Tangled Up In Wires

Immediately after this episode wrapped up, one of my friends turned to me and told me it was his favorite of the season so far. A minute or two later, my brother texted me that it was a massive disappointment. Welcome to the sixth season of Lost.

I am somewhere in the middle. “Sundown” felt almost like a mini-finale, wrapping up the first section of the season with a couple big action sequences and moving the pieces into place for the next phase of storytelling. It was more about dotting some Is and crossing some Ts and, as such was a little lacking in emotional heft or twistiness.

We start back in the burbs, this time with an anxious AlternaSayid, ready to meet his Lady Love: Nadia. Nadia opens the door and is really happy to see him, as are two young children. Sayid? A father as well? Alas, no. The children belong to Sayid’s brother, who married Nadia instead of Sayid. Sayid is a jetsetter who travels around the world translating contracts for a big oil company, but he clearly still carries a torch for Nadia. Things get complicated when it turns out that Sayid’s brother is being ripped off by a gangster he borrowed money from. That gets even worse when said gangster beats the crap out of Sayid’s brother.

Sayid confesses to Nadia that he’s traveled so much and pushed her to marry his brother because he feels guilty about everything he did in Iraq. That’s why he doesn’t want to torture/kill/utterly destroy the gangster, but when said gangster kidnaps Sayid, he doesn’t have much of a choice. And who does the mysterious loanshark turn out to be? Martin Keamy, who long-time viewers will remember as the big villain from the freighter in season four who killed Alex. Keamy has a little fun making a big evil speech before Sayid turns the tables and kills him and his men (presumably somewhere in the alternaworld a freighter was wired to explode when Keamy’s heart stopped beating). Sayid gets ready to bail when he hears noises from a locker and opens it to find Jin bound and gagged!

Meanwhile, on the island, Sayid went to see Dogen demanding answers. Instead, he got his ass kicked and banished. Sayid is on his way out when Claire comes storming in (working for Smokey in exchange for his promise to reunite her with Aaron) saying that Smokey is outside and wants a word with Dogen. Dogen knows how stupid that sounds so, with no other choice, he tries to make nice with Sayid and sends him out to kill Smokey. To do so, he has to stab him with a special knife before Smokey can even say one word to him.

So Sayid leaves the Temple and finds Smokey, who greets Sayid before Sayid stabs him. Smokey just looks disappointed and then chats with Sayid about why he wanted to stab him. Smokey brings him to the dark side by promising him to give him the thing he wants more than anything else in the world (Nadia back alive and with him). So Sayid heads back to the Temple and tells everyone there that they can leave and join Smokey or stay and die. Dogen tells everyone to stay anyway but Cindy, speaking for most of the redshirts, says that sounds nice and all, but she’s gonna pass.

Meanwhile, Kate’s wandered back to the Temple (because why-the-hell-not) and she finds out Claire is there. She talks Lennon into taking her to see the crazy little Aussie, where she promptly spills everything about taking Aaron back with her. Claire is clearly fuming, but manages to keep herself under control enough to not give too much away to Kate.

Finally, as Will Smith would say, shit gets real. The sun sets and Sayid heads back to the pool to speak with Dogen. There, Dogen relates the sad tale of how he came to be on the island. He was a banker who went out drinking to celebrate his big promotion on a night when he had to pick up his son from baseball practice. Dogen got into an accident and nearly killed his son. Jacob came to him and offered to heal Dogen’s son, if Dogen agreed to come to the island and never see the son again. It was a sad moment, made all the sadder by the brutal way Sayid killed him. So, RIP Dogen. You were a pretty awesome character.

Sayid then kills Lennon and, with that, Smokey can enter the Temple (what about the ash line?) and unleash hell. In a pretty shocking sequence, Smokey lays waste to the Temple and most of its inhabitants. Meanwhile, the statue crew arrives at the Temple and runs into Miles, who lets Sun know that Jin is still alive. In a pretty hilarious moment, Ben runs into Sayid and Sayid simply stares at Ben with the crazy eyes until Ben runs away. Ilana hides everyone in the secret chamber so they all make it out. Meanwhile, Kate survives by joining Claire in her pit.

So, as the episode winds down, the Temple is destroyed and any Others who are still alive are all on Team Smokey. In fact, Team Jacob is looking a little thin right now, having been reduced to just Hurley, Jack, Ilana, Sun, Lapidus, Miles, and Ben. Sayid joins up with Smokey and Kate also follows him.

Everything’s in place but, as far as this episode goes, it felt a little disjointed. Sayid’s arc pressed too many of the same buttons that Sayid’s stories have been pressing since the O6 days and the flashsideways are starting to feel a little redundant (see a Lostie, find out how his or her life is a little better without the island, see him or her run into a few other past characters from the show). I liked the last fifteen minutes, even if they played out how I expected (aside from Dogen’s death, which took me by surprise and was a pretty sad moment), but mostly this was another table-setting episode.

So we’re a third of the way through the final season and, with 12 hours left, the show has left itself a pretty hefty amount of work to do. It has to answer the big questions, resolve everyone’s storylines, and provide a satisfying justification for the flashsideways. The last five years have been littered with episodes like “Sundown” and yet there’s a temptation to treat each hour of this season as some kind of precious, rapidly disintegrating resource that must be treasured and handled with care. And that’s true, to an extent. But Lost is still telling a story in small chapters. Some of those chapters are going to be quiet and some are going to be loud and some are going to be incredibly satisfying and some are going to leave us a little cold (and it differs from week to week; I really enjoyed “Lighthouse” but I know some people didn’t care for it and vice versa with “Sundown”). What matters, more than these individual moments, is the picture they form. “Sundown” was hardly a bad episode. It moved the plot along, deepened the themes we’re working with this season, and gave us a pretty epic action sequence for our troubles. But, at this late point, is merely good satisfying enough?

Jonah’s Score: 69

Tangled Up in Wires Grade: B

Some Theorizing:

-Is Smokey’s deal with Sayid related at all to the Magic Box that Ben talked about in season three? Because that thing hasn’t been mentioned in forever

-Neither Jacob nor Smokey seemed particularly benevolent this episode. Smokey offers the Others “freedom” by basically saying “join me or die” while Jacob offers Dogen the chance to heal his son, but only if Dogen joins Jacob and never sees his son again.

-Its also important to note that, without the island, Dogen’s son seems totally fine. Was Dogen’s accident a manipulation of Jacob? It sure seems like that’s the case.

-Forgot to mention that Miles told Sayid that he was dead for two hours and the water didn’t have anything to do with saving him. Sounds like someone’s infected!

-Maybe there’s some significance to the fact that each 815er (except Kate) has encountered a non815er who we recognize (Locke saw Ben, Jack saw Dogen, Sayid saw Keamy). Maybe Jacob is still somehow pulling the strings in this alternate timeline, and these encounters are meant to bring everyone closer together.

-Why is Jin in that closet? And how did he get there from being in custody at LAX?

-The season one flashback order officially comes to an end this week, as we get a Sayid episode instead of a Sun one.

-There are 12 episodes left and we still need flashsideways for Claire, Ben, Jin, Sun, Hurley, and Sawyer at least. I guess what I’m saying is that there’s still so much stuff to address there that if those stories are going to tie into what’s going on to the island, they’d better start doing so soon.

-I don’t mean to say I’m rooting for Claire to kill Kate, but I did stand up during their big scene together and yell “Gooood, let the hate flow through you.”

-Also glad to see Miles agrees with me re: the hotness of Crazy Claire

-I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’ll just say that I really hope the guy narrating the promo was full of it.

-Remember to come back on Thursday as Michael and I hold a TUIW Conversation to unpack this episode some more.