No podcast this

week (again) because I had a bit of a throat thing going on (again) over the weekend, and the review

is late because...well...I'm just writing it now.
The Economist is this week's ep, and with a nice, obscure-sounding title I was bound to

enjoy it. Factor in that it was Sayid's turn to take centre stage and it's high fives all

round.The end of the writer's strike has thrown up the possibility of 5 more new episodes

of Lost being produced this season, bringing the total to 13. Chances are there will be a long break

before the new batch air though.
Spoilers for Lost episode 4x03 follow:
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Lost - 4x03 - The Economist
Lost Lesson of the Day: Ben is a big fat liar.

Happenings: I'll forgo a

summary this week in the interests of getting this written before a new episode airs. On island,

people wander back and forth in the jungle. In flash forward, Sayid is both a badass and a

sucker.

"I'm Sayid - do you like my hair?"Likes: Sayid has one of the most

interesting back stories, and yet he hasn't exactly been in the limelight the last couple of seasons.

The simple fact that he is one of the 'Oceanic 6' is enough of a twist for me, not least because I

assumed the pre-titles sequence was a flashback when it began. Hopefully this device will

allow him to be drawn more into the flashforward A-story concerning Jack's desire to return to the

island. This week's flashforward is a bit more self-contained than I'd hoped for, but it was still

fairly strong and it's early days yet. The fact that Ben will leave the island in the future is

enough of a hook for now, but I'll be disappointed if we don't see other members of the 6 crossing

paths in a more purposeful manner soon.The on-island highlight was Daniel's experiment.

It's great to finally have someone on the island who can start actively trying to figure the place

out - a role Sayid explored to a small extent in season 1, but was soon diverted away from. Granted,

Daniel might not want to call in the airstrike quite so close to the precious helicopter next time,

but hey the guy's a physicist so he gets at least one mulligan per episode in my book.

The art of waitingDislikes: The island A-story was a little

underwhelming, with Sayid trudging to the barracks and back only to be duped by Hurley of all people,

but I guess it's only fair that the writers try and curb the accuracy of Sayid's intution a little -

he's been right about so much it's hard to imagine people following Jack and Locke when they've got

such a prescient alternative. Likewise, the island B-story was stretched to breaking point - yes,

it's nice to hear Jack's baseball callback, and Frank is hard to dislike, but you'd think these

people would be going crazy standing around for hours at a time while there's a functioning

helicopter not 10 yards away.
Rating: 5 out of 7 DHARMA Stations


Predictions: Jeff Fahey

(Frank) is the only one of the four new arrivals to be listed in the guest cast instead of the main

credits, which leads me to believe that he'll be disappearing for a while as of next episode and

Sayid and Des will be disappearing with him. I'm guessing it'll be episode 6 at least before we see

the freighter, which would be a shame really because the shot of the helicopter veering away from the

island had a similar effect on me as that of the raft in season 1 - that sense that the show is

going somewhere!


I think you have to go back to Enter 77 to find another Sayid centric episode so I was interested to

see what we were going to learn about him this time around. He comes up with a plan to get Charlotte

back and asks the freighter people if they will take him to the ship - they agree on the condtion

that Miles tags along on the trip. It was quite interesting to see the effect the island had on the

package that was sent from the ship: there's a time diffence between the Island and the freighter.

There was also a nice reference back to the end of season 2 about leaving the island and having to

stay on course or bad things could happen.
Likes: I enjoyed seeing

Sayid in assassin mode, Jack and Kates little chat at the start of the episode, and also the big

reveal at the end concerning Ben. The flashforwards were good and especially the ones toward the end

of the episode, which seemed to be connected with this season's story arc.
Dislikes: I didn't think Hurley's

betrayal worked that well in that it seemed they were forcing the conflict between him and Locke - it

just didn't seem to ring true with Hurley's character. Sun and Jin again have been pretty much left

out again, with the freighter people taking up a lot of room.
The Economist rates 4 out of 7 DHARMA Stations.

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