Outlaws

Created by: J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof

Story by: Drew Goddard

Air date: Wednesday, February 16^th, 2005

Sufficient unto the day…

by Matthew Amason

A Soulful Spike Society Review

www.soulfulspike.com

Author's note: I am indebted to the ideas and thoughts of my fellow S’cubies for the insights and opinions shared about this episode. Thanks, all! And a special thank-you to S’cubie Rachael for her beta assistance.

The title of an episode of LOST is the capsule summary of that episode’s theme. What is an outlaw? He’s a rogue. A cowboy, a maverick. A person who takes away another’s decisions. Being an outlaw means putting your interests above the interests of others, no matter what it costs them. Knowing yourself and being true only to yourself. An outlaw is someone who strays beyond the limits of society. And that’s what this episode is about: Crossing that line, and crossing back. Doing so by letting go of your sins and your obsessions; by reconnecting with others. By being true to the other as well as to the self.

And we’ve got a lot of outlaws in this episode. We’ll go over the biggies first.

Sawyer:

We find out this episode that he’s committed murder. He holds out on returning the firearm to the generally agreed-upon authority on the island. He cons people for money, and for the satisfaction of putting one over on a rube. In general, he drives the rest of civilization nuts, in that he always seems to expect a quid-pro-quo. With this in mind, he withholds Doc Shepard Sr.’s approbation and love from Jack: I get the feeling he will be using this information at some future time, when it will profit him. In addition to these things, let us not forget that he also tortures baby piggies.

Kate is another of our big-league outlaws: this is established in previous episodes. Here we get reinforcement of that impression from the revelations in the “I never” game. She also uses guile and trickery to get the gun back from Sawyer, by angling to get “carte blanche” from him (though I don’t doubt for a moment that Sawyer knows this is her goal) by helping him track the SawyerBoar.

Charlie is the last of the major outlaws: This is shown most explicitly in the previous episode, where he killed a man without due process. He took the decision into own hands, without regard for what they all might have learned from Rom. This, after an episode in which we see his powerlessness in the face of his fight against addiction.

We have other, lesser outlaws on the island, at least for the purpose of this story. First is Sayid: his outlawry comes from having tortured Sawyer: he also stole maps and information from Crazy French Lady (CFL) Rousseau. The last of the minor outlaws on the island is…. the SawyerBoar/DaddyBoar/DuckettBoar… (Hereafter referred to only as the SawyerBoar. He represents the original Sawyer, and his agent of destruction, our Sawyer’s father: he also represents Duckett, after it becomes clear to Sawyer that he has killed the wrong man… SawyerBoar violates Sawyer’s tent, steals his tarp (recreating the way that the original Sawyer stole the young boy’s sheltered life with parents who cared for him) attacks him, and destroys HIS possessions exclusively when he and Kate are out camping, to the point of urinating on his shirt. He is clearly meant to recall each of the three characters that shaped Sawyer’s life: this is shown first with Duckett’s voice whispering “It’ll come back around” (Duckett’s last words) when Sawyer chases the boar into the forest.

We see people in the flashbacks who are outlaws as well, though their journeys are not shown coming full circle. Hibbs is one: he plays Sawyer like a fiddle, and uses him as a pawn to set an example, relying on Sawyer’s passion and his need for vengeance to keep him from seeing what he is being used for. Duckett is not really an outlaw, he just borrowed money from the wrong people, and got caught at the wrong place at the wrong time. Doc Shepard Sr. is an outlaw through being true to himself in his cowardice, his weakness. He also sets Sawyer again on the path to murder. He withholds from Jack the pride he feels in his son’s bravery and moral strength. But he also makes the beginning of the journey back. He shares with another human the pride he feels in his son, and his awareness of his own weakness: that he is weak, compared to Jack.

When a person has crossed the line, though, has become an outlaw, how does he go about coming back? What do you do to change what you’ve become? How do you rejoin civilization? Sawyer seems to accept that the past is the past, in not killing SawyerBoar. This is doubly significant, for while the SawyerBoar represents the original Sawyer, he also represents Duckett, the innocent victim of Sawyer’s thirst for revenge. Sawyer spares the innocent as well, in this opportunity for a symbolic “do-over.” It HAS come back around, and Sawyer has done better this time.

Kate reconnects, becomes less of an outlaw by opening up to another person in the “I never” game, by revealing her most loathed personal secret and staying true to the rules of the game. She performs a service for the leader and the good of the community in getting the gun back from Sawyer. She helps Sawyer find his demon so that he might face it. She is accompanying him, and being honest with him, as a sort of penance for her sins.

Charlie returns from across the line by burying Ethan. He treats like a human the man he had shot down like a dog: treats him like a man by giving him the dignity of a burial. He accepts Sayid’s concern and listens to him about the fact that he is not alone.

Sayid continues his work-in-progress on returning from the crossed line in trying to connect with Charlie, and, in one of the more interesting scenes, in connecting with Sawyer. They have a chemistry onscreen that makes me think that they could be great together.

The damn boar? Well, he does not attack again, after Sawyer decides not to kill him. But otherwise, his character just becomes sorta boaring...

Another ongoing element of the show LOST is the element of shamanic/spiritual guidance. We have two different flavors of shaman on the island: Locke, and Hurley. Let’s explore a little bit of the way each operates.

Locke operates through parable, and through opening up people's eyes to the issues they face, whether they want them opened or not. He brings forth the idea that the boar may represent some issue or issues in Sawyer’s past through a parable about his stepmother. As usual, he follows his tendency of illustrating what the issues are, and allowing his parishioner to make a choice. He has a strong focus on what an individual chooses for himself, separate from what might be the good of the community. He is much more the shaman of the individualists in this fashion, humans as rogues.

Hurley is the What You See Is What You Get shaman. He helps when asked. He sees what is going on under the surface, and knows who to bring to the person to help him: knows that Sayid is the best person to discuss post traumatic stress disorder with Charlie, and asks him to do so. He plays on the obligations people feel to the community: he asks people to help each other, and strengthens bonds within the community by doing so. Witness his method of getting information from Sawyer in a previous episode: he just asks him for it. (I get the feeling that a lot of the acrimony between Jack and Sawyer could have been resolved if Jack had tried Hurley’s straight-up methods first). Hurley’s focus is the health of the community as a whole: he may want to help the individual with his problem, but he is focused on the community’s survival and health, much more so than Locke is.

Little things that don’t fit elsewhere:

What I liked:

“Perhaps he wanted to go camping.” With Andrews’ deadpan delivery.
Sawyer asking Sayid what he heard when he was in the woods. Connecting with him.
Doc Shepard Senior’s incredibly chilling and moving speech.

What I did not like:

How easily an experienced confidence man could let himself be duped by a fellow con man.
Sawyer’s idiotic attempt to lure the SawyerBoar after him by playing boar jr. like a little porcine bagpipe.
Kate’s insistence that little baby piggies are sacred, and not lunch.
Claire’s gonna be pregnant forever, isn’t she?

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