Season
2, Episodes 13 and 14- “The Long Con” and “One of Them”
Summary:
In
flashback, Sawyer attempts his usual con with a woman named Cassidy but she
catches on to the trick. She asks him to show her how to con people. After some
small cons, she asks about the “long con”, and reveals she has $600,000 to help
complete it. Sawyer meets with an associate who helped to plan the con to steal
Cassidy’s money but Sawyer has fallen in love and doesn’t want to go through
with it. Sawyer reveals the plan to Cassidy and has her go into hiding but he takes
the money anyway. Jack asks Locke for the combination to the armory (in a plot
with Ana-Lucia), and puts Sawyer’s medicine stash in there. Sun is hooded and
dragged away while working in her garden and the camp believes the Others are
back. Jack and Ana use this as fuel to help train the survivors. Sawyer
convinces Locke to move the guns to keep them safe but Sawyer somehow acquires
them and declares himself the “new sheriff in town”. Hurley shows Sayid the short-wave radio that
the Tailies found. After fixing it, they pick up a WWII-era signal. At night,
Sawyer meets with Charlie, who reveals himself as Sun’s kidnapper and Locke’s
follower, wanting to make Locke look foolish.
During
the Gulf War, Sayid is captured and asked to interrogate his commanding officer
Tariq about a lost U.S. pilot. Tariq refuses to answer so Sayid is taken to Joe
Inman who urges him to use torture. He does so, and Tariq reveals the location
of the pilot’s body. Inman and Sgt. Austen release Sayid after the job is done.
Sawyer is annoyed by a loud tree frog and recruits Hurley to help kill it. Ana informs
Sayid that Danielle is near camp. She takes him to a man caught in one of her
traps who she thinks is an Other. He says his name is Henry Gale. Sayid frees
him but Danielle shoots him with a crossbow. Sayid takes him to the hatch where
Jack and Locke save him. They put Henry in the armory but Sayid locks Jack out
so he can begin to interrogate. Henry sticks to his story of crashing in a
balloon and his wife dying of sickness. Sayid is unconvinced due to Henry not
remembering specifics of burying the woman he loved and begins to assault him.
Jack prevents Locke from pushing the button until he opens the door, which he
reluctantly does. Jack stops Sayid from further attacks as the time counter
hits zero and turns into hieroglyphics, but Locke enters the code to return it
to normal. Sayid tells Charlie about Henry and reminds him of how he nearly
died from the Others.
Review:
There are cons flying all around in “The
Long Con”. There’s the one in the flashback, but Sawyer also orchestrates one
at camp, by falsifying an Others’ attack on Sun, all in an effort to get the
guns for himself. Ever since Sawyer set off on the raft, he had relinquished
his position as Mater Hoarder and Town Merchant. He hit a low point by nearly
dying from his bullet wound. Since his personality is generally off-putting,
few people will converse with him by choice, so he needs capital in order to
draw conversations to him. He won’t admit it, but he likes the company, and
keeping the guns and medicine makes him valuable. Thus, Sun is seemingly
attacked (and Charlie’s already-low stock sinks even deeper) and it sparks a
migration of resources which end up in Sawyer’s hands. It’s a pretty effective
plan, but it’s yet another minor plot point that only mildly pays off. The
scarcity of guns is relevant for the upcoming Henry Gale arc, but the “There’s
a new sheriff in town” line sets him as more of an obstacle than he ends up
being.
When watching this episode years ago, I
had theorized that Cassidy is actually pulling a long con on Sawyer, and that
she was faking being his apprentice in order to snatch the big loot away from
him later. And for some reason, that fictional twist stuck in my head, and I
still thought she was working him over when I watched it just recently. But
nope. It’s weird how something in your head is filed away as Truth in your
memory. I think it would have been a nice twist, personally. The Hurley/Sayid
radio bit was neat, as Sayid slowly tries to regain his passion after Shannon’s
death.
The first half of the season was pretty
wonky, but the better half gets its engine started with the Henry Gale
storyline. It’s cool to see that Michael Emerson had Ben locked down pretty
much from the beginning. We knew Ethan and Tom Friendly were bad news nearly
from the moment they showed up, but now we have a wild card that requires
careful questioning and intuition to determine his allegiance. Sayid has been
adrift since Shannon died, and this presents an outlet for him to channel his
anger, and Naveen is pretty great here, which is nice given how little he is
given to do this season. The “known” threat has become an “unknown” threat –
which is a catalyst for more paranoia and fear than if he had been unmasked immediately.
The locked door provides a cool double-“ticking time bomb” scenario in which
Locke must enter the numbers before the timer runs out, and Jack must stop
Sayid from torturing their prisoner, but needs the combination to the door,
which Locke has. I appreciate that the writers decided to tease us here with a
glimpse of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. We’d been pressing the button for 14
episodes now and the audience was probably growing impatient with whether it
means anything. That little morsel of information reinvests our interest in the
button, and we know now that SOMETHING happens when you fail to push it.
The flashback gives us Sayid’s torture
origins (I don’t think he would look that old in 1991, but whatever), and he
unknowingly encounters two people connected to his fellow castaways – Kate’s
father and Desmond’s partner. I’m interested in the dynamic of this young Iraqi
being used by the American military to coerce his superior into revealing
information, and then for him to be dumped on the side of the highway when
they’re finished. That’s a unique theme they could have played around with for
Sayid at some point, as his Muslim/Arabic culture is more or less ignored for
most of the series. But even with all of this stuff involving torture and the Others
and the countdown timer, their choice for the B-story was to have Sawyer and
Hurley hunt for an annoying tree frog. Why? It contrasts so hard with all the
serious stuff going on simultaneously, and serves no other purpose. Plus it
comes one episode after Sawyer established himself as Sheriff Badass, and all
of that cred goes out the window once he gets bested by a frog. A different
story involving his stash or the guns would have jived better with the Henry
Gale thing.
And one more little noteworthy thing:
Sayid’s revelation to Charlie about the prisoner means Charlie is now the
bearer of many secrets here, as he is one of only two who knows he faked Sun’s
kidnapping, plus he has the Virgin Mary statues. An interesting place for him
to be.
Connecting the Dots:
The song on the radio is by Glenn
Miller, who disappeared in a plane during WWII, and it was confirmed in a
season 5 recap special that the song was playing due to time travel somehow. I
don’t really know how that happens, unless the radio waves are just bouncing
around in the island’s sphere, unable to get out. Regardless, it’s a hint of
the time travel craziness that is to come. Would have been cool if they had
picked up some other songs throughout.
The Hieroglyphics on the countdown timer
hint at the island’s Egyptian past. Why DHARMA thought to use them in the Swan
is beyond me.
Joe Inman from Iraq is Kelvin from
Desmond’s time in the hatch. In the finale he hints that he signed up for
DHARMA because he was struggling with the knowledge that men followed his
orders. We may be seeing signs of that here. Perhaps he felt guilty about
forcing Sayid to torture Tariq.
Sayid is persuaded to torture Tariq when
he learns Tariq gassed a village that killed part of his family. Coincidently,
the man Sayid currently knows as Henry Gale was also involved in a gas attack
(the Purge).
Ranking:
1.
The 23rd
Psalm (10/10)
2.
One of Them
(8.5/10) (Tree frog aside, this is a tense hour with a decent flashback and a
great new wrinkle added in the form of Henry Gale.)
3.
The Other 48 Days
(8.5/10)
4.
The Long Con
(7.5/10) (A fun, if slightly confusing episode. Wish Sawyer’s monopoly on the
guns ended up being more relevant.)
5.
Orientation
(7.5/10)
6.
Man of Science,
Man of Faith (7.5/10)
7.
The Hunting Party
(7/10)
8.
…And Found (6.5/10)
9.
Abandoned
(6.5/10)
10. What Kate Did (6.5/10)
11. Collision (6.5/10)
12. Everybody Hates Hugo (6.5/10)
13. Adrift (5/10)
14. Fire + Water (4/10)
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