Episode Review: LOST: "Sundown" (Season 6, Episode 6)

Play by Play

2004 Timeline

Sayid knocks on Nadia's door… she's married to his brother and has kids. His brother is in mob trouble, and needs Sayid's unique skillset. Sayid is not at all cool with the idea of taking out the mob with Iraqi interrogation techniques.

This changes when Sayid's brother is attacked. Sayid refrains from retaliating until he is picked up by Keamy's men and taken to the kitchen of a restaurant. After a couple of minutes of threatening talk from Keamy, Sayid quickly kills all of them. He hears a noise in the walk-in freezer, opens it and finds Jin.

2007 Timeline

Sayid knocks on Dogen's door… not. He'd much rather knock on his head. After a savage fight, Dogen's baseball falls to the ground, and this signals the end of the kerfluffle. (Yes. I said it. It was a full-on kerfluffle!) Dogen tells Sayid to leave. As Sayid is about to leave, Claire struts into the temple and tells Dogen that 'You know who' wants to see him. Dogen suddenly changes his mind, and decides that Sayid should be his assassin, and kill Smokey McLocke. Sayid sets off, finds McLocke in the forest and stabs him with a big pointy knife. McLocke is nonplussed and non-dead. This is probably not the desired outcome.

Smokey gives Sayid back the knife, and then asks him "What do you want?"… thus revealing that he is, indeed, a Shadow from Babylon 5. Or Mr. Morden. Sayid carries Smokey's message to the Temple "Jacob is dead. Leave here by sunset or die".

Kate wanders into the temple. For a place that was supposed to be really challenging to find and hazardous to enter, they seem to have installed a revolving door. Anyhow, she finds out that Claire is there, and she goes to tell her about Aaron. Claire doesn't look like she's taking this news all that well, and then utters a dire warning. Yes, more direness, just when you thought the dire well had run dry. Well, this is Lost, and things can always get more dire.

Sayid goes to talk to Dogen, where Dogen tells us his story. He killed his own son in a drunk driving accident. Jacob offered him his son's life in exchange for his service, though he could never see his son again. Dogen agreed. After this story, Sayid drowns Dogen in the healing pool and slaughters his 'translator'. Since Dogen was the only thing keeping Smokey out, with his death, Smokey storms through the temple like hell on wheels. Kate barely escapes by jumping in the pit/cell with Claire. The beach survivors, including Lapidus, Sun and Ben arrive at the Temple. Ben tries to retrieve Sayid, but he is… unretrievable. He's gone all creepy-evil. Ben is horrified and runs. The beach crew escape out the same hidden passage that Jack and Hurley used to reach the lighthouse, while Smokey kills everything in sight.

When the dust clears, Claire and Sayid stroll through the courtyard, stepping over bodies. Lots of bodies. Lots and Lots of bodies. Kate is stunned by the carnage, but follows Sayid and Claire out to the creepiest rendition of 'Catch a Falling Star' I have ever heard.

McLocke and his followers march off into the night.

Observations

If they were going to hand out answers, I must have missed them completely. The plot moved ahead with alacrity, however the answers, not so much.
What did get answered?

• Dogen's story- he was recruited by Jacob out of personal tragedy
• Is Sayid Evil?- Yes. He is.
•  … ?

I have NO idea why ABC marketed this week as "QUESTIONS ANSWERED!". If I can only think of two… Okay, one and a half. I didn't really think Dogen's story was a dangling thread. If you are gonna advertise answers, give more than one and a half, please.

Well, the parallelism is back. Sayid is asked to do bad things that test his goodness in both timelines. However it seems that if you DO bad, you ARE bad. Amazing how that works… (see what I did there? I said 'works'. As in Faith vs. Works) I will be rather impressed if we get Faith vs. Works integrated into the Fate vs. Free will matrix that this show has set up. We have Faith vs. Science in there, why not Faith vs. Works? The integration of faith and works are what makes bargains like the ones in this episode possible. Dogen made a bargain with Jacob based on faith, as did Sayid with Smokey. The same mechanics were used, but one is in the service of good, the other, evil.

It has been noted by my esteemed collegue, R3, that both sides are manipulative. This is very nearly a truism (or in other words, DUH!), as the show continues to run a strong themes of Free Will vs. Determinism. In order to maintain an illusion of choice, both sides of the coin must play the game, mixaphorically speaking.

Got some serious creepy going here, though. Naveen Andrews carries off evil extremely well, and he's aided by Michael "Ben" Emerson. The pivotal scene, when Ben goes to rescue Sayid would not have been nearly as effective without Ben's look of horror on encountering Sayid at the pool. Both men are masters of what R3 calls 'face acting'… in fact I would not be surprised if Andrews and Emerson have been coaching Josh "Sawyer" Holloway and Matthew "Jack" Fox.

So, what did you think? Were you actually expecting answers? What do you think that Lost MUST answer in the next ten weeks?