Summary: In flashbacks, Sawyer does a long con on a woman named Cassidy who has $600K. He falls in love with her and doesn't want to continue, but eventually he decides to do it anyways and he takes her money and leaves. On the island, Sun is attacked and everyone gets riled up in fear of attacks from the others. Kate and Sawyer suspect Ana Lucia is responsible and tried to scare everybody into joining the army. Sawyer warns Locke that Jack is coming to get the guns so Locke hides them. Locke and Jack get in a blowout, but Sawyer reveals that he tricked everyone and stole the guns. Kate is disgusted by Sawyer's actions and claims that he wants to be hated. Later he meets with Charlie, who was working with Sawyer and is the one who attacked Sun and followed Locke to the guns.
The Good: I love watching cons. I find stories that pay attention to details absolutely fascinating because they reward rewatches and include lots of lovely little details that are simply satisfying. As such, I loved the conning themes in this episode. It was really fun to see Sawyer execute two cons, one in flashbacks and one on the island. The way that everything slotted together by the end of the episode was lovely. This episode felt like it had much more focus and heart put into it than most episodes this season. The gun story is pretty well set up. I wish this episode was the direct follow up to "The Hunting Party" because a lot of the plot involves the fallout of the confrontation in the climax of that episode. The tension in the camp surrounding the others increased naturally, and as a result there was much more emphasis on the Jack/Locke conflict as they both approach the new threat completely differently. But enough about the plot. This episode is all about Sawyer, who has been given consistently great development. This season he has felt a little bit adrift (he's done nothing but flirt with Kate for the past few episodes) and there wasn't much character development surrounding him. That changed here as Sawyer does the most despicable thing he has done since season 1. We learn a lot about why Sawyer is the aggressive and vile man he is despite showing potential to be a better person. As Kate says at the end of the episode, Sawyer wants to be despised by everyone, because if he can be redeemed for his crimes, than so can the Mr. Sawyer who ruined his life. And for a man driven by his desire for revenge, confronting the possibility that Mr. Sawyer may actually be a decent man isn't possible. So Sawyer compensates by making himself hated by everyone, especially the ones he loves, who are Cassidy and Kate in this case. It's a wonderful bit of character exploration that shows us that Sawyer isn't a bad person at heart, but he wants to believe that he's a bad person. This also does a good job of explaining why Sawyer has been a mix of hateful and lovable throughout the series, as sometimes his true nature seeps out and he isn't able to be that hateful person he knows he must be. There were some pleasing moments of good writing in this episode. Sayid has been in the background for a while now, so the writers check in with him in a nice little side story to show him trying to move past his grief. I also liked the little touch of Sawyer losing his glasses on the raft and Kate having to read to him. Lastly, there was another random Easter Egg as Kate's mom appeared in Sawyer's flashback with Gordy. The Bad: The plot to build an army is a good idea but the execution here was pretty bad. The main issue is we see absolutely nothing of the community. The extras are hardly used in this episode and we aren't shown Ana Lucia and Jack actually doing anything. Everyone talks about making an army, but we never see anybody actually making the army. It's a classic case of the writers failing to abide the "show don't tell" rule, and that hurts the episode. There's too much exposition here which could've been replaced with us actually seeing how the camp feels about training an army. Charlie's story arc isn't working at all. He's become such a cartoony evil now, and couple that with his comical hood and we might as well call him "Darth Charlie". He's an utter prick in this episode as he is motivated purely by hate and anger, working only to hurt others instead of benefiting himself. His attack on Sun is quite shocking and it's really hard to buy into Charlie stooping so low as to do that. The Unknown: What does Sawyer plan to do now that he has all of the guns? Where is he hiding them anyways? Hurley makes a curious comment regarding the music transmission that Sayid picked up. He notes that the transmission could be from "any time". Could being unstuck in time or something like that possibly explain how this island has never been found before? Best Moment: Sawyer's speech declaring he's in charge again was very well done. Character of the Episode: Sawyer. Conclusion: This was a really fun episode that gave us more strong development for Sawyer. Score: 70
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
Categories
All
|