I'll be live-blogging tonight's episode (possibly slightly delayed as I'm waiting for my best half to arrive home).

As promised, the time for Questions is OVAH! We'll get Answers tonight! Boodles of 'em . . .

. . . R-i-i-i-g-h-t.

***** MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW THE FOLD *****

From the title, this looks to be a Sun episode, or maybe even a Sun/Jin episode (!). We'll see.

A pattern is emerging.

Season 1: the first show after the pilot was a Kate show: "Tabula Rasa".
Season 6: the first show after the pilot was a Kate show: "What Kate Does". Her Tabula is not so Rasa anymore, as she goes on the lam in Los Alternageles

Season 1: Next came a Locke show, the classic "Walkabout" which ends with Locke screaming about his destiny at that poor Aussie tour guide's desk, and then the reveal that he was in a wheelchair, paralyzed, but then magically healed by the island. Locke loves the island and its healing powers.
Season 6: "The Substitute" - Locke in our alternate universe comes to peace with the fact that the chair is his destiny. Oh, and the smoke monster inhabits a physical clone of DeadLocke's body and can't wait to get off that stinkin' rock of an island.

Season 1: "White Rabbit" had Jack chasing his dead father all over our favorite Island O' Mystery.
Season 6: "Lighthouse" had Jack chasing his son David (David Shephard, get it?) all over Alternate LA, and still ending up at that darn cave.

Season 1: "House of the Rising Sun", all about Sun and Jin.
Season 6: "Sundown". If they kill Sun, I'm going to . . . kill them back.

And now to the show.

Previously on Lost, Sayid gets shot, drowned, resurrected, infected, claimed, and tortured. Not to mention nuked. A very, very bad day.

Wait a minute. Maybe this isn't a Sun show. I guess I'll have to retract all those carefully devised parallels up above. Drat. I was pretty proud of that.

In the alternate time-line, Sayid gets out of a cab and goes to visit Nadia. She smiles brightly and they embrace. He's greeted by several urchins who call him "uncle Sayid", and is also greeted by his brother, who is married to Nadia. Sayid has just arrived from Sydney. He went there to translate oil contracts. His brother, Omar, owns a small (Terrorist) store. During dinner Omar answers his (Terrorist) cellphone and darkly and abruptly cancels dinner, to go have a (Terrorist) conversation.

The niece and nephew find the photo of Nadia in Sayid's bag. Nadia totally can tell that Sayid is still smitten with her.

Now, back to the island. Sayid barges in on Dagon in his Temple office. He wants to know what that machine was that they used to torture him. Dagon explains: "In every man there is a scale - on one side is good, on the other side is evil". Sayid is evidently off the charts (thought Dagon doesn't say which way).

"We think it would be best if you were dead"

"You think you know me but you don't. I'm a good man . . ."

Dagon strikes Sayid and now everybody is Kung Fu fighting. And smashing up everything. As Lost fights go, this one's a doozy. These are some fine fisticuffs.

Sayid gets clocked in the face with a huge stick but recovers and has the upper hand for a bit, but then is almost stabbed in the neck and . .

The baseball rolls of Dagon's desk. This is, evidently, an omen of great import so Dagon decides not to kill Sayid and instead just tells him to go away, and never come back. (And off he goes!)

Elsewhere, Locke and Claire stand at the ash boundary near the temple. Locke is urging her to cross the line. She says she will if she can get her son back. He promises her she will, which doesn't exactly destroy my theory that he's not evil but is actually good, but it does put a dent in it.

"Are you gonna hurt them?" she asks.

"Only the ones who won't listen."

***** Commercial *****

Sayid is sleeping on Nadia's couch. Omar touches him on the shoulder and almost gets his own shoulder dislocated because Sayid has the reflexes of a python. "Translating oil contracts." R-i-i-i-g-h-t.

Omar is in trouble. He is being loan-sharked. So I was wrong about my Terrorist jab earlier. I'm batting .0000 tonight, and I feel really bad about saying that about Omar.

Omar wants Sayid to hurt the people who are loansharking him. He "knows the kind of man" Sayid is. He knows what Sayid did in the war.

Sayid refuses to help him. "I'm sorry. I'm not that man anymore"

Back to the temple: Sayid grabs his pack as Miles walks up. Sayid is leaving. "I've been banished."

"For what?"

"Apparently I'm evil."

Sayid thinks it's ironic that they want to kill him since they are the ones who healed him. Miles lets him know that he was dead "for two hours". Two hours? I don't remember it being that long.

"Whatever brought you back, it wasn't them."

Right at that moment Claire barges in, and walks up to Dagon (who is quickly becoming the most irritating side-character on this show).

"He wants to see you."

"Who wants to see me?"

"You know who." (I think on the island you are instantly killed if you give a straight answer to any question)

"Tell him to come in!"

"No, you have to go to him."

Dagon's no fool. He orders Lennon to put Claire in the "hole". Lennon also mentions, offhand, that he can't find Jack or Hurley.

Dagon tells Sayid to come with him, because "things have changed."

They go back into Dagon's office. He wants to know where Jack and Hurley are. Sayid asks "why is Claire here?"

Dagon gives no answers, but pulls out an ornate box. He tells Sayid that Locke will not stop until he's destroyed every living thing on this island. He is "evil incarnate".

Dagon wants Sayid to kill Locke. He hands him a dagger.

Sayid (rightly) wants to know why he would do anything for Dagon, who has tortured him (and also, just a few minutes ago, beaten the stuffing out of him). Dagon reminds Sayid that he said there was good in his soul, and now's the time to prove it.

***** Commercial *****

Back at Nadia's house, Sayid is walking his niece and nephew across the street. You can tell they like their uncle, and they want him to stay, but he's going to have to go to Toronto in a few days. The kids get on a school bus, and here comes Nadia. She looks distraught.

Now Sayid and Nadia are in a hospital, and Dr. Jack Shephard walks on by, but they don't know him (although he gives Sayid a look). Omar has been "mugged" and Sayid decides to go mugger-hunting. Nadia begs him not to.

Back in the jungle outside the temple, Sayid bumps into Kate, still casually toting her gun. Kate is back at the temple, having slipped through it's incredibly tight security perimeter. Remember the flares and everyone freaking out a few episodes ago? Now everyone's just kind of lounging around and you can waltz right in the front door if you want.

Kate heads over to Miles. He welcomes her back and totally calls it when it comes to what happened with Sawyer. He also lets Kate know that Claire is back, and "still hot". Kate gets wide eyed. "Where is she!"

Sayid is still hiking around the jungle, carrying his dagger. He hears a noise. It's Smokey, only now it's Locke. Locke says hello and Sayid immediately stabs him right in the chest.

Locke casually pulls out the dagger. "Now why'd you go and do that?" Heh.

Never, ever, trust Dagon . . . (or was it because Locke talked first? Dagon said he had to stab him before he talked. . . naaah, Dagon is just a lying liar).

Where's Sawyer, by the way? Wasn't he hanging out with Locke?

****** Commercial ******

I'm still miffed that this isn't a Sun episode. But that's neither here nor there. Back to Sayid and Locke: Standoff in the jungle.

Locke politely hands the knife back to Sayid.

"What are you?"

"Well Sayid, you seem to have some idea about that considering you stabbed me in the chest without even saying hello"

Locke continues: "I feel sorry for you." Locke is, I think, right about this: Dagon sent Sayid out into the jungle believing Locke would kill him.

Sayid wonders what Locke wants (and why he hasn't killed him). Locke wants him to deliver a message. And he offers him "anything he wants."

"The only thing I ever wanted died in my arms. And I'll never see her again."

Big smile, and a whisper: "What if you could?" Smokey's recruiting.

Back at Nadia's house, Lock repairs a vase, broken by the boomerang he gave the kids. Nadia walks in, and Sayid apologizes and lets her know that the kids are in bed.

Omar is out of surgery. Sayid offers to help, but Nadia tells Sayid that this is Omar's responsibility. She wonders why Sayid pushed her toward his brother.

"For the last twelve years I've been trying to wash my hands of all the horrible things I've done. I can't be with you, because I don't deserve you."

We cut back to the island, where Dagon stands by the river, waiting for Sayid, who rightly blows him off. Sayid speaks directly to the temple denizens.

"Jacob is dead, and because he's gone none of you have to stay here anymore. You're free. The man that I met is leaving the island. You can join him. You have until sundown to decide."

By the way, they die if they decide to stay.

In the temple hallway, Lennon gets smacked against the wall by Kate.

"Where is Claire!?"

He takes her to Claire, who is in the "hole", singing the "Catch a falling star" song.

Kate calls to her. Claire smiles and greets her.

"Why did they put you down here?"

"They have Aaron. They have my son."

Kate corrects her. "They don't have your son. I took him. I raised him."

As Kate goes on and on about what a wonderful, beautiful boy Aaron is, Claire totally wants to kill Kate.

Kate isn't reading the signals, though, and says she will rescue Claire.

Claire smiles "I'm not the one who needs to be rescued, Kate"

The temple thugs drag Kate away as Claire shouts "He's coming"

****** Commercial ******

Sayid strides through the temple while the temple people panic. Lennon is not happy about this. Everyone's pretty much buying Locke's message.

Miles asks if they are leaving yet, but Sayid says he has to "return this" as he pulls out the dagger.

Flash sideways to LA, Sayid is abducted outside the house by some Iraqi thugs. They take him into some restaurant back room. Someone is standing at the stove making eggs.

It's Keamey. He offers to make Sayid some eggs. He really makes good eggs, and seems very proud of himself about that.

"Martin Keamey" He introduces himself. Very friendly. Sayid tells him his name and "but you already knew that."

Keamey asks "How's your brother doing?" And tut-tuts about how his brother got mugged right in front of his store.

Keamey gets to the point. "Your brother borrowed money from me, and like everyone who takes a loan, he has to make payments."

"Did you put my brother in the hospital?"

"Oh, you think it was me?" No, of course not, Keamey. Why would we think that?

"It's a dangerous world, Sayid."

Right about then, Sayid violently elbows the guy guarding him and uses him as a human shield while he disarms him. The shield gets shot by the other guard, who then gets shot by Sayid. Sayid then levels his gun at Keamey. Keamey grovels, and promises to forgive the debt. "Just forget about it."

"I can't," replies Sayid, and he shoots Keamey dead. So the universe has self-corrected as far as Martin Keamey is concerned.

Sayid hears a noise, goes back into a store-room, and finds Jin Kwon, tied up with duct-tape over his mouth.

"No English!"

****** Commercial ******

Dagon ponders that darn baseball by the dirty pool. He's kind of miffed that Sayid didn't kill Locke, although I'm not sure how he knows that (well, obviously, because he knows Sayid can't kill Locke. I think he's just miffed that Sayid is alive)

"You let him talk to you?"

"I stabbed him in the chest like you told me to, then I let him talk to me."

Sayid drops the knife, rather than stabbing Dagon with it which I not so secretly wish he would do. Sayid wants to know why Dagon hasn't just killed him already.

Rather than answer the question, Dagon tells a story about being a businessman, getting promoted, and having too much to drink at the promotion party. Every Friday he picked his son up from baseball. His son was twelve, and there was a bad accident. Dagon survived, but his son was in bad shape. In the hospital, a man came to him, a man he had never met, and said he would save his son's life, but Dagon would have to come to the island, get a new job, and never see his boy again.

"His name was Jacob."

"Jacob drives a hard bargain," observes Sayid.

"The man outside, I take it he offered you a similar bargain."

"Yes."

"It is sundown. Do you choose to stay or go?" asks Dagon.

"I'd like to stay," Sayid says, as he pulls Dagon into the pool and starts to drown him. Dagon lets go of the baseball and it floats to the surface as he, evidently, dies.

Lennon runs up. "What have you done!?!?! Do you realized what you just did? He was the only thing keeping him out! Idiot! You just let it in!"

Sayid's had enough. He kills Lennon with the knife and says "I know."

We start hearing those noises we used to hear back in Season 1 - you know, the train sound, the kind of eerie horn sound. Smokey attacks!

At this point everything moves really fast and it's hard for me to keep up.

Kate and Miles run away as Smokey picks off people. Kate runs to get Claire.

Miles tries to hold a door closed, but Ilana, Lepidus, and Ben bust in. Um. Where'd they come from?

Meanwhile Claire is in her hole, placidly waiting. She doesn't want to leave the hole and tells Kate that she'll be safer in the hole. Kate jumps in just in time as she gets the full view of the underside of Smokey screeching overhead.

By the pool, Ben urges Sayid to leave. "There's still time."

Sayid smiles, creepily. "Not for me." Ben looks genuinely horrified and backs away.

In the temple's Hieroglyphic Hall Miles off handedly tells Sun (I didn't catch that she was part of this, I was typing too furiously) that Jin was here just yesterday and that he's alive.

Ilana reads the hieroglyphics on the temple wall; the same ones Hurley noticed last time. She pushes on a panel and a door opens.

"Everybody inside, now."

They get in, just as Smokey comes barreling that hallway.

Sayid walks out into the courtyard as creepy "Catch a falling star" singing plays in the background. He and Claire both have the same happy-zombie look on their faces. Kate follows, and stoops over to (wisely) poach a rifle from someone who ran into Smokey a few minutes ago and no longer needs it.

Sayid and Claire walk off, same placid look on their faces, and they walk out of the temple and meet Locke with his new Other recruits, presumably people who fled the temple before Sundown. Kate follows behind, with a less placid look on her face.

Previews: They are making it look like Ben is going to buy the farm next week. "The man who caused so much death will meet his own demise." So, Jack's gonna die?

We'll see. Regarding Ben, I'm not buying it.

Bad Wobot.