LOST- Episode 52: Every Man For Himself

  Previously on LOST: Jack wondered what the Others wanted with him, Sawyer tried to fight his way out of captivity and Sun shot Colleen the Other.

  The show opens on Desmond, who is sitting on the beach watching Claire and Aaron share a moment.  He approaches her and asks if he can fix her roof.  A jealous Charlie approaches and nips this friendly offer to help in the bud. 

  In Jack's aquatic cage, the torture part of the Others' plan has begun as they have left the television and it is playing annoying old school cartoons.  Juliet enters with food and Jack starts playing with her mind.  He asks her if he should talk to Benjamin to find out what's going on.  Juliet insists that Ben is not the leader, that they make decisions together, but she is immediately undermined when Ben storms in and orders her to come with him.  The sub is back and there is a "situation."  When they leave, Jack presses his ear to the door to try and get the scoop, but it is unclear if he is able to learn anything. 

  Quick cut to the Others racing through the jungle with a bloody body on a stretcher. 

  Sawyer is woken up from his nap when his cage door swings open.  It's time for work.  Before Sawyer can provoke another beating, Danny gets a call on his radio and presumably learns of the fate of his lady love, Colleen.  Ben and the Others race by with the stretcher as Kate and Sawyer look on-apparently work is canceled today.  Kate asks what happend.  "We happened," Sawyer answers with a grin.  He says they just got their ticket out of there, which cues the creepy LOST title screen. 

  Over the break, Sawyer concocts a plan.  Every time he earns a reward, a drink of water pours from a pipe.  He's done it enough for a puddle to have collected at the cage door.  When he doesn't earn a reward, there is a jolt of electricity.  Since Picket/Danny is distracted at the moment, it shouldn't be terribly difficult for him to not notice the puddle.  Sawyer grabs him and ZAP!  Kate points out that Sawyer himself will be electrocuted too, but he says he will have the advantage of knowing it's coming.  Kate asks about Jack and Sawyer responds with the title of the episode, "It's every man for himself." 

  Sawyer flashes back to life in prison, where he was apparently a pretty good boxer.  As they head back to their cells, Sawyer asks the guy he just beat about the new guy, who is taking an unsanctioned beating from some thugs.  The guy is named Munson and he is rumored to have ripped off the government for 10 million bucks, which was never found.  Sawyer finds it intriguing that the warden keeps breaking up the fights as they make steely eye contact from afar.  Later, Sawyer talks to Munson and wonders out loud how he got such an easy prison job after only a week.  His theory is that Munson is being buttered up by the warden so that he can get his hands on the money. 

  In the present, Sawyer is pleased to see that his victim will be none other than Benry the Leader.  When Ben steps in the puddle, Sawyer grabs him and starts pusing the electro-button with a stick.  Unfortunately for the con man, Ben has taken the precaution of shutting the power off.  Then Ben kicks his ass.  When Sawyer regains consciousness, he is strapped to a table and is about to be injected in the chest with a giagantic needle.  We don't get to see the deed done before a commercial break, thank goodness.

  At the beach, Desmond approaches Paolo, the new guy just now emerging from the background.  He is launching golf balls into the ocean with the clubs Hurley found and Desmond asks if he can take one.  Paolo quips that if Des takes the five iron, which he never uses, then he won't have to go looking for it when Des dies in the jungle doing God knows what.

  When Sawyer wakes up again, he is greeted by Ben holding a caged bunny.  Ben shakes the cage repeatedly while yelling at the bunny, which eventually causes the bunny to have a heart attack and keel over.  Even funnier, stranger and sadder than I can even describe.  The point is that they have equipped Sawyer with a pacemaker which will cause his heart to explode if he overexerts himself.  It's the Others' own special way of keeping him in line.  Ben also mentions that if Saywer mentions this to Kate, they will do the same thing to her.  He straps a watch/heart rate monitor onto Sawyer's wrist and tells him to take up yoga.

  Sawyer is brought back to his cage and is immeditately put to the test.  Tom has brought Kate some new clothes to change into, and Sawyer can't stop himself from sneaking a peek as she changes.  He also raises her suspicions by not telling her what happened when he was taken.  He can't even explain why his watch is beeping at him as he pours a bucket of water over his head. 

  Sawyer flashes back to when he got a visit in prison from one of his former cons.  I think it's the one from his Long Con episode, but I'm too lazy to look it up.  Anyway, she is the one who landed him in jail by pressing charges.  She shows him a picture of a baby named Clementine and says that she is Sawyer's daughter.  She asks him to write the baby a letter, but Sawyer scoffs at both writing to a baby and the notion that he even has a daughter.

  In the present, Sawyer is still making Kate suspicious with every word.  She thinks she can squeeze through the bars at the top of her cage, but Sawyer tells her not to bother. 

  Meanwhile, Jack is hearing more scratchy voices through his broken intercom, when Juliet comes to get him.  She needs his help because Colleen is dying and he is a doctor. 

  A loud alarm sounds throughout the zoo, which prevents Kate and Sawyer from being able to make themselves heard as Jack is marched past them with a sack over his head.  Ben and the other Others are not thrilled that Juliet has brought Jack to their operating room, but she feels he is their last chance to save Colleen.  As Jack scrubs up he notices some X-rays on the wall, but Juliet tells him they are not Colleen's.  Jack goes right to work on his new patient, easily slipping back into 'doctor during a crisis' mode.  Unfortunately, there is not much he can do and it is not long before Colleen has slipped away. 

  Danny/Picket just lost his wife and this understandably puts him into a rage.  He takes out his aggression the only way he knows how lately, by beating the crap out of Sawyer.  Even though Sawyer doesn't fight back, the action is still too much for his heart and the watch starts beeping.  As Danny repeatedly punches Sawyer, he godes Kate into admitting that she loves the con man.  He then storms off, not even bothering to throw Sawyer back into his cage. 

  Back in Flashback State Pen, Sawyer has buddied up to Munson and has earned enough trust for Munson to ask for his help in moving the stolen money.  Something tells me this might be exactly what Sawyer wanted. 

  Back in his cage and still alive, Sawyer starts to clean himself up and doesn't even bother to try and figure out what motivated the beating.  Kate decides now would be a good time to try and climb out of her cage- a move Sawyer protests.  She makes it out safely and without tripping an alarm and starts to beat the lock on Sawyer's cage with a rock.  Sawyer grabs her by the arm and begs for her to leave him behind.  This is the last straw for Kate as she wonders incredulously what they did to him.  She asks for the truth for once in his life, but his only reply is that if she really loved him, she would run.  Kate replies that she only said that to put an end to the beating.  And with that emotional dagger, she climbs back into her cage to stick it out with Sawyer.  "Live together, die alone," she says, echoing Jack.

  Watching the action on Camera 5, Tom comments to Ben that Danny wants to kill Sawyer.  Ben tells him that can wait.  As for Jack, he can stew for a little longer, as well.  Jack is handcuffed to table where Colleen's dead body still lies.  Juliet enters and admits that she is a fertility doctor and has not been around death before.  She thinks she should have gotten Jack sooner, but he says it wouldn't have mattered.  Juliet wonders if he is just saying that to make her feel better, but he says he doesn't care how she feels.  Duh!  He then mentions the X-rays and thinks he has figured out why he was taken.  Someone has a tumor on their spine and Jack just happens to be a spinal surgeon. 

  At the beach, Desmond has used the golf club and some other stuff to create a contraption that Hurley thinks is pop art.  It looks more like a lightning rod to me, and soon enough, a storm begins and a bolt of lightning hits it. 

  Night has fallen at the zoo, or early morning rather, as Ben wakes Sawyer up with a "good morning".  Apparently, he wants to show him something.  Sawyer flashes back to his meeting with the warden and all is revealed.  Things can never be what they seem with James Ford.  He hands over the location of the 10 million dollars and is, in turn, a free man.  The warden asks Sawyer what he wants to do with his share and Sawyer tells him to have it put in a fund for baby Clementine, with the stipulation that she can never know where or who the money came from. 

  Whatever Ben wants to show Sawyer is really far away and quite a climb.  Sawyer's heart rate is getting dangerously close to critical mass.  They stop close to the top of the hill so Ben can show Sawyer the rabbit, alive and well.  There's no exploding pacemaker inside Sawyer after all.  What Ben finds most interesting is that threatening Kate was the real trick that kept Sawyer in line, not the threat of his own death.  Sawyer punches him in the face, but Ben keeps his cool, saying only that the rabbit is not what he wanted Sawyer to see. 

  And here's the real kicker.  The Others don't live on Crazy Island- they live on a nearby seperate island, about twice the size of Alcatraz.  That explains why they need to steal boats, take their captives to a pier and have a sub.  Sawyer is floored, realizing that even if he escapes, there is nowhere to run. 

  Next time on LOST: Locke begins his rescue mission and has more problems with Mr. Eko.