The Modern-Day Warrior (LOST spoilers)

I've been generally happy with ABC's Lost and it's Gilligan's Island meets Lord of the Flies motif, but last week's episode kinda sucked.

Theoretically, this shouldn't be surprising, as Sawyer was already the most annoying character on the island. It should follow that he had the least compelling backstory. Somewhere in here, there's an abject lesson in how us blue staters (Hollywood writers) don't understand red staters (redneck criminal characters), the message rammed home early and often last week. Just because he's an asshole and an orphan with an oh-so-ironic past doesn't really make him any less of an asshole.

If they can ultimately weave this into the plot in a compelling way (think Garibaldi getting more and more erratic way back on Babylon 5), I won't have so much of a problem with him. But for now, he's more of an obstructionist than an opportunist, and that doesn't really give him much depth at all.

Also, as far as I can tell, this was the first flashback that did not involved getting on a plane in or near Australia, or even being anywhere near the Pacific Rim, which seemed like a peculiar drop of the ball from the writing staff.