Follow along! The episode guide for "Confidence Man" is in Finding Lost, pp. 51-55.The thing I’m enjoying most about the rewatch so far is remembering what it was like seeing them for the first time, and how it was such a big surprise that Locke was paralyzed, or Sun spoke English, or Jack’s dad was such a dick, or, in this case, that Sawyer is a conman who is emulating the man who destroyed his life. Talk about taking the redneck bully and turning him into a complex guy with major issues.
Fun stuff I noticed:
• All of the non-Sawyer plot material acted as a bridge between the first section of season 1 and the next. Sayid leaves; Sun infiltrates herself within the group a little more; Charlie and Claire get together.
• I commented in my season 1 Finding Lost guide that pregnant women shouldn’t be eating peanut butter, so it’s a good thing Charlie gives her the imaginary stuff. I wrote that book after my first pregnancy, and yet, by the second one, only three years later, I was told by my doctor to go ahead and eat all the peanut butter I wanted, and now they let you give peanut butter to babies under a year old. New studies are showing that peanut allergies may be caused by people NOT giving peanuts to kids, so they never develop an immunity to it. Give it 5 years and it’ll be banned again. But in 2004, Charlie’s doing the right thing.
• I loved that Sayid refers to his years of torturing as being “communications.” It sort of fits with life on the island: getting anyone to communicate is like pulling teeth.
Things that have new meaning:(I couldn't decide between a pic of Angry Sawyer and Vulnerable Sawyer, so I've chosen both. You're welcome.) ;)
• Throughout the series, Locke is the one guy who never tells a lie, and who is brutally honest no matter what. He marches into the Others camp and announces who he is (in several different eras). He is consistently honest, even when it would be advantageous to him to lie. And yet here, he actually creates his own long con against Sayid by making him believe Sawyer is the bad guy. We’ll never see Locke pull off something like this again, by not only lying, but pointing the blame in the wrong direction. We’ll know by the end of season 1 that he’s the guy who clocked Sayid in the head (something I’d forgotten about until I saw him do it in “The Moth,” and then thought, “Oh YEAH! THAT’S why Sayid hates him so much”).
• This isn’t from the episode, but just a fun fact: at the 2008 Comic Con, Darlton told the audience that in the Exposé episode, they were going to include a gag where Nikki and Paulo are in the jungle and they find Shannon’s inhalers, look at it, and toss it aside. HAHA!!!
• Sawyer says his investor is from Toronto. It was actually me. And in the world of Lost, that means I’m evil.
• After seeing the finale, I could only picture that little boy writing the letter on the steps of the church and his uncle trying to stop him. That letter takes on a whole new meaning when you’ve seen the genesis of it.
• When the woman’s husband is talking to Sawyer in the restaurant, he says, “What is this, a loophole?” THAT word means something entirely different to us now!
• Watching Jack punch Sawyer in this episode, I can’t help but think how they’ll pummel each other senseless in “The Incident.” But at the same time, Sawyer develops a real hatred for Jack, and yet the man sticks his fingers into Sawyer’s arm to pinch an artery closed. Eep.
• The end of the episode we hear “I Shall Not Walk Alone,” and not only do I LOVE that song, but one of the lines refers to taking the hand of “my mother Mary,” and we later discover that Sawyer’s mother’s name is Mary. :::chills:::
