Lost Rewatch on VHS: Outlaws

 

One of the complaints justifiably made about Lost is that for the length of its run, none of the characters will share any of their deepest, darkest secrets about anything that happens either on the island or in their past. Perhaps this is one of the reasons, in hindsight, that Outlaws is one of my favorite episodes of the first season, if not the whole series. In what is an outlier for this show, almost every characters is willing to share certain key stories about their past and quite a few of them are able to move on in a way. This is true even when it comes to the flashback in this episode, even if Sawyer never goes into the exact details as to the who or the why.

Sawyer spends the brunt of this episode dealing with a boar that he believes ‘has it in for him,’ something that fundamentally amuses both Sayid and Kate when they see him in action. Neither of them are ever aware of why Sawyer is convinced that he has to hunt down and kill this boar – it is because Sawyer is carrying guilt for his actions before he got on the plane and has somehow come to believe that this boar is the manifestation of that guilt.

Given what we will eventually see and learn about this island, I’m actually inclined to believe that Sawyer might not have been far off in his estimation. Repeated here are the whispers we have heard a couple of times on the island, but this is one of the few times we actually manage to get a coherent sentence: “It’ll come back around.” When we finally understand the implication of it in the final flashback, we almost believe the fan theory that this might be some kind of purgatory and that this is something that Sawyer has to work through to move on. The main difference is this isn’t anywhere close to all the baggage Sawyer is carrying and the end of this episode isn’t close to proving it.

Even if you know this on a rewatch, it doesn’t change the fact that everybody is still sharing far more than they usually do. This is on display in what is one of the high moments of the entire first season: Kate and Sawyer kicking back after trekking the boar and playing the drinking game: ‘I never.’ The opening moves are very sweet and funny,  and then eventually begin to probe slightly. When Kate tells us both she was in love and married, these are actually stories that will get paid off later in the series (and in fact maybe linked to two completely different flashbacks for her). Gradually, however, the exchanges become more jagged until Sawyer finally ends the fun with: “I never killed  a man.” After they both drink and Sawyer gives a cutting remark, we naturally assume he’s being hurtful. Based on what we learn not long after, I’m now inclined to think this is borne more out of pain and guilt than anything else. (It’s not clear if Sawyer knows whether Kate was the prisoner on the plane.) And let’s not kid ourselves, the fact that Sawyer drank to, really makes one think he was looking to see if they really did have something in common.

Similarly Locke, whose stories usually seem to have more historical referenced than personal, actually delves a little deeper when he tells Kate and Sawyer about the story of his foster mother and the Golden Retriever that mysteriously appeared after his sister died in an accident. He still guards his own feelings -  he can’t bring himself to admit he truly believed it when Kate asks him – but it is an insight into his own beliefs that is more humanistic than they are outright religious.

Charlie and Sayid have an interesting interaction as well, as Charlie continues to deal with his own trauma having shot Ethan just a few days earlier. He can’t look Claire in the face when she comes to him, and he clearly seems to think that if he buries Ethan he can essentially put all this behind him. When Sayid tells him a story about his own PTSD – again demonstrating that he is fundamentally more honest about his past than almost everyone on the island – Charlie finds a way to face his trauma in a way he hasn’t been able to yet. It is a baby step forward but it’s one he needs.

Someone else reveals a bigger truth – only it’s not who we expect, and its certainly not where we expect to find it. The scene in the bar is critical in several ways, perhaps most importantly when it comes to viewing the survivors. Throughout the first season, many of the characters have believed that they may have been guided to come to the island. The viewer is no doubt considering it as a possibility but there’s still some room for doubt. We know Locke’s reasons for believing this and we know why Claire thinks the same way, but because their beliefs are grounded in spirituality and mysticism, the more rational among us may still be holding doubts. After this episode, it becomes a lot harder to argue that the survivors of Oceanic 815 were supposed to be on the plane because it will start becoming too hard to dismiss what we are seeing as coincidence.

Sawyer has come to Sydney out of revenge to kill the man he has been lead to believe was responsible for the deaths of his parents. This is the first time (but far from the last) that we see that for a con man, Sawyer is very easily conned. When he hears that ‘Sawyer’ is in Sydney, he ignored his instincts to distrust Hibbs and no doubt gets on the first plane there. The first time, he goes up to Duckett (Jeff Perry just a few years before he will shoot to fame for his work in Shondaland) he clearly has his suspicions but can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. So he ends up in a bar, either to drown his sorrows or get some liquid courage. Based on what we will learn about him, I’m more inclined to think it would have been the former – had he not run into Christian.

This is the first time we run into Christian in the last place we’re expecting. Alcohol often causes people to speak the truth, and in Christian’s case, he actually does. He tells Sawyer that despite what Jack did in ‘All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues’, he is actually proud of his son and grateful for what he did. He knows all he has to call and tell him this, but he can’t bring himself to do so.

Of course, that does not mean that Christian is just as capable of saying the worst possible things to strangers as he is to his son – though to be fair, there’s absolutely no way he could what Sawyer was there to do or what the consequences would be. And you could argue that Sawyer pays him back in kind by leaving the bottle for Christian who will then begin the process of drinking himself to death.

The difference being, of course, that Sawyer does learn the consequences of his action from an equally unlikely source. Jack is mostly absent from this episode, save for a scene at the beginning but when Sawyer returns the gun to Jack – it’s never clear whether he did so because of his promise to Kate or whether he just doesn’t want a reminder of what he’s done – Sawyer learns in no uncertain terms who Jack’s father was and what happened afterwards. Sawyer doesn’t have it in him to ‘ease Jack’s suffering’ yet – though this to will pay off – but its clear in the last minute of the episode that even though he managed to work through his issues about his murder of Frank Duckett, he now realizes that another burden has been put on him. (Though I’m not sure this was Sawyer’s fault.)

There is one more key element worth noting: after Sawyer shoots Duckett in the chest, he begins to read the letter he’s carried with him for nearly thirty years. Let there be no doubt in anyone’s mind that Sawyer was always going to do what he eventually did. There’s even a possibility he thought doing this would free from ‘Sawyer’: when Duckett asks him his name at the shrimp stand, he tells him its James, and we’ll eventually learn that is his real first name. I thought then – and do now – that Sawyer thought doing this would free him and cause him to get rid of the name and man that had haunted him all his life. In a sense, this is true, but in a larger sense, it’s not. As much as Sawyer might rage about the island becoming a strip mall near the end, this island will turn out to be the only thing that ends up freeing him – which given his eventual connection to it, is slightly ironic.