Sundown

Wow. Now that's a great episode of Lost! "Sundown" was not only my favorite episode this season, but maybe the best since “There’s No Place Like Home”*. It just delivered at every turn - a gripping Island story, an intriguing and emotional flash-sideways, and an awesome, gut-wrenching ending. Just spectacular. Watching the likeness of John Locke lead Sayid and the rest of those traitorous Others out of the temple with that just-so-sweet-it's-creepy music playing in the background, I wanted to cry. And puke. And scream. That's Lost at it's best. And TV at it's best.

*When I say something like this mid-season, I generally mean it in terms of my initial enjoyment of the episode. That’s what I mean here. My opinions tend to change after rewatches for a variety of reasons (complexity, symbolism, interaction between flashes and Island events, overall significance, etc.), but right now “Sundown” is really revving my engines.

I'm starting my first day of big-boy work tomorrow, and with all the hoopla and anxiety that's accompanying that milestone, I don't have a ton of motivation to write a huge recap this week. This episode probably deserves better, but hey, that's what the DVDs are for. This won't be the last time I watch/discuss/write about Sayid's journey toward damnation I'm sure.

The big theme of this episode was summed up nicely by soon-to-be-dead Dogen when he told Sayid "For every man there is a scale. On one side of the scale there is good. On the other side, evil." Lost has tackled this theme many times before through many different characters, most prominently Sayid and Mr. Eko. Lets start with Sayid.

Sayid's episodes often explore how he balances the good and evil inside himself and how he deals with the balance he's struck. We've seen Sayid at one moment reluctant but willing to torture ("One of Them" flashbacks), at another, repentant of his actions (leaving camp after torturing Sawyer, building houses in the Dominican), and then at another, even eager and unremorseful (after putting the screws to Henry Gale in the hatch). After “Enter 77”, he appeared to swear off torture completely and for a while he held up that promise. The Island had benefited Sayid like it did many others; it allowed him to sort out his issues and reach a place where he was at peace with himself. Then he left the Island, Nadia was killed, and all bets were off.

Our first two flashbacks with Sayid established his love for Nadia and the great lengths he would go to in order to keep her safe. He shot himself and killed one of his fellow soldiers to allow her escape in "Solitary", then infiltrated a terrorist cell and put his life in mortal danger for the chance to see her again. She is the most important thing in his life and often his feelings for her cause him to throw his moral compass completely out the window when she's involved. See his vengeful killing spree and his sideways flash this week.

The day Nadia was killed was the turning point for Sayid. He didn’t have anything to live for anymore. The MIB might as well have taken the white stone off his scale and thrown it into the ocean right then and there. He had accepted his miserable fate. That’s what allowed him to pull the trigger on Ben and to go along with Jack’s crazy Jughead plan – he might as well take a chance and try to undo everything horrible that he’d done. I go as far as to say this means he was “claimed” even before he came back from the dead. He was beyond redemption because he believed as much.

Eko, on the other hand, refused to repent for all the bad things he'd done. When Yemi/Smokey asked for his confession, he answered with this - "I ask for no forgiveness, Father. For I have not sinned. I have only done what I needed to do to survive." He did not acknowledge the evilness inside him. And it appears he was killed for that. But I agree with Eko. Before he was killed, he said this – “A small boy once asked me if I was a bad man. If I could answer him now, I would tell him that... when I was a young boy, I killed a man to save my brother's life. I am not sorry for this. I am proud of this!” And he should be proud! He saved his brother’s life at the expense of his own. It was a totally selfless act (and one not dissimilar from the one Dogan had to make with his son). Man, I wish Eko was still around. I’d feel much better about our team if he was.

My theory about all this? The MIB realized that he couldn’t turn Eko to his side so he killed him just like he killed all the Others who wouldn’t leave the temple. The Monster might be judging people, but he’s not making his call and then punishing the guilty. He’s looking for the people who know they’re guilty so he can use them for his own personal needs – the war against Jacob and his quest to leave the Island.

Still, Sayid went into the jungle with the intention to prove his goodness to the Others by killing the “incarnation of evil.” He wasn’t a completely lost cause yet. He tried to kill the MIB, and was smart enough to know the MIB was going to ask him for something. But then, like with Sawyer before him, the MIB made him a Godfather offer, and this time it was for “anything in the entire world.” Sayid was hooked. He had succumbed to the dark side. His insane “Not for me,” followed by the crazy-evil laugh sealed the deal.

When the MIB said, “What if I told you that you could have anything you wanted?” I got Des-like flashbacks to Ben’s speech to Locke in “The Man from Tallahassee”. In that episode, he said to Locke, “What if I told you that somewhere on this island, there’s a very large box... and whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it, when you opened that box, there it would be.” He was talking about the now-fabled “magic box”. Notice the similarities in the two statements? Leading with “What if I told you”, the “whatever/anything you wanted…” in both. So I ask, is the Monster the magic box? Was Ben tempting Locke with dark side back in season 3? Something to think about.

Here’s another theory about the MIB. So he lured Sayid over to his side with the promise that he could give him anything he wanted in the whole world. For Sayid, this meant Nadia, whom he mentioned had died in his arms. The MIB more-or-less said that didn’t matter. Thus far, I think the MIB has been a pretty straight shooter. I don’t think he’s making promises he can’t fulfill. So somehow, I think he has the power to make this happen. And I think the result of that might be the sideways world. It was the way the scenes were spliced together that led me to this theory, and I think that’s intentional. That’s the conclusion we’re supposed to draw. But instead of being some lovely “happily ever after” for Sayid, it’s more of a “be careful what you wish for”. I don’t know if it all adds up perfectly, but that’s the impression I got from that scene. MIB=Magic Box → Sideways World.

That sideways world seems more and more like some sort of dream world to me every week. You know how in a dream sometimes you have people playing strange roles and appearing in places all of a sudden (or places they aren’t supposed to be? Walt? Please?)? No? Maybe that’s just on TV. But it’s like Locke’s trip in the sweat hut. In that vision, Ben was waving the wand at the airport, Hurley was behind the ticket counter, and Desmond was a pilot. Same deal in the sideways world. Keamy’s a loan shark, Des is on the plane, Jack’s a father, Ben’s a teacher, Rose works at the temp agency, and Ethan’s a doctor. It’s like the Wizard of Oz. That story has been referenced plenty of times on Lost already, and I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if it held some clues here.

One last thing about good vs. evil. The Others always refer to themselves as the good guys, and they seem obsessed with this idea of a "good person". Ethan told Claire that Aaron would be safe with them because "[they]'re good people." Ben (as Henry Gale) bargained for his life in "Dave", crying, "I'm not a bad person!" One of Ben's best lines came at the dock at the end of Season 2 when he says, "We're the good guys, Michael." And I’m sure there were plenty more instances. So if the Others really are servants of Jacob, then were they the “good guys” all along? Some of the stuff we’ve seen from Ben and Widmore indicate otherwise, but that could be more of a knock them personally than the Others as a group. They’ve been in a struggle with Smokey to maintain “balance” on the Island, and now it’s up to our non-corrupted Losties to reestablish that balance, with the battle lines drawn as such. On the one side we have Jacob, Hurley, Jack, Ilana, Richard, Sun, Miles, and Lapidus. On the other side, there’s the MIB, Sayid, Claire, and a bunch of faceless Others. I’m going to put Ben, Kate, Jin and Sawyer in the “wild card” column, but my gut tells me that they’d all go with Jacob if given the opportunity. Hell, I’m an optimist.

I think the reason I love this episode so much, aside from all the action and danger and creepiness, was how it just fits so perfectly into where we are at this point in the season. The good/evil dynamic has been lurking in the background since last season’s finale. We knew a war was coming. And Sayid was due for a flashback because of all the mystery surrounding him being “claimed”. Now, the war has arrived, we know which side to choose, and they seamlessly integrated an awesome character story with on-Island action, all under the spotlight of the very same theme. I’ll say it again – that’s Lost at it’s very best.

Well, I guess that ended up being just as long as usual, only with less proofreading. Oh well. Until next week.