Review: Lost 2.13: The Long Con

Sawyer plays the entire camp. And in an enjoyable style,
I might add. From Wikia

Lost - Season Two, Episode Thirteen - The Long Con
Written 13/8/13

Waiting for next week's big plot development that will push this season into perfection, The Long Con follows up last week's disappointment with something slightly similar, except that Sawyer is cool and also has a deliberate psychological reason for why he's being such an asshat. I felt at times like I was watching an episode of Hustle transposed onto a desert island, and while it was cool to see Sawyer's plan to manipulate the other survivors to work against one another come to fruition in so slick a style, it also felt a bit frustrating to see the show mirroring the character beats from the previous season and not doing half as well.
     Jack and Ana-Lucia are all up in trying to train some of the background characters into an army to go off and fight the Others, which has Locke on the defensive as he still believes that the guns are safer locked away and taken only when absolutely necessary. As Jack raids Sawyer's stash to get meds, he begins to cook up a plan. Charlie attempts to kidnap Sun, leaving her dazed and unconscious. This leads the camp to think that The Others have gone back on their promise and attacked. Sawyer leads Kate to believe that it was Ana-Lucia's plan to scare the camp, which thereafter drives her to tell Locke that Ana-Lucia is planning to steal all the guns. Under Locke's nose, Sawyer steals all the guns, declaring himself "the new Sheriff in town." While his bravado makes everyone else hate him, Kate confronts him over the fact that he just wants to be hated. Elsewhere, Hurley cheers up Sayid by giving him Bernard's working radio, and they listen to Glen Millar on a radio channel actually coming from the 1950s. (Thanks Season 5!)
     In his flashback, we see Sawyer attempt his usual routine on a girl named Cassidy. She works it out fairly simply, and asks to become his accomplice and protogé. They go around the country conning people, until Sawyer's real partner Gordy tells him to cough up - it's a long-con, and Sawyer is after Cassidy's money. Despite the fact that he has feelings for Cassidy and feels like shit for doing it to her, he cons her anyway and ditches her, never to see her again.

Sawyer and Cassidy. From Wikia

     All of this links to a statement that Sawyer makes at the end of the episode - that despite his development on the Island and the fact that he had acheived the mean feat of getting everyone in the camp to like him, he still can't forgive himself for the shit he's done - "I ain't never done a good thing in my life." I can understand where he's coming from and it's very true of the character itself to do it, but it feels very melodramatic for me, and to organise Sun's kidnapping in the way he did rather pushed him over a moral boundary that even I am not prepared to look past for the time being. The issues in this episode are revisisted in its "sequel" next season, so at least they don't just get discarded, but their place in this season feels rather oddly placed, even if I did enjoy the episode.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: His name is Henry Gale, and he's from Minnesota. Or so he says. We meet Michael Emerson's character in One Of Them.