Power play
Updated 2006-02-13 16:00:00
Turns out Sawyer was sick of Charlie's having taken over the "Island's No. 1 *****" ranking, and also he's mad that people took his stuff while he was on a raft, and he sets in motion an elaborate scheme to wrest some power, and possibly some beer, back from Jack and Locke, who have philosophical differences as to the use of guns. So Sawyer enlists Charlie, still smarting from the Claire dumpage and the Locke beatdown, to stage an attempted kidnapping of Sun. Then Sawyer plants the notion in Kate's mind that Ana-Lucia staged it to drum up recruits for her ninja army, since The Others agreed to leave the Lostaways alone and everything. This is a plausible theory, because why would the totally trustworthy Others lie? Well, whatever. So Kate puts some doubt in Jack's mind as to Ana-Lucia's motives. I don't know why Sawyer needed Kate to do this, since Jack decides it's time to grab some guns anyway, and Kate asks Sawyer to warn Locke about the posse coming down the hatch-hole. Locke gets Sawyer to keep an eye on the timer while he hides the guns -- only Sawyer has Charlie follow Locke, and now Sawyer's got the guns.
Too bad the present-day story was given away (the culprit anyway, if not the motivation) by the Sawyer flashbacks, in which he cons a woman out of $600,000 while pretending to teach her about the conning business. Sawyer might as well have spoken directly to the screen when he talked about getting people to do what you want by making them believe it's their idea. Sawyer does appear to have some genuine feelings for the mark. Which, if you think about it, kind of makes him even more of an *****.
Also, how did Sawyer get Vincent to go along with the scheme?