LOST Rewatch: S1E15 "Homecoming" and S1E16 "Outlaws"

Here are some of my thoughts after rewatching episodes 15 and 16 of the first season of LOST, as part of my contribution to The LOST Rewatch (see my previous rewatch posts). When I get a chance, I'll post my rewatch commentaries in the podcast feed as well.

Season 1 Episode 15 - "Homecoming"

After Claire comes back, she can't remember anything that has happened since she was on the plane. The entire past month is gone from her memory. Jin asks Sun if Claire is all right, and then he asks about the baby. Sun says in Korean "I'm sure the baby is fine." Sun and Jin exchange awkward looks, which in retrospect was a small hint about their inability to conceive a child of their own prior to the Island.

Ethan seems to have been a very mentally disturbed person. He tells Charlie in this episode that he'll kill someone every day until he gets Claire back and that he'll kill Charlie last. On the first night, Ethan not only murders Steve (presumably by breaking his neck) but he also breaks "his arms [and] all the bones in his fingers" according to Kate. Later when Ethan sees Claire, he has an angry, sinister look on his face before he begins chasing her through the jungle. This is a very different perspective from what we later see of him in flashbacks. He seemed to have been very kind to Juliet, and surprisingly he even seemed to care for Claire after having captured her (aside from keeping her drugged and injecting her abdomen, of course).

How did Ethan sneak past the Flight 815 survivors' guards and traps to kill Scott? Locke suspects that Ethan came by water, and although this was never verified we do know that The Others had a submarine, at least two boats, and canoes at that time. It's also possible that Ethan sneaked past Boone, who fell asleep during his shift.

Ahh, the Numbers again. In Charlie's flashback, the copier machine he was trying to sell was a "Heatherton C815 Copy Center."

In spite of the horrified look Claire gave Charlie after he shot and killed Ethan in front of her, she seemed to have completely forgotten about it by that night when she walked up to him and asked him why she remembered peanut butter. Perhaps after some introspection she became attracted to Charlie because she knew how vigilantly he would protect her. Either that or her sudden leap from horror to love was a bit of an oversight by the writers, directors, or producers.

Season 1 Episode 16 - "Outlaws"

The episode starts on the eye of a young Sawyer, and we witness his perspective from under his bed of what happened the night that his father killed his mother and then himself.

Sawyer wakes up from this nightmare flashback and sees a boar rummaging through his things. He chases the boar into the jungle, and after it gets away, Sawyer hears whispers much like the ones Sayid heard in "Solitary", but he also hears one that says clearly, "It'll come back around."

In a flashback, Sawyer's former partner Hibbs is missing a finger, which is another instance of a missing body part. Hibbs tells Sawyer that he found the original Sawyer—the man who conned his mother, leading to the deaths of his parents. We find out later in the episode that the man whom Hibbs identified, Frank Duckett, was not really the original Sawyer; Hibbs conned Sawyer into killing someone who owed him money.

Why is Charlie being a creep to Claire all of a sudden? At the end of the last episode they were becoming friends again, and now suddenly Charlie's conscience is catching up with him for killing Ethan? Again, it almost seems like the last Claire and Charlie scene from "Homecoming" doesn't fit well with the rest of the plot.

Sawyer and Kate's "I never" drinking game is the first time we hear about Kate's brief marriage. We don't find out the details of her marriage to police officer Kevin Callis until the Season 3 episode "I Do".

Locke tells Sawyer a really strange story about how his foster mother believed that her daughter, who died in a tragic accident for which the mom blamed herself, was reincarnated as a golden retriever. The dog showed up out of nowhere about six months after the daughter's funeral, and after the mother died five years later the dog "disappeared back to wherever it was she came from in the first place." Sawyer later seems to relate this story to Frank Duckett and the boar who has been causing him trouble.

When Sawyer meets Frank Duckett at his shrimp truck, they introduce each other casually, and we learn that Sawyer's first name is actually "James." In the first part of the season finale, "Exodus, Part 1", we learn from an officer at an Australian police station that Sawyer's full name is James Ford.

In a flashback, Sawyer runs into Christian Shephard at the bar. Christian admits that he loves his son and that he's proud of him and grateful for "what he did to me. What he did for me."

I came across an interesting theory on Lostpedia that Sawyer may have unknowingly and unintentionally contributed to Christian Shephard's death. The coroner told Jack that Christian died of a heart attack caused by excessive alcohol consumption, and Sawyer paid for Christian's liquor because Christian claimed he had misplaced his wallet (he apparently left it in his hotel room according on Jack's flashback in "White Rabbit"). Christian's death is ironic because of his remark to Sawyer that Australians "think Americans can't hold their liquor."

There are an awful lot of Flight 815 survivors who have killed someone. In this episode, Kate and Sawyer reveal to each other through their drinking game that they've both "killed a man." In an attempt to help Charlie work past his feelings of remorse for having killed Ethan, Sayid tells Charlie about the nightmares he had after voluntarily being on a firing squad that killed a terrorist.

After Sawyer shoots Frank Duckett, Frank says "You didn't have to— tell Hibbs I would've paid." He realizes that Sawyer was conned into being Hibbs' hitman. Just before he dies, Frank says "I was going to pay. It'll come back around." The last sentence is what Sawyer heard amidst the whispers more than once in this episode.

When Sawyer finally tracks down the boar, it just watches him calmly. Sawyer, presumably thinking about Frank Duckett and perhaps about the story Locke told him, has compassion on the boar and decides not to shoot it. This is a redemptive moment for Sawyer, which is very interesting because death often follows redemption on the Island. Two of the most notable examples of this phenomenon are when Ana Lucia, in spite of having murdered Jason prior to the Island, was unable to bring herself to murder Ben, and then right afterward she was killed by Michael, and later Michael redeemed himself for the murders he committed by sacrificing his own life to save the lives of several people including fellow Flight 815 survivors on the freighter. In spite of Sawyer's notable moment of redemption in this episode, he's still alive as of the Season 5 finale (unless, of course, the explosion of the bomb in the last few seconds of the finale killed him).

By the end of the episode, Charlie has apparently let go of his remorse for killing Ethan, and he finds Claire on the beach and offers to take her for the walk that she asked for earlier in the episode.

Sawyer recognizes Jack's line "That's why the Red Sox will never win the Series" and figures out that the man he talked to in the bar was Jack's father. Rather than tell Jack that his father loved him and thought very highly of him, Sawyer chooses not to say anything at all. In the first part of the season finale before Jack goes off to get dynamite from the Black Rock and as Sawyer prepares to leave on Michael's raft, Sawyer realizes that they might not see each other again and he tells Jack about his conversation with Christian.


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