'Lost': Where the heck is the recap?!

In all my time recapping Lost, I have never encountered an episode more challenging to write about than “He’s Our You.” For starters, I’ve had an upset stomach since about 10:15 PM that’s really distracted my thought process. But even when my tummy subsides long enough to allow me to think, I find that “He’s Our You” is filled with implications within implications that aren’t easy to parse. I mean that in a good way.

For example, if the past can’t be changed, then that means thatSayid’s assassination attempt on Young Ben has always been part ofAdult Ben’s life experience. Which means that while Ben was cultivatingoff-Island Sayid into a vengeance-crazed killer — and knowinglyencouraging Sayid’s homicidal resentment toward him — he did so knowingthat one day, Sayid was going to travel back in time and then try tokill him. So does that mean that Ben was complicit in Sayid’s attack onhis life? Does that mean that Ben actually wanted Sayid to try and murder him? And what if we’re wrong and the past is open to revision? And what if Ben knew that, too?

You see what I mean. The episode was complex with always-tricky timetravel logic deeply intertwined with themes of nature vs. nurturethemes, free will vs. predestination that are equally trippy to ponder.The episode sketched Sayid’s arc from childhood chicken killer to adultscrawny-Ben murderer. We learned he never wanted to get on Ajira 316: Abounty hunter employed by the family of the Italian golf course guy that hekilled last season had captured him and was taking him to Guam. Thatbounty hunter: newcomer Ilana. And though she said she had never heardof Benjamin Linus before, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Ben wastruly the guy who hired her. On the Island, the Dharma Initiative triedto get Sayid — whom they suspected of being a Hostile spy — to spill hisguts by getting their resident shaman/torturer to pump him full oftruth-telling drugs. It worked: Sayid told them everything. While theydismissed his claims of being from the future as just so muchcrazy talk (much to Sawyer’s great relief), they were deeply concernedabout his detailed knowledge of three of their hatches, including thenot-yet built Swan station. Not wanting their off-island masters in AnnArbor, Michigan to decide the matter for them, Dharma’s leadershipdecided that Sayid needed to be executed. But Young Ben had taken ashine to Sayid—he saw him as his ticket out of Dharmaville and intoOthersville—and hatched his first evil mastermind scheme: BreakingSayid out using the old “flaming VW distraction” trick. Yet out therein the Island’s jungle, Sayid, convinced he had finally discovered hispurpose, shot Ben and disappeared into the night. Is Ben dead? If so,what are the implications for Lost history was we know it?

So as I continue to puzzle through the episode, I hope you’llcontinue discussing the episode here in the Popwatch column. Thanks forthe patience — we’ll get the full recap up shortly.

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‘Lost’recap: "He’s Our You"