Lost Summer: Episode 8-10.
"Confidence Man," "Solitary" & "Raised By Another."
Welcome back to Lost Summer. We have much to discuss. Hope you had a great week.
Two days ago, the doorbell rings and my dog YUMI goes nuts. Hey, look! It’s another Amazon package! This is fantastic news, as it had been two, maybe even three hours since the last Amazon package was delivered to my stoop. I was starting to get the shakes.
What could it possibly be this time? A perpetual motion machine? Hamburger earmuffs? Dog perfume? Whatever it was, I was surely a fool for living without it for so long.
It really was dog perfume.
For the low, low price of one hundred American dollars, the fine (I’m guessing) folks at Dolce & Gabbana have created a delicate-yet-luxurious scent for canines like YUMI who routinely eat cat vomit and step backwards into their own feces. I thought it was a joke bottle when I opened the box.
And as much as I wanted to dislike everything about this purchase…it smells pretty good. It’s alcohol-free, gentle as to not overwhelm the senses, and worlds more palatable than the berry-flavored shampoos YUMI is slathered with at the groomer. She seems to like it, or at the very least is completely unbothered by it. I’d probably wear it in a pinch.
Make no mistake, this is all very stupid, but it’s my kind of stupid. It’s the sort of thing my conservative relatives would assume we were blowing our expendable DINK money on here in the big city, aaaaaand sometimes stereotypes exist for a reason, I suppose. Exhibit A: Dog perfume.
Alright, no more screwing around. A three-day weekend calls for a three-episode Lost recap, but let’s run through it a little quicker than usual so we can start cramming veggie dogs and potato salad into our collective gobs as soon as possible, ‘kay? For the first time this season, make with THE THIN & MEAGER!
EPISODE 8 - “CONFIDENCE MAN”
Flashbacks
James “Sawyer” Ford is a con man with a heart of gold and an ass of granite. Or to put it another way, James Ford’s life was once ruined by a con man named Sawyer, and now Ford’s living the same life on the lam. Running scams, sleeping with married women and robbing doughy oilmen of hundreds of thousands of dollars is a life he’s just fine with, but not if a kid’s gonna get hurt in the process. Man’s got a code.
During the scam that makes up the entirety of this week’s flashback, we see Sawyer (Ford, our Sawyer) call off said con when he realizes the married woman has a son. He drops his briefcase of cash, calls off the grift and storms out of the house. I’m sure the family will bounce back with little repercussion.
On The Island
Boone’s rifling through Sawyer’s stuff, which is not a good idea for such a delicate, fragile, stupid boy. Sayid’s still trying to figure out who conked him on the noggin after he fired the flare. Clearly someone who wanted to stop him from triangulating the distress signal. Particle Man, perhaps? Particle Man hates Triangle Man.
Sawyer beats the crap out of Boone for rustling his jimmies and jiggle-frying his lobster mac, but Boone was just looking for Shannon’s inhaler, which he believes Sawyer is hoarding. Jack demands Sawyer turn the inhaler over. Sawyer tells him to shove it. Kate asks Sawyer what it would take to part with it. Sawyer wants a smooch. Kate goads Sawyer into admitting that he’s not a complete monster, to which he shows her the letter he’s been keeping in his pocket. This is the letter he wrote, as a child, to the “Sawyer” that conned his parents and led to their murder-suicide. He initially passes himself off as the recipient of the letter, but Kate knows better (and she usually doesn’t).
Meanwhile, Shannon’s throat is slowly closing up (the audience is reminded that this is a bad thing and she could die). With Jack’s approval, Sayid steps up (with little provocation, I might add) and decides to torture the inhalers out of Sawyer. He’s done it before, you see (TBA). Sawyer finally agrees to turn the inhalers over, but only to Kate, and only after that sa-mooch. And smooch they do, with tongue and everything. Sawyer then says he never had the inhalers to begin with. Kate levels Sawyer and Sayid stabs him in the arm, hitting an artery. I swear to God this is a good TV show.
Thank goodness Sun is here to save the day, as she creates a plant remedy of crushed eucalyptus leaves which improves Shannon's breathing (VapoSunRub? I’ll workshop that). Charlie convinces Claire to move to the caves, insisting it’s safer. Sayid, disgusted with himself for breaking a vow never to torture anyone again, decides to leave the group and venture into the jungle on his own. But not before he gets a smooch from Kate.
EPISODE 9 - “SOLITARY”
Flashbacks
Sayid tortures his way right into a promotion. That’s how good he is at torturing people!
Unfortunately, Sayid is later ordered to torture a woman he appears to know, named Nadia. Nadia also remembers him from her childhood (same pickleball team). The two talk about their past, and how Nadia became a traitor to her nation (teach me how). Nadia refuses to cooperate for weeks, until Sayid’s commanding officer tells him that Nadia is to be executed.
Later, when Sayid leads Nadia out, he reveals that he has set up an escape route for her. Nadia pleads with him to join her, but desertion will mean the death of his family. To save his love, Sayid is forced to shoot his fellow officer and then shoot himself in the leg to avoid suspicion. Nadia’s off in the night, and Sayid’s about to lose that promotion (and maybe his leg).
On The Island
Sayid's Trip
Along the coastline, Sayid discovers an electrical cable leading out of the ocean and into the jungle. The island has cable! (nobody ever once made that joke, so shaddup you face) The cable leads underground, and near it is a set of traps. Sayid is caught off-guard by one (the Shrine of the Silver Monkey), which pulls him upside down by a rope. Trapped for hours, Sayid is eventually cut down by an unknown figure and faints. Time for the torturer to become the tortureeee.
I’ll just keep typing e’s until it looks right.
Asking “Where is Alex?” the woman shocks a restrained Sayid with an electric current. Sayid pleads that he doesn't know who Alex is and explains about the plane crash. When he comments about the French distress signal he picked up, the woman asks if it’s really been that long. Sayid says, “How do you say ‘Did I stutter, bitch?’ in French?”
Sayid sees a jacket with the name "Rousseau" on it, the French woman’s name. She talks about her distress signal, and how “they” now control it. “They” in this case is David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros./Discovery. We have to stop him; he canceled Battlebots!
Danielle Rousseau tells Sayid about how her science team experienced malfunctions during a storm in the Pacific. Her ship was breached and crashed. After two months, something occurred, causing Rousseau to make the distress signal which stated that “it had killed them all.” Danielle explains that “the Others were the carriers,” and that though she had never met them, the Others whisper in the jungle. Sayid manages to break free from his chains, and after grabbing a gun as well as copies of maps and diagrams and some gum and a Maxim and some Tums, he makes his escape.
Sayid and Rousseau cross paths as Sayid is trying to escape. Rousseau reveals that she herself had killed her entire crew, claiming they were “sick.” She could not afford to let whatever hurt them escape the island if rescue would come, so she killed everyone close to her. Sayid asks if she wants to join him, but Danielle declines. Before she leaves, she advises Sayid to watch his people very closely. Sayid shouts after her, “Who was Alex?” She answers that Alex was her child.
As Sayid treks back through the jungle, the sound of the Smoke Monster is briefly heard, and he begins to hear whispers. Damn you, Zaslav!
The Caves
Hurley thinks that everyone is too tense and they need something to help them unwind. Dharma Initiative Brand CBD gummies, perhaps? Locke returns to the caves with Ethan, another survivor*, after hunting for food. The two of them found a variety of luggage items during their scout, and Hurley offers to look through them for anything useful. Hurley discovers something in the bags which puts a smile on his face.
Ham.
Never again. Never again will I do that joke. I love Hurley. More importantly, Weezer loves Hurley. I’m sorry, buddy.
Michael and Jack make plans to split the drinking water to make a shower facility. Their discussion is interrupted by Charlie, who takes them to see Hurley. Hurley has built a golf course in order to help everyone to have some fun in their life on the island. They play golf. Anyone left-handed is thrown into a volcano.
EPISODE 10 - “RAISED BY ANOTHER”
Flashbacks
Claire is pregnant, and her boyfriend Thomas is not about that life. Byeeee!
Claire and a friend visit a psychic, who reads Claire’s palm and immediately congratulates her on her pregnancy. He then freaks out and swiftly returns Claire’s money, refusing to continue the reading and ushering the two women out. After pleading for a follow-up reading, the psychic says it is crucial that Claire raises the child herself. Claire says she will put the baby up for adoption unless Thomas returns, but Malkin insists that she must listen.
“Listen,” he pleads. “Listen.” “Why won’t you listen?” “You’re not listening.” “Listen.”
Now at a solicitor's office, Claire is finalizing details of adoption. The adoptive parents agree that Claire will have no legitimate rights to the child, and that she will be paid upon the child’s birth. She tries to sign the papers, but the pen is not working. The lawyer passes her another, but again ink does not come out. As a third is passed to her, Claire begins to have second thoughts, panics, eats the pen and runs away.
Claire meets with Malkin and tells him she is ready to listen to his plan. Claire is told that a couple in Los Angeles will take good care of the child. He gives her tickets for Oceanic Flight 815, but Claire is put off by the fact that the flight is only a day away. Malkin firmly says it cannot be any other flight and the couple is waiting to meet her in America. Do they not have phones in Australia?
On The Island
Claire has a nightmare and wakes up screaming. Charlie calms her down and notices her bloody hands and asks what happened. In the morning, Jack sees to her hands, commenting that she must have had one hell of a nightmare to have dug her nails 1/4 of an inch into her palms. Claire implies that perhaps it was not a nightmare, but Jack shrugs the event off as sleepwalking and stress. Jack, the guy who hasn’t slept in a week and keeps seeing his dead father around every corner. A bastion of stability.
Once again at night, Claire sees a man covering her mouth and stabbing her stomach with a needle. She wakes, screaming loudly just like the night before. She says that someone attacked her, and Jack and Michael try to comfort (ie: gaslight) her, but Claire is adamant that what she saw was real and that someone truly was trying to hurt her bay-bay. The event leads Hurley to realize that none of the survivors have any idea of who their fellow survivors on the island really are. He wants to start a census of who everyone is and where they live (in the caves or on the beach or in a hatch deep under the ground). Meanwhile, Charlie reassures Claire that he will watch over her all night.
He also offers to hold the baby’s hand, which I found inappropriate.
In the jungle, Hurley questions Ethan Rom. Ethan answers his questions, saying he is from Ontario, which explains why he looks so weird. At the caves, Jack tries to tactfully tell Claire he thinks she should take some sedatives (strong enough for an Aussie, but gentle enough for an infant). Claire realizes Jack thinks she is making everything up. Packing her things, she decides to go back to the beach, which she thinks is safer than the caves. Charlie catches up with her and escorts her for her protection, despite her telling him to leave her alone.
As Claire and Charlie continue heading to the beach, Claire begins to feel contractions. Charlie offers to deliver the baby himself. Claire flatly tells him to get Jack at once. Charlie finds Ethan and tells him to find Jack. Charlie returns to Claire and helps her calm down. She tells him about the psychic she visited, and while she thinks he was wrong, Charlie says perhaps he knew of their fate. Claire becomes convinced Malkin put her on the flight knowing what would happen. She starts to feel better, and Charlie remembers that Jack told him about stress causing a false labor. The relationship between the two is now completely mended, and they decide to head back to the caves.
There, Jack and Kate are shocked to see Sayid stumble in. Sayid is severely dehydrated and delirious, speaking of the French woman. He ominously adds that “we are not alone” before fainting. Before they can properly take care of him, Hurley shows up to talk about his list. He has cross-referenced all the names he collected with those on the flight manifest, and found that one of them was not on the latter. That person was not on the plane.
As Charlie and Claire begin their trek back, they are greeted by Ethan. Beginning to feel uncomfortable, they ask where Jack is. Ethan simply stares at Claire and replies that Jack is “oot and aboot.” Charlie and Claire scream in unison.
Creepy smash cut, creepy episode over. The Ethan reveal is still so fantastic.
If I’m being honest, that wasn’t nearly as thin and/or meager as I thought it would be. I guess someone’s Thin & Meager is always gonna be someone else’s Thick & Meaty. That was my senior quote, actually.
…um…let’s BREAK IT DOWN!
“Confidence Man” - Sayid leaves the group because he feels remorse for going back to his old ways and torturing Sawyer, but…nobody really asked him to. He offered his bamboo-shoots-under-the-fingernails services to Jack, who agreed because he didn’t want to do it himself. I gotta say he reverted quite easily, and with little convincing.
In Sayid’s defense, I think it was because he thinks Sawyer was the one who hit him in the back of the head (Particle Man). Speaking of which, Locke played Sayid pretty easily for a guy who was Republican Guard counterintelligence, getting Sayid to immediately agree that it was probably Sawyer who racked him. We won’t find out that it was Locke who hit Sayid until S1E21.
“Confidence Man” is more than a Sawyer flashback episode, it was a real introduction to Josh Holloway as an actor. He emerges from the ocean naked, gets into multiple fights and shows every range of emotion in the book through his origin story (one of the most tragic of a unanimously-tragic group). It was just a great showcase and quality setup for the Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle we’ve been hinting at so much. It also sets up Sayid’s pilgrimage, which is important because he finds some weeeeeird shit out there.
“Solitary” - This is a big episode for the “Mythology” of Lost: Sayid finds the cable that goes into the ocean, finds Rousseau and discovers there are other people already on the island. It’s a reminder of just how much stuff comes into play in the first half of the first season that carries the show through the next hundred or so episodes. The mystery of the cable won’t be answered until the penultimate episode of Season 3.
"Solitary" also solves the first big mystery of the series by revealing the origin of the French voice heard in the pilot. This reveal occurred despite the network encouraging the producers to wait until the finale to show Rousseau. For series cynics, this is the only mystery the Lost writers ever solved.
Even more than "Solitary," "Raised by Another" felt like the first all-in on Lost as a serialized mystery, in part as Claire's story is the first to reveal a character's destined voyage to the island in the form of flashbacks. Did the psychic know that 815 would crash in this way? The manifest says that Ethan wasn’t on the plane? Sayid’s back and he says “we’re not alone?” Here we GO, baby! A perfect buildup.
Again, ABC got very squirrelly about all of this, as they knew the show was a hit by this point and didn’t want to scare people away with sci-fi and time travel elements. Nobody ever claimed TV producers were intelligent (I’m talkin’ to you, Zaslav). Besides, there was no turning back at this point.
Come on, dude! We’ve got, like, three family reunions this weekend! Make with THE NUMBERS and let’s hit the road already.
4 - “Confidence Man,” “Solitary” and “Raised By Another” were watched by 18.4, 17.7 and 17.1 million viewers respectively. Again, I’m shocked at the million-viewer swing between episodes, but I guess I shouldn’t be. Serialized network dramas like this weren’t really happening when Lost came around, so it took a bit for people to realize they really needed to watch every week to keep up with what was going on (don’t make me tap the “Appointment Television” sign again). This is also the reason Lost didn’t work as a syndicated series. Sure, you could watch Lost out of order, but you could also do a photo op at Arlington National Cemetery. Some things are clearly insane and worthy of ridicule.
8 - In “Solitary,” Jack goes after Sawyer for being selfish and hoarding supplies; Sawyer accuses him of running a “commie share-fest.” That’s what I should have called the CDP.
15 - Also in “Solitary,” the character of Sullivan, to whose medical woes Jack tended, was created to make the rest of the survivors think that Rousseau's team was killed by an illness. This is funny to me, because it felt like an immediate Easter Egg regarding how many survivors were unknown to the main cast, had no speaking parts and served no purpose. It felt like the Scott & Steve Paradox I talked about last time moreso than a plot point, probably because they didn’t follow up too much on it afterward.
16 - You already know this, but Episode 9 contained the first mention of “The Others,” and Ethan Rom is an anagram for “Other Man.” I really just wanted to shout-out that Ethan looks like a creep, which he is. Just a perfectly-cast creep. Great stuff.
23 - In “Raised By Another,” it’s discovered that Ethan’s name wasn’t on the manifest, which concerns Hurley. But wouldn’t the name ‘Sawyer’ not be in the manifest, either? Whatever, they explain this away in a later episode. Stop worrying about it. I shouldn’t have even brought it up.
42 - “Raised By Another” is the first episode where Flight 815 is mentioned by number. What? Episode 10? It really took that long? I feel a little Berenstain’d here.
Thanks so much for reading. Sound off in the comments and enjoy your long weekend. We’ll be back on Tuesday with another double-shot of Lost Summer.