Lost: Season 6, Episode 8 Review: Recon

Recon

Original Airdate: March 16, 2010

Writer: Elizabeth Sarnoff and Jim Galasso
Director: Jack Bender

After the best flash sideways to date in “Dr. Linus”, this episode is a step down.  Perhaps it is just the inevitable disappointment after a great episode, but also the flash sideways suffered from tackling too much for so little screen time.  It felt at best like a “Part 1” subplot and at worst like a bigger story that got hacked to pieces with a machete.  The main story is far better, setting up Widmore’s arrival and the questions that come from that.

Unlike past flash sideways, Sawyer’s LA X life is a mixed bag.  He has a more respectable career as an LAPD detective (where was Ana-Lucia?), using his overall talent at conning for undercover work.  He also must be a Jimmy McNulty sized legend in the department as his back up in the sting operation presumably were listening in as he had sex with the very attractive Jodi Lyn O’Keefe.

However, he has not gotten over his parents’ deaths and still vows revenge on Anthony Cooper.  So despite being on good terms with Locke in this reality, LA X Anthony Cooper still has a checkered past.  So does that mean he still is the man who ruined Sawyer’s life or is he mistaken?  With that and the redemption some characters have found in the LA X timeline, this could end with LA X Sawyer forgiving Cooper for what he’s done instead of exacting a brutal revenge when he finds him.

He also is pretty sloppy with his plans.  It turns out he did nothing to stop LA X Kate at the airport because he didn’t want anyone to know he was at the airport instead of Palm Springs (are there no video cameras in LAX?)  Then he calls up the Anthony Cooper suspects at his desk with his phone.  I’ve seen enough CSIs and Dexters to know this is going to raise a red flag when Cooper’s body shows up.

While I enjoy seeing the cameos from past cast members, I didn’t buy the romance between Charlotte and Sawyer.  It makes sense Chang would know Charlotte if her parents worked in Dharma with him, but clearly this was meant to be Juliet.  It would’ve had a bigger emotional impact had it been her getting too close to his past, but sadly Elizabeth Mitchell is busy on another show, so instead of cutting it, they replaced the woman.  They needed that bit to drive that wedge between him and Miles, but Sawyer’s lies about where he was could’ve done the trick just as well.

Charlotte rejecting Sawyer motivates Sawyer to talk to Miles, but an episode of Little House on the Prairie convinces him to apologize in the first place.  The “Previously On…” podcast, among other places, criticized this shorthand as lazy.  While there is some truth to this, Sawyer’s epiphany should’ve been rewritten when they couldn’t get Elizabeth Mitchell back, it calls back season three, where Sawyer mentioned watching it when he was sick at home as a child.  That show was a source of comfort for him during a tough time, so the connection with his past telling him to move on worked.

The end of the flash sideways, where LA X Sawyer runs into Kate, doesn’t feel like the pay off this story was heading to this episode.  It feels like something they wanted to do, so it literally crashed into the plot.  They must’ve been trying for something ambiguous, as Sawyer is out for himself despite aligning with Johnny’s group.  However, it seems like the episode would’ve been better built around LA X Sawyer finding LA X Cooper and what he would’ve done to him.

On the island, Johnny and the rest of the survivors from the Temple massacre arrive at camp.  Here he tries to comfort Zack & Emma after he tells them the Smoke Monster killed them, well aware that he and it are the same.  Despite hating Jacob, he is as manipulative as his counterpart ever was.  It seems that the siege was to get people behind him, it didn’t matter who he killed.

It turns out their plan to get off the island isn’t going to be as easy as expected, with Sawyer having to head to Hydra Island to see if the Ajira plane is still flyable and to gain the trust of the people still on there.  Considering the Smoke Monster can break off into several pieces, it may not be hard to believe that part flew over to the other island and saw what happened.  Sending Sawyer over had to be part of a contingency plan to accommodate the new arrivals.

Sawyer arrives to find the remaining survivors, or at least some of them, of Ajira 316 dead and a woman named Zoe pretending to be one of them.  It turns out she is one of the people on Widmore’s submarine, which apparently didn’t hire any mercenaries.  It’s not far fetched to believe Widmore’s people are the ones responsible for the remaining survivors’ deaths, which he denies, but admits that that will be viewed with a jaundiced eye.  In Widmore’s defense, the bodies have already begun to rot and are swarmed by flies, something that wouldn’t happen in the short time Widmore has been back.

So he strikes a deal with Widmore: lie about their presence and lead Johnny to their door.  However, as soon as he gets back to the main land, he alerts Johnny that he lied to Widmore and tells him everything.  It’s all a part of his plan to distract them while he hijacks the sub and makes a run.  Sawyer’s gotten a lot of grilling from fans who think this is a little far fetched.  Piloting a plane is hard enough assuming they can get Frank to do it, let alone forcing whoever in Widmore’s team to operate the sub and get them off the island.  Despite Holloway’s attempts to sell it, it still sounds naïve.

As Sawyer’s in it for himself, what does this mean to his promise to Jin to help him get off the island as well?  Sawyer has taken a dark turn this year, but he worked with Jin for three years during their time in Dharma.  Will he make one last redemptive action or screw over others for his rescue?  Not to mention there is the inevitable obstacle of those still unexplained people who attacked the Losties in the outrigger during the flashes.  Those people have to be a group of the people on the island now.

Back in Johnny’s camp, Kate and Claire hash out their differences and it is, to say the least, awkward.  It’s worsened with Johnny not realizing that maybe making Claire angry for three years and able to access sharp objects was a bad idea.  While intervening, there appears to be some weird father-daughter relationship going on, possibly because Christian was one of Johnny’s forms.

While trying to console the shaken Kate, Johnny reveals a little bit about himself when he recalls that he, like Aaron, had a crazy mother and that her behavior caused “growing pains”.  This could further add to the theory that Johnny and Jacob are brothers, with Johnny’s mother favoring Jacob.  There is an odd feeling like he expects Kate to do something about Claire so Aaron won’t have to live with the problems Johnny did or if Johnny is Aaron thanks to time loops and other island magic.  Regardless, Claire is convinced Kate was acting in Aaron’s best interest (tell her he’s with her mother already) and they make nice, but its pat nature feels forced or hiding a more malicious agenda.

So for Sawyer’s presumed last episode, we get a mixed bag.  The flash sideways were too expansive to get full coverage, possibly to deal with the fact that this is probably the last episode of it.  The main island storyline is a lot better, and luckily this episode is just a speed bump on the road to the finale.

Overall Score: 7/10