“He’s looking for someone to tell him what to do next.” With those words, Ben summed up exactly how my head feels. What the hell is going on here? Going back to last season, there have been an amazingly successful string of “Lost” episodes that have changed everything we thought about this show. Wasn’t this show about a group of people trying to be rescued? Not so much anymore. Now, the brilliant writers of “Lost” have given us an incredible tale that really circles around one large question: What happened on that Island that changed the survivors of Flight 815?

I’ll get this out of the way really quick: What an episode. There are certain “Lost” episodes that really make me realize that you had to be involved with this show for quite some time. There is no way you would understand how incredibly out of character the flash-forward Sayid was acting. Here is a man who has seen and done some fairly despicable things and had really made it his mission to never be that person again. All this does is back up the overall feeling that whatever happened to get the Oceanic 6 off the Island, changed those six people.

We have seen Jack, Hurley, and Sayid in their after-Island lives and none of them seem to be having a great time. Hurley is dealing with some mental issues and extreme feelings of guilt regarding whatever happened to get them off the Island. Jack’s wheels completely spun off as he balanced an oxycodone and drinking habit between hopping flights and suicidal thoughts. Now, we see Sayid as an assassin for Ben. What happened to these three once noble characters to make them behave they way they will behave?

So “The Economist” was not an economist? Apparently, this man is somebody that wants to find Ben, even after they have left the Island. Ben has more lists than Rob Gordon from “High Fidelity” and this list seems to be titled “People To Kill By Ben Linus”. We now know that our Freighter Four want Ben and it doesn’t seem like they just want to chat him up. Somebody wants Ben dead and who better to snuff out those people than Iraqi torture expert Sayid Jarrah.

Let’s leave poor Sayid alone for a moment and move on to a few more slick moments from last night. So how much is John Locke behaving like Ben? Big time pal. He is manipulating situations and people in order to find out what he wants to know. Locke got Hurley to trick Sayid, Kate, and (quickly becoming a favorite of mine) Miles into thinking that Locke ditched him behind. He got Sayid in front of Ben and quickly turned the tables on both of them by turning Sayid’s attention from himself to Ben. It’s still up in the air as to Locke being right or wrong and I get the feeling it’s a bit of both.

Did Sawyer sum up exactly what all of our 815′ers need to realize? They have roofs over their heads, running water, what else do they need? Obviously, some bad things are happening to the people who do leave. Of course, we don’t know what will happen to the people that stay behind. When Sawyer asked Kate why she wants to go back, he asked the best question you could ask Kate. There is no reason for her to want to leave. On the Island, there are no handcuffs or jail cells waiting for her. I will also admit, I teared up when Sawyer told Kate he wanted her to stay and find out how long they could “play house”. I really think Sawyer knows that he needs to stay and he desperately wants Kate to be there with him. Unfortunately, we know that isn’t going to happen.

How slick did Sayid look? Seriously. What a ladies man…and what an awful golf swing. We know that Sayid is a romantic at heart and has a soft spot for the ladies. This is what makes his transformation into Ben’s killer more improbable. It’s an intriguing turn for a “Lost” character that seemed left out in Season Three. It’s a good thing because I feel that Naveen Andrews is one of the strongest performers on the entire show.

So what happens next? The previews seem like we will find out what happens to Kate next week. Will we find out who she was so worried about getting back to when she met with Jack in the future? Will she immediately be arrested when she hits U.S. soil? At this point, anything is possible.

As far as Daniel’s little experiment, I can’t even begin to think about that. It looks like the time being slower on the Island theory is right on track. The freighter fires a clock over to him and it was 30 minutes or so behind the clock that Daniel was carrying. It also was delayed in arriving. There is no doubt now that the 100 days the “Lost” folks have spent on the Island have moved slower than the rest of the world. That’s really all I have for that and it makes my head spin just thinking about it.