Lost: 02-13, “The Long Con”
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I am spellbound by last night’s episode of Lost! It was Sawyer-centric, which couldn’t please me more. Sawyer is my absolute favorite character on this show and without him, I’m not sure I could watch it. For once we had a good mix of island and flashback, without too much of either.
While Sawyer was off in the raft and on the other side of the island, his stash of goodies was taken and distributed among the group. This angered him, so he raided Jack’s medical supplies and took back whatever pills he had previously.
Jack and Locke agreed reluctantly that they would both have the combination to the gun vault as long as both of them consented should it need to be opened. Locke casually explained the row of Virgin Mary heroin statues by indicating they may have some therapeutic value. He didn’t take them out of the statues because he thought it would be unlucky to break seven Virgin Mary statues. That makes sense enough. My hopes of this being an episode where Locke loses all rational thought were squashed already, I could tell.
Episode spoilers inside! Lots of thoughts about this episode and some cool clues (or at least one clue) I picked up,
“...[Sawyer] gives Jack the same evil eye we’ve seen Charlie give a few times in recent episodes."
Locke suggested Jack keep all his medical supplies in the vault as well and likely insinuates that Sawyer has some pills he shouldn’t because Jack immediately runs to Sawyer’s tent to find them. This really pisses off Sawyer and he gives Jack the same evil eye we’ve seen Charlie give a few times in recent episodes.
Later, Sun was tending to her garden when a sack was thrown over her head, her hands were tied and she was dragged off. She was left unconscious not too far away. Once Sun is safely recovering, Sawyer and Kate investigate the scene of the crime. Sawyer points out the sack isn’t the same material as the one The Others used on her. He suggests perhaps someone staged this to convince people that an army needed to be formed. Thoughts immediately turn to Ana-Lucia. Kate goes to Jack with her suspicions.
“...Sawyer comes out of the jungle firing a gun."
Sawyer is dead on, because at the thought of The Others coming back to harm them, the group gets in an uproar and wants to arm themselves to go fight them. At Kate’s insistence, Sawyer runs to the hatch to warn Locke that they’re coming for the guns, which prompts Locke to move them while Sawyer stays behind to push the button. Jack indeed does come and finds the gun vault empty. He gets pissed and seeks out Locke, finding him on the beach. They’re about to get into a huge fight over it, when Sawyer comes out of the jungle firing a gun.
He gives a speech telling everyone he was pissed that while he was gone his stash was taken and everyone appointed Locke and Jack their leader. He points out that both of them were too wrapped up in each other to figure out he was playing them all along. Just like in his flashback, this was a long con and every step of the way he got other people to think and do what he wanted while they believed the ideas were theirs. Sawyer tells everyone he now controls the guns and there’s a new sheriff in town.
The final piece of the puzzle is put into place when we find out Charlie was the one who ‘attacked’ Sun. He and Sawyer were working together, which is fitting since now everyone hates them both.
I’m just not really sure what to think at this point. As I mentioned, I love Sawyer. I want him to be a good person deep down inside and I was really starting to believe that. A part of me wants to believe that Sawyer just can’t find the good in himself and that he resorts to these cons to keep him from getting close to anyone (just as Kate suggested). Sawyer had some good points in his speech and I’m not sure that him controlling the guns is a bad thing. This was a lesson they needed to learn before it got out of hand and everyone killed one another.
Evil Charlie is rarely seen without his hood on and half of his face in the shadows. I don’t know how to explain his actions, other than perhaps that illness that was spreading through Danielle’s group. When Sawyer offered him some heroin, Charlie refused it. I want to like Charlie as well, but that just isn’t happening.
Did anyone notice the bullet wound in Sawyer’s shoulder? There’s no way it’s been more than two weeks on the island since he was shot and it’s almost completely healed. People do seem to heal quickly on the island, so perhaps that was a clue to the island’s healing powers.
The big thing I noticed was Kate’s mom in the diner where Sawyer was meeting that guy to whom he owed money. I went back and found some screenshots from “What Kate Did” and Diane the waitress who served Sawyer is definitely Kate’s mom. That means Sawyer was running this con in the same state Kate lived (can’t remember which). I don’t know why that connection is exciting to me, but I love it when the lives of the islanders interconnect with one another!
The whole Hurley/Sayid subplot was a nice , happy addition to this week’s dark episode. I hated Sayid’s relationship with Shannon, but I’ll give Naveen Andrews props for convincing me that Sayid was really devastated by her death. Hurley’s declaration that the radio signal could be coming from “any time” was interesting. Was that foreshadowing, or just a nod to all the time-travel theories going around? Wasn’t the Dharma initiative experimenting with time as well?
Next week promises to be super exciting. They capture who they believe is an Other and Sayid slips on the torturer hat again to get information out of him. It also looks like the clock is going to hit zero this time (for real, hopefully, not like the last time they teased us this way) and I can’t wait to see what happens. Hopefully it’s something cool like Walt materializing before them or The Other they captured turning to sand or something.
This season got off to a really slow start, but I am now enjoying the show again just as much as I did the first season. If you had any thoughts about last night’s episode or picked up on any clues, please share them!
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Posted on 01.12.06Rating:
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sHa shinizzle
oooh~ Sawyer!
damn it, haven’t watch it yet. Still trying to finish downloading this ep *sigh* But boy oh boy, you make me sooo freaking eager to watch this ep.
ps : this is very random but I love your favicon. It’s cute 
Carla
I was spellbound by this episode too, I am a HUGE Sawyer groupie. I only like him on the show though, he’s kinda weird in interviews. I thought this was the best episode yet.
There’s a really good clue when you look up the book Locke was holding when he was “alphabetizing” the books. The story in that book is really interesting… heard that in a podcast.
