Sayid (Naveen Andrews) and Jack (Matthew Fox) don't trust their potential saviors in LOST: The Economist(2008).
© ABC

Mania Grade: B
Episode: The Economist
Starring: Evangeline Lilly, Josh Holloway, Mathew Fox, Michael Emerson, Elizabeth Mitchell
Written By: Adam Horowitz, Edward Kitsis
Directed By: Jack Bender
Network: ABC

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LOST: The Economist

One of the comments last week complained about not being about to get invested in much of the drama of LOST because you can’t take very much of what happens in the series at face value. I’ve been thinking about that a good bit this week and it was on my mind during this episode. I actually came to the conclusion that I disagree with this person. When people die on this series, they tend to stay dead. Sure, they may appear to the castaways as ghosts or recreations of the smoke monster, but the actual person is dead. As far the twisting plot changing, what appeared to happen to something completely different? Well that’s the very nature of a mystery isn’t it? The requirement at the end of this series is that the writers tell us the one final truth, the real answers to the questions to make this long adventure feel complete. LOST came back strong and I mentioned that I hoped it could continue that trend and so far it absolutely has.

This week felt like a return home, to what LOST was when it started. We get the events of the island and we get a flashback, in this case a flash-forward, that focuses on one of the castaways and inevitably get some hint as to how the two stories are connected. We were promised that we’d learn who another of the Oceanic Six is this week and we learned it right away when we saw Sayid on the golf course. Sayid has apparently taken the role of a professional assassin and he kills another golfer and walks away through the sprinklers. As he and the golfer were chatting and Sayid shared that he is one of the Oceanic Six the golfer became very nervous and seemed to really want to get away but before he could, Sayid put a bullet in him. 

Sayid’s next job begins when he meets a woman who works for a mysterious man who calls her out of the blue and demands that she “shop for him”. Sayid develops a relationship with this woman in order to get close to her boss, or at least that’s the way it seemed. In fact, Sayid was after her and she was after him too. The twist that came when they shot each other was a small one, nothing compared to the closing moments of the episode. I loved this story because it shows the two sides of Sayid and the internal struggle he has with who he is. He’s a stone cold killer but he doesn’t want to be and this time he fell for his victim, but she apparently didn’t fall for him. This flash-forward was a perfectly crafted look at who Sayid will become. You could complain that this is de-evolution for his character because he seemed to be moving away from being this person but then we learned who is pulling his strings and why Sayid is allowing it to happen. 

Seeing Ben appear at the close of the episode cleaning up Sayid’s wounds was exhilarating. This guy has to be one of the greatest villains in television history. He’s shown himself to be a master planner and incredibly adept at running the show by manipulation even when he seems to be at the biggest disadvantage. How much of what’s happening currently on the island is a part of his plan? It would be easy to say yes everything that Locke is doing is falling in line with what Ben wants but Ben is also a man capable of taking the biggest advantage of an opportunity when it arises. Will he be given an opening soon to turn the tables or is everything that’s happening now a part of his elaborate plan? I’m inclined to believe that seeing Ben off the island is due more to a target of opportunity situation because he had things set up to where the freighter and its occupants would never find the island so when they did he had to start working his mojo on a way to save himself and keep things working to his advantage. So I think we’ll see something happen in the near future that will make this flash-forward possible. The most important part of Ben’s appearance in the Vet’s office fixing up Sayid is that we know that Sayid is doing these killings to protect the rest of the castaways still on the island. Is Ben having Sayid kill off the mysterious group that came to the island looking for him? It sure feels like it to me.

Back on the island Sayid came up with a plan to swap Miles for Charlotte with Locke, of course not telling this plan to Miles. Miles and Sayid head off for the barracks to find Locke and Jack convinces Kate to go with them as back up because Sayid has said that jack can’t go because of his lack of control around Locke. At the barracks, Hurley is used as a decoy to get Sayid, Kate, and Miles caught. This bothered me because even if Hurley doesn’t agree with Jack I just don’t see him doing something so underhanded. I wonder if there’s more to that apology Hurley gave to Jack in his fast-forward story from the season premiere. At any rate, Locke accepts Sayid’s deal to trade Miles for Charlotte. At a glance, it doesn’t make sense that Locke would take this deal because he already has both of them imprisoned so Sayid really doesn’t have anything to negotiate with, especially sense Locke has no intention of leaving the island. But like we’ve previously said: you can’t take anything on LOST at face value. I believe Sayid has made some other sort of deal with Locke that we’ll learn about later, making it obviously important that Jack didn’t participate because he’d never deal with Locke. Sayid makes it clear in this episode that he still doesn’t trust these mysterious saviors so he may have appealed to Locke on that level saying that he needs to go to the freighter and investigate and hopefully learn the true motives of these people. In Locke’s eyes he still has a hostage and if Sayid is successful he’ll have more information too. It’s a can’t lose sort of deal for Locke.

Along with all of this there are even more threads added to the plot. Daniel’s experiment shows that there’s a 31 minute time lag from off the island to on it. He tells his pilot buddy to be really careful to remain on the set trajectory when returning to the freighter. What does this time gap mean? Also, I know Daniel is a pretty spastic dude but why didn’t he think to set his experiment up a little further away from the helicopter? I’m just saying, you know, rocket plus helicopter equals all kinds of bad. Locke wanted to make a stop at Jacob’s cabin before heading to the barracks but when he arrived at the last known location of the cabin it was nowhere to be found. Last week Hurley commented to him that the cabin was in a different direction. Well apparently the island can move buildings too! I can’t help but think that in some way Ben has something to do with the cabin being gone. It does nothing but benefit him for the group to see Locke looking like an idiot. At the barracks, Sawyer apparently convinces Kat to stay and “play house with him”. I found this scene interesting because up to now we’ve only heard from Locke reasons to stay on the island. Sawyer shares his feelings with Kate and shines a light on reasons why she’d want to stay too. So what about the rest of Locke’s merry band? Will we start to hear why they’d want to stay on the island? One other question: where are the rest of Ben’s people?

Yep, another fantastic episode of LOST has come and gone. The story telling was addictive and fast paced and the mystery is getting even deeper. Now, we have the promise of an additional five episodes this season too!