Lost

On last week's fantastic episode of Lost, the freighter people finally arrived on the island and revealed why they were really there:  to find Benjamin Linus.  We also got tantalizing flashbacks from each new character involving the crash of Flight 815, the wreckage of which was found in the Sunda Trench off the coast of Bali.  Somehow, everyone on the flight was confirmed dead.  Also, a DHARMA polar bear ended up fossilized in the desert of Tunisia, which caused my head to explode from confusion.

Tonight's episode promises to reveal another of the Oceanic Six, while a few of the castaways trek into the jungle to rescue Charlotte from Locke's grasp.  We'll be here tonight with live thoughts detailing all of the exciting twists on and off the island.

As the episode begins, Sayid (Naveen Andrews) is investigating Naomi's dead body.  He finds a bracelet with an inscription that reads "N, I'll always be with you. RG."  Sayid asks Lapidus when they can take the chopper off the island, and makes a deal with him to return Charlotte to safety in exchange for a flight out of there.  Lapidus agrees, and says that he can take three of them on the first trip.

Sayid flash forwards to a calm day on the golf course, revealing him to be one of the Oceanic Six.  A man drives up in a cart and makes a friendly golf bet with him, and the two guys begin to chat.  Sayid tells the man that he was on Flight 815 and that he received a large settlement after coming back to the mainland.  The man seems extremely unsettled to discover who he is.  After the guy takes his golf swing, Sayid pulls a pistol out of his bag and shoots him dead.

Later, Sayid walks into a trendy restaurant and sits next to a blond woman named Elsa.  He asks her for directions and tells her that he's thankful to find someone who speaks English in the middle of Berlin.  Sayid introduces himself as a corporate recruiter, and the woman shares that her boss is an economist.  She has to keep a pager with her at all times in case the man needs her at a moment's notice.  The two share a flirtatious smile, and it becomes obvious the woman recognizes him from somewhere.  He asks her out to dinner, and she graciously accepts.  After leaving the restaurant, Sayid calls a mysterious man, telling him he made contact.  He drops his phone in the trash can immediately afterwards.  Ooh, it's like an episode of Alias!

Back on the island, Sayid finds the picture of Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) and Penny in Naomi's bag.  He wants to know what connection Desmond has to Naomi.  Sayid lets Jack know that he won't be needed on the trip to find Charlotte, as he doesn't want Jack trying to shoot Locke in the face again.  Kate tells Jack that he now knows how it feels to be told not to come along.  He tells Kate that she should go with the group for a change.  He knows that Sawyer won't allow Locke to hurt her, but if she's not there Locke may start some trouble.  Kate, Sayid, and Miles head into the jungle.

Sawyer (Josh Holloway) is trying to get the name of Ben's mole out of him, but Locke tells him not to bother as Ben won't give it up.  The gang gets to the location where Jacob's cabin should be, but the building has mysteriously vanished.  Locke says that he must have been mistaken, and starts to lead the group to the barracks.  Hurley protests the continued holding of Charlotte, but his voice of dissent can't stand up to Locke's crazy leadership.

Sayid is still studying the bracelet and wants to know if Miles was close to Naomi.  Aside from finding her hot, he wasn't.  Miles wants to know how Locke (Terry O'Quinn) split the group in half, and Sayid tells him about the debate regarding the motives of the rescuers.

In the flash forward, Sayid meets Elsa to go to the opera and they immediately start kissing.  She says she's going to leave her pager behind, and if her boss calls he'll have to live with her absence.  Sayid says he'll take the phone for her, and also mentions that the job he was hired for is proving more difficult than he expected.  I do believe he's supposed to murder her boss, but simply can't bring himself to do it.

Faraday grabs some equipment from the helicopter and starts piecing together some sort of device.  He asks Lapidus for the phone, saying that he wants to call Regina on the boat and do some sort of experiment.  He calls, and uses his wacky scientific device so Regina can zone in on their location.  He tells her to fire the payload.  She fires whatever it is, and though she shows it getting to his location, Faraday never sees it.  Weird.

The trio led by Sayid arrive at the barracks, but no one is around.  They go into one of the houses and find Hurley (Jorge Garcia) tied up and gagged in a closet, claiming that the others left him behind.  I guess Hurley shouldn't have spoken up on the hostage situation.  Hurley tells everyone about how Locke is seeing visions of Walt and has gone totally nuts.  Locke disappeared with the group, and Hurley mentions that they may have gone to Ben's (Michael Emerson) house.

Jack (Matthew Fox) asks Lapidus if the Red Socks really won the Series, and he confirms that they actually did.  That's the moment when the payload, in the form of a rocket, crashes to the island.  The rocket has a timer in it, and, strangely enough, it's at a later time than the device Faraday set up on the island.  Somehow the rocket went all wonky with time on it's short trip from the freighter.

Sayid's group bursts into Ben's house for a look around.  Sayid finds a blocked off room that contains a bunch of clothes, money, and passports with Ben's picture in them.  What the hell is going on, you ask?    Yeah, I don't know either.  Sayid doesn't have much time to look around, because Locke and Sawyer burst in an on him and Kate (Evangeline Lilly).  Hurley reveals that the whole thing was a trap and apologizes.

Danielle and Hurley lead Sayid to a different building and lock him up with Ben.  Ben immediately starts giving him grief about falling for Hurley's trick.  In a different room, Kate wants to know why Sawyer went with Locke.  He tells her that he has no desire to leave the island because he knows that there's nothing in the real world for him.  He tells Kate that if she goes back she'll just get arrested, but Kate wants to leave anyway.

Locke enters with some lovely refreshments for Ben and Sayid.  He's quite the kind warden.  When Sayid asks where Miles is, Locke says that he's somewhere else.  Sayid tries to bargain with Locke for Charlotte, and John reveals that Ben has a man on the freighter.  Sayid claims he'll give Locke something valuable in exchange for the hostage.

Back in the land of flash forwards, Sayid is in bed with Elsa and talking about their relationship.  After Elsa reveals that she's in love with him, he vows that there will be no more secrets between them.  That's when her pager goes off.  Her boss needs her immediately.  Sayid tells her that she needs to leave Berlin, telling her that people will soon be asking what happened to her employer.  She figures out that Sayid used her to get to her boss, and he reveals his plans to kill the man.  Sayid says that the man's name is on his employer's list and reveals that he is not an economist.  Elsa pulls out a gun and shoots Sayid in the chest, causing me to jump half way to the ceiling.

She calls her boss, telling him that Sayid wouldn't give up the name.  It was a double cross all along!  Sayid successfully reaches for his own gun and kills Elsa with a couple of well placed shots.  Still, he doesn't feel very happy about it.

On the island, Desmond is asking Lapidus why Naomi had the picture of him and Penny.  Lapidus refuses to tell him whether or not he knows Penny Widmore, but Desmond vows to find out the truth.  He's going to be on the first helicopter out, and then he plans to find out what connection Penny has to the freighter people.

Sayid returns to the site of the chopper, with Charlotte in tow, and tells Jack that Kate decided to stay behind.  He lets Lapidus know that he traded Miles for Charlotte, which Frank doesn't seem to mind.  As Lapidus prepares to get in the helicopter, Faraday warns him that he needs to follow the exact same course when leaving the island.  Otherwise it's likely he'll fall into that wacky time vortex, and that certainly wouldn't be good.

Lapidus, Sayid, Desmond, and the corpse of Naomi are the first to get in the helicopter.  It slowly takes off and leaves the island as Sayid looks out at the ocean.  He flash forwards to a dog kennel.  Sayid walks in and his mysterious boss tells him to remove his shirt to prepare for the bullet removal.  The man asks if Elsa is dead, and Sayid reveals that she is.  Who is the mystery man, you ask?  It's Ben!  Ben says that they're doing this to protect Sayid's friends, but Sayid is worried that "they" now know who he is.  Ben has another person he needs eliminated, and he thinks Sayid is just the man for the job.  Consider my mind blown yet again.

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- Don Williams, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
(Image courtesy of ABC)

Read EW.com's take on this episode of Lost