Lost Re-view: Solitary

The next episode of Lost's first season was centered on Sayid. It was the second episode from writer David Fury, following Walkabout. It's not the triumph that that first episode was, but is a pretty good hour.

A lot of the strength comes from the power of the Sayid back story revealed here. Like Sawyer's flashbacks in the previous episode, Sayid's story doesn't cover how he came to be on Oceanic Flight 815. The more important story to tell here is of his history with Nadia.

The episode begins with an artistic, wide shot of Sayid sitting alone on the beach, looking at her photo. His flashbacks go on to reveal his work as a torturer for the Republican Guard, and how his conviction is shaken when a woman he knew in grade school is set up to be the subject of his next interrogation. Unlike the flashbacks of the Sun episode, which were all in Korean, this episode uses the "Hunt for Red October trick" of having the characters begin in their native language, before transitioning to English for the rest of the episode. This is likely for practical reasons, as actor Naveen Andrews does not actually speak Arabic as Yunjin Kim and Daniel Dae Kim speak Korean.

The Nadia-Sayid relationship shown in the flashbacks is quite powerful, taken just as presented in this one episode. She seems to see the true man he is, sees him "pretending to be something I know you're not." She bears the scars of past tortures -- burns, drill marks, and more -- but is unafraid that he will inflict any more harm on her. And in the end, he shoots himself in the leg to ensure her escape. Wow. That's love. The last thing she does is write on the back of his photo of her: "You'll find me in the next life, if not in this one." And in fact, that's exactly what happens in the afterlife of the sixth season -- Sayid tries to connect with Nadia.

But unsuccessfully. And there's the rub: it's just hard to know what to make of the Nadia relationship in the full context of Lost. Ultimately, the show tells us that Nadia was not Sayid's soul mate. That's Shannon. And while I suppose I'll have to get to re-watching those early second season episodes that really establish this, I must confess my memory is that that relationship never really clicked for me. So to sort of bolster the narrative and boost up Sayid-Shannon in my mind, I find myself compelled to "push down" Sayid-Nadia.

Suddenly, I wonder if there's a second way to read what we see in this episode. Does Nadia actually feel any connection to Sayid at all? Or is she really the ruthless terrorist that those who captured her believe her to be? Does she merely remember Sayid from years ago, and start flirting with him to save her own skin? When she says "Do your work; I'm not going to tell you anything," is it bravery, or does she really think she's put the whammy on Sayid and he's not going to hurt her? Hmmm.

Sayid's adventures on the Island in this episode are just as momentous as those in his flashbacks. In fact, this episode marks the first appearance of a rather large number of Island mysteries that would fuel fan imagination for a long time to come.

It begins with Sayid's discovery of a cable on the beach, which he follows inland. Little did he know that the more interesting direction to follow it would have been into the water and down to the ocean floor -- that's where we'd find the Looking Glass station at the end of season three.

Then he spots a trip wire in the jungle, which he carefully steps over... only to be snagged in the real trap, laid by someone even more clever than he. And that someone turns out to be Danielle Rousseau, the "French woman" in the distress call. If you thought she must have been long dead, you're in for a mammoth revelation, Lost fans! There is someone still alive on the Island other than our crash survivors! And just for all the sci-fi fans out there, we cast Mira Furlan from Babylon 5 to play her!

Rousseau is quite the character. She apparently speaks five languages, asking Sayid "where is Alex" in English, German, Italian, Spanish, and French in an early scene. She tortures him with electricity one moment, but tenderly strokes his face and feels genuine sympathy for him just a scene or two later.

She also brings the first hints of a host of Island mysteries. She speaks of "the sickness" that claimed her science team (and which would much later claim the focal character of this episode, Sayid). She mentions the Black Rock. She talks about the "Others" on the Island. She tells us about the "whispers" that speak to you in the jungle (which Sayid encounters himself in the very last scene). And she speaks of "Alex" throughout the episode, only revealing her to be "my child" at the end -- actually not ever specifying that Alex was a daughter and not a son (as Sayid mistakenly assumes).

In fact, writer David Fury once revealed in an interview that another tidbit was meant to be teased in this episode: Rousseau was to have mentioned that the thing her expedition was researching? "Time." Fury claims that ABC asked that most of the blatantly sci-fi elements like this be removed or downplayed in the first season, so the line was cut.

But the problem with such a large downloading of mystery in this one episode is that a fair chunk of it turns out to be irreconcilable with what we would later learn. We'd even see some of it, thanks to all the time-traveling in season 5. Some of the inconsistencies you can chalk up to Rousseau's general craziness after years of isolation; hell, she even contradicts herself in this episode. She tells Sayid she's never seen another person on the Island, yet clearly has seen an "Other" before, because she thinks he is one. (And indeed, as we'll later learn, the Others took her child.)

Some of Rousseau's special brand of crazy in this episode becomes explainable when you compare her to "wild jungle Claire" of season 6. The two were played very similarly. Claire got to the point of split ends and raising a dead squirrel skeleton baby because she lived for three years alone, with the Man in Black poisoning her mind and turning her "evil." Indeed, the "sickness" that Rousseau claims took her expedition was likely this same touch of Man in Black corruption. (Though I question whether any of Rousseau's team was actually infected as she claims... or if it was really just her).

In any case, you can stretch all of this to explain why Rousseau says "there's no such thing as monsters" in this episode, though we know she saw the Smoke Monster soon after arriving on the Island, and she even implies worse things on the Island than the polar bears in this very episode. If ol' Smokey came to Rousseau in some human form, as he does to Claire in the final season, then Rousseau knows a little of his true nature... or at least would think of "it" as a "person," just as Claire later would.

Rousseau thinks the "sickness" comes from the Others (which she just claimed never to have seen), not from the Smoke Monster's corruption. More head scrambling from a Claire-Smokey type brainwashing? General ramblings of someone cracked from 16 years on the Island? Or just stuff that doesn't connect because the writers didn't actually planned ahead? You decide.

But here's something that crazy can't explain. Once the full timeline unfolds over six seasons, it puts Rousseau's arrival on the Island a few years ahead of Ben's "Purge" of the Dharma Initiative, in which he released a toxic gas all over the Island, killing everyone. So how did Rousseau survive that?

Stuff like that is why I'm happy to focus on character. As Sayid says of Rousseau's broken music box, "some things can be fixed." Let's extend his metaphor to details like this, acknowledge that maybe this is an area that can't "be fixed," and get back to other character stuff in this episode.

As all this serious stuff is happening to Sayid, the rest of our heroes are enjoying a quite different, light-hearted time. The principal subplot of this episode involves Hurley building a golf course. While Jack has been trying to "make people feel safe" by seeing to basic survival needs, Hurley recognizes that fun is a basic survival need too. Hurley finds the equipment in various luggage, notes that "rich idiots" go to tropical islands all the time to play golf, and it's off to the green. (Say, would Hurley himself be one of the "rich idiots" he's referring to? A few episodes later, we'd learn of his lottery winnings.)

The golf course subplot is a vehicle for comedy in this episode -- arguably the most humor any episode of Lost has had so far. The golf course draws quite a crowd, and eventually betting for or against Jack. ("Action" that Sawyer gets in on, offering up some of his stash, to finally begins integrating with the rest of the group.) There are a few great lines, like Kate to Jack: "I almost didn't recognize you. You're smiling." Or Sawyer's: "A doctor playing golf. Now I've heard everything." Or Charlie to Michael: "You didn't hear about the polar bear?" (Okay, so that last one isn't about the golf course, but still funny.)

Two characters make their very first appearance here. The first is Ethan (not counting the mobisode that was made years later), showing up for just one scene. He's obviously ingratiated himself to Locke, who says Ethan has "had some hunting experience." And while that's no doubt true, the bigger truth is that Locke -- like everyone else -- has been fooled into thinking Ethan was a crash survivor.

The other character making his first appearance is Sullivan, a hypochondriac with a rash that Jack is forced to deal with. "The rash guy" (I had to look up his actual name, because I'm not sure they say it on screen) is really built up as though he's going to be a recurring presence. I think he gets as much camera time as Arzt does in his first episode, for example. He certainly gets more time here than Ethan. And yet Sullivan is never seen again after this episode. Kinda weird. Was he really just a one-off device for this episode? Did the actor they cast not work out?

There are a handful of other small character arcs playing out in this episode. There's still friction between Jack, Kate, and Sawyer over the last episode's torture. As Kate bluntly puts it: "Accidents happen when you torture people, Jack." So Jack is tending to Sawyer's knife wound. The latter says its out of guilt, but Jack maintains: "I'm here because no one else wants anything to do with you." To which Sawyer challenges: "She does." The love triangle is fully under construction at this point.

Walt tries to get closer to Locke this episode. Walt wants to go hunting, which Michael shuts down immediately. But then, when Michael is too busy playing golf to watch his kid, Walt slips away for some knife-throwing lessons with Locke. And thus, any goodwill the Michael character earned by designing a shower this episode is undone by showing him as a neglectful parent. Nice.

And Claire... well, actually, this is I believe the third episode in which Claire doesn't appear. And we're only nine episodes in. I don't think I realized the first time around just how much Emilie de Ravin was "sitting on the bench." Perhaps the writers were struggling with finding ways to use a character who's eight months pregnant in any kind of active role in a story? I suppose omitting her from episodes was probably a better thing that watching her play the same "I'm pregnant" beats every week. (At least she's the focus of the next episode.)

There's a lot of good stuff in this episode. The Sayid story brings both emotion and tantalizing hints of the future. But I have to say that the golf course subplot, fun though it is, doesn't really mesh well. It doesn't quite come off as a series of light moments to relieve the tension -- it feels more like parts of an entirely different episode that, while fine on their own, just don't blend well. I rate the episode a B+ overall.