Lost Re-view: Confidence Man

The next episode in Lost's first season delved in Sawyer's background. It was written by co-creator Damon Lindelof, and is notable as the first episode of the series in which a character's flashbacks don't include information on how he or she wound up on oceanic Flight 815. The message here is that this particular detail isn't key to understanding Sawyer's current behavior on the Island.

That behavior was rather difficult to understand as you watched this episode unfold the first time around. Sawyer seems to be withholding asthma medication from Shannon purely for his own amusement, and is willing to endure a beating from Jack and torture by Sayid just to keep the game going. He offers to trade the medicine for a kiss from Kate, only to reveal he never had it in the first place -- and all of this seems to serve no purpose other than to make people hate him.

After you've seen the whole episode, you realize that this is exactly the point. He wants everybody else to hate him as much as he hates himself. He'd certainly rather be hated than pitied. ("It doesn't have to be this way," says Jack, referring to Sawyer's impending torture. "Yeah, it does," replies Sawyer, referring to his own self-loathing.)

Once Sawyer was on a righteous quest to hunt down the con artist he blames for the death of his parents. But along the way, to make ends meet, he became a con artist himself. And now, rather than use the Island as an opportunity to reform himself, as others have done, he is trapped with his own self-loathing. He has only enough of a moral compass left to give up a con when a young child is involved, and to decide that he deserves to be punished. And he'll goad anyone willing into being the instrument of that punishment.

There's an interesting arc to the Sawyer-Kate relationship in this episode. For one, this is the first time they kiss. Actually, it's a great moment, brilliantly covered in a single take, and well acted by both Evangeline Lilly and Josh Holloway. You can see the moment where Kate actually gives in and starts kissing back... and the moment just a split second later where she recoils at the realization she's done that.

But more importantly, I think Sawyer gains a measure of respect for Kate in this episode. Until now, he's thought of her as "Freckles" -- cute and harmless. But near the beginning of this episode, when he's playfully teasing her and she suddenly challenges him about the letter she's seen him reading in secret, he instantly switches gears. I said he's looking for anybody that's willing to punish him, and suddenly he realizes that Kate can be that too. He forces her to read the "letter to Sawyer" -- leading her to think that he's the recipient, not the writer -- and a short while later is pressing for her to kiss him, basically against her will. It's all calculated to make her hate him, to set her up as another person willing to punish him.

But Kate never really falls for it. First she just plays off his sleazy come-ons. "You sure know how to make a girl feel special, Sawyer," she says sarcastically. (Though we see that true and literally in the next scene, a flashback where he's conning a married woman.) "Nobody's that disgusting."

Later, Kate's interjecting herself between Jack and Sawyer for the first time, stopping the two from coming to blows. Then she tries to stop Sayid and Jack from carting him off for a round of torture. (Though this may have as much to do with concern over Jack -- mentally -- as Sawyer -- physically.)

But Sawyer is determined to go as far as he can down the dark road. When he's stabbed quite brutally through the arm by Sayid, and Jack is literally pinching the artery shut until more help can arrive, Sawyer tries to get Jack to let go and let him die. "If the tables were turned, I'd watch you die." And yet, at the end of the episode, there is a tiny bit of good still in him. He can't quite bring himself to burn his letter to the real Sawyer, to destroy that last symbol of... take your pick, his childhood, his quest for justice and not cash, whatever.

Sawyer isn't the only character sent down a dark path this episode. It's a theme for the hour, verbalized by Jack: "We're not savages, Kate. Not yet." Interesting qualifier, "not yet." Jack himself takes major steps in that direction a short while later, sanctioning the torture of Sawyer.

Sayid is the man wielding the bamboo shoots, though, and this episode is setting up directly for the next one to focus on him. He's not at all reluctant about the torture, and suggests it to Jack. (He's under someone's influence a bit here, but I'll come back to that.) Perhaps we could say, knowing that Sayid and Shannon end up a couple later on, that it's partly because it's her at risk that he feels so moved to such an extreme. But I think that might be trying too hard to put a positive spin on something thoroughly unheroic.

Ultimately, it's the sight of the blood when Sawyer gets stabbed that makes Sayid come to his senses. He's immediately horrified at what he's done, and how short a journey it was for him to get there emotionally, and embarks on a sort of spiritual quest at the end of the episode. And he really seems to think he might be leaving for good. He says to Kate before he departs: "I hope we meet again."

But if you ask me, the one who should be taking the redemption quest is Locke. However dark Sayid and Jack go this episode, you could argue Locke goes darker. Remember, having seen the rest of the season, we know that it's Locke who's responsible for knocking Sayid out and smashing his transceiver in the previous episode. And yet, unprompted and under no suspicion himself, Locke suggests that Sawyer might be responsible, explains how it might have happened, and just generally throws Sawyer under the bus. This last bit of voodoo is what pushes Sayid over the edge, but in full context, I have to ask: what the hell, Locke?

All this "Dark Side" stuff in this episode. How appropriate then that it's the first time Hurley gives us a Star Wars reference. (When Jack helps Shannon through an asthma attack, Hurley says "that was like a Jedi moment.")

Fortunately, some of the characters are standing on higher ground this episode. Sun is able to craft a eucalyptus remedy for Shannon. (Though Jin noticeably bristles, apparently at his wife doing something good for anyone who's not him.) Boone is about to storm off to beat on Sawyer, but does the right thing and stays at Shannon's side instead.

And then there's a sweet little side plot between Claire and Charlie. He wants her to move to the cave, but she's determined to stay on the beach "for when we get rescued." (Ah, she still hasn't given that up.) So the bet is on for Charlie to find her some peanut butter in exchange for her agreement to relocate. Charlie ultimately charms her with a jar of imaginary peanut butter, and the scene is more touching, I think, than when he would procure the real thing for her later on in season two.

A few other odds and ends about the episode. The book Watership Down makes a reappearance. It turns out it was Boone's book -- lending a possible dimension of intelligence to a character who hasn't always come off too bright so far. Sawyer is less high-minded about the book: "It's about bunnies." (Something that would come back in season three.)

There's a nice moment of continuity from the last episode. When Jack punches Sawyer, he grasps in pain at his shoulder that was dislocated the day before.

Hurley's lack of weight loss is addressed on screen, when Charlie suggests that he must have a secret food stash. At the time, I'm sure this was a simple beat for laughs, and an acknowledgment by the writers that "yeah, we know he ought to be losing weight, but he's not going to." But interestingly enough, in the next season, there's an actual plot point of Hurley hiding food, exactly as he is accused of falsely here.

And lastly, this is yet another episode to end with a music montage. For the first time, though, the "source" of this music is not something actually identified on screen -- as in, from Hurley's Walkman. The music simply comes from nowhere. It's a potent selection, but perhaps the writers felt the falseness of this. In the future, they'd turn to composer Michael Giacchino to score their concluding montages.

I'd rate this episode good, but not great. The Sawyer back story is strong, and vital to setting up the long road of redemption that would unfold for him over the many seasons. But the behavior of many of other characters is sudden, unearned, or (in the case of Locke) even outright unexplainable. Overall, I'd call it a B.