"Tipped the Wrong Way" - 6x06: Sundown

So I don't often use foul language on this blog, but my friends, in this case, I'm afraid I must: that was some dark, dark shit. "Sundown," indeed. (And Sun was only in it for a few seconds - what gives?)

Tonight's episode had me entranced in all the evil goings-on, much like Sayid after meeting the dev... I mean, the Monster. But boy, are they ever setting up Mr. "Evil Incarnate" to be the one and only. It freaked me out, it had me on the edge of my seat, it had me yelling, "Don't be stupid, Sayid - just shoot him!" and "No, not Dogen! But he is (was) so cool!" at the TV; I loved it. So much happened. Major stuff. That's what really impressed me about this one.

I'm just going to share a few comments tonight because the only thing keeping me conscious right now is the excitement from tonight's episode, "Sundown," and even that is trickling out of me like goodness from Sayid. So, here we go...

This was a unique episode for Season 6 so far in that it truly focused on only one character: Sayid. We got a little sprinkling of the Monster, of Claire, and of Dogen, but both on and off the Island, this was Sayid's story. Sayid brings flowers to Nadia in Alt. 2004, but - ah, tricked ya! - she's married to his brother, Omar. You know, the guy that can't kill chickens. That scene from last season actually had some bearing on Alt. Sayid's story tonight; Omar is asking Sayid to do his dirty work for him again, except at first, he refuses. "I'm not that person anymore." (Every time he thinks he out, they keep pulling him back in...) It's just like what Ben did to him in his Oceanic 6 days. And we really want to believe that he is truly done with being a murderer, we so want to believe that finally, he is on the path to redemption... but we soon find out that it's not to be, even in this alternate timeline. (I have a theory that is slightly related to this about what the eff this show is all about - read on and see what you think.) The loan sharks that are after Omar for more money that he doesn't have apparently put him in the hospital in a (again, apparently) staged mugging outside his store. Nadia, the only positive influence in Sayid's life, the only one who can turn him from his past, and his only reason for wanting to be a good person, convinces him to go to her house to watch her children. He does, but the sharks circle and pick him up outside the house the next day and take him to the kitchen of a restaurant. (The Inn at Newtown? Nah. Sorry, inside joke...) Why a kitchen? Well, because back in Season 1 or 2 (or maybe even 3?), Sayid is kidnapped by a man whose wife was tortured by Sayid and is tied up in...the kitchen of a restaurant. 
And since we're talking about connections, who's the loan shark? None other than Martin Keamy, winner of the "Most Surprising/Random Cameo in LOST History" Award! Well, it's not that random - he and Sayid do have some history. Keamy even comes complete with his toady on the Island, who if memory serves, is strangely also named Omar. Anywho, Keamy and his huge, gleaming teeth continues the longest-running Christopher Walken impression ever and tries to intimidate Sayid, all while making eggs. By the way, if you have any idea what the eggs are all about, please comment at the bottom of this post. But Sayid ain't having any of that shit and goes all Special Forces on Keamy's henchmen. When he has Keamy at gunpoint, Keamy tells him to calm down and that he'll cancel his brother's debt, and to forget about it. Sayid says, "I can't," and blasts him in the chest, killing him. Then, as there are no more sounds of eggs frying or guns blazing, he hears a banging in the kitchen. He goes to a freezer and finds Jin! He is all tied up and looks like he's gotten a once-over from Keamy. So was Keamy the one Jin was delivering the watch to? Is Keamy working for a much larger, more important villian?

So we saw Sayid return to the darkness that he has been infected with his whole life. This, of course, is mirrored in the Sayid on the Island, just in a more literal way. He chanrges into Dogen's office demanding answers, and after Dogen explains the test he performed on him - the machine tests the balance of good and evil in a person, and Sayid was "tipped the wrong way" - they get into an intense, knock-down, drag-out that ends with Dogen about to put a knife to Sayid's throat, but the falling of his baseball stops him from doing so. He tells Sayid to  leave, and he is about to...until Claire walks into the Temple.
Claire says that "he" wants to talk to Dogen. Since "he" can't come into the Temple, she says that Dogen needs to come to "him," but Dogen is no dummy - he knows that if he goes, "he" will kill him. Claire, being quite the smarty in her new dark form, suggests that he send someone who "he" won't want to kill. Hmmm, who could that be?
Dogen sends Sayid away, but with a somewhat elaborate knife that he wants Sayid to use to stab the Monster in the chest. Sayid attempts this when the Monster appears to him in the jungle (after Sayid meets Kate, who I was starting to think was going to accidently bump into every Lostie on the Island). He has no luck, other than to get the Monster to calmly remove the knife from his chest and say, "Now what did you have to go and do that for?" And how ironic that "Locke" gets stabbed with a knife, no?
Now here's where the Monster plays the Satan role perfectly. He is the ultimate deceiver, the ultimate provider of false hope and empty promises, the ultimate manipulator; he tells Sayid that he can get him anything he wants in the entire world, even the one thing that he wants - the woman that died in his arms.
When Sayid returns, he and Dogen have a discussion about promises that were made to them, because it turns out that someone made a promise to Dogen, too: Jacob. Jacob promised him that if he came to the Island, his son who was killed (or just badly injured?) at the hands of a drunk-driving Dogen would be saved and live again. It came with a price, though - Dogen could never see his son again. In this story, Dogen finally tells Sayid, and us viewers, what's up with the baseball. In an emotional scene, he tells the story of the accident and how it happened when Dogen was driving his son home from a baseball game. The ball is a reminder of that fatal decision that sent him to the Island. It seems that his guilt over killing his son has made him want to never kill again, which is why he stopped himself from slitting Sayid's throat when he saw the baseball fall. (This is also probably why he makes others do his killing for him, which is a total cop-out.)  
Too bad this emotional scene, which seemed to be setting up for an alliance between the two men, ends with Sayid drowning Dogen in the dirty pool, which is dirty pool in my book. Lennon, before Sayid offs him, too, panics, telling Sayid that Dogen was the only thing keeping the Monster out of the Temple. Sayid, in a great parallel to Ben, simply says, "I know." To paraphrase Darth Vader, the darkness in him is now complete.

That was the main thrust of the episode. That, and the total insanity that went on when the Monster entered the Temple. I'll get to that in a moment.


The Monster can't cross the ash line, but his minions can. He makes Claire enter the Temple with the promise that she will get Aaron back. He tells her that he never goes back on his promises, but again, who in history/literature is famous for saying things like this? But once Dogen is killed, he goes hog wild. So was it that Dogen was the last leader? Was he the new Jacob once Jacob was killed? Is this why Jacob is recruiting - did he somehow know that once the Monster had infected people on the Island, the Others in the Temple were doomed? Is this what makes a candidate a subsitute - the ability to withstand infection by the Monster? In that case, my pick would be Hurley, the most innocent of them all, but we seem to be getting set up for Jack to be the one. Jack, the miracle worker. He who walks among us, but is not one of us.


Miles tells Sayid that the Others didn't bring him back to life. He says that Sayid was dead for two hours; "it wasn't them that brought you back..." So it apparently was the dirty water, no?


Sayid walks by Jack in the hospital.


When Kate returns to the Temple, Miles says, "welcome back to the circus."

Speaking of Kate returning, she is finally reunited with Claire. Well, sort of, if you want to call her Claire. Kate, in her two minutes with her by the pit, seems to be confused, but doesn't catch on to the madness of Claire. Not until the final scene, and maybe not even then, either. First of all, the rendition of "Catch a Falling Star" that played (or was Claire singing it?) as Claire and the Monster, with Kate following behind, survey the damage was haunting. I think it had the desired effect to creep everyone out. But what is Kate thinking here? At first, as she picks up the gun, I thought that she has now also been infected, which I would find really shocking. I think she is going to be a wild card, and this is why she is not one of the key numbers. I don't know what to make of her, though. My guess is that she is just trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I don't think she is infected or on the Monster's side.
I think this is also confirmed with the Monster's apparent lack of interest in her. Again, as many fans have pointed out, she is #51 - a candidate, maybe, but not one of the main numbers. So does the Monster not realize that she's a candidate, especially since she is not on the inside of the cave (providing further proof that the cave is actually the Monster's cave, and the Lighthouse is Jacob's domain)? Is he ignoring her because he's been led to believe that she can't be a successor to Jacob? As I said, she might be Jacob's wild card - Jacob knows she is important, but he has managed to hide this fact from the Monster. And so the Monster, Claire, and the other candidates (where's Sawyer, by the way?) walk away from the Temple with no concern for the fate of Kate.


Claire is truly, truly frightening. Emilie de Ravin is playing her perfectly, I think - a great balance of the old Claire with the darkness that has taken her over. The looks with those icy blue eyes, the creepy smiles, the nutty singing of "Catch a Falling Star" in the pit, it's all pretty chilling.


So the Monster has finally entered the Temple. He has taken down Jacob's stronghold...with the exception of the secret room which Ilana leads Sun, Lapidus, and Ben (I think...?) into. What is their next move? What is the Monster's next move?


What do you all everybody think about this episode? Let us know in the comments below!

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I want to leave you with a theory tonight. I had this theory a long time ago, at least two seasons or so back, and I'm not sure what made me drop it back then (and this is not a "Hey everyone, I figured out the end of LOST!" comment, I swear - I'm sure I'm wrong, but I'm trying to think what back then had me thinking about this, and I can't put my finger on it). But it came back to me tonight once Sayid's brother was taken to the hospital, and I think it makes a lot more sense now. I also doubt I'm the only one to think of it. It goes a little something like this: 
For our Losties, being on the Island is a moment in each of their lives - the moment that Flight 815 hit turbulence. It always landed. But in that moment, a "lost" moment, a most pivotal one in their lives, they were taken out of their lives and put on the 815 that crashed. They lived on the Island. They went through all of the things we've seen, and are currently seeing, them experience. This new "alternate" timeline is not alternate at all, just as Damon and Carlton keep insisting; we are seeing what happens to them after that moment has passed. What happened to them in that moment, though has changed their lives from what they were before the moment to what they are now. The present changed the past which changed the future. Somehow. What we are seeing now is the result of the choices they made in that moment. Case in point: Sayid. He is infected on the Island just as he is in life
This is not a perfect theory. What's Desmond's deal? If the Island is basically a figment of their imaginations, or some sort of pit stop on the road of reality, why does the Island actually exist on the bottom of the ocean floor? I dunno. How would their moment on the Island change their past? Maybe it's like a compass needle: as the tip of it rotates on that central axis (like an Island is a fixed point in the ocean), so does the other end that balances it. The tip is the future, the axis the present, and the opposite end is the past. Is this making any sense? Probably not. But there's something about it that makes sense to me. 


It's been great to get comments in the past few posts, and it would be even greater to get a few more! Any questions or comments are welcome.

Until next time,


Good Luck & Namaste,


~ Matt