“Solitary”

Lost season 1, episode 9
Original air date: November 17, 2004

Backstory: Sayid, in his Republican guard uniform, tortures a man for information about a bombing, threatening him with punishments ranging from losing a hand to being killed. Sayid is then informed that he's being promoted, but he barely notices, as he watches a woman walk by in a burqa, and she dares to meet his eyes as she passes; she is the woman from the photograph that he carries on the island.

Unfortunately, this woman is the next person that Sayid is called upon to extract information from. She's a childhood friend, it turns out, and she used to tease him on the playground, out of affection. Sayid can't bring himself to really torture her, although she remains captive. He brings her food and other comforts during the month that she's imprisoned, and he urges her to give him little bits of information in exchange, so that he can demonstrate that she's willing to cooperate.

After a month, though, Sayid's commander orders him to bring the girl — Nadia — out and shoot her for not cooperating. Sayid is shaken, but he obeys and gets Nadia from her cell. Along the way, he unlocks her handcuffs and urges her to hide in a transport vehicle that will be leaving the compound. She begs him to come with her, but he says they'll kill his family if he deserts. His commander approaches to investigate what's going on, and Sayid kills him. He then shoots himself in the side so that it will look like Nadia overpowered him, shot the commander and then shot Sayid before escaping. He hands her his gun to help her escape, and then she's gone.

Current: Sayid notices a rope coming down the beach into the water, which leads all the way back up into the jungle. He follows it until he comes upon a booby-trapped wire, which he carefully steps over. Not carefully enough, it seems, because he still triggers the trap and ends up dangling upside down. He crashes into a tree and gets a branch in his leg before he blacks out.

When he wakes, a woman keeps asking, "Where is Alex?" over and over in a number of different languages. When Sayid says he doesn't know what she's talking about, she shocks him repeatedly. He identifies her as the woman from the transmission, which causes her to pause. He then sees "Rousseau" on a jacket in the room, and says it aloud. She wonders how he knows her name, and he explains having seen the jacket. She then calls him Sayid and wants to know about the woman in the photograph. He relates some of his history with Nadia, and the woman is fascinated.

As she begins to trust him, Sayid asks about her time on the island. She can't believe it's been 16 years. She tells him that she was part of a research team whose boat crashed. They came ashore, and then "it killed them." When she starts talking about all the rest of her team dying, she starts to sound more and more crazy. She tells Sayid she hears voices in the jungle. Sayid offers to fix a music box that has been broken — a gift from her husband, Robert.

She drugs Sayid to move him from a prostrate position on a makeshift bed to being shackled to a chair, so that he can work on the music box. He learns that her name is Danielle, and he gets the box working. He asks her to let him go, but she says she can't. They hear a noise, like from the monster, and she takes a gun to investigate. Sayid warns her about the monster, but she says there's no such thing.

Sayid has retained the screwdriver he used to fix the music box, and he picks the lock of his handcuffs with it. He gathers his belongings and some of Danielle's maps, as well as taking the other gun, before leaving the underground dwelling. As he goes through the jungle, he does begin to hear voices. He encounters Danielle, who trains the gun on him. He puts his on her, and after a standoff, he pulls the trigger. Nothing happens, though, and she says that her husband didn't notice that she'd disarmed that gun right before she shot him either. Sayid asks why she did that, and she says "they were sick." He realizes that she killed all her teammates, and he tries to persuade her that he's not sick. He gets her to stand down and then tries to convince her to come with him back to the beach. She refuses, but she warns him to watch the others in the group. As he takes his leave from her, she tells him that Alex was her child; as Sayid walks through the jungle, he begins to hear voices whispering around him as well.

Meanwhile, back at the camp, everyone's very stressed, and Jack's even treating some of them for hives. Hurley builds a golf course of two holes, though, and invites Michael, Jack and Charlie to play. They attract a crowd, eventually, with Sawyer betting on Jack's last shot — thus bringing him back into the group a bit. While Michael's engaged in the golf, though, Walt sneaks away to learn to throw knives from Locke, which Michael has expressly forbidden.