Rewatching LOST: 1.21 "The Greater Good"

Sayid takes it upon himself to ascertain the truth from Locke about what really happened to Boone, while Shannon vows revenge on the person she holds responsible for Boone’s death.

• Kate tracks down Jack in the jungle during his hunt for Locke, and convinces him to return for Boone’s funeral. Sayid attempts to offer Shannon consolation by speaking up at the funeral and speaking of Boone’s courage. But Locke suddenly appears and interrupts the funeral, his clothes still soaked in Boone’s blood, and comes clean about how Boone really died. Jack explodes in anger, attacking Locke because he holds him responsible for not only Boone’s death, but lying about how Boone was injured. (The implication being that had he known the truth about how Boone was hurt, he might have been able to better treat Boone and possibly even save his life.) He demands to know where Locke was, why he ran off after delivering Boone to him. In the midst of his tirade, Jack nearly passes out from exhaustion and blood loss (having transfused Boone with his own blood). Sayid, Kate, and Sun privately convince Jack to get some rest, suggesting that Jack’s emotions are raw because of his physical condition. When Jack tries to pacify Kate by pretending to rest, she forces the issue by crushing some sleeping pills and putting it into a drink for him. He passes out.
• Much like Jack, Claire isn’t interested in getting any rest, though Charlie is finally able to get her to hand over the baby and get some sleep. On his own, Charlie later has a hard time getting the baby to stop crying, so Hurley tries to help, but neither of them have much luck.
• Locke returns Boone’s knapsack to Shannon, and tries to help her sort out her feelings. He asks for her forgiveness, but instead of giving it to him, she goes to Sayid and asks him to kill Locke. Sayid considers her request and later approaches Locke, asking to see the beech craft so that he might salvage parts from the plane’s radio. The two of them head to the beech craft and find the broken stash of heroin-filled Virgin Mary statues. Locke becomes cagey when Sayid tries to find out why he lied about Boone’s accident, so Locke attempts to earn Locke’s trust by handing over the gun he took from the beech craft’s dead passenger. Sayid is unimpressed by this, so Locke offers to tell him something he doesn’t know: it was Locke that knocked Sayid out and destroyed the transceiver weeks ago, when Sayid was trying to triangulate the source of Danielle Rousseau’s transmission. Sayid furiously pulls the gun on Locke, who explains that he did it because he believed it was in everyone’s best interests. Sayid asks about the Hatch, which Jack mentioned to him earlier from Boone’s delirious ramblings. Sayid examines Locke carefully as Locke lies, suggesting that Boone may have been referring to one of the beech craft’s hatches.
• Sayid and Locke return to camp, and Sayid reports to Shannon that he believes Locke, that Boone’s death was an accident. But she still desires revenge, and doesn’t seem to hear his words.
• Walt, unnerved by Boone’s death, expresses fear to his dad that they could die on the raft, which is almost complete. Michael reassures him, but Charlie shows up asking for help with the baby. Charlie soon discovers that the one thing that seems to pacify the boy is the sound of Sawyer’s voice. Sawyer, for his part, isn’t interested in helping with the baby, but has no choice if the survivors want any peace and quiet. Sawyer feels quite ridiculous as he winds up reading out of a magazine just so the baby can hear the sound of his voice, and Claire is equally amused and confused when she finds Sawyer and Charlie tending to the baby in such an odd manner.
• Jack wakes up from his drug-induced slumber only to find that the key to the gun case, which he’s been wearing around his neck, is gone. Jack believes it was Locke, but Sayid intuits otherwise: it was Shannon, who means to kill Locke.
• It’s raining in the jungle when Shannon retrieves one of the guns from the metal case. Sayid, Jack, and Kate catch up to Shannon just as she has Locke held at gunpoint. Sayid rushes her, trying to divert the shot, but she manages to graze Locke on the side of his head. Jack throws a murderous look of his own at Locke, while Shannon runs into the jungle alone, away from Sayid.
• That night at camp, Shannon sits alone by a fire while Sayid watches from a distance. He tells Kate that he may have made a mistake in stopping Shannon from killing Locke.
• Sayid visits Locke and tells him he saved his life because he believes Locke might be their best chance of surviving on the island — but he hasn’t forgiven Locke for destroying the transceiver, and he still doesn’t trust him. Then he demands to be taken to the Hatch, but when Locke plays dumb, Sayid assures him that he knows that Locke is lying.

• Shortly before the flight of Oceanic 815, Sayid was coerced by the CIA and the ASIS into helping them track down some explosives in Australia by a group of Iraqi terrorists. He was chosen for the job because his college roommate, Essam Tasir, was one of the terrorists, and Sayid agreed to it because the CIA offered to help him find what he’s been searching for, for the last seven years: his long lost love, Nadia. So he infiltrated the terrorist group Essam was a member of and found out that he’d been selected to be a suicide bomber, though Essam didn’t want to go through with it. When the CIA and the ASIS wanted Sayid to convince his friend to do the deed so they could trace the explosives to their source, Sayid refused, until they threatened Nadia’s freedom. He had no choice but to convince Essam to go through with the suicide bombing, but once they had the explosives, he confessed the truth to Essam and told him to run. But instead, Essam shot himself in the head. Later, Sayid was given Nadia’s location: Irvine, California, where she was working as a lab tech at a medical testing company. The CIA even gave him his plane ticket to send him on his way to reunite with Nadia. But Sayid insisted that the flight be changed to the next day so that he could claim Essam’s body for a proper Muslim burial — putting himself on the fateful flight of Oceanic 815.
• Sayid’s past as an interrogator has given him a unique skill: he can always tell immediately when someone is lying to him.
• Thanks to the time they’ve spent together working on the raft, Michael and Jin seem to have finally become friends.

• Sayid was on his way to America looking for Nadia, the woman he loves. He was in Australia fulfilling his part of a bargain with the CIA to learn Nadia’s location, in exchange for helping take down an Iraqi terrorist cell.
  Question: What brought Sayid, an Iraqi national, to Australia and the United States? 1.02
• It was Locke who knocked Sayid out and destroyed the transceiver.
  Question: Who knocked Sayid out when he was trying to triangulate the source of the French woman’s transmission? 1.07
• Locke believed it was in everyone’s best interests to avoid the source of Danielle’s transmission, given the horrific things she described on it. And he believed that talking about it would have gotten them nowhere, so he chose to act instead.
  Question: Why did this person knock Sayid out? 1.07
• Sayid finally found Nadia’s location and was on Oceanic 815 to go to her. But since the plane crashed, he was not able to reunite with Nadia.
  Question: Did Sayid ever find Nadia, before the crash of Oceanic 815? 1.09

• “The Greater Good” is the second Sayid-centric episode of the series.
• Judging by the sound of his voice, actor Terry O’Quinn must have had a cold during the filming of this episode.
• Another dramatically-heavy moment, yet another rainstorm in the jungle. I did not remember how many times this particular plot device — underscoring tension with rain — was used in the first season.
• “The Greater Good” presented an interesting juxtaposition of what it means to do something bad in order to accomplish something good. Sayid lied in order to stop a terrorist bombing — an altruistic goal, and to find the woman he loved — a more selfish desire. Locke lied about destroying the transceiver because he felt it was in the best interests of the survivors. Later, he lied about Boone’s cause of death to protect the secret of the Hatch — a selfish motive. As Sayid said, “there is always a choice” — a theme that would recur throughout the show’s entire run.
• With this episode, we now know exactly why each and every major character on the show was on Oceanic 815 when it crashed:
  • Jack was on his way home to bury his father.
  • Kate was being extradited by a U.S. Marshall.
  • Locke was going back home in defeat, having been refused passage on his Australian Outback wilderness experience due to his wheelchair confinement.
  • Sawyer was returning home after being tricked into killing the wrong man.
  • Hurley was in Australia trying to find out more about the source of the cursed Numbers.
  • Charlie was going home having unsuccessfully tried to convince his brother to get the band back together.
  • Sayid was off to reunite with Nadia after seven years of searching for her.
  • Jin and Sun were each planning to escape their old lives and start over in America.
  • Claire was convinced to get on the plane by a psychic who knew what her fate would be.
  • Michael had just taken custody of his son and was taking him home.
  • Shannon and Boone were returning home after Shannon’s latest attempt to swindle money from Boone ended in defeat for both of them.

Image credits: “Rewatching Lost” logo by Robin Parrish. Season 1 cast promotional image and Oceanic Airlines logo: American Broadcasting Company.