One of Them (S0214)
Airdate: 15 February 2006
Written by: Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof
Directed by: Stephen Williams
Running Time: 44 minutes
In the mid-2000s, a curious cultural amnesia began to set in regarding the Iraq War. Today, many prefer to pretend that grim chapter never happened, but in early 2006, as the conflict raged and turned even once-enthusiastic American public opinion against it, its dark shadow was inescapable. It seeped into the most unexpected corners of popular culture, even a seemingly escapist television drama about plane crash survivors on a mysterious island. One of Them, an episode that initially presents as a typical Lost character-study rehash, becomes, upon closer inspection, a disturbingly relevant artefact of its moment. Through its central narrative and a devastating flashback, the episode engages directly with the moral corrosion, pragmatic compromises, and outsourcing of brutality that defined the Global War on Terror, using the island’s microcosm to hold a dark mirror to American foreign policy.
The main plot employs Lost’s signature misdirection. It opens with Sayid encountering Ana Lucia, the woman who murdered his love, Shannon, weeks prior. Instead of the expected dramatic confrontation, Sayid adopts a chillingly pragmatic stance, aligning with her when she warns of a stranger in the jungle. This stranger is revealed to be the feral Frenchwoman, Danielle Rousseau, who has captured a man (Michael Emerson) claiming to be Henry Gale, a Minnesotan mining magnate and balloon enthusiast who crashed four months earlier. Rousseau’s instinctual distrust is immediately validated by Sayid, whose experience with the infiltrator Ethan has primed him for suspicion. When “Gale” attempts to flee, Rousseau’s arrow brings him down, and he is carried to the Swan Station. After Jack stabilises his wound, the real drama begins. Sayid, with John Locke’s explicit approval, decides to interrogate the prisoner using his specific talents. Locke locks them in the armoury, over Jack’s moral objections. Here, the show stages a profound ethical showdown: Jack, who once sanctioned Sayid’s torture of Sawyer for medicine, now draws a hard line, threatening to let the station’s fail-safe button go unpushed unless Locke relents. Locke capitulates, and Sayid emerges from the improvised interrogation room without a confession but with an unshakable, experience-born conviction: “Henry Gale” is lying. This conviction, shared in a chillingly matter-of-fact conversation with Charlie (another Other-killer), establishes a new normal on the beach—one where torture is a rational, if ugly, tool of security.
The flashback, however, is where the episode’s contemporary resonance sharpens into a scalpel. We are taken to Iraq, 1991. A young Republican Guard officer, Sayid Jarrah, is captured by U.S. forces during the Gulf War. Interrogated by a Sergeant Austen about a downed Allied pilot, Sayid remains stoically loyal, even enduring the scorn of his commanding officer, Tariq (Marc Casabani), who views his pragmatic cooperation as treason. The dynamic shifts with the arrival of “Inman,” a CIA-like intelligence officer played with serpentine calm by Clancy Brown. Inman recognises a potential asset. His method is not crude brutality but sophisticated, morally bankrupt manipulation. He shows Sayid a video tape of a Kurdish village—populated by Sayid’s own relatives—being wiped out by Saddam’s chemical weapons. Then, he makes an offer: extract the information from Tariq yourself, and you will be rewarded. The implication is clear: do our dirty work, and do it with your own hands. Sayid accepts. In a harrowing scene, he tortures and presumably kills his superior officer. The war ends, and Sayid is released back into Iraq, pockets lined with U.S. dollars, his soul etched with a new, marketable skill: torturer. The message is devastating. Sayid’s descent into brutality is not solely born of his native regime’s evil; it is engineered, purchased, and outsourced by American power. The U.S., represented by the cynically named Inman (echoing “in man,” the inner self), becomes the author of Sayid’s damnation, responsible for every act of torture he will later commit.
Juxtaposed against this weighty narrative is a seemingly frivolous subplot involving Sawyer and Hurley. Plagued by a loudly croaking tree frog, Sawyer embarks on a quest to silence it, discovering Hurley secretly hoarding Swan Station food. The filler nature of this storyline is almost too on-the-nose, serving as comic relief that feels tonally dissonant. Their mission culminates in Sawyer casually crushing the frog, an act of callousness that horrifies Hurley. While intended to show Sawyer’s regression into his brutish persona, it suffers from weak continuity. This is the same Sawyer who, mere episodes earlier, staged a near-coup to control the guns and declared himself the island’s most hated man, yet here he is, oddly laid-back. Hurley, meanwhile, acts against his own carefully established concern for group harmony, succumbing to simple gluttony. The subplot’s clumsiness slightly undermines the episode’s gravitas.
Yet, the script by Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof remains remarkably subversive. In the post-Abu Ghraib climate of 2006, the idea that the U.S. would outsource torture—to allied regimes with poor human rights records, or even to turned enemies—was a live political debate. One of Them dramatises this outsourcing with terrifying clarity.
It also deepens the show’s mythology. The episode’s climax offers a tantalising glimpse of what happens if the Swan Station’s button is not pressed: a computer screen flashes with Egyptian hieroglyphics (a ‘load’ or ‘warning’ glyph), deepening the mystery and promising payoffs seasons away.
Furthermore, the introduction of Michael Emerson as “Henry Gale” is a masterstroke of casting. Fresh from playing a serial killer Henry Wink on The Practice, Emerson embodies a perfect, unsettling ambiguity. Is he a terrified everyman or a sinister manipulator? His every hesitant smile and wary glance keeps the audience, like Sayid, perpetually off-balance.
Ultimately, One of Them transcends its genre trappings. It is more than a puzzle-box episode advancing a fantastical plot. It is a bleak, acutely contemporary commentary on how war corrupts absolutely, how moral lines blur in the name of security, and how the powerful can remain clean by making others dirty. While let down by some sloppy character beats in its secondary plot, the episode stands as one of Lost’s most morally complex and politically brave hours, a stark reminder that even escapist television could not escape the long, dark shadow of a misguided war.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
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