Lost recap: ‘The Economist’

Well now…we have a new set of questions in the Lost universe, the big one is: Who is R.G.?

This episode was PACKED with stuff and if you are as “lost” as I am, please raise your hand.

Lost: The Economist starts off with Sayid praying, then he walks over to Naomi to cover her up since she’s laying there out in the open. Before he finishes though, he sees a bracelet on her arm and he takes it off to look at it.

Engraved on the inside of it: “N. I’ll always be with you. R.G.”

Again…who is R.G.? Hmmmm…we’ll get back to that…

Sayid Flash Forward

Jina and I were both pumped that it was a Sayid-focused flash-forward because we just don’t see enough of him. He’s one of the best characters on the show.

Sayid is the fourth member of the Oceanic 6! We now know Jack, Kate,Hurley and Sayid.

So Sayid is out playing golf when a guy named Mr. Avelee (I have no idea what his name is) drives up in a golf cart. He comments on how no one has been out on the course, then wagers with Sayid on whether his 5-iron will be more accurate than Sayid’s 7-iron.

Before the man swings, Sayid informs him that he’s a member of the Oceanic 6. This has a big-time effect on Mr. Avelee who is suddenly scared and ready to leave. He hits a great shot, wins the bet, but says he doesn’t need the money and heads for his golf cart.

But before he can go, Sayid stops him by saying the man’s name, pulls a gun and then blows him away. He picks up his clubs and walks off the course.

Sayid is an assassin. But for who and why? The answer is unbelievable. Read on.

Back on the Island

Sayid finds out that Naomi had a picture of Penny and Desmond in her bag, so either she had some separate mission aside from the other four, or they aren’t telling all.

Locke and his gang are still trying to find the cabin. Sawyer suggest they shoot off Ben’s big toe.

Now that’s kind of funny…he’d have four toes after that I’d guess? Reminds me of a certain picture.

Locke can’t find the cabin and starts to butt heads with Hurley who wants to let Charlotte go. This is obviously a real conflict and it comes into play later.

Jack sends Kate with Sayid and Miles who are headed to find Locke and make him hand over Charlotte. And then he shoots Juliette off to find Desmond at the beach.

Future Assassin

Sayid meets a girl at a coffee shop who has a boss that she says is an “economist.” She’s obviously a mark for Sayid who for some reason is now a hired gun. He’s after the economist, but we don’t know why. We DO know he isn’t working alone because he makes a phone call to someone saying he made contact.

He makes a date with the woman for dinner.

Back on the Island

Daniel starts rushing around and sets up a contraption on a tripod. He make a phone call to the Regina on the boat asking if she has a signal and to fire the payload. Payload? What?

Regina fires it and she counts down the kilometers to the target, which is where Daniel is standing. She goes from around 60 kilometers to zero and still no payload. Daniel is perplexed and worried.

Sayid, Kate and Miles get to the barracks…find Hurley tied up. He talks about how Locke has gone a bit nuts, getting orders from Walt, taking a hostage, etc. It seemed a pretty convenient plot device to have the argument between Locke and Hurley earlier though.

In the famous line from Star Wars: “It’s a trap!”

The best line of the night though came when Miles was trying to grill Hurley and called him “tubby.”

“Oh awesome, the ship sent us another Sawyer.” Classic.

Sayid, Kate and Miles go to Ben’s house because Hurley said that Locke’s gangs were stopping by there first before heading out. From the earlier discussion with Locke about Charlotte, we totally fall for the Hurley’s story.

Sayid finds a hidden door behind a dresser in Ben’s room. Behind it is another tiny room full of passports from places like New Zealand and Brazil, plus clothes and money in various currencies.

One of the passports had the name Dean Moriarty from Zurich on it. It took me awhile but that’s the infamous character from Jack Kerouac’s American Classic, On the Road.

Dean is a free spirit, who wanders the United States doing whatever it takes to have fun and make enough money to get to the next destination. What does it have to do with Ben?

Then the trap is sprung. Sawyer pops in on Kate, Locke holds a gun to Sayid. Hurley says “Sorry dude.”
Sayid gets locked in with Ben, and ends up making a deal with Locke for Charlotte by trading Miles.

Kate and Sawyer

I swear, if I were Jack, I’d give up on Kate. She gets locked in a room with Sawyer one time and is suddenly thinking about staying. She asks Sawyer why he doesn’t want to leave, and he responds that he isn’t looking to leave…he doesn’t have anything back there for him.

And then he puts the same idea in her mind. Wasn’t she headed to jail when when the plane landed? Why would she want to go back?

The next thing you know…Sayid gets back with Charlotte without Miles…or Kate. He tells Jack that she decided to stay.

Holy Time Travel Batman??

The payload that Daniel had Regina shoot over suddenly arrives and it’s 31 minutes ahead. The payload is like some rocket fired with a sharp pointer to stick in the ground. A big dang dart.

WHAT? 31 minutes ahead?

Daniel grabbed a clock out of the payload and it says 3:16. He checked out the time on the contraption he set up and it reads 2:45.

What the heck!

Okay, theory time: It’s obvious really hard to get to the island, there is only one bearing to get there and somehow coming any other way takes you through time and brings you to the island 31 minutes later.

At least, that’s all I can think of. The bearing matters and I don’t know for sure if the rocket took the same one to get there?

Back in the Future

There was an amazing amount of stuff happening in this episode, holy crap.

We go back to Sayid who has fallen in love with the girl, who says she’s done the same. He gets ready to be honest with her when the pager for her boss goes off. It means she needs to go to him.

Sayid tells her she needs to leave town, and as he explains why, she freaks out as she discovers that he intends to kill the economist.

But she’s a good actor. As she’s crying, she pulls a gun out and shoots Sayid in the shoulder. Wow! Saw it coming, but still wow!

She gets on the phone with her boss, or someone, tells him he was supposed to call earlier and that Sayid is still alive. It becomes totally obvious that SHE has been setting HIM up.

Too bad she didn’t take Sayid’s gun away, because when she comes out of the bathroom, he puts two bullets in her chest. And cries.

She tricks him, he kills her…but as Sayid takes one last look at her, we see her wrist and she’s wearing a bracelet….BOOM!

Naomi is connected to this R.G. guy who is who Sayid is now trying to get to.

Back to the Island

Desmond shows up with Juliette and is going to join Frank and Sayid, along with Naomi’s dead body, on the chopper back to the boat.

Daniel brings Frank close to him and tells him to follow the same bearing back to the boat. Not to waver from it at all.

That brings back into the play the idea of other bearings being problematic and have something to do with time travel or delay. Delay on the way in, go into the future on the way out?

Is it BAD to travel through to time?

OMG, it’s Ben!

Sayid, bleeding and shot, walks into some animal clinic with a bunch of dogs in kennels.

He stumbles into a medical area and starts to get patched up by someone with an all-too familiar voice.

Ben. Sayid is working for Ben. Holy crap. First off Ben is off the Island, and second, Sayid is doing his bidding.

But I don’t think it’s exactly that way. Ben implies that something horrible happens on the island, maybe on the boat, maybe the actual island, we don’t know. But we do know it was something bad enough to make Sayid desire revenge and to protect his friends. He seems to be working WITH Ben.

I can see Ben’s mutual reasons for wanting this R.G. guy dead as well, because obviously he was coming for him on the island via the boat.

Ben says he has another target for him, but Sayid points out that they know he’s after them now.

Creepily…Ben replies. “Goooood.”

Is R.G. the Matthew Abaddon character? Or someone much higher?
Does anyone out there KNOW who he might be, cause I have no clue. Who is R.G.?

Your Turn

Time for you guys to chime in with your thoughts. This episode had so much going on from Kate and Sawyer, to time travel, to Ben and Sayid in the future, to some dude named R.G., to hidden closets and missing cabins.

My head is spinning, yet I can’t help but think that this season of Lost is simply BRILLIANT so far and some of the best episodes I’ve seen in so long. It’s like the 48-episode timeline has focused these guys on some awesome stories.