HRose
4621
Btw, Sayid is the only one with a logic reason about why he’s back on the island.
Kate last episode: Why are you back? I don’t know.
Jake this episode: Why are you back? Because I felt like I should.
In Sayid case it’s either Ben paying someone (so it’s logic, but then one wonders why the island mystical pull only work on some), or the island manipulating coincidences, that links back to the first season.
And we’ve yet to have an answer to why the island produces coincidences and how.
That is, excluding deus ex machina.
This show is a fraud if they don’t explain these points. We’re at episode 11 and characters still act without a proper motivation. Like Locke, but without the “faith” excusing their actions.
That’s a pretty big leap, considering that just before he fired Sayid said “You were right about me. I am a killer.” That’s not something one would say before shooting to wound.
Menzo
4623
Yeah, fair enough.
Proper plotting would be Sayid trying to kill Ben but getting distracted by something (like Jin hitting him over the head, or the smoke monster, or whatever) and failing.
heh, you are going to be SO disappointed…
For every answer we get in Lost, we usually get a handful of new questions along with it. That’s something I like about the show. When other shows try to explain everything they usually ruin everything. Fraud is a bit of a silly word to use, I mean it’s not like the show promised to answer all the questions…
They’ve already shown the island being able to manipulate events (or at least, probabilities), even off the island. And we know that, except perhaps for a special case (Desmond,) whatever happened, happened.
Therefore, Sayid could have tried to shoot Ben 100 times, and something would have happened to make him miss enough times that Ben could survive. So blaming Sayid for not being an effective assassin doesn’t quite work, since no matter what he could have done, he would have failed.
Hunty
4626
The Jack and Kate rule of lost comes into play again. Didn’t think this one was that great, which is a shame as the last few episodes have been amazing. Kate and Aaron is one tedious plotline. The only point of interest in it is whenever they go and see Aaron’s grandmother, who has the most ludicrously shit Australian accent in the world. She sounds like Dick Van Dyke’s character in Mary Poppins coming round from a general anaesthetic.
Enjoyed Miles and Hurley, although I agree that needing to have Ben forget is a bad decision - Khoram pretty much absolutely nailed it in my eyes as to why in his post above. Why on earth did they truck out to see Richard Alpert in the middle of shitty nowhere when there was another surgeon in another Dharma station? Silly. Jack violating his hippocratic oath on a childish whim was pretty weak too. I wish the writers would give him a break.
Talk about petty things to get worked up over - seriously, I have to wonder if the people who are so upset about this episode have been watching since season 1…
Hunty, the other doctor is in the Looking Glass Station. That’s the under water hatch that desmond/charlie swam to at the end of season 3. Perhaps… carrying Ben through a jungle is slightly better than scuba diving or however the dharma people get in there. That would be silly. As for Jack, what’s so childish about not wanting to save someone who will grow up to be a monster? and how is that a “whim” it sounds more like a “choice” to me. It’s not like he just said “ah, not today… not feeling in the surgery mood”. He gave his reasons, and personally I think Jack was showing some wisdom with his characterization of the island (“perhaps it wants to fix things” said Jack turned Locke) and then shot down Kate.
there are other, valid things in that episode of Lost to hate, like how absolutely boring the plot with kate/aaron is, or how utterly annoying the lady who plays Juliet is. Every word she says makes me want to go back in time and refuse to operate on her. Also, back to the future talk was awesome.
Hunty
4628
Easy there tiger - I think there’s only one person getting wound up round here. Besides, petty, nebbish griping about plot points is half the fun of Qt3, right?
That said, good catch on the Looking Glass thing - that makes the situation make (slightly) more sense. As for Jack, it’s my understanding that doctors cannot ever refuse to provide treatment if it’s required and they can give it. Admittedly, he’s not likely to get pulled up in front of a medical board or anything, but it struck me as a fairly ham-handed piece of characterisation to have him completely disregard that with no further soul-searching than he could fit into a long shower, off-the-cuff Lockeisms or nay.
Tend to agree with the other pluses and minuses, as per my post.
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As of 2 years ago, physicians in the United States were not required to provide treatment, at least according to a friend who is a pediatric surgeon. If a physician doesn’t want to perform a procedure (e.g., goes against his or her religious beliefs, feels in danger by the patient’s family if the procedure isn’t successful), he or she isn’t required to, and normally wouldn’t be brought up on ethical violations.
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The Hippocratic oath is “above all, do no harm”, not “you must treat.”
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Jack’s allowed people to be tortured in the past (can’t remember if he’s killed anyone), so he’s already abandoned the oath. Juliet’s shot a person, so she’s no model of consistency herself.
I didn’t love the episode, mainly because the Kate/Aaron backstory wasn’t compelling, and Sayid’s non-lethality was bothersome. I understand that Ben had to live, but the writers still need to make the sequence of events from '77 to '07 interesting. Otherwise it devolves into boring deux ex machina. But Jack’s refusal to help wasn’t an issue for me. Ben grows up to be a manipulative monster, so I can understand not wanting to help.
Jazar
4630
Exactly. Give Sayid a break guys. Also, he’s not just killing someone he’s running for his life.
I think Asspennies was on the money when he said that sayid only “missed” a lethal shot because of the island manipulating events, or it could be that the time continuim didn’t allow it. Young Ben didn’t die in 77, so if we follow the logic given to us “what happened, happened, and you can’t change that no matter how you try”… that and he was probably still coming down off the drugs, I really can’t understand why people are upset that Sayid didn’t shoot a 12 year old in the head on prime time television.
It all goes back into the conversation that Miles and Hurley were having. It wasn’t just funny, it was the focal point of the whole episode. Miles was making the point that they can’t change what’s going to happen because it will happen anyway. Then, despite all the decisions made by all the LOSTies who weren’t supposed to be there what ends up happening in the end? Ben becomes an Other. Sayid and Jack figure by killing/letting him die they solve the problem : FAIL. Kate/Juliet/Sawyer figure by saving him they chage who he becomes: FAIL. The path may be different, but it leads to the same destination. The question we (and Miles and Hurley) are left asking is “was it always supposed to happen this way?”.
For me, it’s not that he didn’t - it’s why he didn’t. Or why he bothered at all. It was a strange scene, and I don’t expect it will make any sense until(/if) they do the follow-up Sayid episode that gives a hint of his motivations interspersed with his childhood memories of frustration over being unable to lethally shoot the murderer that killed his brother.
Also, I’ve found the recent Sayid storyline somewhat strange because he was previously painted as a reluctant soldier and interrogator who seemed to become a cold killer as a result of the tragedy in his life. But then they determined that he was born a cold killer …
I guess that could be played out as some life experience causing him to reject that life, only to return to it now. I’m a bit cold to the character presently, but I’m going to have to see where they go with it first.
Shiroko
4635
I think you missed the point of the episode. Kate went back to find Claire, she believe Claire is alive, and that a boy should be with his mother.
Jazar
4636
Sayid has recently learned that he’s only good at being a killer. He tries to escape it but it always comes back to him. (Bar scene with undercover hit-woman.) There’s not going to be a follow up to explain his motives, they just did that in the previous one. He realized he was there to kill Ben. Problem is killing a then innocent child doesn’t make his decision an easy one so he becomes tormented and doesn’t do a perfect job.
I can’t see them not doing a scene where he addresses what brought him to that point.
Just as they’re about to have between Locke and Ben (which doesn’t appear to be going the way I’d imagined, given Ben’s surprise at seeing Locke).
I’m not sure what you’re expecting Zen, it seemed to me like that entire episode was what brought him to that point. We’re reminded about all the crap Ben put through Sayid, but then shown a sweet, innocent kid who is roughed up by a drunkard dad. Didn’t you get the impression that Sayid wanted or at least thought of trying to stop Ben’s dad when he found Ben bringing sayid a sandwich?
I don’t think there’s all that much left to explain, except perhaps where Sayid is running off to… and perhaps why he/jack/kate/hurley were the only ones brought back in time. I’m really curious why the rest were kept in the present.
Actually, that’s exactly one of the things that made his choice all the more jarring for me. Part of that problem is that he’s become this tortured, walled-off nutjob, like Jack, whose current motivations and issues are unclear due to a lack of proper expression.
I was also very interested to see some interaction between himself and young Ben, so to see that cut off so abruptly is another problem for me. Though if Sayid is running off to the Others now that could prove interesting.
Anyhow, I’m currently reserving judgement until I see how it plays out - but so far I’m a little perplexed by what is going on with that character.
Is it true that Lostpedia is on its way out* while we’ve still got five episodes and another season yet to go? I’m nearly done with The Third Policeman and after catching up with the show last night I went to that site to (as I thought) correct or append something in an entry, when I accidentally read book plot spoilers. (Still, I suspect the correlations with that story are more important for Season 2 and Desmond in general than to anything else. So carry on).
