Let’s get something out of the way right now: “Sundown” was not only the worst episode of the season so far, I actually can’t think of a worse episode in the entire run of the series to date. Maybe if we go back to the third season when Kate and Sawyer were in bear cages eating fish biscuits. But that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that this week’s pungent abomination not only rendered most of the initial setup for this season kind of pointless, the story threads it did explore could not have been handled with a more amateurish hand. Its inferiority depresses me so much — especially after the two winning episodes preceding it — that I don’t really want to write about it. But I skipped last week, and I don’t want to fail the class.
In the alternate-Los Angeles timeline — becoming known among Lost fans as a “flash sideways” — Sayid arrives at the home of his brother, Omer, who has married Sayid’s beloved Nadia. At first it appears we’re headed toward a scandal and a confrontation between the two brothers, but instead it turns out that Omer has borrowed money from a loan shark who insists on interest payments in perpetuity. After Sayid refuses to use his mad torture skills to intervene, Omer is brutally attacked outside his store. Sayid reconsiders getting involved, but Nadia asks him not to. She blames Omer for the mess, and for that matter, why didn’t Sayid marry her instead of pushing her off on his brother? Sayid pleads that he doesn’t deserve Nadia, and never will.
After putting his niece and nephew on the school bus the next day, Sayid is accosted by men in a black S.U.V. — the official vehicle of bad guys and diplomats — and taken to a restaurant where Martin Keamy is frying up some eggs. Turns out he’s the shark. Sayid kills everyone, then discovers Jin trapped in a freezer.
You see? Sayid is a stone cold killer. That’s all he’ll ever be. He knows it. That’s why he didn’t marry Nadia (in this reality). Back in “real” 2007, Sayid did marry Nadia, but she was hit by a car. Did Jacob have something to do with that? Did MIB suggest to Sayid that Jacob had something to do with it? If he did, we didn’t hear him say it. Which seems odd to me.
Before meeting MIB in the woods on his ill-begotten hunting expedition, Sayid bursts into Dogen’s office/greenhouse and demands to know why Dogen wants him dead. Then they get into a ridiculously gratuitous martial arts battle that ends with Dogen banishing Sayid from the temple. When Claire arrives, however, and says MIB wants to have a chat with Dogen, the tribal chief retracts Sayid’s banishment and directs him to find MIB and stab him in the chest. Maybe the writers have painted themselves into a corner with this whole temple thing, but I’m starting to get whiplash from all the people coming and going and escaping and sneaking back in. Why is there a secret entrance to the temple that only people who don’t actually live at the temple know about?
Sayid finds MIB and stabs him as requested it, but it doesn’t accomplish anything. MIB offers Sayid anything he wants, and apparently it’s a convincing speech because Sayid returns to the temple and tells everyone MIB will kill them unless they go to the appointed location and meet him there. And that’s pretty much what happens. But first, Sayid drowns Dogen in the holy pool (so much for its life-saving powers, I guess) and then cuts Lennon’s throat. MIB barrels through the temple in smoke form and kills everyone whose names we don’t know.
Ilana, Frank, Ben, and Sun arrive — would someone please reunite Jin and Sun already? — and immediately leave, though we don’t actually know where Ben went. Kate dazily joins up with MIB’s crew, which also features crazy Claire, as well as an unseen Sawyer and Jin (though for the latter supposedly under fear of getting an axe in the chest).
This episode reminded us that we don’t actually know how Sayid was resurrected, and the look he gave Ben when the former leader of the Others told him there was still time was wonderfully demonic, so maybe there’s more going on with Sayid than meets the eye. But this episode couldn’t have made me care less. The flash-sideways was about as interesting as a Kansas highway and only half as suspenseful. That Sayid felt he didn’t deserve Nadia was the one notable thing to come out of those scenes — notable given that after spending time on the island in the original reality, Sayid ends up marrying her — but it could have been wrapped in any number of subplots. Why choose the most predictable formula available?
Part of what makes Sayid such a compelling characters is his sense of loyalty. It’s a shock for Sayid to double-cross anyone, but he feels no loyalty to Dogen, so the murder scene isn’t powerful. In fact, Dogen has already tried to kill him three times (if you believe he thought MIB would retaliate for stabbing him), so you can argue that it’s self defense! The show has always played with ideas of light and dark, but I wonder if we’re getting too literal about it. In any case, it’s starting to feel more and more biblical … or at least mythical. And that focus on mythology, I think, is detracting from what made the show so strong in the first seasons: the strength of the characters.
By replacing Locke with MIB, by reducing Sayid to … whatever he is now, by not knowing what to do with Jin and Sun apart from keeping them separated, the show is demonstrating greater concern for the “mysteries” we’ve been teased with these past five seasons than for the people whose lives the solutions to those mysteries were supposed to illuminate. As this season progresses, the whole thing is starting to feel more and more like a game. Follow the map on Hurley’s arm to the magic lighthouse. Smash the lighthouse mirror. Wait on the cliff. Stab MIB with dagger. Take message back to temple. Drown Dogen. Unleash smoke monster. Run from smoke monster! Use secret passage to escape temple. End of level.
Rating: 
Honestly, I’m pretty sure the script was a first draft.
