I wanted to send you all a Lost valentine this week, but I couldn't decide whether to go with Desmond saying, "I See Love In Your Future" or Sayid saying, "Life Without You Is Torture." (Conspicuously absent: Mr. Friendly saying, "You're Not My Type.") Anyway, card or not, know that I love you all dearly, and am ready to share with you that which is most important to our relationship: Lost chat.
Isn't it funny how something as simple as a change from flashbacks to flash-forwards changes the whole rhythm of watching Lost? By the middle of the third season, waiting to see whether it was going to be "a Locke episode" or "a Jack episode" had long since ceased to be a thrill in and of itself. But tonight I was genuinely anxious to see whose post-island life we were going to learn about.
Answer: Sayid. Or as he appeared in the flash-forward: "Sayid The Avenger: International Assassin And All-Around Sexpot." When first we see him off the island, Sayid is duffing his way across an exclusive golf course, waiting for his target: an affable Frenchman who starts to panic when he realizes that Sayid is one of "The Oceanic Six." (And rightfully so, since Sayid immediately plugs him with a pistol. I guess he doesn't like it when people try to play through.) Later, he travels to Berlin and cozies up with Elsa, a seemingly trusting young woman whom Sayid woos and beds–apparently over a fairly long period of time–in order to get closer to her employer, "an economist" whom Sayid means to murder because he's "on the list." Instead, he has to gun down Elsa, who was only using him to find out who his employer is. At the end of the episode, bleeding from a bullet lodged in his chest, Sayid stumbles into a kennel to have the bullet extracted by his handler, whom we all know better as….
Well, first let's back up, to the place we're flash-forwarding from. Back on the island, Sayid is still at the center of the action. Determined to get to the freighter sooner rather than later, Sayid makes a deal with the freighties' pilot, Frank, to catch a ride on his helicopter in exchange for retrieving the anthropologist Charlotte from the clutches of Locke and his reluctant disciples. Sayid, Kate, and my new favorite character Miles travel back to The Others' barracks–as the Lost engineers once again make good use of the big island playset that they built for us last season–where they're ambushed by Locke's crew thanks to a good piece of decoying by Hurley. More on the implications of that in a moment.
Meanwhile, back at the 'copter, while Jack waits for Juliette to return from the beach with Desmond–retrieved in order to find out why dead freightie Naomi was carrying a picture of the wry Scot around–fidgety physicist Daniel Faraday performs an experiment with the help of his shipmate, The Voice Of Zoë Bell. He sets up a beacon and asks her to send a small guided missile towards it, but the missile arrives roughly half an hour after it's supposed to. More on that in a moment too.
Outside of the facts of what's happening in the island present and the off-island future, there are really two things going on in "The Economist." First off, the ramifications of our original castaways' split are starting to be felt. We've got Kate imprisoned by her former lover Sawyer at the barracks, and Hurley having to deceive his friends in order to prove his loyalty to Locke–even though he's already dismayed about Locke's decision to take prisoners. The title of this episode comes from the occupation of Elsa's boss, but the whole episode is really about our heroes pulling out their charts and graphs to do a little cost-benefit analysis. They'll make deals with devils if that's what it takes to get what they want, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the big final reveal of Sayid's off-island employer: none other than Benjamin Linus, who in the episode's final scene lays a long line of jive about why Sayid needs to get back to killing in his name as soon as possible.
The other major point to ponder in "The Economist" is the result of Daniel's experiment. (Which shakes him up so much that he makes extra-sure to tell Frank that when he flies off the island, "Stay on the same bearing, no matter what.") For a while now, Lost theorists have speculated that time moves slower on the island, and this strange game of rockets-and-beacons seems to be a confirmation of that. Though only 80 nautical miles offshore, the boat is apparently located 31 minutes in the future. (Unless I'm missing something here, which is highly likely; I'm sure y'all will let me know.)
Then again, time may be moving differently off the island too–at least in a metaphorical sense. How patient does Sayid have to be in order to get the information he needs from Elsa? By the time he kills her, they're already talking about "love" and making plans for their future. Their relationship has a whole arc that takes place during the three scenes we see of them: the one where they meet and flirt, the one where they go on a date, and the one where they try to kill each other. I guess what I'm saying is that for Sayid and the rest of the Oceanic 815 survivors, if there's something you want–that you really want–then you must be willing to live lifetimes while you wait.
Grade: A