Recap / Lost S 01 E 21 The Greater Good

Season 1, Episode 21:

The Greater Good

"John Locke killed my brother, will you do something about that?"

Written by Leonard Dick.

Directed by David Grossman.

Locke: I know what it cost you to do what you did. Thank you.

Sayid: I did it because I sense you might be our best hope of surviving here. But I don't forgive what you did. And I certainly don't trust you. And now, you're going to take me to the Hatch.

Locke: Hatch? — I already showed you the...

Sayid: John, no more lies.

In flashbacks, the CIA recruit Sayid to help them catch a terrorist: his old friend Essam, in exchange for helping him find Nadia. In Sydney, Sayid meets Essam, who introduces him to his terrorist cell. Essam is supposed to act as a suicide bomber for them, but Sayid realizes that he is in over his head, and tells the CIA he can get him to turn himself in. The CIA tell Sayid to convince Essam to go through with it so he can lead them to the explosives, and threaten to arrest Nadia if he doesn't. Sayid convinces Essam to do the bombing, and agrees to go with him. On the day, Sayid tells Essam about the CIA, and offers to give him a ten minute head start before he calls them. Essam is distraught at having been used, and kills himself. The CIA tell Sayid that Nadia is living in California. He stays in Sydney an extra day to claim Essam's body, which is why he ends up on Oceanic 815.

On the Island, Sayid watches Shannon as mourns for Boone. Jack angrily searches for Locke in the jungle, but Kate convinces him to return to camp. The survivors hold a funeral for Boone. Shannon is unable to say anything, but Sayid expresses regret for not getting to know him. Locke shows up tells everyone about how Boone died on the beechcraft. Jack attacks Locke, and has to be pulled off him. He collapses, and Sayid tells him to get some rest. Jack tells Sayid what Boone told him about the Hatch.

Locke apologizes to Shannon for Boone's death. She asks Sayid to "do something" about Locke. Kate drugs Jack to make him sleep. Locke agrees to bring Sayid to the beechcraft. He tells Sayid that he was the one who attacked him and destroyed his triangulation equipment when he was looking for Rousseau's signal. Sayid asks him about the Hatch, but he lies, saying Boone was talking about a hatch on the beechcraft. Sayid tells Shannon he believes Boone's death was an accident, and she storms off. Charlie looks after Claire's baby while she sleeps, and discovers that Sawyer's voice helps him sleep. Shannon steals a gun from the Marshal's case to kill Locke. She holds Locke at gunpoint in the jungle. Sayid tries to talk her down, and then tackles her when it doesn't work. Shannon tells him to stay away from her. At night, Sayid confronts Locke, and demands that Locke take him to the real Hatch.

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Tropes in this episode include:

• Affectionate Nickname: Charlie refers to Claire's baby as "Turniphead", since Claire hasn't come up with a name for him yet. Claire doesn't particularly care for this.
• Ambiguous Syntax: Charlie, seeking help with Claire's crying baby, asks Jin if he knows where to find Sun, and Jin says "no"; it's not clear if he understands Charlie and doesn't know where Sun is, or if he thinks Charlie is asking for his help with the baby and declining.
• Blatant Lies:
  • Jack, while pale, exhausted, and ranting about Locke, claims that he's fine and doesn't need to sleep. Nobody believes him.
  • Sayid sees the scar on Locke's back from when he donated his kidney. Locke claims it was a war wound.
    Sayid: It looks like a surgical scar.
    Locke: Like I said, war wound.
  • Locke claims that the reason Boone had to climb up to the Beechcraft is because he had a charley horse. Sayid obviously doesn't believe him, but he doesn't find out the real reason that Locke couldn't climb up to the plane.
  • Locke claims that Boone's words about the Hatch were referring to the hatch doors on the Beechcraft, a lie that Sayid calls him on at the end of the episode.
• Broken Pedestal: Any goodwill Locke had with the other survivors is ruined by Boone's death, and showing up to the funeral with his clothes still stained by Boone's blood doesn't help; everyone glares at him as he speaks up, and even Walt doesn't seem to want anything to do with him anymore. Sayid even briefly questions whether or not he should have just allowed Shannon to kill Locke, and he tells Locke that he only intervened because of how useful Locke is to the camp.
• Call-Back:
  • When Agent Cole calls Nadia by her full name, Sayid repeats Nadia's own words almost verbatim.
    Nadia: Nobody calls me "Noor", Sayid.
    Sayid: Nobody calls her "Noor".
  • While delivering Boone's eulogy, Sayid mentions Boone's attempt to save Joanna.
• Chekhov's Gun: A literal example. Sayid spots the gun that Locke found off the dead body.
• Death Glare: Just about everyone, Jack and Shannon in particular, glare at Locke when he speaks up during Boone's funeral.
• Driven to Suicide: Despairing over Sayid's betrayal, Essam shoots himself rather than accept Sayid's offer of a Mercy Lead.
• Due to the Dead:
  • The survivors lay Boone to rest after he passed away in the previous episode. When Shannon can't bring herself to speak for him, Sayid gives the young man a brief eulogy, praising Boone's heroism and regretting that he hadn't known him better, and Locke shows up to explain what happened and to also praise Boone as a hero.
  • Sayid claims Essam's body to ensure that it is buried in accordance with Islamic tradition, as opposed to cremated.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Essam is devastated that Sayid set him up to be reunited with Nadia, so much so that he is Driven to Suicide.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite his fury at Locke, Jack is willing to intervene when Shannon tries to kill him.
• Exhausted Eye Bags: Not having slept since he started trying to save Boone, and having given his own blood in a futile attempt to save his patient, Jack is visibly pale and exhausted at the start of the episode.
• Getting the Baby to Sleep: Claire is still recovering from delivery so Charlie offers to look after the baby, but nothing he does can get the kid to stop crying. He eventually discovers that the baby only settles down when he hears Sawyer's voice. When Claire wakes up from a nap she finds Charlie sitting with Sawyer who's reading a car magazine to the baby.
• Heroic BSoD: Shannon totally shuts down in the immediate aftermath of Boone's death, unable to bring herself to respond to Sayid's attempts to comfort her or to even speak at Boone's funeral.
• Heroic RRoD: Lack of sleep and loss of blood seriously weaken Jack; his verbal and physical attack on Locke at Boone's funeral has his collapse and nearly pass out. Kate ultimately resorts to drugging him with sleeping pills because Jack refuses to simply rest and look after himself.
• Hidden Depths: The decidedly non-action-oriented Shannon manages to quickly and successfully load a gun and get it ready to fire.
• Improperly Paranoid: When he finds the key to the gun case missing, Jack, still seething over Locke's lies, assumes that he took it. As Sayid realizes, it was actually Shannon (who, ironically, wants a gun so she can kill Locke).
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Essam is a terrorist, but it's clear that he's misguided and in over his head, and he's even on the verge of backing out of being a suicide bomber because he doesn't want to kill innocent people before Sayid is forced to talk him into going through with it.
• Internal Reveal: Locke is finally forced to reveal the existence of the Hatch to Sayid.
• Irony:
  • Sayid, whom Boone was jealous and antagonistic towards, is the first one to speak at his funeral.
  • Charlie discovers that Sawyer's voice calms the baby's crying while Sawyer is complaining about the same crying.
• It's All My Fault: Locke blames himself for Boone's death, feeling that he should have said no when Boone first offered to join him on a hunt. Shannon replies that if he had, Boone would have ignored him and gone anyway. He also admits that he was wrong to lie about how Boone was injured, and when Shannon intends to kill him for it, he makes no real attempt to talk her down.
• It Began with a Twist of Fate: Sayid delays his flight to Los Angeles by a day so that he can claim Essam's body and make sure that he is properly buried, which is how he ends up on Oceanic 815 in the first place.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Agent Cole is a rude jerkass whose actions lead to Essam's death, but her goal of finding the explosives stolen by Essam's terrorist cell is understandable, and she's right that Essam chose to get involved with terrorism.
  • Sayid is enraged that Locke was the one who destroyed his transmitter, but, as Locke points out, everyone was so focused on trying to get off the Island that no one stopped to think if tracking the signal saying "it killed them all" on a loop was really a good idea. Sayid can't find a counter to this.
    Sayid: You ruined my chance to find the source—
    Locke: The source of a transmission that kept saying "they're dead, it killed them all" over and over. Is that a place you really want to lead people to?
• Kick the Dog: When Sayid tries to speak in Essam's defense, Cole writes Essam off as useless because he doesn't know where the stolen explosives are, and she demands that Sayid convince Essam to go through with the terrorist plot under threat of having Nadia arrested. She also calls Essam a terrorist after his death, despite the fact that, if she hadn't demanded that Sayid talk him into it, Essam would have backed out of the plot.
• Licked by the Dog: There's a big display of the levels in kindness Sawyer has taken since his introduction when Claire's baby stops crying at the sound of his voice, and he reads him an old car magazine to help him sleep.
• Living Lie Detector: Sayid claims to have picked up this skill in his time as an interrogator, and succesfully uses it on Locke to tell that he is telling the truth about the beechcraft and lying about the Hatch.
• Mercy Lead: Sayid tries to offer Essam a head start before he calls the CIA on him, but Essam is so upset by his betrayal that he kills himself instead.
• Nerves of Steel: Even after seriously angering Sayid and having a gun pointed at him, Locke keeps his cool and even lies to Sayid about the Hatch.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Jack's rant at Locke at Boone's funeral convinces Shannon that Locke was directly to blame for Boone's death; she asks Sayid to kill Locke, and when he doesn't do it, tries to do it herself.
• Not Helping Your Case: Locke offers Shannon condolences about Boone's death with his clothes still covered in Boone's blood; his words do nothing to help Shannon, and if anything, seems to further convince her that it's Locke's fault that Boone is dead.
• Not Me This Time: Locke admits that he attacked Sayid and destroyed his equipment, but he denies burning the raft, still keeping Walt's secret.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Jack, when he realizes that the key to the gun case is missing.
  • Sayid, when Jack tells him about the missing key, quickly realizes who is really after a gun and why.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Sawyer, who once beat Boone bloody, is visibly affected by his death, and when Jack, with whom Sawyer has always been antagonistic, collapses at the funeral, Sawyer is the first to yell for someone to get Jack some water.
  • Walt, who has liked and admired Locke since the crash, looks almost afraid of him as Locke washes Boone's blood from his clothes, and he quickly leaves when Locke attempts a friendly wave. He's also very anxious and worried about how safe the raft is, clearly shaken by what happened to Boone.
  • Shannon, who has, to this point, been mostly passive and in no way violent, steals a gun to try and kill Locke out of grief and anger over Boone's death, coming very close to doing so.
• Pet the Dog: Agent Cole is, in no small way, responsible for Essam's death, but she keeps her word with Sayid, giving him Nadia's location and a plane ticket for Sayid to get there. She and Agent Hewitt also accommodate Sayid's request to delay the flight so he can give Essam a decent burial.
• Present Absence: After his death in the previous episode, Boone's absence is heavily felt here; everyone is reeling from the tragedy and both Jack and Shannon blame Locke for what happened, driving the Island plot of the episode.
• Rage Breaking Point: Jack, at the end of his rope and blaming Locke for Boone's death, holds his temper until Locke finishes speaking at Boone's funeral, then unloads on him.
  Jack: Where were you? Where were you? Where the hell were you, you son of a bitch?! What'd you do to him?! What'd you do? Where were you?! You just left him to die! You lied to me! WHERE WERE YOU?! WHERE WERE YOU?! WHERE WERE YOU?!
• The Reveal: Locke was the person who knocked out Sayid and destroyed his triangulation equipment back in "The Moth".
• Sadistic Choice: The CIA give Sayid the choice of helping set up Essam or convincing him to turn himself in, in which case they'll arrest Nadia as an enemy combatant. He reluctantly chooses the former.
• Shout-Out:
  • Essam's roommates are seen playing Half-Life during Sayid's visit.
  • Hurley sings some of James Brown's "I Got You" in an (ineffective) attempt to calm "Turniphead".
• Spotting the Thread: Sayid notices (or pretends to notice) a bug in Essam's smoke detector when he realizes that it doesn't go off while one of Essam's roommates is smoking indoors.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Despite dramatically leaving to find Locke at the end of the previous episode, this episode quickly reveals that not only did Jack not find him, but he's been going in circles since he left; Jack has no tracking skills that would help him find Locke, and he hasn't rested since giving Boone his blood, so he's nowhere near at his best, physically or mentally.
• Tranquil Fury: Shannon is calm and civil with Locke when he offers condolences about Boone's death... then she goes to Sayid and, in a perfectly calm, but no less impactful, tone, says that Locke killed Boone and asks for Sayid to do something about it.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Jack is livid with Locke over Boone's death, screaming at and attacking him at Boone's funeral for lying about how Boone got his injuries.
  • Essam is furious and deeply betrayed when Sayid admits to betraying him, and is especially angry that Sayid talked him into going ahead with a suicide bombing to further his own goal. Even his last words curse Sayid's actions.
    Essam: You were supposed to be my brother, my friend!
    Sayid: I am your friend!
    Essam: A friend who told me to do this for Zahraa, just so you could find some woman that you love?! ...Well, Sayid, I hope she makes you whole again.
    Sayid: ESSAM! [BLAM]

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