'Lost': One of Them

There are a few seminal episodes in the history of Lost, those that stand above the rest and exist as turning points either in terms of narrative scope or sheer quality. This episode is an excellent example of both, with the introduction of a now legendary figure coupled with some excellent acting, sprinkled with a lovely dose of mythology. Such a combination quelled the bad taste that the last few episodes left in many a mouth in order to produce a five-star quality outing this time around.

One of Them

4) In Short

"I have a guy with creepy eyes trapped in a net: anyone want him? Going once...going twice..."

8) On the Island

Hunk alert! Sayid's washing up, topless, on the beach. Ana Lucia rushes up to him, looking for Jack. She thinks she's spotted an Other, but it's only Danielle. Sayid tells her to go back and tell no one what she saw. Sayid approaches Danielle stealthily, and asks why she's there. She informs him that she's been looking for him. This is how people meet in the absence of eHarmony.

Sayid wants to know where Danielle is leading them, not exactly trusting her after the last time she arrived and, you know, kidnapped Aaron. She won't divulge the exact destination, but gives him her gun as an offering of trust. The two come across a man caught in one of Danielle's traps. Danielle insists that he is "one of them." This man says his name is Henry Gale, from Minnesota. Sayid cuts him down, but Henry instantly flees. Luckily, Danielle has the cure for such a situation: a freakin' arrow through his chest.

Danielle suggests that Sayid interrogate this man back at their camp, after Jack tends to his wounds. She warns that "Henry" will lie for a long time. Interesting how she would know that, having never seen an Other before, eh? Sayid throws Henry's limp body over his shoulder and heads back to camp.

Sayid wakes John Locke up, inside the Swan. He brings Locke to meet the newest guest in the hatch. The two ask him a series of questions WHILE THE BLOODY ARROW IS STILL IN HIS CHEST, which is so wrong it's right. According to Henry, he and his wife crashed while trying to balloon across the Pacific. His wife died on the Island, after the two survived inside a cave for a few weeks. The interrogation is interrupted by the arrival of Jack, who instantly tends to his patient. Sayid makes sure that Jack does not untie him.

Gross surgery time, as Jack cuts the arrow on both ends and slowly removes it from Henry's body. Nearby, Locke and Sayid weigh the validity of Henry's story. Locke thinks it's convincing, but shares Sayid's skepticism. Sayid suggests that Locke change the lock on the armory, without Jack's knowledge, to provide a safehouse for Sayid to take things up a notch. Locke senses that Sayid wants revenge, but ultimately relents and agrees to change the combination.

Sayid and Locke convince Jack to put Henry into the armory, lest his bloody presence scare future button pushers. Jack agrees, and all three move him into the tiny room. Once Jack and Locke leave, Sayid locks himself in, leaving him alone with Henry. Jack's anger at learning the combination was changed leads to a FANTASTIC series of Jack/Locke scenes. In this first act, Locke notes that Jack's raising of an army must mean they are at war: thus, Sayid's questioning behind closed doors is a necessary part of that.

Inside the Torture Chamber/Armory: Sayid tries to poke holes in Henry's previous testimony. Henry shudders from pain as he tries to answer Sayid's questions. Henry's answers are incredibly specific, going so far as knowing the specific beacon on his balloon. He keeps trying to deflect the questions by seeking to learn about his captor. Finally, Sayid quietly informs him, "My name is Sayid Jarrah, and I'm a torturer." This is the part of the Torturer's Anonymous where everyone replies, "Hi, Sayid."

Jack's on "mop up Henry's blood" duty, when Locke asks to give Jack a hand in Act II of their throwdown. While washing his hands, Jack notices the pliers are missing. Oops.

Sayid's interrogation moves onto the balloon, with Henry still offering plausible specifics as to its makeup and content. Sayid grabs his hands and wraps the pliers around one of Henry's figures, moving onto the specifics of his wife's burial. Henry freaks the hell out, and what follows is an incredible scene in which Sayid's anger over Henry's specifics turns into a memorial to Shannon. I'm far from the biggest Sayid/Shannon fan, but Naveen Andrews straight up kills this scene with Michael Emerson every bit his equal.

Act III of the Jack/Locke Drama, with Jack trying to force Locke into opening the door while two things simultaneous happen: the computer starts beeping and Sayid starts beating the holy hell out of Henry. Jack keeps Locke from pushing the button, with eyes that speak of complete insanity. Creepy. The tension's ridonkulous as Locke finally relents, opening the door and sprinting over to the computer. And that's what it happens: the counter hits zero before Locke can finish typing the code, and hieroglyphics start to appear as what sounds like the world's biggest engine revs up below them. After being momentarily mesmerized, Locke finishes the code and the counter reverts back to 108. Jack then pulls Sayid against his will from the room. FREAKIN' AWESOME.

Sayid continues to insist that Henry is an Other, even without proof. Locke astutely notes that the word "Other" is based upon context, so Danielle is technically right in viewing both Henry and Sayid as "Others."

On the beach that evening, Sayid informs Charlie that there's a man in the hatch with new punch marks on his face. Charlie asks why Sayid is telling him this, and Sayid replies that unlike Locke and Jack, Charlie could understand Sayid's lack of guilt over harming Henry. After all, Charlie remembers all too well how merciless they can be, having been strung up and left for dead by one of them. Sayid thinks the two nominal leaders of their group have forgotten just how dangerous their allies are.

Worst B-Plot Ever Devised By Man: Sawyer is tormented by a freakin' tree frog. I'm not joking. In his search for the frog, he comes across Hurley munching on a secret stash of Swan ranch dressing and other goodies. Sawyer agrees to keep quiet if Hurley helps him find the frog, all the while making fun of Hurley's weight. Again, I'm not making this up. This actually happened in this episode. The less-than-dynamic duo eventually find the frog, and Sawyer kills it. Um, the end.

15) Off the Island

Sayid is in a bunker, trying to destroy Iraqi mililtary files during the Gulf War while the US of A bomb the living bejeezus out of their position. Before all documents can be destroyed, U.S. military secures the facility and demand to know who's in charge. Sayid saves the life of a fellow soldier about to be shot, and when it's learned he can speak English, he's led to an adjoining facility by none other than Kate's adoptive father, Sam.

Sam wants to know the location of Sayid's commanding officer. Sayid informs him that he already left for Hillah before the bombings started. Sayid's surprised and dismayed to see said commanding officer in the room to which Sam had led him. They want Sayid to act as translator to interrogate his superior officer as they look for a downed pilot.

The superior calls Sayid a disgrace, toying with him psychologically in front of the unknowing Americans. Unable to get information from this officer, Sam promises that more extreme measures will be taken. They bring him to a man named Kelvin Inman, who shows him a video of said officer's previous activities (primarily involving chemical weapons on villages in the area). Sayid's disgusted by what he sees, which gives Kelvin an in: he digs the knife in a little further about the downed pilot, and hands Sayid a wooden box.

This wooden box contains a whole lot of goodies: a hammer, scissors, the latest Hannah Montana live CD. Everything a budding torturer could need! Sayid's officer is skeptical that Sayid will actually do it, going so far as to order Sayid to take his own life as a subordinate officer. He then spits in Sayid's face, which is about as smart as dry humping a hornet's nest. Sayid soon emerges from the room with the pilot's location, sporting hollow eyes and bloody hands.

Sam rides on a convoy with Sayid, gazing at a picture of young Kate. They eventually take him off the convoy, where Kelvin informs him that the Gulf War is over, with the U.S. pulling out with Saddam in power and Sayid ostensibly still in his employ. While cutting him loose, Kelvin tells Sayid in Arabic that one day, he will need to know something important, and now has the skill set to obtain it. Sayid swears he will never torture again. Very Scarlett O'Hara of him. Kelvin gives him some American cash and leaves Sayid on the side of a long and empty road.

16) The Mythology

It's all about one thing, and one thing only: that tree frog, baby. OK, not really, it's all about those crazy kooky hieroglyphics.

This is the first instance of such writing on the show, but not the only one. We've also seen them on Ben's secret smoke monster summoning door, and adjacent to the frozen donkey wheel. One can make a fairly good assumption that the hieroglyphics in the Swan were installed as a measure of homage to the other instances on the Island.

If you believe the timeline suggested by yours truly last week, then the countdown timer was installed as part of the process by which a button was pushed every 108 minutes to alleviate the electromagnetic buildup that occurred on this part of the Island. As such, the builders were in a position to place a message of sorts at the final hour to somehow drive home the import of the task at hand. And the message they chose, according to Damon Lindelof, is "underworld."

Now, a lot of people took this translation to go, "Oooh, the Island is Atlantis, mystery solved!" But I choose to look at "underworld" a different way. More of a Peter Gabriel way. My main man Peter wrote one of my favorite all-time songs, one that I think is appropriate to bring up now: the last song on the album "Us," entitled "Secret World." The theme of the song is that just below the everyday life exists another, more fantastical one, a world accessed only through the power of the connection between two people.

Now am I suggesting that the Island is a physicalized version of this song, a tropical representation of Immanuel Kant's "Realm of Ends"? Not exactly, but the idea of a world just below the surface of the real one sure seems to mimic the status of the Island itself, meaning that the hieroglyphics don't refer to Hades so much as its relativistic position to the world around it. But since I've brought up the realm of ends, let's look at that briefly in the context of both the Island and the Underworld.

Kant came up with the "realm of ends" as the extension of something called the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative is defined as:

...a command which expresses a general, unavoid­able requirement of the moral law. Its three forms express the requirements of universalizability, respect and autonomy. Together they establish that an action is properly called 'morally good' only if (1) we can will all persons to do it, (2) it enables us to treat other persons as ends and not merely as the means to our own selfish ends, and (3) it allows us to see other persons as mutual law-makers in an ideal 'realm of ends'.

I bring up this horribly confusing philosophy not because I want to seem all smart, because as the college professor once said to our class while teaching this topic way back in the day, it's "as clear as mud." But if you factor in the "utopian social" aspect of the Swan orientation video, one can look at this "underworld", this "secret world," as a possible physical location to explore the philosophical concepts engaged in by Kant. It's a place that Henry/Ben later declares is outside even God's view, making it a clean slate upon which to put philosophical/social theory into practice in a relatively controlled, untainted environment.

What you can see in this episode, both in the rotting state of both the Swan and everyone's psychology, is just how far from the end this secret world truly is. As such, while "underworld" didn't originally refer to hell itself, the Island certainly feels really close to it at this point in the show.

23) The Moment

Sayid torturing through the tears, hands down.

42) In Retrospect

1. Just in terms of pure viewer joy, it's hard to beat everyone's first interaction with Ben. It's a bit like watching young Anakin meet young Obi-Wan in The Phantom Menace, only without all the sucking.
2. "How Ben Ended Up in the Net" is one of those scenes I need to see before the show ends. It's probably Top 5, up there with "How Danielle Lost Alex" and "Hurley and Ben Tour the World Silently Sharing Candy Bars." It'd be the snack food version of this.
3. I used to take great pride in pointing out during Season 4 just how much Team Locke had turned into The Others, and how the phrase was loaded to accommodate shifting perspective, and hey, here's Locke saying exactly this stuff in this episode. I'd either completely forgotten, or subliminally stored it for blogging purposes years later.

108) In Summary

Just a brutal, claustrophobic, mind-bending episode, and one of Season 2's best. Just seeing Henry Gale brought into the show elevates it above the spate of terrible episodes that preceded it, and started the progression of episodes in which the Swan corrupted nearly everyone who stayed inside of it.

What followed wasn't always perfect, but thanks to Henry, it was inevitably more compelling.

Leave your thoughts about this episode below!

Ryan also posts every 108 minutes over at Boob Tube Dude, then peruses Zap2It's Guide to Lost Facebook group.