I don't think he really had any reason to believe they'd let him leave alive - even if he did confess to being the one that tortured her. I think the fact that the wife told him she was going to tell her husband she made a mistake is indicative of the fact that he, at least, intended to kill Sayid. He figured they were going to kill him, and this eliminates any motive for him to lie and save himself.

Not to mention, he seemed genuine when he confessed to her. I don't think the Sayid character is a good enough actor to pull that sort of break down off.

Truthfully, people are reading to much into this scene, and developing these overly complex explainations about him lying when all indications are to the contrary seems silly.

From his previous flashbacks we did not see him torture women (IIRC). He even helped Nadia escape.

Fact is I only post in TV show threads every once in a while. By the time I watch it (DVR) any opinions/comments I have, have already been expressed by fellow posters. I tend to read the TV forums at work where I can't post (or login for that matter).

I think Sayid did torture the woman. It's not likely that the woman would've mistaken Sayid for someone else she spent a week with being agonizingly tortured by.

I think Sayid's confession, and the woman's response, also suggest he actually did it. Sayid confessed only to the woman, and only when they were alone. Sayid knew that if he confessed to the husband, the husband would likely kill him in anger, or at the least torture him some more. The woman seemed to know this too, since she said she'd tell her husband she made a mistake instead of revealing to him that Sayid confessed. Why would she lie to her husband unless she knew that he'd do something to Sayid that would effectively turn them into what Sayid had been?

He tortured Naida first. From the S1 episode 9 "Solitary":

SAYID: Tell me what you know about the bombing in Najaf. Tell me, or I swear I will hurt you.

....

NADIA: Go on Sayid, do your work. I'm not going to tell you anything.

SAYID: Then I'm going to hurt you.

NADIA: I know.


IIRC, later when Sayid visits her cell to smuggle her food, there was evidence of new abuse, and the implication was that he had done it. She wasn't bearing a grudge though since she'd been tortured before.

And even though Sayid eventually helped her escape, helping the woman you love escape doesn't preclude him from having tortured woman before, or even after, her escape.

Like I said, limited. Heroes has a body count that's at least in the teens, and has killed off two fairly main characters already. LOST has to be careful with even basic cannon fodder, since they have a pool of only 30 to pick from, and everyone throws a hissy fit whenever they kill off someone main.

Well, it doesn't help that fans go ballistic when new characters are developed that "take away time" that could be focused on their favorites.

My point was that LOST's cast started out from a limited pool of possible characters, which has risen and shrunk slightly over the time period but has mostly stayed constrained due to basic geography. Heroes could go through a body count of 40+ people and a dozen or so main cast members and still chug along due to an exponentially larger pool of possible characters.

I don't think they have. Locke's story early on in this season involved the Island, as did Eko's. The focus has shifted to the Others a little more this season, but the Island as a character isn't gone.

Desmond's was a good episode, but it introduced more questions and may end up being tangentially tied to the overall arc, since his situation seems to have arisen from what happened to the Hatch.

As for Hurley's, I enjoyed it, but a lot of people complained about it in its respective thread.

There's more to the show than just the mystery, but if you remove the mystery, a huge part of what keeps viewers tuning in is taken away. After that it's just a serious version of Gilligan's Island, or a dramatized version of Survivor.

Okay, so the defense of the show is that the concept sucks for what they're trying to do? That doesn't sound like much of a defense to me. Maybe they shouldn't have structured the show in this way if they needed to be able to kill characters at will like Heroes does.

I do recall that...but we never really ever saw him hurt her, right? It could have very easily been another guard. Its been a while since Ive actually seen Season 1 so my memory is very hazy, but Lost has shown Men hurting Women before so it wouldn't have been a taboo thing to show.

No, I'm saying that you really can't compare the two series because aside from the serialization angle, they're structurally very different. Heroes can get away with explaining character's backstories fully and quickly because they can always move on to new characters. Heroes can kill characters much more easily as well. Heroes can answer the "mysteries" it creates quickly because they can always create new mysteries from outside sources, because they have essentially the whole Earth as its stage and players. The core of the show doesn't center around a mystery, it centers around people with superpowers becoming "heroes."

LOST is much more self contained. They can't answer every question about the Island within one season because then that's it for the show. They don't have the option of creating new mysteries and characters whole-cloth like Heroes can. It's like how Twin Peaks couldn't create another murder to centralize the plot of the show around once the first one had been solved.

I think Sayid was alone in the room when he said "I am going to hurt you," so no, it couldn't have easily been a guard. That's not what the guards are for anyway; they're not trained to carefully inflict pain to extract information. That's what interrogators are for, which Sayid is. That's what he was assigned to her for.

As for not seeing, we never actually see Sayid hurt his former Iraqi commander in the S2 episode either. Would you claim that Sayid didn't torture him either?

All the evidence of that S1 episode strongly suggests that Sayid tortured Nadia. If the show producers had wanted Sayid to not look like he tortured here, there were several changes they could've done to make it so. Likewise, all the evidence of the current episodes strongly suggest that Sayid did torture that woman. The only evidence to the contrary is Sayid's initial denials, which only make sense given the context of his situation.

It doesn't make sense from even a story standpoint that Sayid would be innocent. If he truly was, then what was the point of the backstory? We've already seen Sayid tortured for something he didn't do when Danielle captured him. The point was that even after all Sayid did to her, she wouldn't kill him, so Sayid decides that after all the Others have done to him, he's not going to kill an Other now either. And remember, this is the first Other he's had access to killing after he blamed them for the death of Shannon. The lesson becomes moot if he was innocent.

and to answer the original question... the woman didn't know sayid by the other name. her husbnad said that she saw him in the restaurant and recognized him. I doubt she ever knew his real name.

yes, they called him by another name.

I thought it was pretty obvious that he didn't torture her. He's apologizing to Nadia. That's where the emotion came from. He needed to apologize as much as the woman needed an apology.

what?! He needed to apologize to her even though he didnt torture her? Do you remember him saying "your face has haunted me ..etc? "
He either did turture her (question still remains why her and her husband called him a different name) or he didnt torture her and said he did hoping she'd let him go. He didnt not torture her and apologize to her just to make her feel better

ooh, nice catch.

You'd think freeing Nadia from prison and shooting himself in the leg for her would be apology enough.

If you are saying he's apologizing to Nadia, then you're acknowledging that he tortured a woman before. Thus, you're acknowledging that he lied in this episode when he said he never tortured women. So in your mind even though Sayid lied about his name, lied about being an interrogator, and lied about having tortured women, somehow in the midst of all those lies, him denying torturing that woman was the truth?

I thought that Sayid seemed to recognize her when she first appeared. And wasn't that before he noticed the signs of torture on her?

I know that. but they did not find him by searching paris for a guy with that name (najib, or something like that). Her husband flat out said that his wife recognized his face, i believe when they walked past the restaurant one day. I'm sure the husband then went and found out his name.

Remember, when they brought him to the restuarant the first time, he asked his wife to look at him again to make sure it was the right person.

'Lost' Can't Even Beat A Rerun
Show continues to hit record low ratings

By MICHAEL HINMAN
Source: Zap2it
Mar-08-2007

It seems that the one-time ABC powerhouse is no more. "Lost" clocked in its lowest overnight rating yet, finishing behind reruns on other networks, to help its network continue down a very dangerous, low-viewership path.

"Lost" earned a 7.6 rating/12 share according to Nielsen Media Research's Fast National ratings finishing just behind a rerun of "CSI: NY" on CBS. It was slightly less than the number of households that tuned in the previous week to see the show, as it limps through its third season.

ABC finished third overall for the night with a 5.3/8, bettering the 5.1/8 performance by NBC, but being blown away by Fox's "American Idol"-led 12.3/19. CBS was second with a 7.4/12.

In terms of the coveted 18-49 advertising demo, ABC moved into second with a 3.5, but was well behind Fox's 8.2.

Ouch!

Hear that ABC, the fans are calling, you better listen......

This doesn't make any sense. Fans still watch the show either way...

Well somebody's not watching the show anymore.

move it back to 9 o'clock. even if it's up against Idol, 9 is much better than 10.

A move back to 8 O'Clock would be ideal.