"He's Our You" Review

It's funny: "He's Our You" spent its entire running time meticulously setting up Sayid's decision to kill the twelve-year-old Ben Linus, and yet I was still utterly shocked when it happened -- proving once again that Lost is the best in the business at providing quality character-driven storytelling and major "gotcha!"-style plot twists.

Of course, this being the island (and considering Faraday's likely theory that "whatever happened, happened"), Ben probably isn't dead. Yes, the Lost writers proved they were willing to take risks -- I'm sure there was plenty of hand-wringing over whether or not to let their coolest hero shoot a defenseless little kid -- but the universe didn't explode from a million paradoxes when Ben was shot, and besides, if they wanted to give it an air of finality, Sayid should've just shot him in the head.

But if Ben pulls through, that means the writers will have to jump through an entirely different set of hoops, creating an elaborate Oedipus-style scenario where Sayid's attempt to kill Ben only helped turn him into the monster he is today. That means that all of Ben's previous encounters with Sayid were colored with the knowledge that he was the man who shot him when he was little. Obviously not something the writers had planned all along, but if that's the route they take, I'll be curious to know how they execute it.

(A tangent on that "monster he is today" classification: Sayid justified shooting Ben in the name of the greater good -- the old "If you went back in time and killed Hitler..." argument. That argument was strengthened by Sayid's references to the "genocide" of the Purge, as Doc Jensen pointed out in his column. But Ben told Hurley last season that the Purge wasn't his decision, that the then-leader of the Others made the call -- possibly Widmore, possibly Richard, possibly someone else. So while Ben was complicit in the Purge, he didn't necessarily cause all of those deaths. We don't know the whole story, true, but neither does Sayid. So what do you think: was he justified in shooting Ben, or not?)

The episode also returned to the traditional flashback structure, but with a newfound purpose: we needed the justification for Sayid's killing of Ben, and we also needed to fill in the blanks of Sayid getting on the Ajira plane with Ilana. (She's some kind of bounty hunter -- but we don't know who hired her. If it's between Widmore or Ben, does it really matter?)

Some of the flashbacks were weak links, I thought. The one of Sayid as a little kid, in particular, was incredibly derivative of that Mr. Eko flashback when he shot the condemned man instead of his brother. And in trying to justify why he's a born killer, did they really have to introduce yet another mean dad? Thematic similarities are one thing, and redundancies are another.

We also got a couple more scenes of Ben manipulating someone a little too easily (see also: every scene Ben has with Locke). I wasn't sold on Sayid's puppy dog "What do I do now?" whine after Ben told him he was finished, nor did I believe Ben's "you're a killer" proclamation in Santa Domingo would manipulate Sayid so easily. Whenever Sayid is a utility character in someone else's story, he's a total badass, and in his own episodes he magically turns into a wimp.

That was something else that was missing from this episode: a strong leader. Let me go even further: none of the heroes were being proactive. (That's part of what made the climax so satisfying: it was an active decision stemming from a well-planned build-up.) Jack, at least for now, is content to mope around and wait for Sawyer to do something. Kate is even more mopey: does anyone anywhere want her and Sawyer to get back together at this point?

Juliet's scant lines in this episode were just pathetic. "It's over, isn't it? This. Playing house. It's over." Ugh. This isn't a Lifetime movie; give the compelling female lead better material! Every single one of her and Kate's lines this episode were in reference to Sawyer. Let them be their own people!

As for Sawyer, the conman-turned-Dharmite was experiencing the difficulties in being a leader this week, especially while trying to lead a double life. I think Doc Jensen was a bit harsh on him in his recap (he's already calling him a "cautionary tale of moral compromise") -- in fairness, Sawyer did his best to keep all the balls in the air, and obviously had no intention of letting Sayid get killed. Sure, he didn't want to lose everyone's trust by making it look like Sayid overpowered him and escaped, which is why he first tried to convince Sayid to act like he defected -- but when the chips were down, he was fully willing to let Sayid walk right out.

Yeah, it was hard to take Sawyer raising his hand at the house meeting. I was more struck, however, by Amy's bloodlust. Sure, Amy: convince yourself that you only want to condemn a man for the safety of your child. That's where it starts.

In fact, the meeting kind of gave me a "Monsters are Due on Maple Street" vibe. That's a classic Twilight Zone episode in which a town get mysteriously cut off from its connection to the outside world, and everyone begins accusing their neighbor of being the culprit. The paranoia eventually reaches a fever pitch and turns into a full-scale every-man-for-himself riot -- at which point we see two aliens watching the town from a safe distance, as one explains to the other how to play into people's prejudices and paranoia and let them destroy themselves.

It got me thinking about how pure of a person Amy really is. It also got me thinking about whether or not she was right to be worried: was Ethan originally a kidnapped child? That makes him a heck of a lot more interesting, especially in light of his kidnapping Claire.

Anyway, I think that's all I got for this episode. Next week, Lost will (most likely) finally show its cards about what kind of time travel game it's playing, but all signs point to "Whatever Happened, Happened." Which, what do you know, is the name of the episode.

P.S. "He's Our You"? The guy wasn't a torturer. And he wasn't very important to the plot, either.

TAGS: Hes Our You, Sawyer, Sayid, Season 5, The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street, The Twilight Zone, Young Ben
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