Lost Season 1, Episode 7: Confidence Man

Oh, man. Let me start out by saying... this episode... could've been funnier. I mean, I like watching a man get tortured as much as the next guy, but as far as making jokes about it... not as fun as I thought. Oh, umm. Spoiler alert, by the way. A dude gets tortured in this episode.

Kate is walking down the beach, tallying her bananas, when she comes across a trashy romance novel and notices Sawyer doing his best Matthew McConaughey impression. It's pretty good too, all he has to do is not shave for a few days and then not wear a shirt. He makes some lewd comments at Kate, which surprisingly have nothing to do with bananas. Well, that's what being on ABC will do to your sexy banter.

Flashback.

Sawyer is in bed with some lady friend, post sans pants dance, making the cutsey talk when he discovers that he's late for a meeting. He jumps out of bed, puts some clothes on for a change, and grabs his briefcase which coincidentally falls open and spills out a bunch of (presumably) real money.

Flash forward.

Sawyer is running through the forest for some reason, shirt on, sandwich in hand, and he find the annoying kid rummaging through his stuff. Cut to Jack disinfecting Sayid's head. They're talking about how Sayid got attacked by a log in the last episode. Sayid is Piiiiiiiiissssssed, but then the annoying kid gets carried into the cave all beat up and stuff. Sawyer kicked the living poops out of him.

Pregnant girl is sitting on the beach, relaxing, and Charlie Pace brings her some water and tries to convince her to move to West Caverberg with him. It is "too sunny" on the beach, he argues, but she "has a hat". This will truely go down as one of our generation's greatest battles of the minds.

Back in West Caverberg, Jack is wasting peroxiding on the annoying kid. We find out that he was digging through Sawyer's stuff looking for his sister's inhaler refills. There's a long, boring explanation as to why he thinks Sawyer has the inhaler refills... I won't make you suffer through it, but Jack takes it upon himself to find them. He and Sawyer have some words and it almost comes to fisticuffs, but Kate shows up and makes the whole situation a lot skinnier.

Flashback.

Sawyer and his lady friend are putting clothes back on and he's explaining that the money is to buy into an oil rig or something... then his money gets tripled... but he doesn't have quite enough... there's a lot of confusing explanations in this episode. Point is he needs about 160 grand for his oil thing. Boy, there's nothing I love more in my adventure mystery show with monsters and polar bears than five minutes of exposition about international investing. Unless it's a conversation between the monster and the polar bear, but maybe I just spoiled the next episode for myself. His lady friend wants in on the deal, and apparently also has 160 thousand bucks, or at least a husband who does.

Flash present!

Jack is Piiiiissssssed, but Kate wants to talk to him before they head down the murder route. Sawyer is... chopping up some wood on the beach, for some reason, when Kate shows up. She tries to barter with him for the inhalers. He doesn't want much though. Just a kiss from Kate. She's a total prude, though. She just starts talking about how Sawyer is in love with a piece of paper that he has in his pocket, but that doesn't go too well. Sawyer is Piiiiiiissssssed! He makes her read the paper. "Dear Mr. Sawyer, you had sex with my mom and stole our money so my dad killed my mom and himself and some potted plants. You killed my parents. Something something." Sawyer still wants a kiss.... or not. I don't even know anymore.

Sayid starts asking Locke about where he was last night. Locke has a solid alibi, though: the boar he was killing. The boar vouches for him, as boars are wont to do, and Locke suspects that Sawyer was the one that clubbed him. Sawyer has an alibi too, because he set off a rocket a few seconds before Sayid got logged in the head. Locke doesn't buy it, though. He's seen how to improvise a slow fuse on TV, and assumes that everyone only gets that one channel he got in his crappy hotel room where he was inviting phone hookers to go to Australia with him. I still think that's weird. Well, it's back to carving spears for Mr. Locke. Oh, also he give Sayid the gift of one of his thousands of hunting knives.

Annoying girl is really bad at breathing, so Jack demands the inhalers. Sawyer makes a smart ass remark so Jack punches him in the face. Finally, some action. The asians seem nervous, or awkward, or dyslexic, or mustard. It's hard to tell with those people.

Flashback.

Sawyer is having dinner with his lady friend and her husband and he's totally swindling them. He acts like he's not that into the deal (and neither am I) with them and the husband seems skeptical. Sawyer starts to walk out but then the guy wants in again. Flash out to me taking a bathroom break during this poppycock scene.

Flash forward.

Charlie Pace is working his charms on pregnant girl. They're talking about food. She wants peanut butter, Charlie Pace says he'll get her some, but only if she'll move to West Caverberg if he does.

Meanwhile, annoying girl still sucks at breathing. Jack talks her through it. Annoying kid tries to tell Jack that she needs her inhaler but he tells the kid to promptly shut the hell up. The girl starts breathing again a little. Huzzah... even Hurley is impressed. Sayid... is not. He wants to torture Sawyer, and he's apparently an expert on the subject from his time in the military. They're going to torture the inhalers out of Sawyer.

Charlie Pace is trying to get some peanut butter from Hurley. He is the fat guy, after all. He would be the one who has peanut butter. Sadly, he does not.

Michael is gutting a fish and it gets in his eye, which sucks, but more importantly, Sun knows how to help the girl who never learned to breathe... Oh wait. Does she have asthma? Oh no! My sincerest apologies to my asthmatic readers.

Jack and Sayid start torturing Sawyer. Kate is pissed. It's the whole bamboo under the fingernails bit. Ouch. But Sawyer doesn't talk. Totally not funny. Finally he agrees to tell Kate where it is, but only Kate.

Flashback.

Sawyer is talking to some black dude in a pool hall. I guess he got the initial 140 grand from this guy, and he wants it back and he's big, black and scary.

Flash forward.

Kate shows up. Sawyer wants a kiss. She kisses him. He doesn't have it. (Insert Price Is Right loser music here). It's somewhere in the ocean. Kate is Piiiiiiiissssssed. Sayid is even more Pissed. Sawyer cuts the ropes that are tying his hands behind a tree and attacks Sayid, Sayid stabs him in the arm. Finally, a little action.

Sayid runs back to camp to get some medical supplies and the annoying kid sees him.
Annoying kid: Whose blood is that? Is it a person? s it Michael Douglas? What do you think of Charlie Pace? Is it bigger than a toaster?

Jack is holding Sawyer's artery shut so he doesn't bleed out and Sawyer's telling him to let go because he'd let Jack die, but if everyone dies, who will jack be King Doctor of?

Flashback.

Sawyer is about to steal those people's money when their son shows up and he thinks better of the situation. He leaves all the money there and walks away. Turns out he doesn't want to ruin a kid's life. It's cause HE ISN'T MR. SAWYER! He's the kid who wrote the letter? I think that's what happened.

Flash forward.

Sawyer doesn't die. Kate figures out that he was the one who wrote the letter because there's a bicentennial stamp on the letter. The ultimate irony is that he then started pulling the same trick on other people. Kate and he have an awkward moment and then he yells at her to "get out", which once again causes some problems as they are on an island. It is literally impossible to be any more "out".

Charlie Pace starts packing up pregnant girl's clothes because he "found peanut butter" but then he presents her with an empty jar. Charlie Pace, clearly having lost his marbles, starts eating imaginary peanut butter. I've seen this trick before. I was not impressed when I saw it in "Hook" and I am not impressed now. Anyways, the girl agrees to move to West Caverberg. Let's hope she catches on before he takes her imaginary hang gliding.

Sayid gets all emo and strikes out on his own because he feels bad about torturing Sawyer. He's gonna make some maps or something. There's some emotional piano music and there's a shot of Burt Bacharach playing a grand piano on the beach. We see Charlie Pace and pregnant girl leaving the beach, the annoying girl breathing, and Sawyer reading his own letter, and finally we see Sayid walking down the beach alone.

Also, Sun finds a plant that cures asthma.

Lost.

For more information on asthma and how to treat it, please visit The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute website or your local library.