less than nine months later she was killed in a hit and run. It’s never clear if this was the action of Charles Widmore, a manipulation of Jacob, or just an accident but the result was the same: the day Nadia died, the best part of Sayid did to and it made him vulnerable to the manipulations of Ben Linus.

Sayid spent the next two years as Ben’s personal hitman, killing Widmore’s men. Sayid was manipulated by Ben into doing his dirty work because it was supposedly to protect his friends, much as Dexter killed people he thought were dangerous to society at large. When it came to an end in the cold of Russia, Sayid blamed Ben but Ben told him: “You didn’t do it for me.” And there’s a certain truth to this: like Dexter, Sayid needed something to channel his darkness into and the list was as good a reason as any.

Sayid tried to walk away from his violence and did humanitarian work. But yet again Ben found him and convinced him that his friends were in danger. This was a pure manipulation on Ben’s part – he claimed his murder of Locke was an action of Widmore to get Sayid back to Los Angeles – but he also knew it was bait he couldn’t resist. In one of the last lines he said Sayid told Ben that “whenever you’ve made the choice, whether to torture or to kill, it hasn’t really been a choice at all. It’s in your nature. You’re a killer.” This could just as easily apply to Dexter except he wouldn’t have bothered to deny it.

And just as with Dexter, the more effort Sayid tried to become human, usually through his romantic connection, it always ended up hurting him. Every time he made himself vulnerable to a woman – whether it was genuine as with Shannon or under false pretense as with Elsa or Ilana – it always comes back to hurt him. In the last case, Ilana did a con to get him into her hotel room, gave a different con (she was there to get him back to the island) and Sayid was brought on to the plane in handcuffs.

In the first season Sayid told his fellow castaways that ‘hope was a dangerous thing to lose.” In that context we see the power of Andrew’s work during the fourth and fifth season: his hope has been taken away from him. By the time he shoots a young Ben Linus in 1977, the only hope he has left in that by blowing up a hydrogen bomb, there is the false hope that all of this will save them and at the worst, it will end his suffering. When Ben’s father shot him, the last words he said in Season Five were: “Nothing can save me.” And it was clear before he was brought to the Temple, he had no hope for the afterlife either.

So it is keeping with Lost that this season began with Sayid dying and coming back to life being given as a sign of hope for Sayid and just as quickly being revealed that something far worse is in store for him: something so bad that Dogen actually thinks death is all he deserves. When Sayid confronts Dogen in the first scene on the island and demands answers Dogen gives a more concise reason then the one he gave Jack as to why he tried to kill him: “In every man there is a scale. On one side, good. On the other, evil…And yours tipped the wrong way.” Sayid’s arguments to the contrary, it has become increasingly hard for even his strongest defenders to make that argument with each passing season: with each one, the scale has been tipping further towards evil and the only thing that’s kept us going is the belief that redemption would come at the end of it. It’s been clear that may be the only thing that Sayid is still hoping for when, after beating him to a pulp and exiling him, Dogen turns around and brings Sayid back to him and offers him a chance to prove himself.

Sayid grasps at this straw when Dogen provides the ancient dagger and tells him it is the only thing that can kill the smoke monster. He tells him the truth about what he is but we’ve already seen Jacob’s soldiers try to kill him at the start of the season and we have little faith that Sayid can do the job, even with this mystical looking weapon. Sayid’s scale has always been balanced between two extremes and both Dogen and UnLocke know how to push him. Dogen applies to the good in him but it is a ploy to set him up to die. UnLocke at least has the courtesy to tell Sayid that he’s been played and the honesty to let him know that he’s been manipulated. Of course, he immediately undoes by manipulating Sayid himself, offering him the one thing he wants more than anything: to be with Nadia again.

(Note: When I first saw this episode, I thought that it meant that UnLocke was referring to the flash-sideways and that he might know a way to get there. It now seems more obvious that he was doing a variation on an old ploy of his, as we’ll see in just a few episodes.)

In the sideways world, one looks at Sayid and sees the parallel between himself and Dexter. Dexter believes that because of the monster within him, it is safer for everyone if he keeps himself at a distance from human contact. By the fourth season he has actually managed to build a house in the suburbs with a wife and family and he believes he can have it all. As we see in the Season 4 finale, it is that desire for human connection that causes the people around him to pay the ultimate price.

Sayid has that same self-awareness but given everything we’ve seen so far in the flash-sideways, it takes on a much sadder context. In this world he has pushed Nadia away from him and towards his younger brother, and they have had the family he very well could have. He refuses to answer Nadia’s letters and its clear that he barely comes to see his brother anymore. He still carries her picture with him, but while it was a sign of hope in the real world, here you see it as a way of punishing himself: this picture is all Sayid thinks he deserves of the woman he loves.

But even here Sayid can’t escape the violent side of his nature. When his brother is attacked  by the people he borrowed money from, his instant reaction is violence. Nadia manages to restrain him initially and she tries to tell him to let this go because it is his brother’s problem, not his. But we can tell watching Sayid that the darkness in him is waiting to be unleashed. When he is brought to  Goodfella Keamy (it is fun to see Kevin Durand be an imitation of a badass rather than the monster he was in Season 4) you know even before Keamy starts making the kinds of threats he does that this is going to end in violence and death. This is another key difference between the versions of the characters we’ve met in their flash-sideways; when someone attacks someone he cares about, Sayid’s response is inevitably violence. This is if anything sadder than much of what we’ve seen before.

The action on the island centers on Claire’s approaching the temple and informing those within that UnLocke is planning a visit. It’s worth remembering that the Man in Black also came to Claire the exact same way UnLocke approaches Sayid in this episode. He appeared to her as someone she knew (although she had no idea that, like Locke, he was already dead) and managed to lure her into the jungle. The last time we saw Claire for sure it was in Cabin Fever and she looked perfectly relaxed, completely unconcerned about Aaron. Claire has clearly degenerated both physically and mentally in the last three years but she still has enough logic to know that both her father and ‘her friend’ are the same being.

Sadly the writers never clarify why Claire chose to leave Aaron behind or how Christian (I’m assuming this was the form the Man In Black took the last three years) managed to convince Claire that the Others had her son. The clearest parallel we have may be that of Rousseau (looking at Claire these days it’s hard not to see a resemblance) whose fraying sanity snapped when Ben took Alex from her. In Exodus Danielle was crazy enough to believe that if she lit a pillar of smoke and took Aaron from Claire, she would get Alex back, and the Man in Black has clearly made the same promise to Claire.

Kate and Claire have not seen each other since Kate was banished from New Otherton in Eggtown and she’s been looking for her since she came to back to the island. The scene between them is incredibly powerful as Kate walks into the pit they’ve kept Claire and finds her singing ‘Catch A Falling Star’. There’s a brief moment where it seems the veil has been pierced but the moment Claire hears that Kate took Aaron and raised him it’s as if a switch has been turned. There’s something terrifying about Claire in this scene, as we truly wonder if the woman we met is their anymore.

The final act of Sundown is one of the great set-pieces of the final season, even if it was invented out of necessity more than anything else. Sayid comes to see Dogen and asks him why he hasn’t tried to kill him, though as we saw in the opening fight that he has the same capacity for violence Sayid does. For the first time the mask of authority falls from Dogen’s face and we see a human being. It’s fascinating that in a show where so many characters have suffered because of bad fathers, Dogen actually ended up going to the island because he was willing to be a good one: he took responsibility for his action and was willing to never see his son again in order for him to live. Hiroyuki Sanada is superb in his monologue delivering emotion and vulnerability in a way we’ve rarely seen characters do on this show.

Sayid kneels by Dogen and he asks him about his plans. Sayid says that he’d like to stay. For the briefest of moments the viewer believes that the good in Sayid has won out…

…and then he grabs Dogen and drowns him in the spring that was supposed to bring him back to life but brought him back the way he is now. Lennon then comes rushing in terrified about what is going to happen next screaming: “You just let it in.” Sayid coldly kills him saying: “I know.”

The smoke monster then rushes the Temple, killing everything in sight. Miles and Kate start to run away, but Kate goes after Claire. Miles hides and finds himself face to face with Frank, who he hasn’t seen in three years, as well as the remnants of the party, including Sun, Ben and Ilana.

Kate runs to get Claire, trying to safe her and the detachment in Claire’s voice as she says: “I’m not the one that needs saving is terrifying.” The smoke monster, bigger and more frightening then  we’ve ever seen it before rushes over ahead. Kate looks at in terror, Claire in a mix of joy and fascination.

And then Ben runs into the spring and sees Sayd. For four seasons Ben has brought out the worst in Sayid and has always been able to manipulate him into doing horrible things., Now, in what will be the last encounter they have in the series, Ben looks at the carnage in the spring and is clearly thrown. Speaking in a voice of calm that lacks the wheedling we’ve heard from him in all their encounters he tells Sayid: “I know a way out. There’s still time.”

Ben has been using lines like this on Sayid since they first met. And in one of the most terrifying moments in the last season he looks at Ben with a face that doesn’t remotely look sane as says three simple words: “Not for me.” Ben looks at the man he’s tormented for years and realizes he’s not there anymore. He practically runs from the room.

The final minutes of the episode will haunt you in a way that even the greatest moments of Lost rarely do. We hear Claire singing ‘Catch A Falling Star’. We’ve associated this song with her since Season 1 and its always been a combination of care and freedom.  Now as we watch her serenely walk through the brutally slaughtered Others without even a second glance in the aftermath of the greatest level of carnage we’ve seen on the show so far, we’re afraid of what’s been unleashed. Just as terrifying is watching Sayid walk through these same bodies with a completely blank expression. This isn’t the look of a soldier or a torturer or a murder; this is the look of a man whose has lost his humanity for good.

Kate manages to do a decent job of hiding her terror, taking a gun of a killed Other. Then she walks out of the Temple, following Claire, not remotely prepared for the sight of UnLocke among the Others who chose to go with him. She has no idea yet who or what this creature is, but that’s not nearly as terrifying as how calm her friends seem to be in the face of a dead man.

  And as they walk into the jungle, leaving the carnage of the Temple behind, a new horror fills us. Jacob is dead. The last safe place on the island has been destroyed and the Others who stood with him are either dead or have switched sides. All that is left is UnLocke and as we can see that when it comes to Sayid and Claire, the Dark Passengers are the ones that are driving them now. Is there any hope left on this island at all?

 

IF THE ENDING IS ACCURATE: Here I have my biggest problem yet. Omar and Keamy’s presence only makes sense if this was an alternate universe because there is no other reason why anyone from the plane would want to see either him of them again.  Keamy is without question the only completely evil person in Lost, considering all the carnage that he inflicted in the name of Widmore in Season 4. Now there’s a certain logic that they would be in Sayid’s version: of all of the survivors he had by far the most direct interaction with both him and Omar during everything that happened on the freighter. But in comparison to some of the monsters in his life, neither was anywhere near the threat to him that either Ben or Widmore were and they certainly didn’t have the same impact. And from the perspective of the ending, how exactly does they’re being killed make sense in the context of what we eventually know? Can it even happen? And if does, where they go next? Or is the whole point of this fan service that these characters were all so evil, they deserve to come back only to be killed again?!