Sawyer and Kate are at it again. Sigh. Thanks, you wacky Lost writers. We didn’t see that coming.
Outside of giving Holloway some welcome screen time to flesh out his presumed allegiance with Smokey, last night’s episode of Lost was mostly just some padded calm before the storm. The title was ‘Recon’, the last intel gathering activity that usually precedes a battle. That, if nothing else, is welcome news.
On the sideways front, there were some interesting if unrevealing twists. The best of these is that James Ford became a cop instead of a criminal; he describes the discrepancy as a single choice to go one way instead of the other. Also satisfying from a fan perspective, is finding that Miles (Ken Leung) is his partner on the force and when Miles plans to set Sawyer up with a date, it turns out to be everyone’s favorite redhead named after an English writer, C.S. Lewis (Rebecca Mader).
It makes sense, however, that James is still haunted by the death of his parents as a result of the actions of Anthony Cooper and that he still wants to track him down. Miles suspects Jim’s recent trip away wasn’t actually for relaxation, and has sent Charlotte in as recon of his own. When Ford finally does confess to Miles that he’s been planning to find and then kill Cooper, the conversation is cut short by a car smashing into their vehicle. The driver of the car; Kate Austen. Ford tracks her down on foot and then apprehends her, ending the sideways flashes with the reunion of Kate and Sawyer.
Anything of substance to be had here? Well, most compelling is the fact that the man fans have fallen in love with in on the island doesn’t really exist in sideways world. There is no ‘Sawyer’ for Ford except the con artist he’s been chasing since childhood. The tragedy of Sawyer was that he fell into the very practice that robbed him of his parents, and here he’s using that experience to save others from it. The trajectory looks the same, save for something else; this James has friends before the island. Miles might be the catalyst that prevents Jim from becoming a murderer.
It’s nice to see that Sawyer and Miles have a strong connection in the sideways world, as their interaction in previous seasons was what gave the latter a sense of purpose and presence. I’m sure the writers made the decision to team him with James here not because it’s an integral part of the plot, but because their camaraderie was so effective before–and it would be hard to buy Hurley as a cop. I feel like the same is true of Mader’s cameo. It doesn’t really serve much except to drop another face in our lap. There’s a decent amount of time setting it up, with no payoff, not as of yet anyway.
A question I have: is Anthony Cooper still Locke’s dad? I wonder about that because there was a brief implication in ‘The Substitute’ that Locke’s dad would be invited to any kind of wedding they had, obviously a far cry from the man who pushed Locke out of the window, stole his kidney, etc. It wasn’t clear then, if Cooper was Locke’s father, although I suspect the sideways world is keeping all of those relational details. If he wasn’t pushed out the window by pops, how did it happen? Are the forces of sideways universe converging on Locke’s wedding day?
That’s all there really was to the sideways stuff, save for a poignant but kind of dopey scene where Sawyer watches Little House on the Prairie and mopes. After last week’s death of Merlin Olson, seeing those clips was odd.
On the island, we learned…well, not much. Sawyer is playing both sides as usual, and putting his conman skills to practice; like Cadmus sowing the dragon teeth, he’s pushing Widmore and Smokey into each other’s orbit so they can have a throw-down. Seeing as how both of those guys are men of violence and lies, I wonder if they are even enemies. Sawyer can usually spot a con, so if that’s what they are doing, it’s odd he doesn’t see it. Unless he simply doesn’t care.
Claire is running around frazzled and crazed, and poor Emile De Ravin is having a really difficult time out-acting her hair. Terry O’Quinn delivers the best performance of the week as he finally settles Smokey down into his Locke skin and starts really behaving like the man. It makes sense why he chose Locke, he’s the guy everyone is most likely to follow instinctively. Unlike the real man, who was at heart a loner, this Locke takes the time to lie away the fears of his followers. Creating a tension between the persona he’s inhabiting and Smokey’s own mysterious nature is the gift O’Quinn brings to the role. And he’s still got great chemistry with Sawyer.
The situation on the Hydra island with the plane survivors all dead and Widmore and his people installed o n the beach, is interesting but not surprising. What Widmore tells Sawyer isn’t surprising either, and while I’m ready to believe him, I don’t know if we should. At any rate, a showdown between the show’s two big heavies would be welcome.
Strangest part of this week’s episode is Smokey’s mention of his own crazy mother and the effect it had on him, relating this to Kate in regards to Claire and Aaron. Is he lying, and if so, to what end? He claims he only wants off the island, but he seems to be setting up a larger endgame. I’m looking forward to learning the lowdown on who and what the black smoke really is.
Which brings us back to Kate and Sawyer. After tonight, it’s become clear that the tension and relationship that’s been built between the two isn’t going away. In some ways, I guess that makes sense. Like his namesake Sawyer who had Huck Finn, Jim finds in Kate a fellow outlaw and rebel to society’s rules. Twain’s protagonists gravitated towards each other because of their ornery natures and because at the end of the day, they were likely to be the only ones still in each other’s company. The dippy romantic subplot aside, that’s really what’s been structured here in James and Kate. Austen is Ford’s Huck (or is it the other way around) and when the world starts falling apart, you can expect them to gravitate towards each other. Will it matter on a larger scale when the war starts?
Is there any significance to the fact that when James returns to find Kate on the beach, she’s roasting a rabbit, the animal most often linked to Sawyer and his journey?
Next week, we see where Richard Alpert has been on the island. Will he have a flash in sideways world?
What were your thoughts about this week’s episode? Were the writers just marking time or was it a worthwhile story to tell?
Check out my other recaps and come back next week for 6.9!
It all sounds like a half-baked re-imaging of Oscar award winning film “Crash”, except more pointless. *sighs*