Jacob's Touch

In Dr. Linus, we learned from Richard that Jacob's touch brought about changes, changes that can be seen as either blessings or curses. We know that Jacob's touch made Richard never die (at least, by his own hand) and never age. It also appeared to me that Jacob's touch revived John Locke after his father pushed him out of a window eight floors above ground. We don't know if Locke would have aged, but we do know he could be killed - just ask Ben.

So, what are the rules of this touch? Are there rules? Clearly, some who are touched by Jacob can age, or else Kate and James Ford would be the oldest children ever. Actually, I can hear some of you say that Kate is a child, but you know what I mean. We know that those who have been touched by Jacob can be "claimed" or "infected", as we saw with Sayid.

Can Sayid, Jin, Sun, Jack, and Hurley age? Is it possible that they will never die? Or can they never die until Jacob or the Island is done with them?

Is it Jacob's touch that makes a Candidate? notLocke seems to think so. If so, then Kate is surely a Candidate, as are both Kwons. Is it the touch that makes the Candidate worthy? Or is it just an acknowledgment of their worthiness? Or perhaps the touch is just to make the Candidate safe?

And what about Ben? I don't remember this, but apparently, Jacob actually touched Ben as Ben stabbed him to death. Did this touch pass on to Ben any of the qualities we're looking at? Could it have possibly turned him into a Candidate? Wouldn't that be funny?

We have to adjust to the fact that not all questions will be answered, but I sincerely hope that we get answers to some of these questions. It might help explain why these people were brought together to the Island.

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.

Sayid's Corpse

As I was driving to work this morning, I was hit with a thought that furthers the theory that Sayid may have arisen as someone other than Sayid.

Miles and Sawyer were not present in the Temple when Sayid was declared dead by the Others and Jack. His body lay where it had been placed by the Others after the failed treatment. Hurley approached Sayid to say goodbye, offering to talk with Sayid whenever he wanted to talk. He looked up to find Miles staring at Sayid's corpse.

The expression on Miles' face said it all. His eyes were wide-eyed and almost scared. What was he hearing from Sayid's body? Because it's Sayid, I just assumed that somehow Miles noticed that Sayid is dead but not dead. Denial is a very strong coping mechanism, my friends.

But now it seems more likely that Miles heard something else he's probably never heard before - something he couldn't put into words. And perhaps that is Jacob taking ownership of Sayid's body.

I presume we'll figure that out quickly enough. I'm crossing my fingers.

Sayid Jarrah, Season Five

Ah, the futility of it all. When I think of Sayid during Season Five, that’s all I can think of. How futile it all was for him. A man of action, he took the opportunity to kill a future evil, to put it to rest, and to change his own life and those of so many others. Sadly, what he couldn’t know is that his act actually set into motion the very events that turned Ben into Ben.

I’ve been told that my post on Ben Linus was a very emotional one, and looking back, I realize that is so. This post, I believe, will be no less so, because the evolution of this character, one of my very favorites, has truly saddened me. Sayid is a good man, with a good heart, who made a decision that to me, was so horrific and wrong-minded, that I fear he can never achieve atonement. That his decision, his act, was futile makes it all that harder for me

Sayid had one episode this season. For many episodes, Sayid was either unconscious or hiding in the jungle. He was a minor character, even at the end, throughout the season, with the exception of one episode, He’s Our You.

As I posted following the episode, I found He’s Our You to be somewhat off. The episode seemed designed to show us that from the very beginning of his life, Sayid was nothing more than a heartless killer. I’ve never seen him that way. For one thing, I don’t know that we ever saw Sayid kill anyone until he broke the neck of an Other (Jason) with his feet in Through the Looking Glass. Until The Economist, Sayid only killed to protect his own life or those of others. After The Shape of Things to Come, we understood how Ben manipulated Sayid’s grief over Nadia’s death to use Sayid’s military skills to kill Ben’s enemies. Not a great moment for Sayid – hello, where’s your infamous intuition? But we saw in He’s Our You that Sayid seemed to relish his role with Ben, and was devastated when it ended so abruptly.

How could Ben’s words in the Dominican Republic turn Sayid into a killer of twelve-year-old boys? What made Sayid decide that Ben was so evil that he needed to be killed as a child? These are questions that I feel were not answered this season. They certainly weren’t answered in He’s Our You.

I won’t go into great detail about the events of He’s Our You, because I know that my thinking hasn’t altered that much since I posted on the episode. Sayid’s shooting of the twelve-year-old was foreshadowed in previous episodes, but his decision still shocked and appalled me. That his was the first step that turned Ben into Ben wasn’t known until later, and makes the act not just futile but also senseless.

I have read other commentators who believe that this is the end of Sayid – that nothing he can do will ever make up for that one act. Even if everything is erased by Juliet’s explosion of Jughead, the act remains engraved on Sayid’s heart one way or another. And that saddens me, because, up until The Economist, Sayid was one of the most redeemable of our characters.

Sayid spent the remainder of the season first, hiding in the jungle. He rescued Kate and Jack from an overly hostile Hostile, and learned that Kate saved Ben. He helped Jack figure out Jughead, and was shot trying to carry it out of the Barracks. He suffered a fatal wound, I suspect, but Jack did his best to save Sayid. Sayid remained in the van while Jack, Sawyer, Juliet, Kate, and Miles worked to set Jughead off (where was Hurley? Taking care of Sayid?). Obviously, we have no idea what happens after Jughead detonated.

The Actor

Naveen Andrews has had a long-term relationship with actress Barbara Hershey. However, during a “break”, he had an affair with actress Elena Eustache, and sired a son, Naveen Joshua Andrews. Andrews the actor reunited with Hershey, and shared joint custody with Eustache. However, on January 7, 2009, Andrews won sole custody after Eustache took the boy out of LA County in defiance of a court order and accused Hershey of practicing witchcraft and poisoning Naveen Jr. Eustache was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, and a full hearing was scheduled for February. Sadly, I’ve seen nothing on the internet about that hearing, but I’ve seen pictures of Andrews with his son as late as September.

I didn't even bother with pictures today. Sorry.

Tikrit, Iraq

Perhaps we knew this already - I didn't. Sayid and his family are from Tikrit. Tikrit is also the home of Saddam Hussein. Many of Hussein's co-horts in the Baathist party were also from Tikrit.

Will this have any relevance? I don't know. Sayid's background has always seemed to be the most connected to actual events, including his involvement in the first Gulf War. I mean, they could have chosen any other Iraqi city. Is Sayid's family connected with Hussein's? Or was the choice just another parrallel, this time between the brutality of Saddam Hussein and Sayid.

Just something to ponder on a Monday night.

He's Our You

Wow, what a stunning episode. Okay, well, stunning ending - the episode itself was just so-so as it led inexorably to a scene I hoped never to see: Sayid killing a 12 year-old boy. This scene sparked so much thought in me, that honestly, I’m glad I had an extra day to compose my thoughts. Further, just that scene alone requires me to have separate posts about this episode, one focusing solely on that final scene, and another on everything else.

Many of y’all know that Sayid is one of my favorites. A large part of it has to do with how, well, gorgeous the man is. The actor plays an Iraqi but is in reality of Asian descent (India), and I’ve always had a thing for Asians. But Sayid is more than just a pretty face (and body) to me. He’s a fierce warrior with a strong streak of loyalty. He develops strong attachments to women, Nadia, Shannon, even Elsa. He has almost as much of a spiritual component as Locke does, and believes that he must atone for his sins. Yes, he’s a killer, but he’s a killer with a heart of gold. Right?

I know I said last week that it looked like Sayid was going to try to kill Ben, so I sort of expected something like this, but this foreknowledge didn’t lessen the impact. But because of my previously mentioned affection for the character of Sayid, I honestly didn’t think too much about the death of Ben. I figured he’d survive, one way or the other. If the island doesn’t mean for him to die, there will be a course correction, and a young Ben will hold this extra betrayal in his devious little heart and be closer to being the Ben we know and love and detest. Instead, I went to bed thinking of the implications of Sayid’s actions on Sayid’s soul. I gave Ben hardly a passing thought.

That ended the next day, in talking with friends (hi Amber, Brian, and Karen!) and reading blogs here and there. People really are contemplating that Ben might be dead. That Sayid pulled what people have wondered for years – he’s gone back in time to kill a horrible man before he becomes the horrible man. Sayid killed his personal version of Hitler.

Or not. So, this post will focus on the shooting and the two major characters in this transaction, Sayid and Ben, both dead and alive.

Sayid Kills a 12 Year-Old Boy

When it comes down to it, Sayid killed a 12 year-old boy who had placed his trust and hopes for the future in Sayid. Ben may have had ulterior motives (and honestly, what 12 year-old child doesn’t? I was 12 once – I remember.), but he did show kindness to an imprisoned Sayid, bringing him sandwiches and a book. Sayid justifies his actions by declaring, “I know exactly why I’m here.” He told Ilana that Ben was a liar, a manipulator, and a monster, and Sayid was clearly disgusted with himself that Ben manipulated him so easily. Lastly, Sayid told the young Ben that “You were right about me. I am a killer” before shooting the boy. The killing was justified – why else would Sayid be back on the island in 1977 with a defenseless Ben – yet clearly a terrible thing to do.

The episode seemed designed to have us agree that Sayid is a killer at heart. We open to a scene reminiscent of one we’ve seen before. A young boy can’t kill, so his brother kills for him. In Mr. Eko’s case, his brother Yemi had been ordered to kill an old man. The victim in “He’s Our You” was a chicken. I know that we were supposed to think, how coldly Sayid the boy killed that chicken! But I just can’t go there. The doomed chicken was penned with a number of other chickens; clearly, the family was raising their own food. When you’re raising your own food, you don’t anthropomorphize them like I would, you don’t give them names (Prunella and Bobbin come to mind, for some reason), and you develop no attachments to the beasts. I don’t find it that odd or telling that the young boy can do what he’s probably seen done hundreds of times. Was he a little efficient at it? Yes, he was, so it probably wasn’t his first time. I think it more means that he’s a survivor. He becomes a cold-hearted killer later.

The next flashback shows us the killer side of Sayid. He’s in full assassin mode, hunting his prey heartlessly. Clearly, being Ben’s assassin has given Sayid’s life meaning, for he’s clearly adrift when Ben tells him, rather coldly, that Sayid’s done. There’s no one left to kill. Sayid is now free to live his life. Sadly, Sayid has no life to live. He never bothered to develop one.

We then see Sayid in full atonement mode, working with a Lost-created version of Habitat for Humanity, building homes or schools or some such. Here takes place the conversation that I had to watch over and over. Ben comments on Sayid’s lack of enthusiasm about killing the men watching Hurley. The rest I wrote (thank goodness for DVR):

Sayid: What makes you think I want to [kill the men watching Hurley]?

Ben: You are capable of things most other men are not. Every choice you’ve made in
your life, whether it’s to murder or to torture, it hasn’t really been a choice at all, has
it? It’s in your nature. It’s what you are. You’re a killer, Sayid.

And to some extent, Ben’s right. Sayid has always fallen back on his torture skills when he felt the situation called for it. Remember when he tortured Sawyer in the belief the con man was hoarding Shannon’s asthma inhalers? That’s the only way to get information out of someone? And the only way to keep your friends safe is to kill a group of people named by Ben? A man you know to be less than forthright and honest? Whether Sayid took joy in torture or killing, whether it is his nature, however, I believe to be debatable. Just because he’s capable doesn’t mean it’s what he is.

The final flashback reminded me of Sayid’s relationship with women, as Ilana seduced the depressed Iraqi. He bemoans that he no longer wants to do the one thing in the world that he’s good at. What? The only thing you’re good at is killing and torture? Isn’t he some kind of telecommunications expert? Wasn’t he perfectly capable of fixing anything electronic? And the only thing you’re good at is killing? Whatever.

I had hoped throughout the episode, that Sayid would see what kind of life 12 year-old Ben had. Sayid witnessed the elder Linus' brutality toward the boy. Why couldn't Sayid instead of taken pity of Ben, helped him escape from his life, and generally be a good influence? Did Sayid even consider this option?

We last saw Sayid flying through the jungle. No matter how fast or far he runs, however, he won’t be able to outrun himself. He will feel the consequences of this for the rest of his life.

A Young Ben is Shot, Part I: Ben Lives

So we'll first assume that Ben survives the gunshot wound to the chest or somehow is resurrected as John Locke was.

My friend Nicole has a theory about resurrection. Ben needs to die and be resurrected in order to become the Chosen One, the leader, or the Little Prince of the Island, which has chosen him for this role. This is an interesting theory, and one I’ll think of for some time to come.

However Ben survives, if he survives we must rethink everything we know about Sayid and Ben’s relationship. I have to assume that Ben remembers the man who tried to kill or successfully killed him (similar to how Locke remembers that Ben killed him). Sayid first meets “Henry Gale” in one of Danielle’s traps. Perhaps “Henry’s” fear was more than just feigned – here’s the man who killed me. (If I really want my nose to bleed, I would have written, “here’s the man who will kill me nearly 30 years ago”).

Then there’s “It’s your nature” speech. We knew this speech was designed to manipulate Sayid to rescue Hurley and eventually return to the island. Was the harshness also designed to inspire Sayid to kill him? So he can be resurrected?

In This Place is Death, Ben angrily told Sun and Jack they’d thank him “if you had any idea what I’ve had to do to keep you safe”. Was he referring the amount of time he had to spend with the man he knew would shoot/kill him?

A Young Ben is Shot, Part I: Ben Dies

And by dies, I mean that he is not resurrected, he’s either buried or cremated, and Michael Emerson loses the best job he’s ever had. If that happens, then everything changes.

Does Widmore remain on the island?
Does the Purge never happen?
Will adequate staffing of the Swan mean that Oceanic Flight 816 never crash?
Does Juliet never leave Miami?

The questions are never ending.

So, with all these thoughts still racing in my head, I’ll sign off. I have at least one more post in me for this episode. We gotta discuss Sawyer’s comfortable Dharma life, Juliet’s realization that “It’s over”, and Sayid's reaction to truth serum.