“I’m the smoke thing.” – Not Locke
Each week during this final season of Lost I find myself excited by the focus of the episode during the “flash sideways” sequences: Sayid, Locke, Ben, Jack, Kate… and now our man Sawyer (Josh Holloway), the wise cracking, hard punching, ladies’ eyeglasses wearing while reading, hard drinking reformed (of sorts) con man that we’ve come to know and love.
The Sawyer as con man character we’ve come to know from past seasons is used to delightfully surprise us in the early going flash sideways as we see him involved in an undercover sting operation with none other than Miles (Ken Leung), the other wisecracking, hearing dead people boatie (I believe the term is) that has grown into being an integral part of the show over recent seasons.
As with the others, Sawyer has a past which invades his current life, even off the island and apart from its pull. We learn that though he has escaped his con man past, there is a lot of mystery surrounding his present. “What were you doing in Australia?” Miles confronts with at one point. And we see him lose out on a potential love interest (archaeologist Charlotte, another boatie, played by Rebecca Mader) as she accidentally saw news clippings showing that Sawyer’s father murdered his mother before killing himself.
The “main” storyline is losing me more now that not-Locke (Terry O’Quinn) is leading his band of Temple survivors out into the jungle. I’m starting to ask myself, “who is this guy again?” And, “why doesn’t he just kill everyone if he’s evil?” He claims that all he wants to do is to leave the island, but is that really it? I kind of feel like answers to these questions reveal the sort of entire rationale for the entire show so maybe I’m not suppose to know at this point. I hope there’s good answers here, but when this is Lost, you just gotta believe sometimes.
Charles Widmore’s (Alan Dale) return to the island with submarine and full entourage felt like a nearly overwhelming new plot element at first but was brought much closer to the story this week. It was fun to see Sawyer in full con man mode, playing off both Not Locke and Widmore (with both likely knowing it). Interesting to note that while Sawyer feels in some ways he has nothing to lose after the death (as far as we know) of Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell), he is still loyal to friends.
There’s also a good dose of Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Claire (Emilie de Ravin) in this episode. Crazy Claire with relation to the importance of her son Aaron is brought up Not Locke, while meanwhile Claire forgives Kate for taking her son off the island. These sections were the slowest of the episode (though overall it was a terrific one) but was a lot of fun to see Kate’s tie in to the flash sideways, detective Sawyer exclaiming “son of a bitch!” at seeing the attractive woman who had just smashed into his car and then fled on foot.
More thoughts on “Recon”:
- “Cutting it a little close, huh?” – Miles
- This showcase episode for Josh Holloway is yet another example of a longtime Lost mainstay who can easily and successfully helm his or her own show in the post-Lost universe.
- “I’m the smoke thing.” – Not Locke
- Not-Locke sending Sawyer over to Hydra Island on a lying/recon mission reminds me of Ben Linus’ (Michael Emerson) first entry on the scene all those seasons ago. There’s a circularity to events on the island that has been referenced a few times Jacob (Mark Pelligrino) talking about this comes to mind specifically).
- I know I shouldn’t really be asking this but… if Not Locke is so smart and super omniscient and smoke monster-y and all… why is it so hard for him to steal the plane on Hydra Island himself, let alone escape the island?
Note to Sawyer’s potential love interests though: don’t go rifling through another man’s drawers.
- Nice touch too to see Watership Down sitting on Sawyer’s dresser.
- Sawyer finding a circle of dead people, literally, on Hydra Island… creepy.
- Another question I probably shouldn’t be asking: Widmore and Not Locke now seem to be primary enemies of one another, whereas it used to appear that it was Widmore v. Ben. If Widmore wants control of the island and Not Locke simply wants to get off the island… they shouldn’t really be enemies, right? That may lead us to believe that Not Locke’s plans are not what he has revealed them to be.
From Around the Web: Lost, “Recon”
- The Ampersand: It’s interesting that Smokey had a crazy mother, and so did John Locke, which made me wonder if that might have been the reason he chose him. Despite the, “Oh yeah, he’s evil, no doubt” attitude all of the fans had after the Sayid episode, Smokey became incredibly sympathetic in this episode for me.
- What’s Alan Watching?: The opening scene in the flash sideways turned the comparable moment from season one’s “Confidence Man” neatly on its head, and the idea of Sawyer as a cop, in a universe where Jacob apparently didn’t influence him, isn’t that far-fetched.
- Small Screen Scoop: Also in this episode we saw Claire try to kill Kate. Sayid sat by and did nothing to stop it. Right before that, Sayid did say he was not feeling right. But the fact that Kate never said anything to him along the lines of “WTF, dude, that she-bitch with the bad wig was trying to slit my throat!” makes me curious.
Some stats and info about Lost, “Recon”
TV SHOW – Lost
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 6, Episode 8
AIRED ON – March 16th, 2010
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – ABC/Hulu
GENRE – Drama, Adventure Shows, Science Fiction
CREATED BY – J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Lieber, Damon Lindelof
CAST – Jorge Garcia, Josh Holloway, Junjin Kim, Evangeline Lilly, Terry O’Quinn, Naveen Andrews, Matthew Fox, Daniel Dae Kim, Emilie de Ravin, Michael Emerson, Henry Ian Cusick, Dominic Monaghan, Harold Perineau, Ken Leung, Elizabth Mitchell, Nestor Carbonell, Jeff Fahey
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.