Lost: Season 1 Episode 21 "The Greater Good" Review

"John, no more lies."

-Sayid Jarrah

The 21st episode of Lost picks up with the survivors reeling from the death of Boone (Ian Somerhalder).  During the funeral, Jone Locke (Terry O'Quinn) shows up and tries to explain what happened, but Jack (Matthew Fox) physically attacks him and calls him a liar.  With Jack on the verge of collapse, but refusing to rest, Kate (Evangeline Lilly) slips him some sleeping pills to finally get him to sleep.

Locke attempts to apologize to Shannon (Maggie Grace), but she does not accept it.  Instead, she goes to Sayid (Naveen Andrews) and asks him to do something about Boone's death.  Sayid gets Locke to take him to the plane, while asking pointed questions.  He gets Locke to turn over the gun he found on the Nigerian priest and Locke then admits he was the one who attacked Sayid when he was trying to find the source of the French transmission.  Sayid is furious, but restrains himself from inflicting any harm on Locke.

Sayid tells Shannon that he believes Boone's death was an accident and she storms off in anger.  Jack wakes up to find his key to the gun case is missing.  He, Kate, and Sayid figure out Shannon stole it and took a gun to kill Locke.  Sayid tackles Shannon and Locke is only grazed by a bullet.  With Shannon refusing to speak to him, Sayid tells Locke to take him to the hatch.

Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) takes care of Claire's (Emilie de Ravin) baby while she sleeps, but he won't stop crying no matters what Charlie does.  Eventually, Charlie figures out the baby finds Sawyer's (Josh Holloway) voice soothing and gets him to read to the baby.

In flashbacks, Sayid gets picked up by the CIA and he is forced to infiltrate a terrorist cell in Australia to track down some stolen explosives.  His college roommate, Essam (Donnie Keshawarz), is in the cell, but the CIA has information on how to find Sayid's love, Nadia (Andrea Gabriel), so Sayid reluctantly goes along with the plan.  When Essam tries to back out of the attack, Sayid has to talk him back into it so he can find the explosives.  Sayid agrees to carry out a suicide mission with Essam, but just before they begin, Sayid tells Essam he is working with the CIA and offers his friend a head start.  Enraged and hurt, Essam pulls a gun on Sayid, but shoots himself instead.  The CIA gives Sayid a plane ticket to Nadia in Los Angeles, but he forces them to change his flight so he can make sure Essam is properly buried.  His flight is changed to Oceanic 815.

What Works:

Sayid is one of my favorite characters on this show and Naveen Andrews is great as always.  I love his interrogations of Locke and how he handles the unfortunate situations he finds himself in.  He also sees straight through Locke's BS, which is a lot of fun.  Andrews is simply fantastic in this role.  He's especially good in the flashbacks sequences and it's scary at how well this character can go under cover.  

The final confrontation between Sayid and Essam is really well done and very emotional.  Donnie Keshawarz is excellent in showing the hurt and betrayal he is feeling.  On the dramatic side, it's my favorite scene of the episode.

I don't love the on-island plot as much, but I love the B-story of Charlie trying to get the baby to stop crying.  We get two hysterical scenes in this episode.  First is Hurley (Jorge Garcia) singing to the body, which is simply a delight.  Then we get Sawyer reading a car magazine to the baby.  Whoever came up with that idea is a genius.  It's one of my favorite Sawyer moments in the entire series.

What Sucks:

Most of the on-island stuff never really clicks for me.  The biggest problems come from the characters of Locke and Shannon.  Their motivations don't make much sense.  Shannon wanting Sayid to kill Locke and then trying to kill him herself just felt extreme.  I never really bought that she would go that far.

As for Locke, I still don't understand why he fessed up to attacking Sayid.  He picked probably the worst moment to do that.  It was a major miscalculation on his part and felt out of character.  Plus his reasoning for lying about Boone's injury was just that he made a mistake makes the whole lie feel forced in hindsight.  It's like the writers were trying to find a way to force conflict between Jack and Locke and it doesn't really work.

Finally, most of the island story is Sayid considering doing something extreme for Shannon, while in the flashbacks, the story is about him doing something extreme to find Nadia.  This doesn't jive super well.  His motivation for tracking down Nadia is well established, but this just draws more attention to the fact his relationship with Shannon isn't very fleshed out.  

Platinum Polar Bear:

The Platinum Polar Bear (which goes to the most useful character in a given episode) for "The Greater Good" goes to Sayid.  He figured out what parts of Locke's story were true and which were lies and he stopped Shannon from killing Locke.  It was pretty much no contest.  This is Sayid's second time winning this award.

Verdict:

"The Greater Good is one of the weaker episodes from season 1.  I like the flashback story and Sayid is great, but Shannon and Locke's character decisions don't make a ton of sense and the main story is sub-par.  However, we do get an incredible B-story with Charlie and that alone ensures that this episode has got it going on.

 7/10: Good