Lost Rewatch: The Long Con

 

This episode, by contrast to Fire + Water, strikes me as far weaker then its reputation would suggest. Don’t get me wrong, there are elements of the episode that are important, particularly when it comes to the flashback at the center and the throwaway storyline may be more significant than we thought at the time. But in hindsight, it really seems that the main story going on this episode was like so many in Season 2: a fundamental waste.

Now I can understand the basic idea at the heart of The Long Con. It’s mainly to show the widening divide going on between Jack and Locke, and to a larger extent just how fractured the camp is at a point when they should be banding together. The major problem is we don’t need to have a conflict about guns to see how much Jack and Locke are at odds: it’s been obvious for awhile and in the next episode, a much more critical storyline to the season will illustrate far better just how divided these two men are. It’s not like this divide isn’t obvious to everybody already: Ana Lucia will point it out in just a few episodes and she’s only been in a camp a week or so. Putting Sawyer in the center of this just makes it seem like its being forced upon us.

In Finding Lost Nikki argues that this is just a sign that over the last few months that Sawyer has not changed and is using his tools of a con man against the camp to his own advantage. The problem is this goes against what we’ve seen during Season 2. Sawyer has been showing that he is more willing to sacrifice himself: he put his life on the line and nearly paid for it with it. He has been willing to make himself part of the team (he might have wanted revenge against The Others but he very well could have gone in the jungle to try and help Michael) and he has been increasingly showing empathy, even in his own way to Hurley in the last episode. His actions in this episode seem less of him reverting to type than the writers reluctance to have him make a major character change at this point in the series: in the next several seasons he will gradually abandon his every man for himself attitude and increasingly take up a role of leadership.

Furthermore, the plan that he stages completely goes against his character even to this point in the show. The fact that he chose to have Sun the victim of his attack – particularly considering how close he is to Jin these days – is something that I don’t think he would have done in the aftermath of the plane crash. The way that he is willing to utterly use Jack by playing on how close he is to Ana  Lucia is petty by his standards, particularly to someone he cares very deeply about. I grant you that he is a very good con man, but as this flashback illustrates – and as we’ve already seen – he is clearly capable of compassion and warmth. He has no problem enduring suffering and being a tormentor of people, but he has never been this deliberately cruel.

And for what? Yes at the end of the episode, he gives his speech about how big a bad-ass he is, how everyone who wants a gun has to come through him, and he is ‘the new sheriff in town’. Except none of these things are true. In a couple of episodes, Kate will come to him for a gun as if none of the events in this episode have happened, and he won’t even put up a fight giving them to her. Everyone will treat him very badly for a few days, but not long after everyone’s going to be interacting him like nothing’s happened. Everyone keeps deferring to Jack and Locke as leaders; no one listens to Sawyer.  He’ll eventually end up giving the guns back without even having to be tortured, and it will turn out he didn’t even make much of an effort to hide them. So why did we have to go through all this? How did any of this progress the storyline or the characters?

And I’m not just talking about Sawyer.  Charlie has been capable of a mean streak this season but his actions are baffling because they all go against everything we’ve seen him do to this point. Let’s say for the sake of argument that Charlie wanted to get revenge on Locke. That in itself is very petty considering just how insane his behavior was in the last episode. But fine, let’s say he agrees to this in order to humiliate Locke. Why in the name of God would be willing to pretend to abduct Sun to do so? This is the most violent and reprehensible action he takes in the course of the entire series and it actually cheapens him immensely as a character. Even at the end of the episode when he asks Sawyer how he came up with the idea, he seems trying to deflect any responsibility for what his part in it. (Though in his defense, he will eventually confess and apologize to her later on.) I get that Charlie might feel that he has been ostracized from the camp after his actions, but this is not the way to get back into anybody’s good graces, certainly not Claire’s.

However, unlike some of the other episodes in this period the flashback more than makes up for it; it’s not only one of the most rewarding in the second season, it’s one that will be the most relevant not just for Sawyer but for at least one other character in the show going forward. We get a pretty big hint as to that possibility when Sawyer is meeting Gordy in the diner and the woman waiting on him is none other than Diane, Kate’s mother. Sawyer has no way of knowing yet how close he has gotten to someone on his flight – or how much closer she’ll get to him in a while.

In this episode we meet Cassidy, one of the more fascinating characters we only see in flashbacks. Cassidy is played by Kim Dickens, the first of half a dozen regulars on Deadwood who will end up playing small but critical roles on Lost from this point forward. (Lost defeated Deadwood for Best Drama in 2005. Dickens made her appearance in the interim between Season 2 and 3 of the show; by the time the next performer from the series guest starred, Deadwood had been inexplicably and unjustly cancelled.) During the first half of Lost many fans theorized that Cassidy herself was a con artist, that she was manipulating Sawyer as much as he was using her, and that her actions were fundamentally done to get money out of him. Later seasons would fundamentally prove that this was not the case but it’s always been hard to figure that out in The Long Con, particularly because Dickens is such a skilled performer.

In the opening flashback she makes Sawyer the moment he makes his move, calls him on it, and actually seems intrigued by his profession than repelled. It is clear, and not just from the title of the episode, that this is a long con and Sawyer is trying to do everything in his power to make Cassidy trust him enough so that she will reveal where the money she’s stashing away is. The reason that so many people saw that Cassidy might be a con artist is because we learned in Outlaws that Sawyer himself is very easy to con if you play upon what he wants the most.

I don’t believe that Cassidy is a con artist but rather that the writers are reminding us, in the middle of a story, were inclined to think he’s a monster, that Sawyer does have a heart. When he goes to see Gordy in the diner, it’s very clear he has feelings for Cassidy beyond that of a mark and that it really hurts him to hear himself called this way. You could make the argument that while his actions are basically his way of telling himself that ‘a tiger doesn’t change his stripes’, that his actions might well be out of love for Cassidy. Yes, there’s no one in the car waiting to kill Cassidy if she doesn’t come outside but Gordy doesn’t seem to be the kind of man to make idle threats. (Considering the company Sawyer keeps in other episodes, that’s very believable.) He took Cassidy for her life savings and that clearly left her with scars (and more than that) but as we shall see, she will get revenge of her own.

And while most of the story around the main plot is essentially background noise, we deal with a loose end from the tail section that has more significance than we think. It seems at first like Hurley, being the good friend he is, is trying to get Sayid out of his depression since Shannon’s murder. He knows Sayid loves all things electronic, so he brings the short wave radio that we now know was used to pick up the signal Boone sent out before his death. Sayid is dismissive and angry and Hurley walks away – but leaves the radio behind.

Then before the episode ends Sayid comes to Hurley with the radio. (I guess he got over wanting to torture Sawyer for the guns really quick?) He has an antenna and he tries to pick up a signal – and they do. A radio transmission that comes through with crystal clarity playing Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade. Sayid dismisses the idea the signal might be close by saying that radio waves could come from anywhere. Hurley says: “Or any time.” Off Sayid’s incredulous look, he smiles and says: “Just kidding.” And we forget about it as the two friends listen to the music.

Now in hindsight, there might have been more to it than that. In the next season we will start getting hints that on the island, time doesn’t act in a normal fashion, something that will become increasingly critical until the fifth season in which it becomes clear that just maybe, the writers weren’t using this little story as a throwaway. (In the very first podcast that Lindelof and Cuse did in regard to Lost,  Cuse joked: “You’re not going to tell them about the time travel, are you?” Maybe they might not have figured that part out by that part in the series, but I’m beginning to think it was in their thinking by this episode.)

Like I said, there are some good things in this episode but the overarching storyline in The Long Con is another kind of con by the writers in Season 2. We think we’re seeing a storyline that is going to be critical for the season and they forget about it before too long. Fortunately in the next episode, we’re finally about to regain momentum.