Follow along! The episode guide for “The Economist” is in Finding Lost — Season 4, pp. 35-43.Here’s where we see Sayid sell his soul, as he puts it, to Ben Linus by becoming his hitman. This episode takes on an entire new meaning for me after having seen season 5’s “He’s Our You”; knowing that Sayid will shoot Ben as a kid makes me wonder if Ben remembers him doing it, and that the slow disintegration of Sayid’s soul is Ben’s punishment for it.
Fun things I noticed:
• Frank says that Dan does this sort of experimenting on the boat all the time; do we ever actually see Dan on the boat before their arrival? We see Naomi, Frank, and Miles, but I don’t believe we ever flash back to Dan or Charlotte being on there.
• I never thought of this before, but Sayid must speak German; the writers have said the only time they’ll include subtitles is when the other person in the scene understands the language (that’s why they show the subtitles when Sun and Jin are talking together, because they understand each other, but when just one of them is speaking to Hurley or someone who doesn’t speak Korean, there aren’t any subtitles). So because they show us what Elsa is saying, Sayid must understand her.
Things that have new meaning:
• Seeing the abandoned houses in season 4 makes me wonder whose house it will become in season 5, circa 1977. The house where they find Hurley appears to be Juliet’s house from S3. But since they all look so much alike, I could be completely wrong on that.
• Watching the seasons so close to one another makes me see the scene of Rousseau holding the gun to Sayid differently; it’s strange to see her doing that when in seasons 1 and 2 he was the only person she trusted from that camp, and he earned that trust. Now she’s betraying his.
• Kate: How long do you think we could play house? Sawyer: Why don’t we find out? Me: You WILL find out, but it’ll be with Juliet.
• Sayid insists on bringing Naomi home, but now I see that as somewhat sad, since her corpse will simply be blown up in a few days.
• Ben says “Need I remind you of the last time you thought with your heart instead of your gun?” Sayid says that’s when he recruited him. But Ben recruited him when he killed that man – with a gun – as revenge for Nadia’s death. Wasn’t he thinking with his gun then? And it’s interesting that in 1977 he’ll think with his head and gun when shooting Ben… NOT with his heart. It’s almost like Ben is trying to turn him into the very person who COULD shoot him as a child, as if he needs Sayid to instigate everything that was going to happen to bring him to the Temple. Hm… I never really thought of it that way. Could Ben be turning Sayid into a monster because he NEEDS him to shoot him in 1977 so he’ll end up at the Temple and become one of the Others?
