Watching Lost

We had a little fun and a little misery last night. Hurley beat an over-confident Sawyer in a ping pong match, meaning that Sawyer had to give up using nicknames for a week, which probably felt like torture to Sawyer. In the flashback, Sayid had to face one of his torture vicitms. It wasn’t a good night for Sayid. He was shot by Patchy, and in his flashback, he was beaten and threatened with torture himself. Not good.

I’ll start with the flashback. Sayid was working as a chef in Paris when a strange man comes to his restaurant and asks Sayid to come work for him. By the way, Sayid was using another name (Najim maybe?). It turns out that this guy’s wife, Amira, was one of Sayid’s torture victims while he was a member of the Iraqi Republican Guard. Amira’s husband wants revenge; it seems Amira merely wants an apology. Amira talks to Sayid alone and tells him a story of some children who were torturing a cat. She rescued the cat, but sometimes it will scratch her or bite her because the cat forgets that he’s safe. Amira says that she knows what it feels like to never feel safe because of what Sayid did to her. She asks him to admit what he did to her and say that he remembers her. Sayid says, “I remember you. Your face has haunted me. I am sorry, so sorry for what I did to you.” She says she forgives him and that she’ll tell her husband that she was mistaken so he would let Sayid go. She says she will never be like a torturer. Wow.

The cat shows up late in the show when Sayid, Locke, Kate, and Rousseau find the Flame station with Patchy (aka Mikhail? The names were hard to catch). Sayid decides to walk up to the house unarmed to talk to Patchy. Patchy shoots Sayid in the arm, and Locke and Kate shoot at Patchy. Patchy claims that he is “the last living member of the Dharma Initiative,” but Sayid’s not buying it. Patchy sews Sayid up and tells him about his past. He claims he was a member of the Soviet army and was stationed in a listening post (is it the same listening post we saw at the end of last season??), but he was dismissed from his position. He saw an ad in the paper for the Dharma Initiative that said, “Would you like to save the world?” He joined Dharma, and he’s been on the island for 11 years working in the Flame. The Flame’s purpose is to communicate with the outside world. He says that Dharma had had some problems with the Hostiles (obviously the Others), who had been on the island a long time before Dharma arrived, and he was one of the few who survived. Turns out that Sayid was right not to believe him because Patchy IS one of the Others, and the black lady Other is there as well. They all fight, and Patchy ends up holding Locke at gunpoint while Sayid has the lady at gunpoint. Patchy starts speaking in another language to the lady, and obviously she told him to shoot her because he does shoot and kill her.

Before all of this, though, Locke had found a computer in the Flame with a chess game. He’s immediately sucked in. Patchy said he’s never been able to beat the computer, but Locke does. When he beats the computer, Alvar Hanso appears on the screen and starts giving instructions about what numbers to enter for certain situations. He says something about the Hostiles (anybody catch it??) and to enter 77. Well, that’s what John does, and the Flame explodes a few moments later. Sayid’s furious, of course. Rousseau wants to kill Patchy. Sayid says, “No, he’s my prisoner. I will decide his fate.” And the episode ends with a shot of the cat.

A couple of questions:

Why was Locke so obsessed with the computer?? Did this bother anyone else? And why would he enter any number into the computer without checking with someone else? It makes you wonder whose side Locke’s on…

Why was Sawyer’s only task after losing to stop with the nicknames? Do they really bother everybody that much?

Did anyone catch the funniest line? Sawyer to Nikki: “Who the hell are you?”

What did you think? What did I leave out? There was a lot of information, and I only got to watch the episode once, so I may have missed something. Let me know what you thought!

Lost, Sayid, Enter 77, Locke, Rousseau, Patchy, Kate, torture