Sawyer and Sayid

I'm having a hard time adjusting to the fact that Lost is now on Tuesday nights and not Wednesdays. Normally, I'm pretty flexible, but this change in days has me quite confused.

Tomorrow night's episode will apparently focus on one of my favorites, Benjamin Linus, perhaps a Dr. Linus in another timeline, but I had a few thoughts I wanted to share.

When Lost started, Sayid was a man of morals who did bad things and Sawyer was just a selfish con man. Sawyer's morals were all survival and his own economic gain. If he participated in group activities, you could be sure that there was some kind of ulterior motive. Now, you could argue that sometimes Sawyer acted selfishly after being treated with disregard by his fellow survivors. But remember The Long Con? In that second season episode, Sawyer worked with Charlie to convince Kate that Jack and Ana Lucia pretended to kidnap Sun to force everyone to join an army against the Others. It ended with Sawyer taking control of the guns and medications. When Charlie asked Sawyer why he did this, he responded, "I'm not a good person, Charlie. Never did a good thing in my life." After watching him that episode, it was hard to disagree.

Sayid, on the other hand, always tried to help the group. Even when he was engaging in some terrible behaviors (say, torturing Sawyer in the first season and "Henry Gale" in the second season), you knew it was to gather information, not for some selfish purpose. He kept a bonfire burning in hopes it would be seen by rescuers, helped Hurley set up a date with Libby, and prevented Jack from killing Locke. Sayid was so shaken by Naomi's death that he insisted her body be taken to the freighter for appropriate disposal later. He seemed such a good man.

But in the fourth season, things changed, starting with Sayid. We learned that Sayid became a hitman for, of all people, Ben Linus. Finally, in the fifth season, we saw Sayid shoot to kill a 12-year-old boy because of who the boy would grow up to be.

In the meantime, the fifth season saw a sea change in Sawyer. After Locke left the Island, he took a leadership role, and though he did develop a pretty complicated con, it was for the purpose of preventing their exile from the Island. And though Sawyer now believes his desire to keep Juliet on the Island was selfish, he found himself falling in love with her. Sawyer met the boy Ben in the DHARMA Initiative, but never tried to prevent the boy from growing up to be Ben Linus. Instead, he was just as shocked as Juliet and Kate after Sayid shot Ben. And somewhat dismayed when Sayid returned to life after dying.

Both Sayid and Sawyer are brilliantly developed and acted characters, and the past two seasons have seen them both grow and change tremendously. I would not follow either man for moral reasoning. Well, I take that back. I'd ask Sayid (prior to his "resurrection") for moral guidance, but I'd be more likely to do what Sawyer does. They've switched, with the only difference that Sayid desperately believes that he is a good man.

We don't know how Sayid's world views have changed now that he's bat-shit crazy. He just knows it's too late for him. But I'm not really sure what that means.

We had no idea last week where James was while notLocke and Claire planned and executed their destruction of the Temple. I assumed that he had been left behind to take care of Jin, but that is just an assumption. I hope that he is not on his way to becoming bat-shit crazy, simply because I'm having a hard time adjusting to the two we have. But perhaps Saywer and Jin are both safe from infection. Perhaps you have to be a candidate (such as Claire and Sayid) who has been killed (I still suspect that Claire was killed when her barracks-house was bombed). notLocke can then resurrect them, but has left his mark on them.

That's my theory. And I'm totally psyched for tomorrow night.