Looking Back at Lost: LaFleur
Sawyer Lies to Horace Goodspeed and to Himself
In the previous episode of Lost, the audience learned the story of John Locke after he left the island. In LaFleur, viewers found out what happened to the people that the man also known as Jeremy Bentham had left behind. In the three years that Locke was away, the castaways accepted the fact that they were stuck in the 1970s and became happy, productive members of the Dharma Initiative.
LaFleur provided the audience with a lot of new information but, like every installment of Lost, this episode created a whole new set of mysteries. How long did it take for the castaways to become integrated with the rest of Dharma (and for Jin to develop such good English)? Did Jin and Sawyer really expect to find Locke and the others, or were their searches simply routine exercises in futility?
How did Sawyer and Juliet's relationship develop into the happy picture of domesticity that they presented? And why was Juliet successfully able to deliver a baby in the 1970s but not the 2000s? Most notably, we did not see Daniel Faraday in any of the "Three Years Later" segments. Where does he fit in to Dharma (if he fits in at all)? And will he be able to stop himself from interacting with young Charlotte?
James Ford and Jim LaFleur
If 316 was all about the Oceanic Six and The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham was all about Locke, then LaFleur was all about Sawyer. In this episode, viewers caught a glimpse of the James Ford that they met in Season 1 - the charismatic con man who can talk his way out of any situation with a combination of charm and lies.
Sawyer used his talent for deception to get himself and his friends into Dharma's good graces, and the lying continued - although perhaps unintentionally - when he told Horace Goodspeed that he had gotten over Kate. Perhaps he was trying to make Horace feel better about Amy's feelings for Paul, or perhaps he was trying to convince himself. Either way, Sawyer was lying.
He may have seemed genuine when he told Horace he couldn't remember what Kate looked like, but the look on his face when she emerged from the Dharma van make his true feelings clear. He has never stopped loving Kate - he just never expected her to come back. Of course, that's not to say that he doesn't really love Juliet. After all, she was there for him when Kate was gone.
Dharma and Oceanic Collide
It remains unclear how Sawyer and the rest of the new Dharma recruits will react to the return of Locke and the Oceanic Six. After all, they seemed pretty content with their new Dharma lifestyle. Sawyer has emerged as the leader he could never become when Jack was around, and he has developed a stable relationship that he never had with Kate. Now that everyone is back together, Lost promises to get even more interesting.
Speaking of interesting, this episode offered two special shout-outs to die-hard Lost fans: the glimpse of a mysterious statue that is most likely the rest of that giant four-toed foot and Sawyer's crack about Richard Alpert's "eyeliner." Lost may ask a lot of its viewers, but no one can say it doesn't offere them anything in return.
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