LOST Revisited- Season 5, Episodes 9 and 10

 Season 5, Episodes 9 and 10- “Namaste” and “He’s Our You”

 

Summary:

After passing through the island’s window, Frank lands Ajira 316 on Hydra Island’s runway. He and Sun row to the main island to look for Jin. They find Christian who tells them their friends are in 1977. In 1977, Sawyer pretends Jack, Kate, and Hurley are new recruits and brings them into the Initiative. Amy names her baby Ethan. Jin rushes to Radzinsky at the Flame station to look for signs of Sun and the plane, but instead finds only Sayid. Sawyer is forced to take Sayid prisoner to the Barracks, and he is given food by Young Ben.

In flashbacks, a young Sayid helps his brother kill a chicken, and finishes his work killing for Ben. After Locke’s murder, Ben tells him he has more killing to do. He encounters Ilana at a bar and takes her back to a hotel room where she takes him prisoner and they board Ajira 316. Young Ben tells Sayid he can help him escape. Sawyer is forced to take him to Oldham who gives him mind-altering drugs to tell them the truth. Kate learns about Sawyer and Juliet’s relationship. The DHARMA leadership votes to execute Sayid. A burning bus drives into the Barracks as a distraction so Ben can free Sayid. They encounter Jin on the road and Sayid knocks him out and takes his gun, where he shoots Ben in the chest.

Review:

“Namaste” is a piece-mover episode with no centric character, which finally brings all of our storylines – Jack’s group, Sawyer’s group, and Hydra Island – up to their most current point. The ride is over and now we must settle in for the next phase. Lacking focus in any specific character, there isn’t much of a theme here and you would be hard-pressed to name many memorable moments off-hand (note the very short summary). There is some suspense as Sawyer and Juliet attempt to sneak their friends into the DHARMA initiation while Jin tries to keep Sayid safe by pretending he is a hostile. There is some awkward banter between Jack and Sawyer about leadership and the women they have been romantically involved with. Yawn. Jack’s submissive role as “work man” in this arc doesn’t really fit with his personality type and they don’t go the more interesting route by having him muscle his way into more important positions.

It was cool to get the crash from Frank’s perspective – after all, he’s going to be the big savior at the end – and the runway finally pays off in a satisfying way. His team-up with Sun is one of the oddest duos of “Lost” and their sojourn to the welcome house has all the makings of a creepy set piece, in the vein of Jacob’s cabin. While there’s certainly something a little eerie about a dead man in a dark house showing them a photo of their friends from thirty years earlier, the whole trip just seems like a way to get these two characters off on a tangent before they start trekking to the statue. Maybe time could have been better spent on Hydra interacting with Ilana, Caesar, and the crew. The photograph does not spurn any interesting debate between them and, despite Christian’s proclamation, they did not in fact have a “long journey” ahead of them, nor were they involved in bringing their friends back from the 70s in any way. So, it’s not a bad episode by any means but not one that is going to be high on anyone’s list of favorites.

“He’s Our You” really tried to force Sayid back onto a path where he would shoot young Ben Linus. We flash back to Ben’s employment of Sayid to not only remember that Sayid can kill on a whim but to show their checkered history. For good measure, they give us a rather unnecessary scene of child Sayid killing a chicken to prove he is “a man” to his father. But the “Sayid is a murderer” plotline is old hat at this point, and it feels like he should have evolved past that by season 5 (the scene in the Dominican Republic even has Sayid admitting he doesn’t like doing it). The Ilana scenes fill in a needed gap, and provide a small mirror to the Elsa story from “The Economist,” but it only builds up to the final beat where Sayid admits “I did” work for a horrible man like Ben. It serves as the concluding piece of evidence for why he would want to exact revenge but it doesn’t seem like enough justification. After all, he committed the murders willingly and with (what he thought were) intentions of self-preservation.

When we get to the moment where he pulls the trigger on Ben it does not feel real. Ben is not a good dude, but how does Sayid’s life improve if he is removed from the island’s history? And while we can conceive of him taking out Widmore-aligned rich dudes, we jump all the way to a child without anything in the middle there that makes it seem like this is something he is capable of. And he does it, pre-meditated, despite Ben bringing him food, helping him escape, and being a victim of his father’s abuses. Is this where he succumbs to the monster’s darkness that overtakes him in season 6?

Despite that weird choice, the episode remains average for the tense debates about Sayid’s fate. It’s tough to remember in retrospect, but it would not be out of the question for this to be the way Sayid goes out, and the characters from DHARMA were underdeveloped or unlikable enough that it would make sense for them to be the bad guys in this situation. The Oldham sequence is a time-waster. The magical truth serum is too easy of a plot device, although the laugh attack is a real gem of a moment for Naveen Andrews. But did we gain anything here? I mean, other than the basis for one of the worst titles ever? It would have been a nice touch to have Sayid’s revelations start to mess with Radzinsky’s head and lead him down the path to be the paranoid hermit we all believed he was from Kelvin’s stories. Ah, well.

Connecting the Dots:

Ben had a broken arm when he got on the plane but it seems miraculously healed once they crash. A case of the island’s bizarre healing powers?

There are Smokey sounds before Christian shows up, finally confirming, to the viewer at least, that at least some of those old Christian sightings were monster facades.

Ilana was working for Jacob to bring the Oceanic Six back, and likely knew that Ajira 316 was going there, hence why she brought Sayid in.

In the “Mysteries of the Universe” DVD feature, they interview a man who was a colleague of Oldham’s and said recruiters asked about the Ludovico Technique (the brainwashing sequence like in room 23). This seems to imply Oldham was involved in Ludovico, which might suggest he was involved in the Room 23 brainwashing. It seems odd he would then be on the main island instead of Hydra, but perhaps he serviced all stations. I’d be more interested in the character if they delved into the Room 23 aspect.

Ranking:

1.      Jughead (10/10)

2.      This Place is Death (9.5/10)

3.      Because You Left (9/10)

4.      The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham (9/10)

5.      LaFleur (8.5/10)

6.      The Lie (8/10)

7.      The Little Prince (7.5/10)

8.      He’s Our You (7/10) (They clearly steered hard to get Sayid to a point to shoot Ben, but the episode could have used a little more meat.)

9.      Namaste (7/10) (It’s a piece-mover episode that gets everyone where they need to be. Nothing bad, but no legendary moments.)

10.  316 (6.5/10)

Next time: Richard takes a child to his “special place,” and Ben straight-up kidnaps another.