-His relationship with Kate: He is willing to be tortured for a kiss. What does this say about Sawyer's capacity for intimacy?
I never thought of the scene exactly that way - that Sawyer's reason for allowing himself to be tortured was to extract a kiss in the end. I think it was more out of self-loathing and to find a way to make Sayid and Jack do something they'd regret.
But there in Season 3, Sawyer's at it again. After being warned not to talk or touch, he forces another kiss from Kate and gets beaten up as a result. So what does he crave more -- a kiss or pain??
There are several other scenes here in CM that are echoed later in the series:
During an aborted face-off w/ Sawyer when Jack first comes looking for the inhalers, Jack tells him to get up. "Why, so we can see who's taller?" It's a precursor to Lockdown where Kate suggests a measurement of a different metric.
Kate ask Jack: So what's stopping you? (from killing Sawyer.) She asks the same sort of question, more seriously, in the S3 finale - why didn't you just kill Ben? (Because for Kate, killing someone is among the first choice of options).
Here in Confidence Man, Jack can still draw on the tenets of civilization in his answer: "We're not savages, Kate, not yet." This reminds us of Sawyer's comment to Jack in Tabula Rasa while they're both rummaging in the fuselage: "You're just not looking at the big picture, Doc. You're still back in civilization." Jack replies: "Yeah? And where are you?" Sawyer: "Me? I'm in the wild." This further illustrates the civilized/lawless facet of the ongoing conflict between Jack and Sawyer.
By the end of S3, Jack's more ready to kill Ben in revenge for the apparent killing of the three Lostie shooters.
More finale foreshadowing for Kate here: After Kate reads Sawyer's letter out loud, he comes up close to her to challenge her space, and she shuts him out by closing her eyes, just like in the scene with Jack at the airport.
Kate slaps Sawyer while tied to a tree when he tells her he doesn't have the inhalers. In the S3 finale, Danielle slaps Ben while he's tied to a tree to make him shut up about making the radio call. In both cases I feel it was well deserved.
"Tell me Sawyer, do you want to die?" he is asked in the flashback by "Minnesota Fats" in regard to the money. Michael asks him the same question while on the raft. Here in CM it's more of a rhetorical question, but Michael has noticed Sawyer's death wish.
Funny how any pleasure derived from this episode is in the epis it foreshadows :
The Sawyer to Kate "Don't you feel sorry for me. [snatches his letter from her]. Get the hell out. Get out!" blasts you like a clarion hearing it again so soon after Jack's "Don't you look at me like that. Don't you, pity me." rile against Dr Hamill.
Same writer. Class.
Bits I have an appreciation for though are: Boone's calling Shannon's revovery a miracle; to man of science Jack.
Boone period the kid's a menace - was the instigator of the whole debacle (using our patented Fuselage 'who's to blame' logic) - but I do like him. And to give him his due, it had been a week since his last ****-up:
used wrong technique CPR on Rose,
attempted to lift a gun,
failed to rescue Joanna,
succeeded in hiding the water
and blew off his bottle rocket duties for the more heroic sounding cave-rescue,
all in the first 8 days. He's overdue a rest - let someone else take the heat for a while.
Liked Shannon too; so pretty and she looked like death. That blue tinge to her lips... I got muscle cramps watching her dying by degrees in front of me that way.
And I wonder if this exchange between Sayid and John still has something to add to our play:
Locke, where were you last night, around sunset?
Well, I'm afraid the only witness to my whereabouts is the boar that I was skinning for our dinner. I heard you were trying to send out a distress call. So it would seem whoever attacked you has a reason for not wanting to get off the island. Maybe someone who is profiting from our current circumstances? And from what I've seen you and Mr. Sawyer share a certain animosity.
No, he has an alibi. Just before I was struck, he set off a bottle rocket, a signal we had worked out -- 2 kilometers away. He wouldn't have the time to go. . .
Unless he found a way to time delay the fuse on his rocket.
How could he possibly have. . .
Anyone who watches television knows how to improvise a slow fuse. Use a cigarette. [Locke offers Sayid his knife] Just in case there's a next time.
There's probably more - but I'll Edit To Add. (thanks as ever to Lost-tv)
ETA: Kate! Have to have some sisterhood sympathy for the hard-nosed minx here; no woman should be put in the position of having to prostitute herself – even if for only a kiss. The swallowing of principles that went down in Confidence Man left a very unpleasant taste in my mouth. Torture is more than unpalatable.
However; our Losties are through the Looking-Glass (they don’t know this yet of course – I have the benefit of being able to flash forward in their realm to the Season 3 finale) and if the Rest of the World is on the other side; then they are where everything is opposite, Time runs backwards, and normal rules no longer apply.
I should really have sympathy for them all: they have eventually to realise, that in the realm they now inhabit; they’re the pawns.
Torture really wasn't neccessary. Sun had a much simpler solution all along. If she hadn't feel the need to keep her english a secret, she could have kept the guys from torturing Sawyer.
At the end of the episode, Sayid changes from his bloodied white shirt into a black one.
At the end of the episode, the song that is playing says something about..."I reach for mother Mary... and I shall not walk alone..." I found this interesting since it's Sawyer's episode, and we find out in "The Brig" that his mother's name was Mary!
Torture really wasn't neccessary. Sun had a much simpler solution all along. If she hadn't feel the need to keep her english a secret, she could have kept the guys from torturing Sawyer.
I think it took some time for her to find the plant; I also don't think she knew what was happening to Sawyer on the beach.
The Sawyer to Kate "Don't you feel sorry for me. [snatches his letter from her]. Get the hell out. Get out!" blasts you like a clarion hearing it again so soon after Jack's "Don't you look at me like that. Don't you, pity me." rile against Dr Hamill.
Same writer. Class.
Whoa. Great catch.
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Boone period the kid's a menace - was the instigator of the whole debacle (using our patented Fuselage 'who's to blame' logic) - but I do like him.
The thing is, Sawyer's statement that the book washed up on shore has got to be a lie. Kate is shown fanning through it and a book that's been waterlogged is never the same, and will look bloated. This one doesn't. Was it just too early in Lost for the prop department to realize that fans would analyze hi-def pictures of every detail?
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And I wonder if this exchange between Sayid and John still has something to add to our play:
Locke, where were you last night, around sunset?
Well, I'm afraid the only witness to my whereabouts is the boar that I was skinning for our dinner. I heard you were trying to send out a distress call. So it would seem whoever attacked you has a reason for not wanting to get off the island. Maybe someone who is profiting from our current circumstances? And from what I've seen you and Mr. Sawyer share a certain animosity.
No, he has an alibi. Just before I was struck, he set off a bottle rocket, a signal we had worked out -- 2 kilometers away. He wouldn't have the time to go. . .
Unless he found a way to time delay the fuse on his rocket.
How could he possibly have. . .
Anyone who watches television knows how to improvise a slow fuse. Use a cigarette. [Locke offers Sayid his knife] Just in case there's a next time.
Sawyer isn't the only con man on the island, as we know. This is one of the few times Locke is the one doing the conning -- getting his "mark", Sayid, to want to do something -- rather than Locke being the Gullible mark in a con.
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Kate! Have to have some sisterhood sympathy for the hard-nosed minx here; no woman should be put in the position of having to prostitute herself – even if for only a kiss.
And it's only the beginning. Fastforward to Season 3 and Ben's plan to use Kate as a sex tool, one way or another, to get Jack to do the surgery.
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The swallowing of principles that went down in Confidence Man left a very unpleasant taste in my mouth. Torture is more than unpalatable.
To quote Sawyer - they're in the wild, and Sawyer dragged them there. It's as if he wanted to prove that point while getting what he wanted - the scorn of the people he found himself among.
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Originally Posted by lostinlaf
Torture really wasn't neccessary. Sun had a much simpler solution all along. If she hadn't feel the need to keep her english a secret, she could have kept the guys from torturing Sawyer.
I don't understand why she didn't just go look for the eucalyptus plants herself; why did she have to involve Michael and thus get glared at by Jin. She clearly could have understood Shannon had asthma without understaing English and could have explained to Jin in Korean that she (and Jin if he insisted) had to go find eucalyptus.
I don't remember the details regarding Sun and the eucalyptus, but I look at it from the bright side: her presence and knowledge of plants and their medicinal use helped save Shannon.
the kid's a menace - was the instigator of the whole debacle (using our patented Fuselage 'who's to blame' logic) - but I do like him. And to give him his due, it had been a week since his last ****-up: 
and
and 