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Episode: - „Deswegen bin ich hier

Commentators: Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz

Commentary[]

Edward Kitsis: Welcome to the commentary for Episode 10, He's Our You.

Adam Horowitz: I'm Adam Horowitz.

Edward Kitsis: I'm Edward Kitsis.

Adam Horowitz: We're executive producers and the writers of this particular episode.

Edward Kitsis: And for the next 43 minutes, you can call me Eddie.

Adam Horowitz: And you can call me Adam. As usual, there's a murder on a golf course from episode... from Season 4.

Edward Kitsis: Peter Avellino.

Adam Horowitz: Yeah. A friend of mine, Peter Avellino, we named that character for.

Edward Kitsis: The Italian man who was shot. l don't remember what episode this was. lt was one of the Dharma ones. Love Radzinsky.

Adam Horowitz: Radzinsky's been a favorite of ours since Season 2.

Edward Kitsis: Since... Yeah.

Adam Horowitz: He was first mentioned...

Edward Kitsis: We saw his blood spot.

Adam Horowitz: That was, uh... seems like a long time ago.

Edward Kitsis: That's an interesting story, as Radzinsky is crazy about the hatch to the point that long after the purge, he sat there pushing the button until, eventually, he went crazy and killed himself.

Adam Horowitz: That was one of the really enjoyable things as writers for this particular season was being able to explore things that we had mentioned years ago and finally give them life.

Edward Kitsis: Including Montand, when he lost his arm, we show when he lost his arm.

Adam Horowitz: Yeah. Yeah.

Edward Kitsis: This is, by the way... There is a 10-minute version of this opening as well.

Adam Horowitz: Yeah. Very often cuts will come in, through no fault of anyone, as being a little bit on the long side, and this was one of those scenes.

Edward Kitsis: l love the way it's shot.

Adam Horowitz: Beautifully shot.

Edward Kitsis: l love the way this is shot. l just think it sets the mood for the whole thing and it just looks so great.

Adam Horowitz: Greg Yaitanes, director of this episode.

Edward Kitsis: Master.

Adam Horowitz: He'd done... He did a few for us before. He's an incredible director.

Edward Kitsis: You just see the visual style that he does. It's just great.

Adam Horowitz: And, you know, no offense to child actors, but it's not easy to get performances out of kids, and he did a great job with these two. And the chicken, l mean...

Edward Kitsis: This is the first time we ever saw Sayid as a child?

Adam Horowitz: Right. Or, you know, l was gonna say that the performance of the chicken...

Edward Kitsis: It was a good chicken.

Adam Horowitz: That's a good snap.

Edward Kitsis: Yeah. Obviously no chickens were harmed.

Adam Horowitz: For those trivia-minded, this is the second time you'll see a dead chicken in a Kitsis-Horowitz episode of Lost. Last time was Season 3. Blew up the Chicken Shack.

Edward Kitsis: Oh, right, right. In Tricia Tanaka. But that was actually... those were frozen chicken.

Adam Horowitz: Yeah, but they were harmed.

Edward Kitsis: Chicken is our...

Adam Horowitz: It's our thing.

Edward Kitsis: It's our thing. And isn't Ben served chicken? Sayid is served chicken in this episode.

Adam Horowitz: Chicken salad, yeah.

Edward Kitsis: Mm-hmm.

Adam Horowitz: You know, thematically that scene was important to us, to set up the dilemma of what Sayid's gonna go through in this episode, which is...

Edward Kitsis: The question of whether or not he is a killer.

Adam Horowitz: And wrestling with his own nature.

Edward Kitsis: That, of course, is Phil. You met them in LaFleur. Phil and Jerry. And for those that wanna know, that is a shout out to the Grateful Dead. Phil Lesh and Jerry Garcia. l love this because you see even Ben at 10 years old was manipulative. Horace didn't send him in there with a sandwich. And a book.

Adam Horowitz: "And a book." There's the book. I've read it twice. It's good.

Edward Kitsis: A Separate Reality, Carlos Castaneda. We will let you have your own interpretation of what that means.

Adam Horowitz: But please read it if you get a chance. And then send us a report. We'd like to know what you think.

Edward Kitsis: Mm-hm. Don't really send us a report, though. Send Adam one. The kid's good.

Adam Horowitz: He was very good. Sterling...

Edward Kitsis: Sayid is always awesome. That's the thing about Sayid. We have been lucky to write... This our second Sayid episode. The Economist.

Adam Horowitz: We wrote The Economist, Season 4.

Edward Kitsis: Yeah, and he is... He's just pure awesome.

Adam Horowitz: It is one of the great pleasures of working on the show is to get to write episodes for the different characters and do a different type of episode. writing a Sayid episode, you're using different muscles than a Hurley episode.

Edward Kitsis: This we love. Uh... You just love to see Sayid being a bad-ass. You just love it.

Adam Horowitz: l do love it. You don't have to convince me.

Edward Kitsis: No.

Adam Horowitz: And, you know, we like the idea that he's around the world, but we always love, on the show, to be able to show, like, winter, which you'll see in the next scene.

Edward Kitsis: This guy's making a crucial mistake. You cannot buy Sayid off. Yeah.

Adam Horowitz: It's funny, this stuff here, we scripted in English to be in Russian, but then made the decision not to do any subtitles and realized it played just as well to not know what the guy's saying. You understand he's trying to plead for his life and pay off Sayid.

Edward Kitsis: It's cooler.

Adam Horowitz: It somehow seemed cooler that way. Nobody descends a stairway like Naveen.

Edward Kitsis: And look at the snow. You can't believe that's Hawaii. l call this the Third Man shot because you walk in and then you see a lone man in a fedora.

Adam Horowitz: Joseph Cotten. No?

Edward Kitsis: No, it's Oliver. l mean, it was...

Adam Horowitz: Joseph Cotten. Third Man.

Edward Kitsis: Yes. When he goes to see Orson Welles. Why would l call him Oliver?

Adam Horowitz: l don't know.

Edward Kitsis: He looks cold. Being from Minnesota, he's got that... he did a good job of that, "I've been outside too long and l have a red nose." You've taken care of everyone who posed a threat to your friends. It's been a pleasure working with you, Sayid.

Adam Horowitz: In a way, a lot of these scenes play as a nice bookend to the scenes in The Economist, in that, you know, that's where we see the alliance between Sayid and Ben start and now we're witnessing the end of it.

Edward Kitsis: And we saw him recruited in... What was the one where he goes...? Nadia.. He goes to Iraq. l can't remember that one. Can remember the title of that one.

Adam Horowitz: It was a good one.

Edward Kitsis: It was a good one. So this is the trilogy. This is the end of it. l always like how sad he looks. Now he has to go live his life and, in a weird way he takes it like an insult.

Adam Horowitz: Again, coming back to Dharma times and being able to see these characters we'd only heard about brought to li was great. l just love Radzinsky and just the looks he gives in the background.

Edward Kitsis: l love Horace. And l love that Horace... You always look at the Dharma and we think of them as these hippies in VW buses just having a good time, but he's, you know... You see why he's the leader here. He kind of lays it out. Now what they don't know is that Sayid could snap both their necks right now and run. That's what they don't realize. They may think they're in control, but they're not in control. Obviously, it's great to, again, as Adam was saying, go back. He's talking about the model, the model of the Swan, which was all of Season 2. So l love the idea of being ablto go back and see it in its inception stage, and Radzinsky is such a big part of it.

Adam Horowitz: And this episode was also in the middle of the season and, in a broader context, was a nice opportunity, we felt, to get into a very character-centric episode again, after doing some very big idea and vast in scope stories.

Edward Kitsis: And focusing back on one character, um, which we usually do on the show, but in the beginning of the year, we kind of jumped around. We shot with Jack and Ben and then Sun and Kate.

Adam Horowitz: So while we are going through everyone, as we always do, this really was about Sayid in Dharma times and how that was going to affect everyone.

Edward Kitsis: This, l love this scene because Juliet is saying, you know, she sees those two are not gonna be content to just hang out and be Dharma Initiative. They're gonna wanna go on treks and run around and solve things, and their little happy life is over. Throughout this entire episode, you'll see Sawyer is denying that. He is trying so hard to deny what she says and he knows it's the truth, which is it is over.

Adam Horowitz: It's something l think we've always found that's worked best for us, when writing the show, was finding ways to put our characters in conflict with each other, and that's what Sayid's arrival really does. Sawyer had a great life and he does not want to see it change, but now he's got no choice but to face a new obstacle.

Edward Kitsis: There she goes. That's what she's saying. It's done.

Adam Horowitz: Now, the character of Oldham is first mentioned here. We tried to make a moment of it, to start to build anticipation towards that. Eddie, do you wanna talk a little bit about the genesis of Oldham?

Edward Kitsis: (sighing) l don't even know how you can talk about Oldham, but Oldham... he was based off this guy who was kind of a chemist in the '6s. And we loved the idea that the Dharma Initiative, being where they were in the '60s and '70s, would have, you know... If they were gonna have someone who's the equivalent of Sayid, their torturer, they were gonna do it in a more, l don't know, chemical way, l guess. And we love the idea that Oldham might have been, at one point, working for the ClA and maybe a Berkeley professor and doing all these weird experiments with drugs. Right now he's just a threat. And this is, l guess, a scene that is further proving Juliet's point, in that Sawyer is once again trying to control it, put out fires. That's what he does best as LaFleur, is he puts out a fire. A new guy comes in and he's gonna figure out a way to get him in, and Sayid's saying, "l don't wanna be a member of the Dharma Initiative. l don't wanna have a job. l'm doing something else here."

Adam Horowitz: One of the trickiest parts of this episode, from a writing and production standpoint, was the fact that the first couple of acts, a lot of it takes place in a jail cell and in these interior locations on the island, by the nature of the story.

Edward Kitsis: By the way, that... just to point it out, that purple poster behind you is a Geronimo Jackson poster from 1969, and the guy in the back, that's Floyd.

Adam Horowitz: There was a lot more to this scene...

Edward Kitsis: Floyd's the guy with the big Afro.

Adam Horowitz: Floyd is the guy with the Afro.

Edward Kitsis: And he works with Hurley in the kitchen and unfortunately we didn't get to dive into him as much this season as we'd want to.

Adam Horowitz: There was more to Floyd and Hurley's relationship that we scripted, actually.

Edward Kitsis: Yes, but...

Adam Horowitz: It was cut for time.

Edward Kitsis: Time and stuff. But you can... That poster, l believe, you can buy.

Adam Horowitz: Yeah, probably somewhere.

Edward Kitsis: Yes.

Adam Horowitz: But, yeah...

Edward Kitsis: It's a real Geronimo Jackson poster, yeah.

Adam Horowitz: We liked the little details of Hurley making sandwiches with dipping sauces out of pancakes.

Edward Kitsis: They were out of waffles. That was cut. What you don't realize is Hurley was willing to use waffle as bread, which a lot of people don't do, and he had dipping sauces. And what l also love is that Hurley's good to go. He's like, "Well, I'm in the Dharma Initiative. OK, cool." Here we see Ben's father, Roger Work Man, who you may remember as the skeleton in Tricia Tanaka Is Dead and then, of course, as Ben's abusive father.You just don't mess with Sayid. That's what that was.

Adam Horowitz: As l was saying before, from a writing standpoint, we had these scenes that had to occur in a cell and with Sayid confined, and the challenge of the episode was to create these situations of conflict and story momentum for at least the first half of the episode before they pull him out, which is why the relationship between Sayid and young Ben became really the key to the episode.

Edward Kitsis: And this is a scene that we wrote where Sayid, who also had a very domineering father, kind of... you're hoping has some sympathy for Ben here. We're hoping that, at this point, you're watching, thinking, "Oh, Sayid's gonna help young Ben. He is going to forgive all the horrible things he's done in his life and he is going to buddy up and mentor this child who reminds him of himself."

Adam Horowitz: It was a conscious attempt to parallel the teaser scene in the flashback of Sayid and his father, except with no chicken being killed.

Edward Kitsis: There's a chicken sandwich...

Adam Horowitz: There is.

Edward Kitsis: ...so that is the motif.

Adam Horowitz: For a janitor, he really doesn't care about the mess he leaves.

Edward Kitsis: Yeah, 'cause who's gonna clean that up if it's not Roger Work Man? l love this. l love the fact that Sayid's in these shirts. This is one of my favorite things of the year.

Adam Horowitz: Although, l wonder... He could have carried more than two. l guess they only needed two.

Edward Kitsis: Well, he's, you know... l mean, he's doing his job.

Adam Horowitz: He's in no rush.

Edward Kitsis: He's in no rush.

Adam Horowitz: He's in hiding.

Edward Kitsis: He's in hiding, but he's doing good for the world.

Adam Horowitz: At his own pace.

Edward Kitsis: Well, and the thing here is... l love this. He just senses Ben. And what's interesting here is that Sayid is... Ben's going to call him a killer in this scene, and this is him trying to get away from the killing and the torturing and the games. What's interesting about this episode is it really kind of fills in a lot of the missing time during the three years. So you're really jumping around, and if you watch the episode... the whole season as a whole, you're like, "This is right during Bentham and before and..."

Adam Horowitz: It's funny, when we were writing this,l believe it was probably September of '08, and nothing had aired yet, obviously, and we'd been in production and the first bunch of episodes had been shot, but because things were so out of sequence and the jumping around in time was so prevalent, it was scary for us. Would the audience be able to come along with us on this ride and follow it?

Edward Kitsis: Or like it.

Adam Horowitz: Or like it. But we were very gratified to hear from some people that they did. But it was a challenge to try to tell the story we wanted to tell in this way.

Edward Kitsis: It's also, l think, really cool just seeing, you know... You see that little 10 year-old, and this is what he has become. And look at Ben, he's cool and he's manipulative, and he's calling Sayid a murderer... ...trying to get him going. What is interesting is that, if you remember, after this scene, he's telling him about the guy that's in front of Hurley, right? And what does Sayid go and do?

Adam Horowitz: He kills the guy waiting outside the Santa Rosa Institute. In fact, at one point...

Edward Kitsis: We actually cut to that.

Adam Horowitz: ...we cut to that scene from the finale of Season 4 outside Santa Rosa, but when we saw the cut together, we realized we just didn't need it, that the scene ending with Ben talking to Sayid was all you really needed to get the point.

Edward Kitsis: Right, but what l think is interesting is he says, "I'm not a killer" and yet he went and he did it. But it was to save Hurley, so it's a gray area, l guess. Now, again, you know, Sawyer is... Things are slipping out of control and he's gotta still maintain being LaFleur, but he's gotta figure out, "How do l save Sayid?" This, of course, takes us to Oldham, who was one of our favorite Dharma characters. He's just, l love the idea that he's out there in a tepee and he's just doing weird experiments and he's got an old gramophone and... And the title He's Our You obviously comes from this scene because...

Adam Horowitz: The next scene.

Edward Kitsis: Yes, but it comes from this sequence and the next scene.

Adam Horowitz: We were trying to go for that kind of creepy vibe of here's a guy out here living his own way, doing his own thing, and who would be out here with all these weird things?

Edward Kitsis: And that, you know, he is... He's a guy, you know... l always... l think that Oldham's flashback would be very interesting. He was obviously working for the ClA. And... did you say the Korean War? No, Vietnam. And he obviously is a smart guy who has gone completely crazy. At one point, we wanted to title this episode The Sugar Cube.

Adam Horowitz: And by "we", we mean Eddie.

Edward Kitsis: Yeah. l did, but l was outvoted. And then He's Our You came out, and that was clearly cooler. But The Sugar Cube will always remain a title no one knows. Except for me and Adam, and Damon and Carlton and Liz, yeah. Don't worry. They're for your protection. There are side effects to what I'm giving you.

Adam Horowitz: We thought it was interesting to have Sayid, who is the torturer and interrogator, have that turned on him and then also to put him in a situation with being drugged where we could see a bit of a different Sayid than we've seen before.

Edward Kitsis: And, again, watching Sawyer having Juliet's words echo in his ear that it's all over and him struggling to keep it together that's what makes this scene kind of cool. By the way, the impetus for those glasses, where we said we wanted them to be like Bob Evans, the legendary movie producer. l don't know if...

Adam Horowitz: We scripted as Bob Evans glasses.

Edward Kitsis: We scripted Bob Evans-like. They're sort of Bob Evans-like. Not fully but pretty cool still. What's great here is in the next scene, you'll see, he does tell them the truth, but the truth is silly. This is the marina. We've literally...

Adam Horowitz: We're back to episode five.

Edward Kitsis: This is the one scene that is almost in every story this year, and it kind of is the moment where we're just saying, "OK, we're caught up again. Here's where we left off."

Adam Horowitz: It was scenes like this that helped us try to orient the audience when we felt we needed to...

Edward Kitsis: With the time travel.

Adam Horowitz: ...place everybody in time. The function of this scene is to get us into the next scene at the bar with Sayid and llana.

Edward Kitsis: And what's fun... What's fun about Lost is that Adam and l wrote a few different episodes this year and a few of them took place at that scene, and you get to go around and get everyone's point of view. This, of course...

Adam Horowitz: But now, for example, that scene now tells us when and where this is taking place. There's no title card you could put up that would have set it up properly.

Edward Kitsis: Or as well. And now we see Ilana, who we've only seen briefly. We know she was with Sayid, but we're like, "Wait. What's going on here?"

Adam Horowitz: My memory of this scene in post-production was how long it took us to come up with the background music for the bar.

Edward Kitsis: Literally...

Adam Horowitz: We went through about 10 different tracks.

Edward Kitsis: Some were too much, some were too... l bet we went back to the original one, too. But also he orders a glass of, was it MacCutcheon?

Adam Horowitz: Yeah.

Edward Kitsis: Which Widmore told Desmond once he wasn't worth... a glass of... ...so MacCutcheon. So you know Sayid is, you know, he's loaded, if he can afford some MacCutcheon.

Adam Horowitz: Yeah.

Edward Kitsis: l, you know... This is, l think, what the fun of Lost is, or at least writing it, is that you've seen her with Sayid in handcuffs, and you're like, "How did that happen?" When we show you the beginning, it is hopefully not what you were expecting. That's what's fun is to be able to show you something and then pose a question of how did this happen? And then go back and get to write it.

Adam Horowitz: You know, with a character like Ilana, the way we introduced her was in little bits, where we see her first...

Edward Kitsis: Hopefully intrigued. What we realized is, you know, people love the character so much that when you throw someone new front and center, people have a reaction, but we realized it's nice to just kind of slowly integrate them into our world, and hopefully you're beginning to wonder who are they and why are they here? And hopefully our answer to that is great.

Adam Horowitz: So if we can introduce her in a way that poses a question, she is escorting Sayid with handcuffs, the question becomes, "Well, who is she? Why is she with Sayid?"

Edward Kitsis: The first thing you think when you see that scene is, "Wasn't that the person that was in Ben's office with Caesar looking for a flashlight?"

Adam Horowitz: Right, so we... It's the slow reveal. If you can do it in little bits that are intriguing, hopefully, you allow the audience to be asking enough questions that they're open to the idea of accepting this new person on the show and curious about what their function is gonna be.

Edward Kitsis: Then again, Sayid questioning himself, "I'm a bad man." And l think what's cool about this scene is he's... ...he tells the truth, it actually does work, but because what he's saying is so ridiculous, um... ...they think he's just been drugged too much. You can see Sawyer kind of freaking out here. ls this gonna ruin it? l love Radzinsky because he clearly thinks he... ...he clearly thinks he knows better than everyone else. He clearly can't stand the way that Horace runs things. [chuckles] He clearly thinks that he would do a better job. l just love how he barely disguises his distaste for the leadership of the Dharma Initiative.

Adam Horowitz: That was the other thing, because we were bringing these characters into Dharma times, with all these characters already existing there, as much as we can create those dynamics between them, like what Eddie was talking about with Radzinsky and how he feels about Horace and the Dharma Initiative, it's never really spoken or addressed directly, but it helped us, in writing it, create a sense of a larger world that's been pre-existing our characters' arrival.

Edward Kitsis: This is the motor pool. l love this scene, because it's kind of a... "l'm with Sawyer now." And she delivers a threat but in the nicest way, but you're not sure it is a threat. When Sawyer pulls up, he knows they're talking about him, and he doesn't like what's going on but he can't put that fire out 'cause he's got a bigger one to deal with, and l like how Sawyer's day is spinning out of control.

Adam Horowitz: Right, and this kind of scene can really only exist in the context of Sawyer coming back with Sayid, who is now causing all these problems, so that there is no time to stop and really have a relationship scene or to deal with that, because you want those feelings to be boiling up around everyone, but there's a more pressing concern.

Edward Kitsis: That look says, "Oh, this isn't good. That's not good at all. But l don't have time for this." And then l think you really get to see, in the next scene, l love seeing the town hall meeting. And you see Radzinsky's complete distaste. Another title at one point for this was The Radzinsky Solution.

Adam Horowitz: That's right, yeah.

Edward Kitsis: Which we still think is pretty cool, but He's Our You was still the coolest. l also love the idea that Sawyer, who came to the island and he was the con man who, you know, traded... lf you wanted suntan lotion, you had to give him things. And now he is the respected sheriff of the town, that people value his opinion. Ann Arbor, of course, for those who remember, is where the DeGroots and the Dharma Initiative started, or at least got their funding.

Adam Horowitz: Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Edward Kitsis: And that is where headquarters are.

Adam Horowitz: Home of the University of Michigan, arch-rivals of the University of Wisconsin.

Edward Kitsis: Go Badgers.

Adam Horowitz: Go Badgers. l guess they're not really arch-rivals. They're in the same conference, but they don't like each other. And little Ethan watching over it all.

Edward Kitsis: Little Ethan who would grow up and kidnap Claire while his... Well, perhaps his mom voting to kill this person, you know, sunk in.

Adam Horowitz: Yeah, the darkness in Ethan started with Mom.

Edward Kitsis: Started with Mom wanting to kill Sayid. And here we love the idea of, again, everything is spiraling out of control for Sawyer, and in this moment everyone's hand is raised, and what does he do, how is he gonna get out of this? And l think we just...

Adam Horowitz: l wanted baby Ethan's hand to come up, but...

Edward Kitsis: He wouldn't work with you.

Adam Horowitz: He wouldn't do it. I would really like to say it's unanimous. This is the beginning of the suspicion, l think, of Sawyer, or LaFleur. This was another scene where we had a lot of trouble coming up with the music.

Edward Kitsis: Because there was a point where we also didn't want music. We weren't sure what was better.

Adam Horowitz: l'm sorry. No, yeah. Giacchino scored this, but when we put our cuts together, what we do very often is we put temp music in, and it's often music from the series in the past or from other sources. The editors will put that in to give a sense of the feel for the scene. But because we don't generally do love scenes on the show, it was hard to find the right feel for this.

Edward Kitsis: Yes, it's a lot easier to find music to put a bag over someone's head and kidnap them than to...

Adam Horowitz: When the scene turns, where it's about to, then you can get into your more intense action music.

Edward Kitsis: Yeah. What's really great is that Damon and Carlton, very early on, season one from the show, have always encouraged writers to kind of... They're very mentoring in that they let us go into the editing room with them and kind of help create the show, and what l think is great is that each writer really gets to start from scratch in the room and take it all the way through to editing. And you're in there with Damon and Carlton kind of editing and getting to see how a show comes together, and that's a really cool process that not a lot of shows... A lot of shows, the executive producers will just take it, that's their domain, and it's great that Damon and Carlton involve us in that. I want you to take these keys out of my pocket, let yourself out. The guard outside is Phil. He's a dimwit. And here you just love Sawyer. He's willing to completely risk everything to save a friend, and l think it just shows, you know, the growth of him. Over the show, with season one, these two, you know, Sayid tortured him to find out where an asthma inhaler was, and here, uh, you know, look. He's willing to risk his entire existence just to save this guy. That's what's cool about the show, and having been here since season one, is really getting to see it grow and how much more we know of these people. Adam, would you tell them where that asthma inhaler went to?

Adam Horowitz: The asthma inhaler was found in the jungle by Nikki and Paolo while they were trekking out to... which hatch was it?

Edward Kitsis: Question Mark, right? To hide the diamonds. And uh...

Adam Horowitz: We actually shot the scene but cut it.

Edward Kitsis: Paolo found the inhaler and threw it.

Adam Horowitz: That's what happened to Shannon's asthma inhaler. Sawyer's exonerated, but no one solved the mystery of the missing inhaler.

Edward Kitsis: Yeah, Paolo has it.

Adam Horowitz: Luckily for Shannon, she was shot and killed before another asthma attack could...

Edward Kitsis: And, to be fair, Paolo was buried alive, so he paid for not bringing it back. Here, again, is now Sawyer fed up. He's just mad. He realizes it's all changing and he just wants to know, "Why are you back? Why have you done this to me?" And we know that, as Sawyer said to Horace in LaFleur, it takes three years to get over someone. He was over Kate and now she's back and it's making... it's just, everything is just spinning out of control for him and he's clearly a guy who likes to be in control. Uh... Why, Kate? I don't know why everyone else came back.

Adam Horowitz: Now, the flaming van that is about to interrupt this scene was originally a flaming cow.

Edward Kitsis: It was never really a flaming cow, but we would always talk about, well, it'd be cool if young Ben had a diversion. The way we would pitch it in the room was, like, you know, "He sends a burning cow through the village and it freaks everyone out." And literally we kept saying that for a while, until finally we were like, "Guys..."

Adam Horowitz: "We have to come up with a diversion."

Edward Kitsis: "Can't be a real burning cow." So the bus seemed the natural... um... It just seemed the natural thing to do. Obviously, it's pretty iconic Dharma. And here we have the bucket brigade. This is the second fire we've written, correct? What was the other one?

Adam Horowitz: It was in Fire + Water.

Edward Kitsis: Yes, Fire + Water. Charlie created a diversion so that he could steal Aaron.

Adam Horowitz: Aaron. Twice.

Edward Kitsis: Twice. And baptize him. And so, yeah, l guess, you know...

Adam Horowitz: We go to the fire well for diversions.

Edward Kitsis: Yeah, if we need diversions, we burn things. That's what we do.

Adam Horowitz: One of the harder things with scenes like this is when in a shot, you get so much stuff that you could do a 40-minute version of this, 'cause it's so spectacular, the fires, the explosions and the people running, and you just sort of have to kind of cut it down and get it to a very tight version that tells the story.

Edward Kitsis: By the way, l love the... when Jack... when Sawyer turns to Jack. He says, "Three years, no burning bus." That's a good moment that, you know... And l think that's important of the show, is that Lost, even in the middle of an action scene, hopefully we're trying to give you - a little bit of character.

Adam Horowitz: Right.

Edward Kitsis: Again, here is young, manipulative Ben Linus, and you realize, even at a young age, he was a smart cookie. And as Sayid said, "l believe I'm here to do something," we're still hoping at this point you realize, "l'm here to help Ben Linus," you don't see the end coming, that you think that they have kind of bonded and he's gonna be a father figure to him and maybe that'll help erase the horrible things they did. And it's kind of sad, you know. Ben has a really crappy life in Dharma times. So you really, in this moment, you really kind of feel for him, l think.

Adam Horowitz: And the hope that we had in writing this is: you really feel for Ben here and you think Sayid is feeling for him, too, and that he's gonna help him escape.

Edward Kitsis: Now, again, we bring you back to the day of the flight, Ajira, but we're now in Sayid's point of view, where he's in handcuffs and he sees Hurley. And now he's beginning to get suspicious.

Adam Horowitz: This is like, l think, a great example of how the ability we have to sort of plan in advance what we're gonna do really helps us, in that having had an end date for the show for some time, we've been able to plan these seasons out as detailed as we can in advance, so we know we're gonna have these different episodes that are all gonna take place at the airport, in the terminal, on the plane, and that will crisscross.

Edward Kitsis: And for those of us... for those who continually refuse to believe that we plans things out, that we make it up, this should be proof, because between this and the marina you see all the interconnectedness of all the characters, that you can't just do this and you can't just make this up week to week. We actually have a pretty good plan.

Adam Horowitz: Well, you know, when... ...when we're breaking the stories for the episodes in the writers' room, we sort of work pretty much on a rotation of kind of going through...

Edward Kitsis: And it is based on seniority, obviously. You will see that Damon and Carlton are first and it goes from seniority. Every once in a while, though, there'll be an episode coming up that, like, you'll be like, "Ooh, can l drop down to do that one?" Different people like different characters. But usually we just pretty much go in rotation. lf you look at the season so far, you'll see that there's a pattern. It started with Damon and Carlton, then us, then Liz, right? And then Vaughan. It kind of goes through that.

Adam Horowitz: But it's also incredibly collaborative, like we all work so closely with each other on everyone's episodes that we all try to help everyone.

Edward Kitsis: This episode... Yeah, the bar scene in this episode, l know that Damon actually wrote that scene. And Carlton will write a scene for an episode, and we'll write one for one of their episodes and so our names may be on the episodes, but it literally is written together as collaborators. mean, you really can't say ownership of each episode cause, hopefully, you know, we're all in it together for every episode.

Adam Horowitz: The process of doing the show is one where you write the script as a script, and then it's like you write it again as a cut, and once you have the film, you're, in a sense...

Edward Kitsis: Kind of rewriting it again. Because sometimes you realize, "Oh, well, it'd play better this way." Or sometimes we'll move scenes around.

Adam Horowitz: Very often, the dialogue you write you just don't need, because the actors are so good, their reactions tell you everything.

Edward Kitsis: Television, not tele-talking.

Adam Horowitz: Exactly.

Edward Kitsis: Yeah.

Adam Horowitz: Now, you know, the ending of this episode was a tricky thing to do. I really didn't know how people would react to this.

Edward Kitsis: We really thought that our offices would be stormed with the villagers and the torches because, uh... and here, you know, we give you that, "He's not really gonna do it, is he?" and it's the moral question, the old, you know, if you could time-travel back, would you kill Hitler as an eight-year-old? And here he's faced with that, and l just love that he repeats, 'l am a killer," and in a weird way he thinks this will erase everything. It's the first time we question paradox. The whole season has been what's happened happened, you can't change it. And what we really wanted to do was say, "Why? Let's challenge it."

Adam Horowitz: We felt like those may be the rules, but characters who hear those rules or have to live with them, of course they're gonna want to try to challenge them and this was...

Edward Kitsis: Especially Sayid, right?

Adam Horowitz: Right.

Edward Kitsis: And, you know, this was obviously a tough thing to write because although he's shooting the character Ben Linus, it was a 10 year-old then, so...

Adam Horowitz: Yeah.

Edward Kitsis: But he lives. Spoiler alert.

Adam Horowitz: And that is episode 10.

Edward Kitsis: Yes.

Adam Horowitz: He's Our You.

Edward Kitsis: Yes.

Adam Horowitz: Thanks for watching.

Edward Kitsis: Thanks, guys.

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