For as much as I appreciate a week off from blogging, it’s hard to deny that those breaks really suck the momentum out of the show. Luckily, “Lost” makes it so easy to get sucked right back in – especially when the writers are having so much fun introducing characters from the present to former acquaintances in the past. Tonight’s episode featured several instances, and while they made a fairly big deal about Sayid meeting young Ben (probably because he’s going to try and stop him from poisoning the Dharma Initiative in a future episode), the brief mention of Ethan being Horrace and Michelle Dessler’s son was a far more exciting reveal from a fan’s point of view.
Then again, it also settles a fairly major debate regarding how Michelle was even able to have the baby in the first place. On the present day island, child birth was considered impossible until Claire had Aaron. Of course, that also didn’t happen until after Charlie killed Ethan. So what if baby Ethan was never supposed to be born, and as a result of Sawyer and Juliet saving Michelle’s life, they indirectly prevented any other child births from successfully taking place on the island until the mistake was reversed? It certainly makes a lot of sense, but I’m still not sure how it fits into the grand scheme of things.
Getting back to Sayid, the guy has run into some pretty shitty luck. While Jack, Kate and Hurley get to take the easy route as Dharma recruits (“What’s up with the jumpsuits?” “You didn’t tell them?”), Sayid has the unfortunate pleasure of being pigeonholed into the role of a hostile. Some trigger-happy nerd named Radzinsky wants to shoot him then and there, but Sawyer, who’s managed to rise among the ranks during his years as a company man, takes him to the barracks instead. What I don’t understand is why Sayid doesn’t just spin his story to make it seem like he’s running away from the hostiles? He’s already wearing handcuffs, so perhaps he could just explain that he was trying to escape. Then again, they’d probably think it was a trick and kill him anyway.
