Recon

“Recon” might not have been the strongest effort of the season, but it was still a solid episode of Lost. I wasn’t as invested emotionally as I was expecting to be in the first Sawyer episode of the season – and maybe the last ever (gah!)– but between the Island and the Sideways world, there was plenty to sink your teeth into. I’ll give this one everything I’ve got, but I kind of feel like Chad Fox taking the mound for the 10th day in a row right now. Work has worn me down. I’m not expecting any brilliant insights or even the usual level of mediocre analysis, but we’ll see what happens. Let’s get to it.

The Island happenings had two points of focus for me. I’ll begin with the first – Sawyer’s motives. The last we saw him he had just agreed to join the MIB in his quest to leave the Island. He restated that position to Jin at the beginning of this episode. The promise the MIB made to get him the Island really sucked Sawyer in. But to borrow words from Ben Linus, “What is it you’re so desperately trying to get back to?” Clementine? Did Kate mention something to him about her at some point? I can’t remember. Juliet? Does he think “It worked” means that she might exist somewhere off the Island in 2008? Could it be that the 2008 off-Island world is the Sideways world?

That would go nicely with my Season 2/3/4 way of thinking about the Island. Things like Ben saying “God can’t see this Island any better than the rest of the world,” led me to believe there was some bubble surrounding the Island. Other people theorized that pushing the button actually was sending the Island back in time 108 minutes with each push. And the weird time shifting we saw in Season 4 with Faraday’s rocket test and the doctor showing up dead on the Island days before he actually died lend even more credence to that line of thinking. So let’s go back to that bubble idea. Juliet blows up the bomb. “It worked”, so somewhere Juliet is still alive. The explosion activates the same energy that moves the Island with the donkey wheel, sending our Losties forward in time to 2008. But the “bubble” somehow preserves everything from the original timeline on the Island while the outside world exists as if the Island sunk. Maybe? Bueller? See, I told you I was worn out.

So we know Sawyer wants to get off the Island, but we don’t know why. Fine. But how is he going to do it? Is he really going to go along with the MIB? The rest of the episode works toward an answer to that. After a nice little heart-to-heart, the MIB sends Sawyer over to Hydra Island to check everything out over there, expressing his confidence in him by saying, “You are the best liar I ever met”. How nice. After a scene on an outrigger where I was 25% sure Sawyer was going to get shot, he lands on Hydra, scopes out the scene, get’s captured by some annoying woman named Zoe, and drops my favorite line of the episode, a perfectly smug “Take me to your leader”.

Surprisingly, Zoe obliges and leads Sawyer onto a submarine. This eliminated all the suspense about who the leader might be, as we saw Charles Widmore aboard a submarine just last week. Whatever. Our mystery itch was scratched when Sawyer commented on a locked door inside the sub (Who could it be? Penny? DES? My favorite guess? Walt.). We get some solid banter between Widmore and Sawyer, before Sawyer offers him this deal: he lies to the MIB and brings him to Hydra Island with his pants down in exchange for a trip off the Island. Deal. But when Sawyer gets back to Camp MIB, he spills the beans, telling him everything about Widmore, his men and his Sonic Fences, Travel Edition.

Wait, what? So he’s really with the MIB? Not so fast. After he walks away, Sawyer walks over to Kate. She asks him the same thing, “What are you doing running errands for Locke?” Sawyer says he’s not running anybody’s errands. He has a plan (he is a thinking man after all), and that plan is to let Widmore and the MIB and whoever else fight it out while he and Kate sneak off the Island. In the submarine.

Now, this was the second time a character said he was going to leave the Island in a way that seems a little crazy. First, Locke said he was going to fly away in Ajira 316, which CRASH LANDED on the Island. Now Sawyer’s going to pilot a submarine. I don’t think of these plans were too well thought out. No matter. I was thrilled that Sawyer wasn’t just the MIB’s errand boy anymore. He was being true to his character, living his motto – “Every man for himself”. But this is post-Dharma Sawyer, a man that once went by the name LaFluer. He cares about other people and knows that he needs them in his life, not just to help him when he needs it, but also to make him feel like a whole person. He’s going to bring Kate with him and I’d bet at least Hurley and Miles too. The scene at the Hydra cages where he picks up Kate’s dress was a reminder to him how much she used to mean to him and how much he still cares for her. I wouldn’t go out and say “SKate” is back in business, but you never know…

The second Island point I’d like to cover is the recent character development of the MIB. I thought that his line from “LA X” where he said “There’s no need for name-calling” was just a throwaway joke. Instead, it seems to be part of his obsession with order and manners, respect and subservience. He didn’t like it when Sawyer questioned him in front of the others, even though it was a rather harmless remark, and he made a point of accepting Sawyers sarcastic apology. His response to Claire was like that of a father scolding a misbehaving child. And he made a sincere apology to Kate after Claire attacked her. All strange. And then there was the whole story about his crazy mother. At first, I was thinking he was speaking as John Locke, but he wasn’t. He said he still had “issues” he was sorting through. Well, he’s on the Island, the best place in the world to sort out issues! Look around you MIB! But no, he wants to leave. I’m not going to pretend to know what any of this means, just something that needs to be noted and remembered.

I’m only going to touch briefly on the Sideways world because I’m running out of gas. It started off with Sawyer (or is just James Ford?) in a situation we’ve seen him in many times. In bed with a hottie, conveniently late for some important meeting, he rushes out the door, but as he grabs his briefcase it pops open and spills stacks of cash all over the bed. It’s the same con we’ve seen him pull numerous times, but this girl doesn’t bite. She pulls a gun on him, he pulls one on her, and like last week with Ilana and Ben, we’ve got ourselves a standoff. But instead of bearing his soul, Sawyer tells the lady he’s a cop and that when he says the magic word, a SWAT team will barge in and takes her down. She doesn’t believe him, but when he says, “LaFluer”, that’s exactly what happens.

The rest of the Sideways stuff was entertaining enough, but I don’t have a ton to say about it (and my train is getting close to Cary). I loved the Sawyer-Miles partnership. I mean, Miles is probably the best friend Sawyer’s ever had. He had always been a loner, but he spent 3 years with Miles in Dharmaville, and it seemed like they’d gotten pretty close. He asked about him in the Island story this week too. It was nice to see them together off the Island. And I loved that Sawyer chose to open up to him with his Anthony Cooper secret almost as much as I loved the scene where he was calling everyone he could find with that name (Oh, the blood-thirst is unquenchable!).

This was critical for me. I’ve had a growing concern that this Sideways world was getting a bit too cute. Between Alex being a student of Ben’s, Ethan working at Claire’s hospital, and Keamy extorting Sayid’s brother for a loan, I started getting afraid that the Sideways world was just a fun excuse to bring everyone back together and to throw crazy curveballs at the audience (Woah, Jack has a kid!). But instead of saying, “Look! Instead of being a bad guy, Sideways Sawyer’s a cop! It’s the opposite!”, it showed us that Sawyer’s still the same guy; he just happened to make one different choice in his life. The same anger and hate still drives him, but he’s following through on it in a different way. Loved that. If this Sawyer-Cooper showdown is half as good as the one in “The Brig”, we’re all in for a very big treat.

So will Sideways Sawyer get his revenge or let his anger go? I was of the opinion back in Season 3 that Sawyer didn’t need to kill Cooper to put his mind at ease, that he’d already turned the page by bonding with the rest of the group. He became a dependable and selfless man at some point in Season 3, and the effects of that played out in Season 4 and in his time as LaFluer. I’ve wavered on when that page was actually turned over the years, but either way I think he could find a similar, non-vengeful, path to peace in this Sideways world. Live together, die alone, right?

Richard episode this week. It’s going to be redonkulous. It’s titled “Ab Aeterno”, which apparently means “Since the beginning of time”. That means these flashbacks could do anything. Literally cover any point in history. I’m doing my best to control my expectations, but I’m having no luck doing so with my excitement.

Until next week.