I Thought We Had Something Special Here, Lost

First, as I've made plain within these frames in the past, let me say I am an avowed and hopelessly addicted Lostaphile.  It's the only show that I happily shell out $2 for on iTunes even after I've caught it on the first run.

Thus, it pains me to say it, but last night's Lost on ABC (which kicked off with a flashback to footage of 1990's pre-liberation Iraq in a Republican Guard bunker - ABC's taking integrated marketing to new heights, eh?) really irked me.

Mark Noonan over at GOP Bloggers and John Podhoretz at The Corner noted similar pestering.

So get this. Tonight's "Lost" revolves around Sayid, the character who was a member of the Iraqi Republican Guard and someone guilt-riddled over his past as a torturer. Tonight we learn, preposterously and offensively, that he became a torturer because he was seduced into it by the U.S. army, which wanted information in 1991 about a downed pilot. "Before the Americans came, I was a soldier," he said. "When they left, I became something else. My name is Sayid, and I am a torturer."

The plot has always had a love-hate relationship with torture.  It's occasionally been employed by both pro- and antagonist, in matters ranging from survival to revenge, and was always clearly intended to be allegorical of, well something.  If nothing else, it was an occasional attempt to put you through the mental exercise of debating whether torture can ever be justified.

Last night's episode, though, made a heroic leap from the realm of mere thought provocation to the more crystalline message of "F' you American imperialism (and by the way, get over this 9/11 business)."

In addition to the above referenced scene, the ep closed with Sayid bending the ear of the Charlie the Junkie (aka Merry the Hobbit) about his recently completed torture of a [seemingly innocent] island newcomer.  Sayid (a former reluctant member of Saddam's Republican Guard, but really a conflicted good guy at heart and certainly a protagonist on the show), is suddenly looking vacant and detached (his girlfriend was accidentally shot and killed a few weeks ago, but that's neither here nor there) as he describes his newfound lack of remorse for his torturing ways.

He informs Charlie that the others (not "The Others", but the other good guys) will never understand why he is now able to torture carefree.  It's because - wait for it - "They have forgotten.  They have forgotten how [the evil island natives] kidnapped Walt and tried to kill Claire and yadda, yadda, yadda."

Then Sayid gives the junkie Hobbit a long look (which for the viewer is right into the camera) and asks dramatically, "Have you forgotten?"

And... scene.

So the lesson I suppose we're to take from this is that torture, prisoner abuse, and other atrocities carried out by Americans in the name of 9/11, parroting "Have you forgotten?" to detractors (as is the wont of we vile warmongers), brings us down to the level of a vengeful professional torturer who "badly beats" some poor sap from Minnesota who had the bad luck to crash land his hot air balloon on a strange island.

Simply odious.  (The fact that the episode did almost nothing to advance the island plot didn't help matters either (except for that little Ctrl-Alt-Del trick that Locke pulled to reset the Dharma computer - anyone know what that was about?).)

J.J. Abrams, I went so far as to thank you in my special Thanksgiving post.  Please don't make a fool of me.