Episode Report Card Dan Kawa: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Just Because My Words Were Lies (Doesn't Mean My Love Weren't True)
By Dan Kawa | Season 1 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.09.2004
Sawyer wakes up bandaged in his tent on the beach. Kate's waiting to have a chat with him about his mystery letter. She's been trying to figure out (as have we all) why he beat up Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity and let himself get tortured and stabbed rather than just telling someone he didn't have the medicine. "You want to be hated," Kate says. Then she points out that the envelope has a bicentennial sticker on it; the letter is 28 years old. "This letter wasn't written to you," Kate says. "You wrote this letter. Your name's not Sawyer, is it?" Sawyer explains that a confidence man named Sawyer screwed his parents in 1976. And then, years later, he pulled the same scam on another couple. "I became the man I was hunting," he says. Then he sees Kate looking sorry for him, swipes the letter, and yells at her to get out, get out, get out.
Commercials! I gotta say, I'm getting diminishing returns from week after week of flashbacks. As a revelation, this one has very little punch. Finding out that Sawyer is actually Fauxyer (tm Unlucky Bear) and that he Became The Man He Hated doesn't really explain his current near-sociopathic personality. I mean, it shows that he's probably upset with himself, but that's not the same as being a mean motherfucker with a death wish. Point A and Point B don't logically connect for me, and that makes this episode just another in a series of flashback-stuffed hours that make me wish, once again, that they would knock it off with the flashbacks and just vividly illustrate life on the island.
Camp Crystal Spring. Sun is smearing goop on Shannon's chest while Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity explains to Jack that his sister's breathing is much better. Jack crouches down next to them and smells the goop; "eucalyptus," he says, shaking his head. "Smart, Jack." Shannon looks much cuter now that she's not wheezing and crying and snotting on herself, such that were I in camp I would happily volunteer to give Sun a break and take over goop-smearing duties.
Midsection Beach. Claire wakes up to see Charlie packing her clothes up into a bag. "You're moving," he says, which gets her all excited for peanut butter. "There is one thing," he says. "It's extra smooth." "That's okay," she laughs. He pulls out an empty jar, and, sticking his finger into it, declares it "full to the brim with stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth, oh God it makes you want a glass of milk, extra-smooth" peanut butter. He offers the jar to Claire, who takes it with a giggle and sticks her finger in as well. It's actually lucky there's no real peanut butter in there, because if there was, Claire would've just caught a nasty case of nail fungus in her mouth from Charlie's disgusting fingers. Charlie hums a bar or two from Driveshaft's country crossover, "Just Because My Words Were Lies (Doesn't Mean My Love Weren't True)." This was a nice scene.