Underpants On The Outside

 Lost has a habit of setting up dozens of mind-boggling mysteries and solving NONE of them. My friend Jordan, whose use of imagery is nothing short of genius, describes the experience of watching the show as frustrating as “Dry-Humping a Supermodel.”

My dad firmly believes that Lost will only end up breaking my heart.  Deep down, I know that he’s probably right, but it reminds me of a certain Bill Withers classic: “My Brother / if you only knew / you’d wish that you were in my shoes / Oh, you just keep on using me / until you use me up.”

I especially feel this way after last week’s episode.  It was awesome.  In fact it was the epitome of a Lost episode - it raised ten questions, it answered none, and even though I should have been frustrated I wasn’t.  Exhausted?  Yes.  Confused? Even more than I usually am. Wanting more? Desperately.  Sure sounds like a dry-humping to me…

This week’s mystery:  what the fuck is going on?????  I know, I know - it’s the official mystery of the show.  But there’re at least two ways that question can be asked.  The first is when you know exactly what’s going on, but you just want to know the reason why, like when you find your wife having sex with your pool boy.  Last week’s episode was a good example of this, because I could understand how and why strangers had come to the island, I just couldn’t understand why they had chosen that particular group of fuckwits.

The other way to ask “what the fuck is going on?” is when you truly have no understanding of what is happening around you. Like when you find your wife having sex with your parakeet. (So THAT’S why she wanted a macaw so badly!!!) You’ll worry about the reasons behind it later - first you just want to make sure you’re not having some kind of stroke.  That’s what this episode was. 

In the alternate storyline (Lost episodes always have two stories - one on the island, and one in the past or future) we see Sayeed on a golf course.  To remind everyone, Sayeed is a former torturer in the Iraqi army and all-around ladies man.  I also feel the need to point out that in this flashforward Sayeed’s hair looks incredible.  It was the first thing I noticed about him. (I think this has more to do with the fact that mine is rapidly falling out, rather than a general interest in hair care, fashion and dude-humping.)  But seriously: it’s like the man sweats conditioner.  When it comes to heroic hair care, Sayeed is right up there with Lion-o and He-Man.

As I said, Sayeed is on a golf course, preparing to take a swing when a jovial looking man pulls up on a cart.  The guy starts chatting Sayeed up, advising him to use a different club, and generally getting on his nerves, which is not a smart thing to do to a man who never realized pliers had so many non-mutilating uses. When Sayeed mentions that he was part of the “Oceanic six” the man gets extremely nervous, and that’s understandable because a moment later Sayeed shoots him in the chest. What the - ?? Who was that?  Why did Sayeed kill him??? Unfortunately, I can’t ask too many questions, because when a supermodel knows how to handle a gun and a pair of pliers, you dry-hump her and you like it and you don’t say shit.  (On the plus side, Sayeed is doing a good job healing the Jack Bauer-shaped hole in my life…)

Since we’re at our first WTF moment and we’re only minutes in, this looks like it’s going to be more of a marathon dry-hump than a sprint.  I wish I had stretched first - I could pull a hammy. But dry-humping is a lot like being stuck in an elevator; it’s better with friends, and fortunately I was joined by ex-Roommate Mary (ex-Roommate Kat was working on her taxes - boooo!) and fellow Lost devotee Banana Bread, named so because she brought over banana bread.  Do not attempt to understand the workings of my creative process.

The next time we see future-Sayeed, he has stopped filming Herbal Essences commercials long enough to meet an attractive blonde in a German café.  She says that she works for a very important economist who mysteriously contacts her via a phone she keeps on her at all times.  She tells Sayeed this because she is totally down to hump, while Sayeed listens because he is going to kill the economist, and probably her. There’s also a good chance that he’s gonna hump at least one of them before the hour is up, because that’s what happens when your hair has volume, bounce and a healthy sheen.  My bald-ass gets a dry-hump and no apology.  Or, putting it as an economist might, the demand for supermodel-humping is a great deal larger than the supply of willing supermodels. 

But let’s leave Sayeed here in the future. Back in the present, as you’ll recall, the Losties have split into two camps.  First is the Lord of the Flies camp, led by John “I Stab Because I Care” Locke.  It might seem weird that people would follow a man who will throws knives at people just for the fuck of it, but then again, their other option was the camp led by Jack.  Sure, Locke is crazy, but that’s only dangerous on rare occasions.  On the other hand, every time you go somewhere with Jack the best outcome you can hope for is that you’ll only be taken hostage. If I were offered the choice between stupid and crazy, I’d probably take crazy too - crazy tends to make for better stories.

There are four Newbies on the island, and each camp is trying to be the first one to collect the complete set.  Jack’s camp is in the lead, 3-1, with extra points because they have the helicopter.  Sayeed makes a deal with Lawnmower Man: if Sayeed rescues the redhead-newbie from Locke’s Funhouse of Flying Pointy Things, he’s on the first helicopter when it goes back to the boat.  He takes Kate and the asshole-newbie, and suggests Jack stay behind to guard the Lawnmower Man and the Sad Sack.  Jack actually has a good chance at pulling this off, because neither of them wants to go anywhere.

Unfortunately for Sayeed, nothing goes as smoothly as his hair.  He, Kate and the Ghost Whispering Dickhead get trapped by Locke, who curiously places Sayeed in a room where Kevin Spacey’s Cousin is tied up.  Now, normally, when you take a man who knows how to ask a question (while pushing a bamboo spike under your fingernails) and put him in a room with a man who knows all the answers (and is tied up in a chair), what you get is 90% screaming, 10% thorough explanation.  But then this show would have to be called “Found”, and I’d have to rename the column “Humping a Supermodel Whenever I Want.”  And while Sayeed seems to really hate Kevin Spacey, he doesn’t want to question him because he knows Kevin Spacey is a liar. What??? What kind of half-rate interrogator is he??? “Sayeed, how’s the interrogation going?” “Not good boss - he’s lying. I might have to go home early - I all out of ideas…”  I imagine this came up a lot during his performance evaluations.  It’s like a supermodel who can’t walk in heels.

I must admit that when it comes to intrigue, this half of the story is less a supermodel, and more an ugly girl I’m listening to while I wait for her supermodel friend to come back from the future in her time machine.  However, there are a couple interesting developments.  First, remember that Sayeed hates Kevin Spacey - he even says that the day he trusts him is the day he sells his soul to the devil.  This is going to come up again.  Also, while Sayeed is gone, Sad Sack (a physicist) sets up an experiment: he places a beacon on the ground and radios the boat to fire a particular kind of rocket at it. But while the boat’s radar shows that the missile reached the target, the rocket doesn’t actually arrive until several minutes later. When Miles compares a clock from the rocket and a clock from the beacon (which presumably should be running concurrently) the missile’s clock is ahead by several minutes.  That’s WTF #2.  Maybe it’s unwise of me to try and hump a supermodel whose vagina bends space-time, but what can I say?  I’m a man of science.

Speaking of bending space-time…If Sayeed thinks thinks things are bad now, they’re going to get worse in the future.  Like when his pending German girlfriend shoots him because she knows he’s planning to kill her boss. First Sayeed turns down an opportunity for a bloody interrogation and then he lets his guard down; I’m going to have to revoke his “Jack Bauer” status and demote him back down to “Curtis”.  Not that Jack doesn’t have a weakness for awful women (Audrey…) but at least they don’t shoot him.  Jack knows how to lay the pipe. 

Sayeed does manage to rally, though, killing his girlfriend/assailant.  In three-plus seasons, Sayeed is now two for two in the category of “love interests fatally shot in torso.”  That’s the danger of luxuriously long-haired men, ladies.  Maybe you should rethink your stance on balding guys.  That is, unless you like the feel of Kevlar.

Now Sayeed finds himself in the enviable position of being newly single in Europe.  On the downside, he’s been shot.  Worse, if he doesn’t get himself fixed in a hurry, the stress might give him split ends. So he lurches his way to veterinarian, where a mysterious voice asks him about what happened.  When I say mysterious, I mean, mysterious to everyone but me.  BECAUSE IT’S KEVIN SPACEY.  Once again, Kaiser Soze controls everything.  I should have seen it coming.  Sayeed said trusting Ben (the character’s actual name) was like selling his soul to the devil.  Well, Ben = Kevin Spacey.  Kevin Spacey = Kaiser Soze.  Kaiser Soze = The Devil.  Transitive property, bitches.  In fact, I’m renaming Ben/Kevin Spacey’s character to Kaiser Soze. WTF #3.  The trifecta!

And if that weren’t exciting enough, on the island Sayeed traded Kate and the dickhead for the redhead, making out like a bandit.  And at the end of the episode… WE SEE THE HELICOPTER TAKING OFF AS IT HEADS BACK TO THE BOAT.

This was a phenomenal, hall-of-fame episode. For all this time I, and I think a lot of people, assumed that the flash-forwards occurred outside the scope of the show - that the show would end “before” these events happened.  But now it seems like we could be flashingforward to as soon as next season, or maybe the one after that.  Giving credit where credit is due, before we watched last week’s episode, Banana Bread thought this might be the case.  Still… wow.

Analogous Dry-Hump:  It’s as if you were invited to participate in a supermodel foursome… only you had to wear a haz-mat suit. 

Analogous Supermodel (In this case, supermodELS.  Plural.): I’m going to go with Victoria’s Secret models Adriana Lima, Karolina Kurkova, Izabel Goulart, and Selita Ebanks, as they appeared in the February 2008 copy of Esquire. But remember: you’re in a haz-mat suit.

Some final thoughts… In the comments of last week’s post, Robbb put his theory out there: the island is an anomaly that will be protected when the Earth’s magnetic poles switch.  This is actually close to my own theory, which I had developed about a half-hour before this week’s episode.  Lately the show has included more of the paranormal.  For so long, we’ve wondered how this show would fit into the regular world, but I’m starting to expect that rather than fit the island into the plausible, they’ll just introduce the fantastic.  What I mean is, I think the island is an anomaly, but I think it’s a gateway to some kind of alternate dimension.  I’m slightly disappointed, because it’s the easy way out, explaining smoke monsters, teleportation, immortality, ESP, and whatever else tickles their fancy.  I also think certain people, like our newbies, will have an affinity for this new dimension, manifesting in special abilities, like how Dickhead Miles can talk to ghosts.   As for Sayeed and Kaiser Soze, this is what I think happens: during this episode, Sayeed is in Kaiser’s house, looking at his bookshelf, and he pauses when he sees a copy of the Qu’ran, along with other holy texts.  I think companies like Hanso want to research this dimensional rift for their own gain, but I think that other people will view it as something sacred and holy, and they fight to protect it.  I think Kaiser is on this team, and when Sayeed discovers more about the island, he is convinced to join Kaiser on his crusade.

Boom.  Recognize the skills.

[Editor’s note: I’m exhausted. There may be some typos and/or incoherent rambling, but that’s only because I don’t have the time or energy to proofread more than half of this, and I want to get it up. (That’s what SHE said!)]