TV Verdict

Tonight: Good Cop, Bad Cop; Rime of the Ancient Submariner; and Squirrel Baby returns! Spoilers follow.

When last we saw Sawyer, he was cutting a deal with a devil named Locke in an underground cave. That was several weeks ago. Tonight, we pick up his story after joining Team Smokey. Or has he? “Recon” is all about Sawyer and the lengths he’s willing to go to play people against each other to get what he wants. It also has the mysterious flash-sideways timeline that asks how James Ford’s life could have been different had he made a different choice.

It is the morning of the second day after Jacob’s death. The Temple is in ruins. Ben getting ready to dig his own grave. And Sawyer is waiting for Locke and Claire to return from their errand. When they come back to Claire’s crazy camp, though, they are not alone. Locke has an army of Temple refugees in tow—among them a confused but surprisingly resilient Kate. She seems to be mostly okay with whatever just went down. She’s just happy to be with Claire (even though she won’t be for long), and relieved to see Sawyer. He, on the other hand, has only one thing on his mind: getting off the island. Locke’s promise to help Sawyer get home if he does the same for him seems to have been sidelined by the appearance of Locke’s makeshift entourage and talk of setting up camp for a few days. Sawyer calls Locke out in front of the group, demanding that they move ahead with the plan. Locke responds by leading Sawyer off for a private conversation and a mission to do a little recon work over on Hydra island. He tells Sawyer that a group of people on that island, who came on the Ajira flight, mean to do him harm and he wants Sawyer to report back on their plans.

We begin tonight’s trip into sidewaysville in a motel room where James Ford is just finishing some business with a lovely lady. He tries to pull the season one pigeon drop con on her, but this time the pigeon ain’t a patsy. She’s married to a con man and knows a grift when she sees it. At gunpoint, he tells her that the whole thing is a set-up—that the motel is surrounded by cops and all he has to do is give the word and she’s off to jail. She calls his bluff. But he’s not bluffing. In this timeline, Sawyer really is a cop. And his partner is Miles.

Back at the station, Miles and James do a pretty good imitation of one of ABC’s failed cop shows. While Miles is trying to figure out what’s wrong with his partner, Sawyer is trying to find Anthony Cooper (proving that, even in this life, some things haven’t changed). Miles stops his meddling just long enough to set Detective James Ford up on a blind date with an archaeologist friend: Charlotte. They hit it off (if you know what I mean), but when Charlotte stumbles upon a file in James’s bureau marked “Sawyer,” he freaks out and kicks her to the curb. Looks like no double date with Farraday for them. The next day, Miles confronts James with proof that he went to Australia, not Florida like he claimed. When Ford still refuses to tell the truth, Miles drops him as his partner. Lonely, James tries to make up with Charlotte, but she turns out to be the only woman immune to his award-winning puppy dog eyes. He finally tells Miles the truth about his parents, and his search for Anthony Cooper. Just as they are about to discuss the legality of a cop killing a con man, however, James’s car is slammed into by another car, whose driver jumps out and bolts into a nearby alley. James chases her down. I say “her” instead of “them” because, hey, let’s face it: it was never going to be anyone besides Kate.

Meanwhile, island Kate is jumped by Claire, who returns the favor of Kate raising Aaron by forcing her to the ground and threatening her with a knife. Before Claire can gut Kate, however, Locke throws her off, informing Claire that killing Kate is unacceptable behavior (stopping just before adding “young lady”), and slaps her across the face. Even more confused than she has been so far this season, a teary Kate runs off into the jungle. Locke finds her and apologizes for Claire’s behavior. He tells Kate that he was the one who convinced Claire that the Others had Aaron. But, he says, he did it to help her. Now he wants to help Kate. When she asks where Sawyer is, he takes her to the beach and shows her Hydra island. They sit on the beach and have a heart-to-black-shriveled-heart. Locke tells Kate that he understands what she’s going through. He had a crazy mother, like the squirrel-skeleton-loving one Aaron has now. Her behavior set him on the wrong path; he knows Kate doesn’t want the same thing to happen to Aaron. Kate heads back to camp, and on the way she runs into Claire. Instead of doing the stabby stab, however, Claire apologizes for trying to kill Kate and sobs into her gullible shoulder.

Over on Hydra island, Sawyer’s mission seems like a bust. He finds the Ajira plane Locke has told him they’ll use to escape, but he also finds a pile of rotting corpses—the passengers the writers apparently didn’t feel like writing for. As he’s standing there, he hears a noise and turns to see a woman running into the jungle. He chases her down (like sideways Sawyer did the fugitive Kate). She tells him that her name is Zoe and that she’s the only survivor of whatever killed her fellow passengers. Sawyer doesn’t buy it and pulls his gun on her. Like sideways James, though, she has back-up. Armed men pop out of the bushes, and take the captured Sawyer to their leader: Charles Widmore, who we saw arrive at the island on a sub at the end of last week’s episode. Sawyer gets a private meeting with Mr. Moneybags, during which Widmore insists he didn’t kill the Ajira passengers, and Sawyer cuts a new deal to get off the island. He tells Widmore that he will go back and tell Locke that no one is on Hydra, setting him up to walk right into Widmore’s trap. They shake on it and Sawyer heads back to the island, where he promptly tells Locke about Widmore and his “deal” to hand over Locke. Impressed at Sawyer’s loyalty, Locke reconfirms his commitment to getting him off the island. Little do both Locke and Widmore know that Sawyer couldn’t care less about their little tiff. As he tells Kate—promising her that they will escape together on the sub while everyone else is fighting—he’s only in it for himself. All this alliance making and breaking just proves that if he made the jump to CBS, Sawyer would be the best player in Survivor history. Sorry Russell.

Another great episode. If you were to make a list of everything that happened this week, it wouldn’t look all that impressive. Besides a few tidbits about the Smoke Monster (as told by the Smoke Monster), we found out that Widmore is here to stop Locke and save the island (which we already guessed), that Sawyer really really wants to get off the island (which we already knew), and that Claire is hopping mad at Kate for taking Aaron (which we also already knew). Fleshed out into an hour-long episode, though, those bullet points add up to a compelling character study of Sawyer, a guy who’s spent so much of his life conning other people, he seems destined to end up conning himself. Like Sayid, Sawyer tried to get away from his criminal past. He made a life for himself with Juliet, but Jack, Kate, and a plan to blow up the island put an end to all that. Now, he just wants to run. I’m not sure what he expects to find off of the island, but he’s willing to make a deal with the devil to get there. The thing is, Sawyer’s flash sideways storyline shows that the defining moment of James Ford’s life wasn’t his parents’ deaths, it was the moment he decided to become a con man. He could just as easily have decided to become a cop. Granted, a loose cannon cop who lies to his partner about his secret search for Anthony Cooper, and who throws beautiful English women out of his bed when they see something they shouldn’t have—but when the truth finally comes out he’s willing to talk to Miles, even if it means being talked out of his revenge. The island Sawyer is beyond that. He’s not the type to let Michael Landon convince him to reach out to other people. Island Sawyer is one angry SOB. A loner, Katie—a rebel. Will he choose sides before the series is over? There’s only eight episodes left to find out.

Sawyer was the focus of the episode, but as far as I’m concerned, he shared it equally with Terry O’Quinn’s fake Locke. We’ve seen Smokey manipulate one-on-one before, but this is the first time we’ve seen him work his magic on a crowd. It was masterful. He is everything the real Locke wanted to be: charismatic, confident, respected. O’Quinn must be loving this chance to play Convincing John. Along with Michael Emerson’s performance last week, his Locke has become the most consistently fun character to watch this season.

It may be that this episode is remembered for coming immediately before Richard Alpert’s flashback blew everyone’s mind, but I thought it was a satisfying return to a major character’s storyline. And for the myth-busters among us, it raised some scintillating questions. Assuming we can take the Smoke Monster at his word (and given how forthright he was with everyone this episode, I think we can), who was his mother? Was she some Egyptian goddess, perhaps related to Tawaret? Was she Jacob’s mother, too? And, if so, what choices did he make to escape his brother’s evil fate? Is Claire really sorry for trying to kill Kate, or is she just biding her time? Is Charles Widmore really there to stop Locke, or does he have some other agenda, possibly related to the mysterious cargo he has locked away in the sub? Does the Smoke Monster really expect to leave the island on the Ajira plane, or is that just something he told Sawyer to keep his real plans hidden? Finally, and most importantly, what is it with the flash-sideways people and microwave dinners? Are Sawyer and Ben in some kind of Hungry Man co-op?

So many questions, so little time. What’s your take?