S1Ep9 – Solitary (Sayid’s first flashback)

[This was the first “write-up” I ever did on Lost, and it was originally an email I sent to a small group of friends. I loaded it into the blog 2.5 years later! However, I made the post date appear to be the original air date of this episode, 11/17/04.]

Recap:

1) Sayid gets caught by the French woman from the transmission - she has been on the island for 16 years. She was torturing him at first with electric shock, screaming "Where is Alex? Where is Alex?" She said MANY THINGS that are important and I am excited to watch again tonight because I couldn't catch it all.

The gist of it was her boat crashed, she was with a team of people including her husband/boyfriend... didn't really say what they were doing so I need to see if I catch it tonight - but I think they may have been scientists? Not sure.

She also had her child with her named Alex.

She mentioned something about going to the Black Rock.

She said everyone ended up getting "the sickness" and basically she killed all of them. Except her child, I think he/she escaped.

She seemed very positive that there are no monsters on the island. She did talk about "the others" and "the whispers in the jungle" - and Sayid just thought she was crazy.

Where she lived had an energy source, and a torture chamber... ??

2) It was Sayid's flashback this time. Basically he was an Iraqi soldier, a childhood girlfriend was captured as a traitor and he had to torture her over the span of a month. She wouldn't tell him anything. At the end of the episode he was supposed to execute her, but he helped her escape by shooting a fellow guard, then making it look like she shot him too (he shot himself) and then told her to go. But in the episode he mentioned to the French lady (Danielle) that "she is dead, and it's because of me." However, in the flashback they just showed her escaping, there was nothing after that to make you think she was dead.

3) They find golf clubs and Hurley (fat guy) makes a golf course and everyone plays and lightens up for once. There was a new dude we hadn't seen before who was breaking out in hives and Jack told him to calm down that it wasn't a big deal. But the guy seemed really really nervous and jittery. Near the end of the show he came back to Jack and said that the rash had spread...

4) The little kid's dad totally ignored him and left him alone in the caves while he was playing golf. The kid found Locke who was practicing throwing knives, and asked if he could teach him how to do that, and that scene ended with Locke giving a huge knife to that kid.

5) At the very end, Sayid escaped from the French woman while she was out after something growled in the forest. She was like "It may be one of the bears..." alluding to the fact there are more bears... He left and took tons of maps and stuff she had in her place. Then he ran into her and she almost shot him and said she had killed everyone else who had been with her. But he talked her out of it and then he busted out.

6) The final scene was him running through the jungle and then all of a sudden the wind kicks up and HE starts hearing all the whispering voices she had been talking about earlier and he just looks all scared and then it ends.


The big issues on the Boards are:

1) Who/where is Alex?

At the very very end, she told Sayid that Alex was her child. Didn't say if it was a boy or a girl. Since at the beginning when she was torturing Sayid after she caught him, she kept asking "Where is Alex? Where is Alex?" that leads me to believe she has reason to think Alex is still alive.

Theories on the boards:
a) Alex is the one who hit Sayid on the head two weeks ago. I used to think it could've been the French woman (I figured she was still alive)... or I thought that until this episode until she seemed so freaked out to see another person... now I think she hasn't left her area of the island for a while, but her son/daughter Alex is roaming around and that is who hit Sayid.

b) Several people also think that Alex actually has posed as one of the survivors from the plane crash, and that it's a character we know who is just pretending to be part of the group and going by a different name. However, the only MAJOR character that we are not POSITIVE was on the plane is Hurley, as they have never shown any flashbacks of him on the plane. But I doubt he could be that big after 16 years on the island.

2) The "sickness"

Danielle (French crazy lady) mentioned that everyone she was with, including her husband/boyfriend, came down with "a sickness" and alluded to the fact that that's why she ended up killing all of them.

Theories:

a) Several people on the boards think that is what the dude that had the beginnings of the rash and was freaking out to Jack about it is coming down with... "the sickness."

b) Other people, myself included, think that is too obvious. I think "the sickness" is more mental than an actual rash/physical disease.

c) Why did Danielle not get sick then? And did Alex her child have this sickness or not?


3) The monster

Everyone on the boards is in agreement that Danielle sounded EXTREMELY confident and knowing when she said to Sayid "There are no such things as monsters." Most people agree that therefore she either knows what the "monster" is on the island because she and her original team are responsible for it, or that she herself has come face to face with the "monster" and she knows what it really is (like Locke).


4) The voices

When Danielle and Sayid first started talking, she mentioned "the others" and he was like "what?" and she said "they whisper..." and he thought she was just nuts. But at the very end, when he is escaping from her, he himself hears the voices whispering in the jungle and starts freaking out.

5) What was the French team doing in the first place?

A theory which a few people batted around on the boards a LONG time ago that the group of people on the island 16 years ago with the French woman were scientists and doing something with animals (including polar bears) that went horribly awry. At first I was like "Come ON!" but after last night, especially when she was like "It's probably one of the bears," (so obviously there are MANY bears on the island), then I started thinking maybe that theory is true. HOWEVER, the producer of the show said that the polar bear and the comic book the kid was reading in that same episode (which had a polar bear in it) definitely were not coincidences.

Other people mentioned something about how in real life, about 16 years ago or something the French really did do some sort of weird testing things in the South Pacific with submarines and all this other stuff. So who knows.

Also, she had a source of energy in her cave, and also had a torture chamber already set up, meaning she used it before. Very bizarre stuff all around!

6) Misc thoughts

Also, what is bugging me is that for both Sayid AND Sawyer, they did NOT cover WHY they were going from Australia to LA on that flight, which they have done for all other flashbacks. Leading me to believe that neither of these characters will be killed off any time soon as there is still more to tell about them. Also, several of the "purgatory theorists" on the boards think that what Nadia wrote on the back of her pic to Sayid: "We will meet again, if not in this life, then in the next" is a clear sign that they are indeed all already dead or in purgatory. I am buying this theory less and less now, though.

- e