Lost 1:16, "Outlaws"
Feb. 16th, 2005 11:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cleolindaA question from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rachnye that I'd really like to look into: does anyone have the old Aerosmith video "Cryin' " (you know, the first big one that Alicia Silverstone did for them) around anywhere? "I swear Josh Holloway is the guy in it that steals Alicia Silverstone's backpack and then runs away, only to be chased down and beaten by our leading lady. Can anyone else confirm this?" I want photographic proof, people, because that is too funny. Breaking news: HEE!
Previously on Lost: Jack's dad is an alkie. Jack himself is a ratfink. Sawyer isn't really Sawyer, but he did have a tortured childhood.
Previously on Lost's previews: Jack and Sawyer go head to head for The Love of Kate Notinsale, Fugitive With a Heart of Gold, to the urgent strains of "Carmina Burana." DUN-DUN DUN-DUHHHHH!
What actually happened this week:
Hey, speaking of that tortured childhood, let's have a flashback to that story Sawyer (or "Sawyer") told about his parents' murder-suicide, shall we? To recap the back story, Sawyer learned his love 'em-and-leave 'em game from the man who slept with his mother and swindled his father, which resulted in the scene we're about to see. Mama de Sawyer is all like, "He's here! Go! Get under the bed! No matter what happens, DON'T COME OUT." Baby!Sawyer, an adorable blond moppet, does as he's told and hides under the bed, and we watch his anguished baby face as, basically, his dad comes home, has a screaming fight with the mother, and shoots her dead (BANG! THUMP). But all of this is behind Baby!Sawyer's closed bedroom door, so we're basically sitting here watching a dark room and a crying child for five minutes. It's all very Hitchcockian and maybe kind of exploitative. Finally, though the sliver of light under the door, we see feet, and then the door opens, and terrified Baby!Sawyer wills himself to become as small as possible under his bed, and then Daddy de Sawyer sits down on the bed and blows his brains out. WHEE.
Sawyerland, present day. Night, and we hear snorting noises. SAWYERLAND HAS BEEN INVADED! Sawyer snaps awake from his Baby!Sawyer nightmares to find... a boar. Rooting through his stuff. With a battle cry of "EUUUURAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!," Sawyer chases the boar out into the jungle. P.S. Sawyer is shirtless. UNH. And then he hears whispering voices all around him, as we saw previously with Sayid. Just for old time's sake: Vincent? Is that you?
National State of Emergency, Sawyerland. Morning. Sayid comes over, barely bothering to hide his amusement, and watches Sawyer try to pull his shit back together. Basically, imagine a birthday party for a dozen ADD first-graders, and you've got Sawyer's campsite--or former campsite, rather, because the boar has run off with his tent. Sawyer asserts that the boar was, in fact, just standing there STARING AT HIM. "Perhaps he wanted to go camping," says Sayid. Sayid is adorable this week. "You enjoying yourself?" snarls Sawyer. "Yes," says Sayid, and he is thisclose from just giggling in Sawyer's face. "Well, laugh it up, Moo-hammad!" Sayid just smiles at him winsomely and walks away.
Then Sawyer calls him back: "Sayid! What did you hear [that time you were power-hobbling through the jungle to escape a lonely, lonely Frenchwoman]?" And then we go through the whole "I didn't hear anything if you didn't hear anything" bit. Sigh.
Sawyer stalks off in slo-mo into his flashback, in which he basically carries a woman into a hotel room and all but throws her on the bed and have I mentioned that I keep forgetting how much I like Sawyer episodes? UNH. And then there's sort of an *ahem* from a dark corner of the room, and the woman screams, because OMG IT'S ROBERT PATRICK! HI, ROBERT PATRICK! I'm really sorry I didn't stick around and watch you on the X-Files, but, you know, after it became apparent that the show was circling the drain, it just got to be... kind of painful, you know? "Tell me about it," says Robert Patrick. "It wasn't exactly a picnic to be on that show at that point, either. No hard feelings?" No hard feelings, Robert Patrick. Man, is he a nice guy. Even now he's all like, "Ma'am, I'm very sorry to have interrupted your freaknasty, but I figured I'd better say something now than, you know, later." And Sawyer's all like, "Baby, go to the bar and wait for me." Baby doesn't want to go ("BABY, JUST GO TO THE BAR"), but finally Sawyer gets her out of there ("I will find you! No matter what occurs, stay loaded! I WILL FIND YOU!"), so he can pound Robert Patrick into the floor. Hey, man! What did Robert Patrick ever do to you? Oh... he screwed you over on a previous con job? Well... okay, I can see that. "I said I'll kill you if I ever saw you again!" Robert Patrick replies that this is why he has returned , so as to make up for "the Tampa job"... by bringing Sawyer information on "the man who ruined your life." So apparently there's a guy named Frank Duckett in Sydney who used to be Frank Sawyer. "This is him?" says Sawyer (or "Sawyer"), holding up a photo. Robert Patrick says yes, but in such a sidelong way that I instantly know how this is probably going to turn out. DAMMIT.
Back on the island, the diplomatic envoy of Katebabwe brings back her loaner gun to Jackstralia in a fetching new purple tank top. Jack notes that he's gotten all the guns back from last week's posse... except for Sawyer's. Kate says she can get it back. "How're you gonna do that?" Kate's like, with sex, duh. "I can speak his language." "The last time you tried to get something from him, you ended up making out with him." Like I said: with sex. "And you didn't get what you were after." Oh, that. "Let him keep the gun," says Jack, "it's not worth it." Oh, maybe not to you, Jack.
Thirty-second trimester, the Clairibbean. "How're you feeling?" asks Charlie. "Very pregnant," says Claire. NO, REALLY. She mentions that she had some dreams-slash-memories the night before, and that Charlie was in them, and would he like to go for a walk? And Charlie TURNS HER DOWN, because he has to wash his hair or something. CHARLIE, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? She just told you that you were in her dreams. GAH.
Out in the jungle, Sawyer finds the tent the boar was last seen wearing. He's marching back in high dudgeon when he hears some voice saying, "It comes back around." Actually, I thought the voice was saying something about going underground, but having seen the whole episode... yeah. It comes back around. And then the boar is there! Run away! Run, Sawyer, run! And then the boar tramples Sawyer and goes off on its merry way. "SON OF A BITCH!" shouts Sawyer, and (back in Sawyerland) accuses it of "running off into the jungle like a coward." You know, like that boar couldn't take Sawyer with two hooves tied behind its back. Kate tells him that the boar wouldn't just attack him for no reason. "THANK YOU, BOAR EXPERT," says Sawyer (no, really, he does). "He's harassing me!" "What are you doing?" says Kate as he pulls out that gun he didn't give back to Jack. "Gettin' even," he snarls. "Oh, just go tell Locke and he'll kill it," says Kate. BWAH. And then we go through the why-do-you-care/I-don't/then-why-are-you-here business, which Sawyer cuts mercifully short with the announcement the he has "some revenge to tend to."
Sydney, flashback. Sawyer buys a gun on the downlow. The end. Okay, for real: he gets lectured on how when "you point a gun at a man, you find out who you really are." I so would have been like, "Man, I don't have all day! Gimme the gun, I got some killin' to do! Wait... I wasn't supposed to say that, was I?" Also, the guy greets Sawyer as "Hibbs' friend" (Hibbs being Robert Patrick). "Great guy." "He's a son of a bitch," says Sawyer, and the guy laughs, like, "Well... yeah, basically." Oh, Sawyer. Do you not see this coming?
Meanwhile, over on the borders of Charlie Arabia, those of you who have been wondering how they were going to dispose of Ethan's body from last week are going to be THRILLED. Hurley helps Charlie lug the Late Ethanator out to what I guess is becoming the castaway graveyard (Agent Shrapnel, RIP). Hurley then notes that Ethan, quite likely, is going to rise from the dead: "Dude, I know this is gonna end with you and me running through the jungle screaming and crying, and he's gonna get me first, because I'm heavy... and I get cramps when I run." You laugh, but I would not put this past J.J. Abrams at this point. Ethan's hand, by the way, has flopped out of the tarp in the process, and several commenters on the previous entry on this journal reported being dead certain, if you will pardon the pun, that he was about to roar back to life right then. But no dice. Then Hurley says, "You all right?," and Charlie says nothing.
Department of Cartography, Sayidistan. Hurley approaches Sayid, who is hard at work with Crazy Rousseau's notes, and asks if he ever had Gulf War Syndrome. "That was the other side." "Oh. What about being shellshocked, what do you call that?" "Post-traumatic stress disorder? Why?" Hurley's worried about Charlie, that's why. "What's wrong with Charlie?" asks Sayid. "Uh, dude? He KILLED A GUY. Shot him in the chest four times." Yes, Hurley, I'm pretty sure Sayid was there, too. But Sayid agrees to go talk to Charlie.
Jungle. Muddy!Sawyer hikes with great determination and hotness through the wilderness. UNH. Then Kate pops up and points out that Sawyer's been following the tracks of birds, various fauna, Boone, and himself for about an hour. Ohhhh, that's right--Kate's got the whole I Am Strider, Hear Me Roar thing going on. So she says she'll help him find the boar if he gives her "carte blanche" from his stash--anything she wants, anytime. You will forgive me if "I Ain't Too Proud to Beg" suddenly got stuck in my head. "You got a deal," says Sawyer. UNH UNH UNH.
Sawyerland Outpost, night. I'm going to do the best I can to recap the particulars of this, but please remember, I only saw the show once. Kate and Sawyer are sitting around their boar-huntin' campfire when Sawyer breaks out the Tiny Airplane Booze. "Where'd you get that?" she asks, and Sawyer replies, with charming obviousness, "Plane." Kate asks if he has more, and Sawyer says, "I got a lot more of everything, but you ain't got carte blanche yet." And then he calls her "sassafraaaaaas," which comes out way hotter than it has any right to. Oh, Jackhole, you do grow on us so. "You wanna drink, you gotta play." Play what? "I Never." I burst out laughing at this point, because "I Never" is the lamest game ever, and is best played by a group of catty girls who need a way to ostracize the sluttier members. So Sawyer starts off to teach Kate, who is for some reason being very dense and claiming not to understand how to play: "I never been to college." Well, clearly. Kate drinks. "Or you woulda heard of I Never." Heeeeee. Touché. Again: "I never kissed a man," says Sawyer. "Now you drink, because you've kissed a man, and you kissed him on this very show, and I was, in fact, that man." Kate's turn: "I never implied I'd been to college when I really hadn't." Oooo, burn. Sawyer drinks. Sawyer: "I never been to Disneyland." For real? I haven't either, but that shit is weak, man. GET TO THE GOOD STUFF! Kate: "I've never worn pink." Really? And then Sawyer drinks. Hee! "Hey, it was the '80s," he says. Sawyer: "I never voted Democrat." Kate: "I never voted." Sawyer, with a sly look: "I've never been in love." Kate drinks. Kate: "I've never had a one-night stand." Sawyer tosses back half a tiny booze. ("Bottoms up, sailor." "Do I gotta drink for each one?") Sawyer: "I've never been married." Kate takes a tiny sip, to Sawyer's visible dismay. "It didn't last very long," she says. Kate: "I never blamed a boar for all my problems." Sawyer looks kind of pissed, but takes a sizable drink. Sawyer: "I never cared about having carte blanche because I just wanted to spend some time with the only other person on this island who just. doesn't. belong." Kate Notinsale, Island Prom Queen, drinks. Kate: "I never carried a letter around for twenty years because I couldn't get over my baggage." Ohhhhhh, hey now. Sawyer glares and rolls his eyes and drinks. And then he drops the bomb: "I never killed a man." OH NO. On the verge of tears, Kate drinks. AND THEN SAWYER DOES TOO. "Well," he says, "looks like we got something in common after all." OH, FOR FUCK'S SAKE, DOOOOOO IIIIIIIIIIIT.
Baby!Sawyer flashback now, only instead seeing his father's feet from under the bed, Sawyer sees... four boar hooves. "It'll come back around." (Me, squinting at the TV: " 'It'll go back underground'?") Kate shakes him awake, but only to discover that the boar has attacked... and eaten all of Sawyer's stuff. Not Kate's--just Sawyer's. "That hog is gonna suffer, I SWEAR TO GOD," shouts Sawyer. And then they hear something in the foliage and Sawyer pulls out his gun and nearly blows away... Locke. "Mornin'," says Locke. "What happened to your campsite?" Kate is sporting some serioussex hair bed head at this point, I might add, so I would not blame Locke for assuming the worst. But if so? That would have been some wild, litter-strewin', shirt-peein' sex right there. Yeah, you heard me: "That boar peed on my shirt! He pulled it out AND THEN peed on it!" shouts Sawyer. "Maybe it doesn't like your cologne," says Kate. "I don't wear cologne!" "Yes, you do," says Kate. "Yeah--well--!" HA.
So in the middle of this, they sit down and have some of Locke's crash-salvage coffee, and Locke tells them the story of his sister Jeannie, who broke her neck falling off the monkey bars and died, and their mom (did he say foster mom?) thought it was her fault, and Kate and Sawyer are sitting there like, Uh. But then this golden retriever came and stared right at his mother and she burst into tears and the dog went straight to his sister's room and slept on her bed every night for the next five years until the mother died, and then it disappeared. "So... you're saying the dog was your sister?" asks Sawyer. "Well, that would be silly," says Locke. (The whole conversation is kind of surreal that way.) "But Mom thought it was." I really want Sawyer to say here, "So... you're saying my father, who killed my mother and then himself, while I was in the room, is following me around and stealing my tent and peeing on my clothes because... he still hates me?" Thanks, Locke.
Sydney. Sawyer gets out of his car in front of the Sweet Shrimp shack (made of seashells by the seashore) and checks the bullets in his gun. Just assume that he does this again at the end of each sentence. He goes up to Frank Duckett/Sawyer's counter with this utter death look and manages to stammer out an order for shrimp with hot (not sweet) sauce, and the guy keeps babbling about missing the States while he cooks them. "You from Tennessee? Oh, I love the South. Miss those Southern women." OH GOD. Half-price shrimp for all Americans, handshake, "Name's Frank." Sawyer says his name is James. I don't know that I believe this; I'm just reporting it. (Also, are we to believe that Sawyer has been using "Frank" as well as "Sawyer"?) And the guy keeps talking, and he wraps up the shrimp, and this scene just goes on and on as Sawyer stands there and checks the gun and twitches and angsts, and finally Frank turns around and no one's there, and we hear Sawyer's car peeling away.
It was at this moment that I began to wonder if Sawyer actually ended up killing someone else. Say... JACK'S DAD, who happens to be drinking himself into a stupor at the same bar where Sawyer now finds himself. Jack's Dad slurs something about having "misplaced his wallet" (actually, I seem to remember the hotel concierge telling Jack that Jack's Dad left the wallet in his hotel room), so Sawyer tells the bartender to leave the two bottles and he'll pick up the tab, I guess. Jack's Dad is like, "I love you." And then we get to hear Jack's Dad go on this enormous spiel about how he was chief of surgery, but now he is suffering, and Sawyer is clearly also suffering, but it's fate, and some people are just supposed to suffer, like the Red Sox, who will never win the damn Series (har!). He has a son about Sawyer's age, he does, who's not like Jack's Dad--no, Unnamed Son does what's in his heart, he's a good man, maybe a great one, and right now Unnamed Son thinks that Jack's Dad hates him and feels betrayed, but what he really feels is gratitude, and pride, because of what he did to Jack's Dad--for Jack's Dad (he quickly corrects himself). If I had to take a bet on what's running through Sawyer's mind right now, I would have to say that it's something along the lines of, "This is my episode, and it's STILL somehow about Jack." That, and "We're gonna need a bigger bottle." Jack's Dad, who is never, ever going to shut up, goes on to say that there's a pay phone right over there, and he could call Unnamed Son, but no. He could tell him that he loves him. He could fix everything. (Well, not everything. That girl whose artery Drunken Jack's Dad severed would still be dead.) "Why don't you?" asks Sawyer, with a side order of STFU. "Because I am weak. This business that you have [here in Sydney, as previously but vaguely mentioned]... will it ease your suffering?" "Yeah," says Sawyer. "Then what are you doing here?" "It ain't that simple," says Sawyer, and I would pay a thousand dollars to hear him add, "because I'm going to go commit first-degree murder and avenge my family, thanks." "Of course it is," says Jack's Dad. "Unless you want to end up like me, of course it is." So... basically, this is the reason Sawyer goes through with it? THANKS A LOT, JACK'S DAD.
Night, Shrimp shack, rain, Frank the Shrimp Guy taking out the trash, Sawyer has his gun, slam to black.
Back from commercials, Charlie is breaking open...melons coconuts, I guess? On a stake. "You've become good at that," says Sayid, or something in that vein. Charlie bitters that he knows Sayid is there to check up on him. Sayid says, very simply, "You killed a man." Charlie goes off on the who and the what and the where and the why and the deserving and the hey-nonny-nonny, but I don't think Sayid was passing any kind of judgment, myself. In fact, he tells the following story (and it's just Storytime on the Island today, lemme tell you what): "When I was in the army in Tikrit, the man who lived next door was a policeman. His car was rigged with a bomb, but it blew up his wife and child instead. When they caught the man who did it, I volunteered to be on the firing squad. I felt no remorse at all afterwards. And yet I found myself waking up at night afterwards, thinking about it. All I'm saying is that this will be with you for the rest of your life." Or something a good deal like that. "Any suggestions?" asks Charlie. "You're not alone. Don't pretend to be," says Sayid. "Shit, half the people on this island have killed someone. Kate has, Sawyer has, Jack probably killed someone on the operating table. I was in a damn war. Jin's in the Korean mafia. Hell, it took two people to kill Agent Shrapnel, and, y'know, only the shadow knows where Vincent goes at night." So... thanks, Sayid.
Shhhh, we's huntin' boar. "I take comfort in knowing that someday, all of this'll be a shopping complex," grouses Sawyer. Well, you know, polar bears need good deals and great prices, too. Then Kate finds a hog wallow (or, as we would say down here in Sawyer country, a waller) and some tusk rubbings on a tree trunk. And then there's squealing and Sawyer goes crashing off into the woods and comes back with... a boar piglet, which he proceeds to bully for a few minutes (Kate: "You're gonna huuuuurt it!") until it does something to him--bite? I dunno, I was laughing too hard--and runs away, and Kate shouts at Sawyer to find his own way home. (ETA: People are telling me that Kate kicked him in the shins.)
Flashback to the Sydney Shrimp Shack. You know, the "Oh, Sawyer, You So Crazy" boar scenes rub up against the "I Shot a Man Just to Watch Him Die" back story in a really awkward way. So... that's a little uncomfortable. Anyway. Sawyer marches up to Frank, the RealSlim Sawyer in the rain and shouts, "SAWYER!" BANG. The guy slumps down against--what, a dumpster?--and our "Sawyer" crouches down and says, "I got a letter for you." Ohhhh Jesus. He actually pulls out that damn thing and starts reading: "Dear Mr. Sawyer..." And Frank, the "Real" Sawyer goes, "Who?" Ohhhhhh no. "Hibbs... I was gonna... pay it back..." And Sawyer says, with sort of a sick disbelief, "You borrowed money from Hibbs?" So... yeah. Hibbs sent Sawyer after a guy named Frank Duckett who never went by the name Sawyer, because Duckett owed Hibbs money. OH MY GOD. THANKS A LOT, JACK'S DAD. Duckett's dying words: "It'll come back around." And that's what Sawyer's been hearing the voices say.
Present day. Sawyer's stumbling through the jungle yelling for Kate when suddenly the boar, he is here. Sawyer whips out his gun and there's Old West whistling and some tumbleweed bounces past. The boar just stands there chewing. Kate, by the way, is observing this from behind a tree. The boar looks at Sawyer. Sawyer looks at the boar. The boar looks at Sawyer. Sawyer looks at the boar. The boar looks at Sawyer. Sawyer looks at the boar. Josh Holloway is really hot when he's mad. The boar looks at Sawyer. Sawyer looks at the boar. Then Sawyer puts the gun away, and sees Kate. "It's just a boar," he grumbles. "Let's get back to camp."
The forgetful beaches of Clairwaii. We see Sun and Jin talking, but not loudly enough that the actors have to be paid for speaking parts. Claire watches Walt and Vincent frolic on the beach while Mercutio works on a very spiffy looking raft with... who is that, Steve? She has this look on her face like, "My, these seem like nice people. If only I had a clue who they were." Here comes Charlie; he seems to have recovered his good cheer. "Wanna go take that walk now?" She does. Hilariously, Claire looks completely unpregnant from behind.
Jack is chopping wood in the jungle when Sawyer comes up with the gun and says, "Stick 'em up." "You trying to be funny?" says Jack, somewhat disbelievingly. (I get the feeling that he was the kid who was always like, "You guyyyyys, the teacher said not to get out of our seats!" So basically, me.) Sawyer grins: "Yeah." Hee! "I was fresh outta pies to throw at you," he says, and hands over the gun. "I asked you for this two days ago," Jack schoolmarms. "And I told you to stick it," says Sawyer, and then, because he just can't pass up the opportunity, adds, "I made a deal with your girlfriend." "For what?" "Nothin' she wasn't willin' to part with." And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the big Jack-Sawyer Steel Cage Death Match, right there. Kate helped Sawyer find a boar, they drank some tiny booze, and Jack doesn't care. I'm putting out a hit on whoever put that preview together last week. And then Jack says something about "that's why the Sox'll never win the Series," and Sawyer goes, "Whaaaaaat?" And then Jack goes on a big spiel about how his father used to say that, because he believed in fate, blah blah matches up with Sawyer's longwinded drinking buddy blee. (A word on the Sox thing: I'm thinking that "Oh ho, the Sox will never win" is a conscious irony on the writers' part, not something that was written before the Sox won and is now just outdated and untrue. Because what this does is it picks up the whole theme the show has going about things that are meant to be and fated and all that, but yet the Sox did win, and that goes with the counter-theme about blank slates and John Locke and starting over and all that.) And so, just to be sure, Sawyer says, "Uh, was your dad a doctor, too?" And Jack's like, "Yeah, he was. But he's dead now. Why do you want to know about my father?" Man, Sawyer looks so green around the gills right now. And I feel really bad for Sawyer here, because you know he's debating whether he should tell Jack that Jack's Dad wanted to tell Jack that he loved him and forgave him and was proud of him... and then you remember the first scene in this episode with Sawyer's awful father. Awwww. "No reason," says Sawyer, and he walks off. The end.
Next week: Sun in a bikini! "After being stranded more than a month... " Mercutio has built a raft! But it only has room for four (I think he said?) people. "But there is someone--OR SOMETHING--that doesn't ever want them to leave." Bad things happen to the raft, and Jin is beat up, and "We're not the only people on this island, and you know it!" Locke shouts. But it will probably end up being all about Jack, because it always is.
(More recaps)
rachnye that I'd really like to look into: does anyone have the old Aerosmith video "Cryin' " (you know, the first big one that Alicia Silverstone did for them) around anywhere? "I swear Josh Holloway is the guy in it that steals Alicia Silverstone's backpack and then runs away, only to be chased down and beaten by our leading lady. Can anyone else confirm this?" I want photographic proof, people, because that is too funny. Breaking news: HEE!Previously on Lost: Jack's dad is an alkie. Jack himself is a ratfink. Sawyer isn't really Sawyer, but he did have a tortured childhood.
Previously on Lost's previews: Jack and Sawyer go head to head for The Love of Kate Notinsale, Fugitive With a Heart of Gold, to the urgent strains of "Carmina Burana." DUN-DUN DUN-DUHHHHH!
What actually happened this week:
Hey, speaking of that tortured childhood, let's have a flashback to that story Sawyer (or "Sawyer") told about his parents' murder-suicide, shall we? To recap the back story, Sawyer learned his love 'em-and-leave 'em game from the man who slept with his mother and swindled his father, which resulted in the scene we're about to see. Mama de Sawyer is all like, "He's here! Go! Get under the bed! No matter what happens, DON'T COME OUT." Baby!Sawyer, an adorable blond moppet, does as he's told and hides under the bed, and we watch his anguished baby face as, basically, his dad comes home, has a screaming fight with the mother, and shoots her dead (BANG! THUMP). But all of this is behind Baby!Sawyer's closed bedroom door, so we're basically sitting here watching a dark room and a crying child for five minutes. It's all very Hitchcockian and maybe kind of exploitative. Finally, though the sliver of light under the door, we see feet, and then the door opens, and terrified Baby!Sawyer wills himself to become as small as possible under his bed, and then Daddy de Sawyer sits down on the bed and blows his brains out. WHEE.
Sawyerland, present day. Night, and we hear snorting noises. SAWYERLAND HAS BEEN INVADED! Sawyer snaps awake from his Baby!Sawyer nightmares to find... a boar. Rooting through his stuff. With a battle cry of "EUUUURAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!," Sawyer chases the boar out into the jungle. P.S. Sawyer is shirtless. UNH. And then he hears whispering voices all around him, as we saw previously with Sayid. Just for old time's sake: Vincent? Is that you?
National State of Emergency, Sawyerland. Morning. Sayid comes over, barely bothering to hide his amusement, and watches Sawyer try to pull his shit back together. Basically, imagine a birthday party for a dozen ADD first-graders, and you've got Sawyer's campsite--or former campsite, rather, because the boar has run off with his tent. Sawyer asserts that the boar was, in fact, just standing there STARING AT HIM. "Perhaps he wanted to go camping," says Sayid. Sayid is adorable this week. "You enjoying yourself?" snarls Sawyer. "Yes," says Sayid, and he is thisclose from just giggling in Sawyer's face. "Well, laugh it up, Moo-hammad!" Sayid just smiles at him winsomely and walks away.
Then Sawyer calls him back: "Sayid! What did you hear [that time you were power-hobbling through the jungle to escape a lonely, lonely Frenchwoman]?" And then we go through the whole "I didn't hear anything if you didn't hear anything" bit. Sigh.
Sawyer stalks off in slo-mo into his flashback, in which he basically carries a woman into a hotel room and all but throws her on the bed and have I mentioned that I keep forgetting how much I like Sawyer episodes? UNH. And then there's sort of an *ahem* from a dark corner of the room, and the woman screams, because OMG IT'S ROBERT PATRICK! HI, ROBERT PATRICK! I'm really sorry I didn't stick around and watch you on the X-Files, but, you know, after it became apparent that the show was circling the drain, it just got to be... kind of painful, you know? "Tell me about it," says Robert Patrick. "It wasn't exactly a picnic to be on that show at that point, either. No hard feelings?" No hard feelings, Robert Patrick. Man, is he a nice guy. Even now he's all like, "Ma'am, I'm very sorry to have interrupted your freaknasty, but I figured I'd better say something now than, you know, later." And Sawyer's all like, "Baby, go to the bar and wait for me." Baby doesn't want to go ("BABY, JUST GO TO THE BAR"), but finally Sawyer gets her out of there ("I will find you! No matter what occurs, stay loaded! I WILL FIND YOU!"), so he can pound Robert Patrick into the floor. Hey, man! What did Robert Patrick ever do to you? Oh... he screwed you over on a previous con job? Well... okay, I can see that. "I said I'll kill you if I ever saw you again!" Robert Patrick replies that this is why he has returned , so as to make up for "the Tampa job"... by bringing Sawyer information on "the man who ruined your life." So apparently there's a guy named Frank Duckett in Sydney who used to be Frank Sawyer. "This is him?" says Sawyer (or "Sawyer"), holding up a photo. Robert Patrick says yes, but in such a sidelong way that I instantly know how this is probably going to turn out. DAMMIT.
Back on the island, the diplomatic envoy of Katebabwe brings back her loaner gun to Jackstralia in a fetching new purple tank top. Jack notes that he's gotten all the guns back from last week's posse... except for Sawyer's. Kate says she can get it back. "How're you gonna do that?" Kate's like, with sex, duh. "I can speak his language." "The last time you tried to get something from him, you ended up making out with him." Like I said: with sex. "And you didn't get what you were after." Oh, that. "Let him keep the gun," says Jack, "it's not worth it." Oh, maybe not to you, Jack.
Thirty-second trimester, the Clairibbean. "How're you feeling?" asks Charlie. "Very pregnant," says Claire. NO, REALLY. She mentions that she had some dreams-slash-memories the night before, and that Charlie was in them, and would he like to go for a walk? And Charlie TURNS HER DOWN, because he has to wash his hair or something. CHARLIE, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? She just told you that you were in her dreams. GAH.
Out in the jungle, Sawyer finds the tent the boar was last seen wearing. He's marching back in high dudgeon when he hears some voice saying, "It comes back around." Actually, I thought the voice was saying something about going underground, but having seen the whole episode... yeah. It comes back around. And then the boar is there! Run away! Run, Sawyer, run! And then the boar tramples Sawyer and goes off on its merry way. "SON OF A BITCH!" shouts Sawyer, and (back in Sawyerland) accuses it of "running off into the jungle like a coward." You know, like that boar couldn't take Sawyer with two hooves tied behind its back. Kate tells him that the boar wouldn't just attack him for no reason. "THANK YOU, BOAR EXPERT," says Sawyer (no, really, he does). "He's harassing me!" "What are you doing?" says Kate as he pulls out that gun he didn't give back to Jack. "Gettin' even," he snarls. "Oh, just go tell Locke and he'll kill it," says Kate. BWAH. And then we go through the why-do-you-care/I-don't/then-why-are-you-here business, which Sawyer cuts mercifully short with the announcement the he has "some revenge to tend to."
Sydney, flashback. Sawyer buys a gun on the downlow. The end. Okay, for real: he gets lectured on how when "you point a gun at a man, you find out who you really are." I so would have been like, "Man, I don't have all day! Gimme the gun, I got some killin' to do! Wait... I wasn't supposed to say that, was I?" Also, the guy greets Sawyer as "Hibbs' friend" (Hibbs being Robert Patrick). "Great guy." "He's a son of a bitch," says Sawyer, and the guy laughs, like, "Well... yeah, basically." Oh, Sawyer. Do you not see this coming?
Meanwhile, over on the borders of Charlie Arabia, those of you who have been wondering how they were going to dispose of Ethan's body from last week are going to be THRILLED. Hurley helps Charlie lug the Late Ethanator out to what I guess is becoming the castaway graveyard (Agent Shrapnel, RIP). Hurley then notes that Ethan, quite likely, is going to rise from the dead: "Dude, I know this is gonna end with you and me running through the jungle screaming and crying, and he's gonna get me first, because I'm heavy... and I get cramps when I run." You laugh, but I would not put this past J.J. Abrams at this point. Ethan's hand, by the way, has flopped out of the tarp in the process, and several commenters on the previous entry on this journal reported being dead certain, if you will pardon the pun, that he was about to roar back to life right then. But no dice. Then Hurley says, "You all right?," and Charlie says nothing.
Department of Cartography, Sayidistan. Hurley approaches Sayid, who is hard at work with Crazy Rousseau's notes, and asks if he ever had Gulf War Syndrome. "That was the other side." "Oh. What about being shellshocked, what do you call that?" "Post-traumatic stress disorder? Why?" Hurley's worried about Charlie, that's why. "What's wrong with Charlie?" asks Sayid. "Uh, dude? He KILLED A GUY. Shot him in the chest four times." Yes, Hurley, I'm pretty sure Sayid was there, too. But Sayid agrees to go talk to Charlie.
Jungle. Muddy!Sawyer hikes with great determination and hotness through the wilderness. UNH. Then Kate pops up and points out that Sawyer's been following the tracks of birds, various fauna, Boone, and himself for about an hour. Ohhhh, that's right--Kate's got the whole I Am Strider, Hear Me Roar thing going on. So she says she'll help him find the boar if he gives her "carte blanche" from his stash--anything she wants, anytime. You will forgive me if "I Ain't Too Proud to Beg" suddenly got stuck in my head. "You got a deal," says Sawyer. UNH UNH UNH.
Sawyerland Outpost, night. I'm going to do the best I can to recap the particulars of this, but please remember, I only saw the show once. Kate and Sawyer are sitting around their boar-huntin' campfire when Sawyer breaks out the Tiny Airplane Booze. "Where'd you get that?" she asks, and Sawyer replies, with charming obviousness, "Plane." Kate asks if he has more, and Sawyer says, "I got a lot more of everything, but you ain't got carte blanche yet." And then he calls her "sassafraaaaaas," which comes out way hotter than it has any right to. Oh, Jackhole, you do grow on us so. "You wanna drink, you gotta play." Play what? "I Never." I burst out laughing at this point, because "I Never" is the lamest game ever, and is best played by a group of catty girls who need a way to ostracize the sluttier members. So Sawyer starts off to teach Kate, who is for some reason being very dense and claiming not to understand how to play: "I never been to college." Well, clearly. Kate drinks. "Or you woulda heard of I Never." Heeeeee. Touché. Again: "I never kissed a man," says Sawyer. "Now you drink, because you've kissed a man, and you kissed him on this very show, and I was, in fact, that man." Kate's turn: "I never implied I'd been to college when I really hadn't." Oooo, burn. Sawyer drinks. Sawyer: "I never been to Disneyland." For real? I haven't either, but that shit is weak, man. GET TO THE GOOD STUFF! Kate: "I've never worn pink." Really? And then Sawyer drinks. Hee! "Hey, it was the '80s," he says. Sawyer: "I never voted Democrat." Kate: "I never voted." Sawyer, with a sly look: "I've never been in love." Kate drinks. Kate: "I've never had a one-night stand." Sawyer tosses back half a tiny booze. ("Bottoms up, sailor." "Do I gotta drink for each one?") Sawyer: "I've never been married." Kate takes a tiny sip, to Sawyer's visible dismay. "It didn't last very long," she says. Kate: "I never blamed a boar for all my problems." Sawyer looks kind of pissed, but takes a sizable drink. Sawyer: "I never cared about having carte blanche because I just wanted to spend some time with the only other person on this island who just. doesn't. belong." Kate Notinsale, Island Prom Queen, drinks. Kate: "I never carried a letter around for twenty years because I couldn't get over my baggage." Ohhhhhh, hey now. Sawyer glares and rolls his eyes and drinks. And then he drops the bomb: "I never killed a man." OH NO. On the verge of tears, Kate drinks. AND THEN SAWYER DOES TOO. "Well," he says, "looks like we got something in common after all." OH, FOR FUCK'S SAKE, DOOOOOO IIIIIIIIIIIT.
Baby!Sawyer flashback now, only instead seeing his father's feet from under the bed, Sawyer sees... four boar hooves. "It'll come back around." (Me, squinting at the TV: " 'It'll go back underground'?") Kate shakes him awake, but only to discover that the boar has attacked... and eaten all of Sawyer's stuff. Not Kate's--just Sawyer's. "That hog is gonna suffer, I SWEAR TO GOD," shouts Sawyer. And then they hear something in the foliage and Sawyer pulls out his gun and nearly blows away... Locke. "Mornin'," says Locke. "What happened to your campsite?" Kate is sporting some serious
So in the middle of this, they sit down and have some of Locke's crash-salvage coffee, and Locke tells them the story of his sister Jeannie, who broke her neck falling off the monkey bars and died, and their mom (did he say foster mom?) thought it was her fault, and Kate and Sawyer are sitting there like, Uh. But then this golden retriever came and stared right at his mother and she burst into tears and the dog went straight to his sister's room and slept on her bed every night for the next five years until the mother died, and then it disappeared. "So... you're saying the dog was your sister?" asks Sawyer. "Well, that would be silly," says Locke. (The whole conversation is kind of surreal that way.) "But Mom thought it was." I really want Sawyer to say here, "So... you're saying my father, who killed my mother and then himself, while I was in the room, is following me around and stealing my tent and peeing on my clothes because... he still hates me?" Thanks, Locke.
Sydney. Sawyer gets out of his car in front of the Sweet Shrimp shack (made of seashells by the seashore) and checks the bullets in his gun. Just assume that he does this again at the end of each sentence. He goes up to Frank Duckett/Sawyer's counter with this utter death look and manages to stammer out an order for shrimp with hot (not sweet) sauce, and the guy keeps babbling about missing the States while he cooks them. "You from Tennessee? Oh, I love the South. Miss those Southern women." OH GOD. Half-price shrimp for all Americans, handshake, "Name's Frank." Sawyer says his name is James. I don't know that I believe this; I'm just reporting it. (Also, are we to believe that Sawyer has been using "Frank" as well as "Sawyer"?) And the guy keeps talking, and he wraps up the shrimp, and this scene just goes on and on as Sawyer stands there and checks the gun and twitches and angsts, and finally Frank turns around and no one's there, and we hear Sawyer's car peeling away.
It was at this moment that I began to wonder if Sawyer actually ended up killing someone else. Say... JACK'S DAD, who happens to be drinking himself into a stupor at the same bar where Sawyer now finds himself. Jack's Dad slurs something about having "misplaced his wallet" (actually, I seem to remember the hotel concierge telling Jack that Jack's Dad left the wallet in his hotel room), so Sawyer tells the bartender to leave the two bottles and he'll pick up the tab, I guess. Jack's Dad is like, "I love you." And then we get to hear Jack's Dad go on this enormous spiel about how he was chief of surgery, but now he is suffering, and Sawyer is clearly also suffering, but it's fate, and some people are just supposed to suffer, like the Red Sox, who will never win the damn Series (har!). He has a son about Sawyer's age, he does, who's not like Jack's Dad--no, Unnamed Son does what's in his heart, he's a good man, maybe a great one, and right now Unnamed Son thinks that Jack's Dad hates him and feels betrayed, but what he really feels is gratitude, and pride, because of what he did to Jack's Dad--for Jack's Dad (he quickly corrects himself). If I had to take a bet on what's running through Sawyer's mind right now, I would have to say that it's something along the lines of, "This is my episode, and it's STILL somehow about Jack." That, and "We're gonna need a bigger bottle." Jack's Dad, who is never, ever going to shut up, goes on to say that there's a pay phone right over there, and he could call Unnamed Son, but no. He could tell him that he loves him. He could fix everything. (Well, not everything. That girl whose artery Drunken Jack's Dad severed would still be dead.) "Why don't you?" asks Sawyer, with a side order of STFU. "Because I am weak. This business that you have [here in Sydney, as previously but vaguely mentioned]... will it ease your suffering?" "Yeah," says Sawyer. "Then what are you doing here?" "It ain't that simple," says Sawyer, and I would pay a thousand dollars to hear him add, "because I'm going to go commit first-degree murder and avenge my family, thanks." "Of course it is," says Jack's Dad. "Unless you want to end up like me, of course it is." So... basically, this is the reason Sawyer goes through with it? THANKS A LOT, JACK'S DAD.
Night, Shrimp shack, rain, Frank the Shrimp Guy taking out the trash, Sawyer has his gun, slam to black.
Back from commercials, Charlie is breaking open...
Shhhh, we's huntin' boar. "I take comfort in knowing that someday, all of this'll be a shopping complex," grouses Sawyer. Well, you know, polar bears need good deals and great prices, too. Then Kate finds a hog wallow (or, as we would say down here in Sawyer country, a waller) and some tusk rubbings on a tree trunk. And then there's squealing and Sawyer goes crashing off into the woods and comes back with... a boar piglet, which he proceeds to bully for a few minutes (Kate: "You're gonna huuuuurt it!") until it does something to him--bite? I dunno, I was laughing too hard--and runs away, and Kate shouts at Sawyer to find his own way home. (ETA: People are telling me that Kate kicked him in the shins.)
Flashback to the Sydney Shrimp Shack. You know, the "Oh, Sawyer, You So Crazy" boar scenes rub up against the "I Shot a Man Just to Watch Him Die" back story in a really awkward way. So... that's a little uncomfortable. Anyway. Sawyer marches up to Frank, the Real
Present day. Sawyer's stumbling through the jungle yelling for Kate when suddenly the boar, he is here. Sawyer whips out his gun and there's Old West whistling and some tumbleweed bounces past. The boar just stands there chewing. Kate, by the way, is observing this from behind a tree. The boar looks at Sawyer. Sawyer looks at the boar. The boar looks at Sawyer. Sawyer looks at the boar. The boar looks at Sawyer. Sawyer looks at the boar. Josh Holloway is really hot when he's mad. The boar looks at Sawyer. Sawyer looks at the boar. Then Sawyer puts the gun away, and sees Kate. "It's just a boar," he grumbles. "Let's get back to camp."
The forgetful beaches of Clairwaii. We see Sun and Jin talking, but not loudly enough that the actors have to be paid for speaking parts. Claire watches Walt and Vincent frolic on the beach while Mercutio works on a very spiffy looking raft with... who is that, Steve? She has this look on her face like, "My, these seem like nice people. If only I had a clue who they were." Here comes Charlie; he seems to have recovered his good cheer. "Wanna go take that walk now?" She does. Hilariously, Claire looks completely unpregnant from behind.
Jack is chopping wood in the jungle when Sawyer comes up with the gun and says, "Stick 'em up." "You trying to be funny?" says Jack, somewhat disbelievingly. (I get the feeling that he was the kid who was always like, "You guyyyyys, the teacher said not to get out of our seats!" So basically, me.) Sawyer grins: "Yeah." Hee! "I was fresh outta pies to throw at you," he says, and hands over the gun. "I asked you for this two days ago," Jack schoolmarms. "And I told you to stick it," says Sawyer, and then, because he just can't pass up the opportunity, adds, "I made a deal with your girlfriend." "For what?" "Nothin' she wasn't willin' to part with." And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the big Jack-Sawyer Steel Cage Death Match, right there. Kate helped Sawyer find a boar, they drank some tiny booze, and Jack doesn't care. I'm putting out a hit on whoever put that preview together last week. And then Jack says something about "that's why the Sox'll never win the Series," and Sawyer goes, "Whaaaaaat?" And then Jack goes on a big spiel about how his father used to say that, because he believed in fate, blah blah matches up with Sawyer's longwinded drinking buddy blee. (A word on the Sox thing: I'm thinking that "Oh ho, the Sox will never win" is a conscious irony on the writers' part, not something that was written before the Sox won and is now just outdated and untrue. Because what this does is it picks up the whole theme the show has going about things that are meant to be and fated and all that, but yet the Sox did win, and that goes with the counter-theme about blank slates and John Locke and starting over and all that.) And so, just to be sure, Sawyer says, "Uh, was your dad a doctor, too?" And Jack's like, "Yeah, he was. But he's dead now. Why do you want to know about my father?" Man, Sawyer looks so green around the gills right now. And I feel really bad for Sawyer here, because you know he's debating whether he should tell Jack that Jack's Dad wanted to tell Jack that he loved him and forgave him and was proud of him... and then you remember the first scene in this episode with Sawyer's awful father. Awwww. "No reason," says Sawyer, and he walks off. The end.
Next week: Sun in a bikini! "After being stranded more than a month... " Mercutio has built a raft! But it only has room for four (I think he said?) people. "But there is someone--OR SOMETHING--that doesn't ever want them to leave." Bad things happen to the raft, and Jin is beat up, and "We're not the only people on this island, and you know it!" Locke shouts. But it will probably end up being all about Jack, because it always is.
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Date: 2005-02-17 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-17 05:43 pm (UTC)