Lost and Found: The Moth and Confidence Man

I'm way behind on posting these, so here's my attempt at getting back on track...

The Moth:

• This is Charlie's withdrawal episode. I mentioned in earlier posts that there seems to be a real disconnect between what we say about honesty and how much information the characters choose to share with one another. Both Locke and Jack openly lie to others about Charlie's situation. This makes me think about the other crimes that characters choose to disclose to their fellow castaways. Michael admits to not having been very involved in his son's life, and it quickly becomes common knowledge that Sayid has a background in torture, yet Jack's alcoholism, Jin's "enforcer" job, Charlie's drug abuse, and Kate's laundry list largely remain hidden. At this point on this island it would make sense for everyone to cautious of revealing past "sins," but it seems odd to me the lengths that some are willing to go to protect the "sins" of others.
• Kate annoys me. I'd forgotten how long the sexual tension with the Kate, Jack, Sawyer triangle has to go on. It's not so much that I mind the triangle plot line, but the whole part where Kate abandons the transponder in order to run back to Jack's side is what I find rather problematic. I think that I'm bothered by Kate's behavior because at this point, she's the only one who is fawning all over the other. She is constantly abandoning her plans or activities to be with Jack, and this invokes some really problematic stereotypes for me, especially since we are only 8 days into the crash at this point.
• I love Charlie. I really like that Charlie gets to both screw up and be helpful in this episode, but I really like that the producers chose to let him find his own way out of the cave instead of simply being the labor for someone else's plan.
  

Confidence Man

• I hate this episode. The torture really bothers me. Up until this point in the series the violence has been primarily contained to the aftermath of the plane crash (which was well constructed violence as M pointed out) or the mystery of island (the "monster" has claimed one victim), but this episode introduces the intentional and calculated human to human violence. Yes, Sawyer can be a jack@$$, but the whole torture in the jungle was really difficult to watch.
• I hate that they choose Sayid to instigate the violence here. Invoking his famous homophone namesake, Edward Said's ideas about western conceptions of the "East" seem to be the driving force here. While I recognize that Sayid's character later deconstructs some of these problematic images, we don't get that in this episode. We get a Sayid who is "othered" in more ways than I can count and given that the episode originally aired a little over a year after we invaded Iraq, I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with the "bad Iraqi" who we will later reveal to be not so bad plot.
• Sawyer has feelings! In addition to the fact that we genuinely feel sorry for Sawyer after the who torture debacle, we see Sawyer's emotional baggage here as well. I appreciate that Sawyer doesn't pretend to be as innocent as many of his companions, but I also appreciate that we get to see an emotion other than sarcasm (is that an emotion?) or resentment.
• Breathing is not cool; Boone is right! Inhalers make you a loser. Shannon still annoys me. I feel like she the cheap adolescent chick lit, who has invaded my science fiction novel.