The good thing about being in a couple that everyone hates, of course, is that you at least have each other. The defining point about all of the couples on my Worst Lost Couple list is that these people don’t even have that. Not only were they not right in the eyes of everyone else, they were so not right they didn’t even manage to stay together! That’s what makes them the worst. Here are my Top 5 in order of least worst to worst worst.
Sayid and Nadia
You know that time when Jacob stopped Sayid to ask for directions? And Nadia then wandered out into the road and turned to talk to Sayid and got hit by a car and was killed? And how we all thought that potentially Jacob was a bit of a swine for having been involved in this unfortunate event? Perhaps we’ve got it all wrong. Perhaps Jacob was doing Sayid a favour.
I mean, sure, Sayid and Nadia may have been introduced as destined for one another since they’d gone to school together but come on. Is that really enough of a foundation to base a relationship? Not really. And neither, I suspect, is forming a relationship based on the torturer-tortured dynamic. If Sayid was any kind of proper Iraqi patriot he’d have dunked Nadia’s hands in acid, clamped crocodile clips to her nipples and run the volts of a car battery through her and then got to work with some amateur dentistry using pliers. She was a traitor! She was planting bombs about the place! And what does Sayid do, the dumbstruck idiot, he lets her go! He even takes a bullet for her to cover her escape! What a sucker, right?
And we’ve not got the full story about Nadia either. She fucking crops up buying a house in America, getting her ass mugged in London and may have even been working for one of Widmore’s pharmaceutical companies (special Lost points to the fan that can name the episode where I got that piece of information from).
Point is, I don’t trust her. She’s up to something, and her turning up all doe-eyed and happy when Sayid “Oceanic Payout Millionaire” Jarrah turns up doesn’t make me any less cynical.
But hey, this is all about how they are as a couple, right? Well pardon me but Sayid has hardly been a paragon of faithfulness. See exhibit A:
To be fair, this is Shannon we’re talking about. That bitch be smoking. And he was facing the possibility of being marooned on a desert Island for the rest of his life. Shacking up with a hot blonde early doors was a pretty slick move, but hardly in keeping with the idea of Sayid and Nadia as postcard heartthrobs.
Point is I don’t particularly trust Nadia and I don’t trust Sayid’s motivations for getting with her (some fucked up childhood sweetheart torturer complex is not the bedrock of a great relationship). They don’t make a good couple. Ergo, Jacob did Sayid a favour.
Charles and Eloise
The only reason this pair haven’t stormed up to a higher position in the list is purely on the basis that we haven’t been shown quite enough of them together to produce an entirely damning account of what they were all about. But what we do know is messed up enough to damn them all the same.
Let’s recap what we do know. Charles and Eloise were once young and on the Island as minor ranking members of The Others.
At some stage during this time they got together and, whilst doing so, managed to elevate themselves into some strange position of joint chiefs of The Others. (I bet there were a lot of pissed off Others who hated them as a couple right around that time!) They had some sex. Daniel was conceived. It’s unclear about whether he was born on the Island or not, but it doesn’t really make much difference here. To be fair, given the slightly protective way Charles put his hand on Eloise’s stomach just before she went off on some crazy-ass mission with Alpert and Jack, it’s clear there was some affection.
But let’s not get carried away.
It eventually transpired that Charles had been making visits off-Island to bang some other, unknown woman, that eventually produced baby Penny. We don’t know who this other woman is but it doesn’t matter (at least so far!). Charles went and got himself banished off the Island as a consequence. At some stage Eloise went and lived off-Island, too. I get the impression she was gone before Charles was banished, but that’s total speculation.
So that’s the story so far. Now the reasoning why they made for a rotten couple. First up:
“Thanks a bunch, mum.”
Yeah, Eloise is some mother. Knowing that she eventually shoots her own son she raises him up entirely in a manner than ensures he gets to the Island, fully-versed in time travelling lore, so he can get a bullet for his troubles. Widmore himself even turns up to get him on The Freighter that takes him there. Nice work, dad. Meanwhile there’s Charles making such a great fist of raising his daughter she goes behind his back to find the Island, rescue the man of her dreams and then never have anything more to do with her father again.
Parent role models they are not.
But inherently that’s their trouble. In their own twisted way I believe they aren’t fundamentally bad people when it comes to the people they love. Eloise loved Daniel, and there was a sad tragedy about how her life played out. Charles, too, evidently cares intently for his daughter to the extent that him being cut out of her life, and the life of his grandson, almost makes me feel sorry for him. And maybe that’s what went wrong with the pair of them as a couple: they cared for each other but they were just fundamentally bad at making it work.
As their bitter meeting at the end of The Variable shows, these were a couple split apart by a duty to the Island and the sacrifices they made in service to it. Somehow I get the feeling there isn’t a reconciliation on the horizon for this pair.
Boone and Shannon
I think you can already see where I’m headed with this. OK, so they weren’t properly brother and sister but they both knew it was wrong.
Come on, Boone. We know your step-sister is hot. When your mother got married and Shannon was slung into the deal you probably couldn’t believe your freakishly blue eyes. But that’s not good enough reason to sex pest the girl into bed. Shannon was a mess. Her dad was dead. Your wicked witch of a mother had denied her any rightful inheritance. And then you waltz in with your knight in shining armour headgames and she finally gives in, not altogether willingly, and you bone her. Nice.
Not that I am letting Shannon off here, either. She’d already become well-versed in the art of being a major cocktease to get what she wanted. But that’s no reason to just give in and let your lovesick, half-brother turn up and fuck you!
Fair enough if this night of passion between the two had forged a special loving relationship, forbidden as it was, where their love was so strong it could not be denied by social taboos. Only that’s not how it turned out. They bickered all the way onto Oceanic 815. Bickered some more. Then Locke told Boone to get over her, and he did, and that prompted him to get in a small plane and fall off a cliff in it and be killed. And then Shannon got all emo for a while before shagging Sayid and getting shot and killed.
Moral of the story: Don’t fuck your brother or sister, even if there’s a bit of a grey area about their sibling status and they’re really hot.
Paulo and Nikki
Riddle-me-this. Who was the most disliked out of Paulo and Nikki? Answer: Paulo.
This line of logic is relatively easy to figure. As Nikki and Paulo have been universally considered as a couple ever since the moment they appeared, they have only ever been discussed as a twosome. As in, what was the worst thing about Season 3? Nikki and Paulo. Not just Nikki. Never just Paulo. It’s always the two of them together.
So taking the point that the pair of them are universally equally disliked, how can I determine that Paulo is the most disliked? Easy. Paulo actually liked Nikki. Nikki didn’t particularly like Paulo. Ergo, Paulo is the most disliked out of the two. Poor Paulo.
To be fair I personally prefer Nikki as well, mainly because of this:
As events transpired they pretty much turned out to be the poster couple for how amorality will ruin romance. Paulo loved Nikki. Nikki loved diamonds. Paulo hid the diamonds to keep Nikki loving him. Nikki found out and left him paralysed in the jungle. As you do. Only then she got herself paralysed (potentially by some kind of Black Smoke interference, if you believe the noises you hear during that scene) and the pair of them, with their precious diamonds, were buried alive.
Fun times.
Even before they boarded Oceanic 815 Nikki had been banging some old guy and Paulo was posing as a waiter who poisoned his food – they were thieving, murderous cheats right from the get-go. A bit like Sawyer, in fact. But where Sawyer got a redemptive plot arc Paulo and Nikki came in to the game too late to ever be given a chance to right their previous wrongs on the Island.
Nikki and Paulo, even by the producers, have become the archetypal example of when Lost was at its most shite – when the programme was spinning its wheels desperate for an end-date and padding proceedings out with new ideas that weren’t always sure to work. And the ultimate kick in the face for these pair is highlighted in the promo poster for Season 6.
Look at all those old faces. Mr. Eko. Ana Lucia. Boone and Shannon, even! Even Libby gets a look-in, and she didn’t even get her own centric episode! But no Nikki and Paulo. The Lost couple so bad even the creators can’t be bothered resurrecting them from the dead for the last and final season along with pretty much every other fucker else.
Jack and Kate
Let’s get something straight right from the top. I like the idea of Jack being the leading man of Lost, and his story being a grand arc that ultimately results in him being heroic and good. Furthermore, I want him and Kate to get together and be the golden couple of the show. I am a Jater. You don’t like that? Here’s my asshole. Dine out.
Jack and Kate living together in love forever, happily ever after: That’s what I want and hope for. But what I’ve got, as of the end of Season 5, is the exact and precise opposite. Jack and Kate are a couple that went all kinds of wrong and yet because of their status, because they are the ones that should have gone every kind of right, this is why they have topped my list as Lost’s Worst Couple.
I’d like to say that the only reason they failed was because they got together in flashforward, post-Island land, when the world was an unhappy place for the Oceanic 6. I’d like to say that, but it’s not true. The seeds of an unhappy union were all present and correct back when they were on the Island.
They fell out when Jack wanted to move into the caves and Kate didn’t. . . They fell out when Kate lied to him as she tried to use him to get the silver case she wanted. . . When they first kissed in the jungle – when Kate first kissed Jack – she then backed off and left him confused. And then not long after she was clambering all over Sawyer’s dick. On CCTV. For Jack’s viewing pleasure.
Not that Jack is entirely without blame either. Consider:
Neither of them made a particularly grand job of their previous marriages either. Jack and Sarah was a lamentable slide into unhappiness, and Kate and Kevin (remember him?) was soon over, pretty much after Kate drugged him and ran off. If anything Jack and Kate deserve each other purely on the basis that they’ve been dicks to pretty much anyone they got romantically involved with in the past.
Tom Brennan, Kate’s childhood sweetheart, shot dead in a car, springs to mind.
In flashforward land Jack still fancied Kate but couldn’t quite get his head around the fact that she had nicked someone else’s baby and was passing it off as her own. He gave it a whirl, mind, but finding out that Aaron was more closely related to him than the person professing to be his mother has gotta mess with a man’s head!
Jack turned to drugs and booze. Kate started lying, making strange phone calls and keeping secret appointments. They didn’t do themselves any favours, did they? And so they fell apart and, barring one bizarre fling after Kate had ditched Aaron with his grandmother (she does like to get some hard dick during times of emotional turmoil!), they were basically the couple that should have it all and instead had royally fucked it all up.
So they’re the worst couple by default. They should be the best yet through their own actions they’ve made a disaster site of themselves and so are the worst.
Kate: “You know, I don’t like the new you. I liked the old you, who wouldn’t just sit around and wait for things to happen.”
Jack: “You didn’t like the old me, Kate.”
It all sounds pretty hopeless, all set down like this. But let’s not lose hope. Remember The Incident, when a battered and bloody Jack was hellbent on marching to The Swan site to detonate Jughead. Who was there? Kate was there. Looking to tend to him and be with him even though she thought he was getting things all wrong.
I’m telling you, they’re going to get together and it’s going to be beautiful. And when Lost is all finished and done you’ll be able to go back to the start and watch that first scene of them together, on the beach, her stitching his wound, and you’re going to realise you’re watching the start of a wonderful relationship. . .
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