"Lost"
Confidence Man (2004)

Director:

Tucker Gates

Writers:

Jeffrey Lieber (creator) and
J.J. Abrams (creator) ...

TV Series:

"Lost" (2004)

Original Air Date:

10 November 2004 (Season 1, Episode 8)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Fantasy | Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

Shannon his having an asthma attack, and Boone is sure that Sawyer has her medications- but he won't give it. As Kate's way to deal with this situation doesn't work, Sayid takes things into his own hands... and IT WILL NOT end good.

Plot Keywords:

Mysterious Island | Labrador Retriever | Scientific Experiment | Parental Relationship | Doctor

Cast

Naveen Andrews	...	Sayid Jarrah
Emilie de Ravin	...	Claire Littleton
Matthew Fox	...	Jack Shephard
Jorge Garcia	...	Hugo 'Hurley' Reyes
Maggie Grace	...	Shannon Rutherford
Josh Holloway	...	James 'Sawyer' Ford
Malcolm David Kelley	...	Walt Lloyd (credit only)
Daniel Dae Kim	...	Jin Kwon
Yunjin Kim	...	Sun Kwon
Evangeline Lilly	...	Kate Austen
Dominic Monaghan	...	Charlie Pace
Terry O'Quinn	...	John Locke
Harold Perrineau	...	Michael Dawson
Ian Somerhalder	...	Boone Carlyle
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Michael DeLuise	...	David
Billy Mayo	...	Kilo
Kristin Richardson	...	Jessica
Jim Woitas	...	Boy

Runtime:

43 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Korean

Certification:

USA:TV-14 | UK:15 | Portugal:M/12

Company:

Bad Robot

Trivia:

The book Sawyer reads is "Watership Down" by Richard Adams. It tells the tale of a group of lost rabbits searching for a new home.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Sawyer is in the bed with the woman, she has bare shoulders. Then when Sawyer realizes it is 3:30 and he slides out of the bed, she is only off-screen for a split second, but she now has a black bra on with straps.

Quotes:

Kate: [reading Sawyer's letter] Dear Mr. Sawyer, you don't know who I am, but I know who you are and I know what you done. You had sex with my mother and then you stole my dad's money all away. So he got angry, and he killed my mother. And then he killed himself, too.
Sawyer: Don't stop now. You're getting to the good part.
Kate: [continuing to read the letter] All I know is your name, but one of these days, I'm gonna find you and I'm gonna give you this letter, so you remember what you done to me. You killed my parents, Mr. Sawyer.

Movie Connections:

References Star Wars (1977)

Soundtrack:

I Shall Not Walk Alone

To Sawyer what "Walkabout" is to Locke

Ahead of three consecutive episodes that reveal significant information about the mysteries of the island "Confidence Man", a solo script by the Lost's main creative force Damon Lindelof, provides an enthralling 43 minutes that remain among the best character-focused moments of the entire series, four seasons in.

"Confidence Man" revolves entirely around Sawyer, with the events on the island involving him being the target of immediate interrogation by the rest of the castaways who suspect him of hiding inhaler refills that Shannon, an asthmatic, needs in order to survive. Any Lost fan cannot possibly remove the intensely dramatic scenes of Sayid torturing Sawyer from memory (a brilliant setup, incidentally, for the following episode), as well as the devastating moment we all realized that Sawyer had written the letter, a moment not quite on par with the finale of "Walkabout" for character impact but still among the most significant character moments of season one.

The screenplay by Damon Lindelof is a complete work of art, thematically linking all the flashbacks to the on-island events far more seamlessly than many season one episodes which attempted to do the same. The only complete breaks from Sawyer's character (and indeed from pure, intense drama) are the scenes with Charlie and Claire, which really work perfectly within the episode.

"Confidence Man" is also the first showing of truly graphic and horrific violence on "Lost". Is it necessary? In one word: yes. It lends authenticity to the proceedings and is far from gratuitous, but is just intense enough to make a statement that "Lost" is an adult drama and not a family-friendly island-escape story, something that was necessary even after eight episodes of the show- if you were talking to others about "Lost" at the time you know this.

All in all, "Confidence Man" is a great episode from the first season of "Lost", improving tremendously on the previous two episodes setting the stage in terms of tone for the three episodes to follow. Great episode from Lindelof.

10/10