Kicking Television – LOST s4 ep3: "The Economist"
Sorry dudes, we’re playing catch-up – been busy the last couple weeks and missed two episodes. What a mistake. Sayid‘s been one of the show’s most intriguing characters for ages, and this episode only raised his stock. Cold shooting down a dude out on the links? That might be even more hardcore than his background in torture. And the longer hair suits his assassin gig in a kind of Pulp Fiction-John Travolta kind of way. Plus he gets with Elsa, the gorgeous foreign blonde! Phew. Cheers, fella.
But that’s the flash-forward. Back to the island. The battle between Locke and Jack has raged for seasons now, both physically and idealogically – last time around, Jack almost put a bullet through his brain, had he not been out of bullets. Sayid has been relatively quiet in comparison; a military man and potentially the island’s most dangerous person, his skills have been flashed only sporadically. The confusion of the freighter and its quirky crew of rescuers has given Sayid the chance to take control of the situation, which he does with self-satisfied terseness. Just like that, he gets Charlotte back and flies with Desmond to the freighter, where awaits Vaughan-knows-what. [Continue reading…]
The flash-forward offers the biggest double-take when Ben is revealed as his boss, mulling over Sayid’s past failure – which presumably is to come. Ben – a vehement freighter-hater from the get-go – tells Sayid he’s trying to protect his friends by killing people on a list. My conspiracy theory? It’s Matthew Abaddon and whoever’s behind the freighter, who are connected to Penelope probably via her conniving father, Charles Widmore. Jack attended a funeral; one of the Oceanic 6 was likely killed by the cabal. All this over Daddy’s little girl trying to find her sea-faring ex-boyfriend. And a magic island.
Highlights:
Nobody’s telling Locke what to do. Jacob’s cabin is gone; as Hurley knows, it’s going a-teleportin’. Locke wasn’t supposed to let Naomi make contact with her freighter. Since Jack managed to make the call, perhaps the island, or Walt, or whoever, has abandoned Locke like an angry deity.
Some nice sexual tension between Jack and Kate, with her doing her standard eyelash-batting and him noting that Locke won’t kill her because “Sawyer won’t let him.” Oh right, that guy. Not to mention the great Hallmark moment where Sawyer asks Kate to play house with him. Good to see the love triangle still has three sides – four, if you count Juliet. Does Kate really choose to stay with Locke (and Sawyer), or is something more afoot? (This gets answered next week…)
Daniel’s experiment. The scientist already knows there’s something up with the island after noticing the island’s effect on sunlight. His “payload” seems to discover a 31 minute time differential between the island and off; is this why the island hasn’t been discovered? It’s in a temporal vortex? Then how can those fancy cell phones make a connection? Why this is somehow connected to the path off the island – the specific bearing the helicopter flies out on, and probably the same one that Michael and Walt used when they left back in season 2 – makes no sense in any scientific manner I can think of, but that’s LOST for you.
Desmond – With his visions, one would think the guy might know what’s going on, but that’d be too much to ask, eh LOST writers?
Ben’s passports. Dude gets around. And here we thought he hadn’t left the island in years.
Some thoughts on episode 4 coming tomorrow.
Previously: Kicking Television: LOST s4 ep2: “Confirmed Dead”