Lost 1.16: "Outlaws"
Written by Drew Goddard
Directed by Jack Bender
In which an encounter with a wild boar takes Sawyer on a hunt, and in the process, he recalls the circumstances that brought him to Sydney and some of the worst moments of his life…
Status Report
Over the past several episodes, the plot threads have slowed down a bit, giving way to character development concerns and subtly shifting alliances. This episode is no different in that respect. What makes this episode exceptional is the level of character development involved. This episode has all the hallmarks of a Drew Goddard episode: character exploration with some serious bite, for lack of a better word.
This is partially accomplished by simply focusing on fewer characters, and taking those characters and pulling them into the two main character threads under consideration. This is another episode about dealing with emotional baggage: Sawyer and his past, Charlie and his present. In a nice bit of parallel storytelling, both men are essentially dealing with the knowledge that they have killed in the name of revenge. Ironically, Charlie is probably in the better position; he can more easily justify his actions from a psychological point of view.
A lot of fans have seen Sawyer as a wounded soul in need of serious repair, and they are not wrong. Those wounds are exposed in this episode, and it is not a pretty sight. The teaser is more than enough information to present Sawyer in a different light. It’s one thing for him to say that his life was ruined by a man named Sawyer, and that trying to find him and get revenge has turned him into the kind of man he has long despised. It’s quite another to know that Sawyer, as a child named James, had to listen to his father kill his mother and then himself, with the suicide happened on James’ own childhood bed. It’s a haunting moment, and one that immediately gives the modern Sawyer a more reasonable context.
After all, it’s one thing to say that a terrible childhood brought about a bitter and self-centered criminal (it’s almost pop culture at this point); it’s another to see, very clearly, that Sawyer never had a prayer of living a normal life, giving how little control he’s had over it. The rest of the characters all have their emotional and psychological issues to work out, but with the possible exception of Kate, Sawyer has them all beat, without a doubt. It’s entirely appropriate that Sawyer be the de facto leader of those remaining on the beach, resisting personal redemption, since he’s also the one with the most to overcome.
Looking at Sawyer’s past, his quest to avenge his parents and the theft of his childhood dominates everything in his world. His criminal activities have been depicted as a combination of instant gratification and ongoing research: one facilitates the other, since finding the real Sawyer means delving into his world. Both driving forces were probably burned into James’ psyche the night of the murder/suicide; there are elements of childhood fantasy at the root of both. Sawyer lives for the moment, all while living for the goal of finding and killing the real Sawyer, all part of some endless revenge fantasy. Literally decades of his life have passed without deeper meaning.
More than ever, it’s clear why he uses the name Sawyer. The real Sawyer has become the totality of his existence, and not just in terms of following in the grifter’s footsteps, consorting with the same shady criminals and following the same lifestyle. James has come to define himself through the search for Sawyer, to the point that he doesn’t really know himself anymore. Unlike the rest of the survivors, who are all more or less aware of who they are and where they lost their way, Sawyer never got to become anyone.
This makes his behavior on the island thus far very easy to understand. Perhaps for the first time, he has the chance to control some measure of his reality. As such, he takes every step to gain possession of anything he might need, all in the name of avoiding dependence. It’s the first, awkward step towards self-discovery. At the same time, he consciously remains close to the others, and when he lets his guard down, he starts to make connections. There’s a part of him that wants to give up “Sawyer” and become his own person. But after years and years of denying his own personal identity, it’s going to take more than a month for him to let go.
It certainly doesn’t help that he’s continued to be a victim ever since that fateful night. He trusts his sometime associate Hibbs when it seems to give him what he wants, at least so far as to go to Sydney and plan murder. The real James seems to come out when he walks away, unable to bring his fantasy into reality. It’s not just that James has a crisis of conscience (thought that is the case); it’s also a sign that as of right now, there’s still something of the innocent little boy left inside. In the days before Flight 815, James wasn’t completely gone.
That’s when his story takes a truly inspired turn. Sawyer might not have murdered Frank, and a terrible mistake might have been avoided, if only he hadn’t run into Jack’s father. Finally delivering on the promise that the lives of the survivors are interconnected in the past as well as the present, pulling in a more abstract concept of a “higher power’ to the series’ tapestry, Jack’s father tells Sawyer something that Jack would love to hear, but something that is now personally devastating to Sawyer in the present: that Jack’s father, ruined by his own son, still sees Jack as a true man. It’s the kind of thing Sawyer never got to hear from a father figure. Even worse, Jack’s father gives Sawyer the motivation to go and kill Frank, only to discover that the man simply owed Hibbs money.
All of which informs the “present”, in which Sawyer comes to see a rather large wild boar as a symbolic enemy, Frank returned to get some measure of revenge, stealing Sawyer’s current comforts in repayment for a stolen life. The message is that a person can give meaning to random or even purposeful events that have everything to do with their psychologically skewed point of view. Forgiving the boar, letting it live, is symbolically the first step towards letting go of Sawyer and becoming James. (The subsequent conversation with Jack, of course, demonstrates that there’s still quite a lot of Sawyer left in there.)
Sawyer’s lesson could also be a hint about the mystery of the island itself. For all the signs and portents suggesting a higher power executing some master plan on the island, there have also been plenty of signs that much of the supposed phenomenon is being interpreted through perspectives that are suspect. If there’s something on the island that has some kind of psychotropic effect, altering perception and interpretation, then it could easily explain Sawyer’s experience in this episode. At the same time, the whispering seems to happen to those resisting the transformative experience of the island, so it’s still more than possible that the larger “higher power” context remains intact.
Charlie also goes through the journey of working out the psychological effects of killing a man, but in this case, he gets something that Sawyer hasn’t been given: emotional support. Part of that is the fact that Charlie didn’t put the rest of the survivors at a distance from the very beginning, so others cared about his well-being. None of them suspect or really even care about Sawyer’s past history, and since he won’t say anything about it, they can’t help him. So Charlie begins to move on, while Sawyer is still left to work it out alone.
Jack has very little to do with this episode; in fact, more is said about Jack through Sawyer’s memory than through his own actions. The writers continue to place Jack in the role of the reluctant leader, in the sense of the man who finds himself appointed sheriff in some Western. In a interesting and unexpected move, the writers take away some of the growing sense of impending conflict by having everyone give back the guns that Jack gave them in the previous episode. It might not change things in the long run; Kate knows where the guns are, and she could ultimately betray Jack down the road (for real or under manipulation herself). But it keeps Jack firmly in control, with the ability to call out the posse when necessary. (Yep, lots of Western archetypes recently!)
Kate is still playing both sides against the middle, working her own game. Now that more of Sawyer’s motivations have been laid on the table, Kate and Hurley are the only characters without some basic degree of psychological background. When it comes to Kate, however, that kind of information could be very important to the fate of all the survivors. Kate wants to do the right thing and help people, but that’s rapidly looking like an avoidance mechanism in and of itself. She’s interested in Sawyer, but even he recognizes that she’s essentially chosen to stick with Jack. But the secrets are starting to come out: she was once married, and coupled with the hints that she killed someone she loved, a vague picture is definitely forming.
It’s very interesting how Sayid’s past as a member of the Iraqi Republican Guard is presented without much prejudice. It’s a part of him that the writers occasionally use when it makes sense, but otherwise, he is portrayed as a normal human being with a sense of true decency. Sayid knows exactly what to say to Charlie to get him past the trauma, and then he moves on. He also shows genuine concern for Sawyer and the implications of someone else hearing the voices. If he knew that Sawyer’s experience included hearing the voices of someone specific to Sawyer’s past, he might be even more concerned.
Of course, Sayid couldn’t have helped Charlie if it hadn’t been for Hurley, who continues to act as the general counselor to the survivors. He seems to have a vested interest in making sure everyone’s psychologically balanced, or as much as possible, once again suggesting a basic understanding of what the island is offering. It’s hard to imagine that Hurley has anything in his past requiring redemption, especially since Hurley was aligned with the island and moving forward from the very beginning. That could only prove to make any such revelations about his past all the more shocking.
Claire has only a small part in this episode, but it’s very important in terms of Charlie’s overall development. It would have been easy for Claire to reject Charlie, having seen him murder someone right in front of her. But Claire seems to understand, on a gut level, that Charlie was looking out for her, and by now, she must know that he died, possibly because he tried to protect her. By episode’s end, they are back on track as the island’s most obvious couple, and a lot of fans couldn’t be happier. (Any excuse to get Emilie to smile on screen!)
Beyond Michael’s continuing effort to build a raft, the minor characters like Jin, Sun, Walt, Boone, and Shannon remain firmly in the background. It’s a testimony to the strength of the episode that their absence in the episode is barely noticeable. Granted, some of those characters will dominate the next episode, so it all balances out over time. Inserting them into this episode without true need would have been a mistake, and thankfully, the writers understood that fact.
Locke, firmly in the role of the island shaman, appears just enough to give Sawyer a bit of semi-obvious context. Some might find his tale about his sister a bit over the top, hammering home a metaphor that was already more or less obvious from the context. But that story serves a twofold purpose. It reinforces the idea that events can be interpreted as something more than they are, particularly in a spiritual sense, and it continues to establish Locke as the spiritual leader to Jack’s more practical leadership. And of course, it’s all rather disconcerting by the time the story is over, making one wonder how much Locke went through in his life, and how similar he might be to Sawyer. In essence: is Locke the kind of person that Sawyer could become, if he succumbs to whatever is causing Sawyer to hear the voices?
This episode is unabashedly all about character development, and in this regard, Drew Goddard hits another one out of the park. He takes a game like “I Never”, a potentially goofy plot device, and turns it into a substantially chilling mechanism for quick and powerful character revelation. This is also an episode that has a definitively slow and deliberate pacing; there are more uncomfortable and telling silences in this episode than one would ever expect, and every single one of them is appropriate. Despite a small role, Robert Patrick gives Hibbs a distinct personality, and it’s clear that he could factor into future revelations about Sawyer’s past, perhaps intersecting with a few other character histories in the process.
One gets the very strong sense that the writers know exactly what’s happening on the island and how every piece of the puzzle fits together, and as a result, they have enough confidence to leave questions unanswered, secure in the assumption that the audience can see that confidence as something justified. So plot elements like the hatch discovered by Locke and Boone have more value, at the moment, as triggers for decisions by characters, revealing who they are and what they want. It’s becoming rather clear that the writers consider it more important to establish motivations and dynamics in the first season, so that future plot and character threads have a strong foundation.
The trick is making sure that the episodes that focus on character development are strong enough to ensure that the confidence in the writers is sustained. Some of the past several episodes haven’t quite achieved that goal, making some wonder whether or not there really is a plan and tapestry in place. Episodes like this reaffirm that the writers know what they’re doing, and that the audience has every reason to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Final Analysis
Overall, this episode is one of the best of the season, providing a deep and unyielding context to Sawyer’s psychological baggage. Nearly every moment of the episode is devoted to revealing some layer of one of the characters, and there are enough hints regarding long-term plot threads to give the character development a strong context. Some might wonder what the past few episodes have been lacking; this episode demonstrates the point perfectly.
Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 4/4
Final Rating: 10/10
Season Average (as of 1.15): 7.8
Directed by Jack Bender
In which an encounter with a wild boar takes Sawyer on a hunt, and in the process, he recalls the circumstances that brought him to Sydney and some of the worst moments of his life…
Status Report
Over the past several episodes, the plot threads have slowed down a bit, giving way to character development concerns and subtly shifting alliances. This episode is no different in that respect. What makes this episode exceptional is the level of character development involved. This episode has all the hallmarks of a Drew Goddard episode: character exploration with some serious bite, for lack of a better word.
This is partially accomplished by simply focusing on fewer characters, and taking those characters and pulling them into the two main character threads under consideration. This is another episode about dealing with emotional baggage: Sawyer and his past, Charlie and his present. In a nice bit of parallel storytelling, both men are essentially dealing with the knowledge that they have killed in the name of revenge. Ironically, Charlie is probably in the better position; he can more easily justify his actions from a psychological point of view.
A lot of fans have seen Sawyer as a wounded soul in need of serious repair, and they are not wrong. Those wounds are exposed in this episode, and it is not a pretty sight. The teaser is more than enough information to present Sawyer in a different light. It’s one thing for him to say that his life was ruined by a man named Sawyer, and that trying to find him and get revenge has turned him into the kind of man he has long despised. It’s quite another to know that Sawyer, as a child named James, had to listen to his father kill his mother and then himself, with the suicide happened on James’ own childhood bed. It’s a haunting moment, and one that immediately gives the modern Sawyer a more reasonable context.
After all, it’s one thing to say that a terrible childhood brought about a bitter and self-centered criminal (it’s almost pop culture at this point); it’s another to see, very clearly, that Sawyer never had a prayer of living a normal life, giving how little control he’s had over it. The rest of the characters all have their emotional and psychological issues to work out, but with the possible exception of Kate, Sawyer has them all beat, without a doubt. It’s entirely appropriate that Sawyer be the de facto leader of those remaining on the beach, resisting personal redemption, since he’s also the one with the most to overcome.
Looking at Sawyer’s past, his quest to avenge his parents and the theft of his childhood dominates everything in his world. His criminal activities have been depicted as a combination of instant gratification and ongoing research: one facilitates the other, since finding the real Sawyer means delving into his world. Both driving forces were probably burned into James’ psyche the night of the murder/suicide; there are elements of childhood fantasy at the root of both. Sawyer lives for the moment, all while living for the goal of finding and killing the real Sawyer, all part of some endless revenge fantasy. Literally decades of his life have passed without deeper meaning.
More than ever, it’s clear why he uses the name Sawyer. The real Sawyer has become the totality of his existence, and not just in terms of following in the grifter’s footsteps, consorting with the same shady criminals and following the same lifestyle. James has come to define himself through the search for Sawyer, to the point that he doesn’t really know himself anymore. Unlike the rest of the survivors, who are all more or less aware of who they are and where they lost their way, Sawyer never got to become anyone.
This makes his behavior on the island thus far very easy to understand. Perhaps for the first time, he has the chance to control some measure of his reality. As such, he takes every step to gain possession of anything he might need, all in the name of avoiding dependence. It’s the first, awkward step towards self-discovery. At the same time, he consciously remains close to the others, and when he lets his guard down, he starts to make connections. There’s a part of him that wants to give up “Sawyer” and become his own person. But after years and years of denying his own personal identity, it’s going to take more than a month for him to let go.
It certainly doesn’t help that he’s continued to be a victim ever since that fateful night. He trusts his sometime associate Hibbs when it seems to give him what he wants, at least so far as to go to Sydney and plan murder. The real James seems to come out when he walks away, unable to bring his fantasy into reality. It’s not just that James has a crisis of conscience (thought that is the case); it’s also a sign that as of right now, there’s still something of the innocent little boy left inside. In the days before Flight 815, James wasn’t completely gone.
That’s when his story takes a truly inspired turn. Sawyer might not have murdered Frank, and a terrible mistake might have been avoided, if only he hadn’t run into Jack’s father. Finally delivering on the promise that the lives of the survivors are interconnected in the past as well as the present, pulling in a more abstract concept of a “higher power’ to the series’ tapestry, Jack’s father tells Sawyer something that Jack would love to hear, but something that is now personally devastating to Sawyer in the present: that Jack’s father, ruined by his own son, still sees Jack as a true man. It’s the kind of thing Sawyer never got to hear from a father figure. Even worse, Jack’s father gives Sawyer the motivation to go and kill Frank, only to discover that the man simply owed Hibbs money.
All of which informs the “present”, in which Sawyer comes to see a rather large wild boar as a symbolic enemy, Frank returned to get some measure of revenge, stealing Sawyer’s current comforts in repayment for a stolen life. The message is that a person can give meaning to random or even purposeful events that have everything to do with their psychologically skewed point of view. Forgiving the boar, letting it live, is symbolically the first step towards letting go of Sawyer and becoming James. (The subsequent conversation with Jack, of course, demonstrates that there’s still quite a lot of Sawyer left in there.)
Sawyer’s lesson could also be a hint about the mystery of the island itself. For all the signs and portents suggesting a higher power executing some master plan on the island, there have also been plenty of signs that much of the supposed phenomenon is being interpreted through perspectives that are suspect. If there’s something on the island that has some kind of psychotropic effect, altering perception and interpretation, then it could easily explain Sawyer’s experience in this episode. At the same time, the whispering seems to happen to those resisting the transformative experience of the island, so it’s still more than possible that the larger “higher power” context remains intact.
Charlie also goes through the journey of working out the psychological effects of killing a man, but in this case, he gets something that Sawyer hasn’t been given: emotional support. Part of that is the fact that Charlie didn’t put the rest of the survivors at a distance from the very beginning, so others cared about his well-being. None of them suspect or really even care about Sawyer’s past history, and since he won’t say anything about it, they can’t help him. So Charlie begins to move on, while Sawyer is still left to work it out alone.
Jack has very little to do with this episode; in fact, more is said about Jack through Sawyer’s memory than through his own actions. The writers continue to place Jack in the role of the reluctant leader, in the sense of the man who finds himself appointed sheriff in some Western. In a interesting and unexpected move, the writers take away some of the growing sense of impending conflict by having everyone give back the guns that Jack gave them in the previous episode. It might not change things in the long run; Kate knows where the guns are, and she could ultimately betray Jack down the road (for real or under manipulation herself). But it keeps Jack firmly in control, with the ability to call out the posse when necessary. (Yep, lots of Western archetypes recently!)
Kate is still playing both sides against the middle, working her own game. Now that more of Sawyer’s motivations have been laid on the table, Kate and Hurley are the only characters without some basic degree of psychological background. When it comes to Kate, however, that kind of information could be very important to the fate of all the survivors. Kate wants to do the right thing and help people, but that’s rapidly looking like an avoidance mechanism in and of itself. She’s interested in Sawyer, but even he recognizes that she’s essentially chosen to stick with Jack. But the secrets are starting to come out: she was once married, and coupled with the hints that she killed someone she loved, a vague picture is definitely forming.
It’s very interesting how Sayid’s past as a member of the Iraqi Republican Guard is presented without much prejudice. It’s a part of him that the writers occasionally use when it makes sense, but otherwise, he is portrayed as a normal human being with a sense of true decency. Sayid knows exactly what to say to Charlie to get him past the trauma, and then he moves on. He also shows genuine concern for Sawyer and the implications of someone else hearing the voices. If he knew that Sawyer’s experience included hearing the voices of someone specific to Sawyer’s past, he might be even more concerned.
Of course, Sayid couldn’t have helped Charlie if it hadn’t been for Hurley, who continues to act as the general counselor to the survivors. He seems to have a vested interest in making sure everyone’s psychologically balanced, or as much as possible, once again suggesting a basic understanding of what the island is offering. It’s hard to imagine that Hurley has anything in his past requiring redemption, especially since Hurley was aligned with the island and moving forward from the very beginning. That could only prove to make any such revelations about his past all the more shocking.
Claire has only a small part in this episode, but it’s very important in terms of Charlie’s overall development. It would have been easy for Claire to reject Charlie, having seen him murder someone right in front of her. But Claire seems to understand, on a gut level, that Charlie was looking out for her, and by now, she must know that he died, possibly because he tried to protect her. By episode’s end, they are back on track as the island’s most obvious couple, and a lot of fans couldn’t be happier. (Any excuse to get Emilie to smile on screen!)
Beyond Michael’s continuing effort to build a raft, the minor characters like Jin, Sun, Walt, Boone, and Shannon remain firmly in the background. It’s a testimony to the strength of the episode that their absence in the episode is barely noticeable. Granted, some of those characters will dominate the next episode, so it all balances out over time. Inserting them into this episode without true need would have been a mistake, and thankfully, the writers understood that fact.
Locke, firmly in the role of the island shaman, appears just enough to give Sawyer a bit of semi-obvious context. Some might find his tale about his sister a bit over the top, hammering home a metaphor that was already more or less obvious from the context. But that story serves a twofold purpose. It reinforces the idea that events can be interpreted as something more than they are, particularly in a spiritual sense, and it continues to establish Locke as the spiritual leader to Jack’s more practical leadership. And of course, it’s all rather disconcerting by the time the story is over, making one wonder how much Locke went through in his life, and how similar he might be to Sawyer. In essence: is Locke the kind of person that Sawyer could become, if he succumbs to whatever is causing Sawyer to hear the voices?
This episode is unabashedly all about character development, and in this regard, Drew Goddard hits another one out of the park. He takes a game like “I Never”, a potentially goofy plot device, and turns it into a substantially chilling mechanism for quick and powerful character revelation. This is also an episode that has a definitively slow and deliberate pacing; there are more uncomfortable and telling silences in this episode than one would ever expect, and every single one of them is appropriate. Despite a small role, Robert Patrick gives Hibbs a distinct personality, and it’s clear that he could factor into future revelations about Sawyer’s past, perhaps intersecting with a few other character histories in the process.
One gets the very strong sense that the writers know exactly what’s happening on the island and how every piece of the puzzle fits together, and as a result, they have enough confidence to leave questions unanswered, secure in the assumption that the audience can see that confidence as something justified. So plot elements like the hatch discovered by Locke and Boone have more value, at the moment, as triggers for decisions by characters, revealing who they are and what they want. It’s becoming rather clear that the writers consider it more important to establish motivations and dynamics in the first season, so that future plot and character threads have a strong foundation.
The trick is making sure that the episodes that focus on character development are strong enough to ensure that the confidence in the writers is sustained. Some of the past several episodes haven’t quite achieved that goal, making some wonder whether or not there really is a plan and tapestry in place. Episodes like this reaffirm that the writers know what they’re doing, and that the audience has every reason to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Final Analysis
Overall, this episode is one of the best of the season, providing a deep and unyielding context to Sawyer’s psychological baggage. Nearly every moment of the episode is devoted to revealing some layer of one of the characters, and there are enough hints regarding long-term plot threads to give the character development a strong context. Some might wonder what the past few episodes have been lacking; this episode demonstrates the point perfectly.
Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 4/4
Final Rating: 10/10
Season Average (as of 1.15): 7.8
posted by John Keegan | 09:17
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