Jack was helping Shannon calm down and settle into a breathing pattern.

I came in at about 8:40. Anyone want to fill me in on everything before the kiss?

Surely someone quicker than me has posted this already, but here you go:

Kate bickers with a nekkid Sawyer on the beach. We flashback to Sawyer in bed with some chick. He tells her he loves her. Then he's late for a "meeting", so he runs around getting dressed and accidentally drops a suitcase full of money, which comes open. SomeChick (I forget her name) is all "what the hell is that??" and he says "uh, you weren't supposed to see that." Present-day, Sayid comes to the cave to have Jack fix him up after getting whacked on the head last week--we still don't know who did it. Boone comes in all bloody and beat-up, says Sawyer did it because Boone was poking around in his stuff (which we saw briefly). Turns out that Boone was looking for Shannon's inhalers, which he packed in his bag (because Shannon never brings enough and he was just looking out for her and awww); he thinks Sawyer has his bag because he's reading Watership Down, which was also in Boone's bag. Shannon's been having trouble breathing lately, since her last inhaler ran out.

When Jack and Sayid hear that Boone has the inhalers, they get righteously pissed. Jack storms off and confronts Sawyer on the beach (and they do an awful lot of running between the beach and the caves, given how far away the caves supposedly are), but Kate steps in before anyone can do any damage. Then she confronts Sawyer about the inhalers and he tells her he'll give them to her if she'll give him a kiss. She can't believe how disgusting he is, blah blah blah, no way. Later, Sawyer turns up at the caves, and Jack punches him a couple of times, then lets him go. Shannon starts to have an asthma attack sometime in here, and Jack calms her down and talks her through the worst of it (could that really work?), then leaves Boone to look after her. Jack and Sayid decide there's only one way to deal with Sawyer. They find him at the beach, knock him out, tie him up, and then Sayid inserts sharpened bamboo sticks under his fingernails while he howls with pain.

Jack barks at Sayid to stop, so he does, but then he pulls out a knife (possibly the one that Locke gave him earlier: when Sayid was asking around about people's alibis for when he got whacked in the head, Locke says he was out in the jungle skinning the boar, but he figures Sawyer was the most likely person to have done it, and he describes how he could have rigged a slow fuse with a cigarette to set off the rocket so he'd have enough time to cover the distance to reach Sayid; Locke gives Sayid a knife to protect himself with, just in case), anyway, Sayid threatens to cut out one of Sawyer's eyes, so Sawyer gives in, but he says he'll only tell one person where the inhalers are, and that, of course, is Kate. So she shows up and is still horrified that Sawyer would withhold Shannon's medicine for a kiss, but she looks a little intrigued in spite of herself, so she decides to kiss him, bringing us up to 8:40, when you came in.

Which Stephen King book was that (the psych approach to an asthma cure) an homage to? I'm thinking The Stand but maybe I'm misremembering.

There was an asthmatic kid in It, but I can't remember the 'psych'ing someone into breathing' part.

I think it was Cujo, Theodosia.

The letter was written by Island!Sawyer when he was a kid. Island!Sawyer is not actually named Sawyer, but has taken on the name (Sawyer) of the guy who screwed Island!Sawyer's mother, then stole money from Island!Sawyer's father, resulting in said father committing murder-suicide. The kid we saw tonight didn't have to write any letters, because Island!Sawyer didn't go through with the scam on the woman and her husband ... because of the kid who reminded him of himself as a kid and reminded Isand!Sawyer of the hate he had for the real Sawyer, whose role he would have played in this kid's life.

Yes?

Later, Sawyer turns up at the caves, and Jack punches him a couple of times, then lets him go.

One of the nice bits about that scene was that Jack winced and grabbed the shoulder he dislocated last week (yesterday in island time) after punching Sawyer. Of course he then hit Sawyer again with the same arm.

Yeah, not much to be sympathetic about there.

I kind of think of it as an addiction. He became the man he was hunting, lost his own identity...oh fuck, I'm going to love Sawyer cause I'm obsessed with identity themes...anyway, he found himself conning people and he couldn't stop. He definitely loved it cause, hey, money, but deep down, there was that self-loathing. I'm not explaining this right and I don't have the time to do the analysis, but I think it's really cool.

I also found Sayid's angst interesting. Another case of not being pleased with what you've discovered inside yourself.

Also, Jack is a doctor. He may have lost his license or been sued for malpractice, but the man is a doctor. He's got that sense of duty to save lives even when they're people everyone wants to die, like Shannon and Sawyer.

I really liked this episode.

Yes?

Yes.

Oh, I can't believe I forgot to mention the magical blinvisible peanut butter! Also, I left out most of the flashbacks, so an addendum:

Sawyer was trying to scam this couple (the woman he was sleeping with in the first flashback, and her husband), using someone else's money (I wasn't clear on how that worked), which is significant because he let the couple keep the suitcase of cash overnight so that they'd trust him, but the dude whose money it was didn't like that idea very much, and threatened Sawyer with some Not Very Nice Things if he didn't get his money back by noon the next day, plus 50% more. Sawyer explained that part of his scam was to seduce the woman and get her to think the get-rich-quick investment was her idea (hence, Sawyer "accidentally" letting her see the suitcase full of money).

Oh yeah, and the note. When he told Kate he'd give her the inhalers for a kiss, and she was appalled, she confronted him about the note he was carrying around, and she said "You keep pulling it out and reading it, and I know it must mean there's a little bit of human decency in you somewhere," so he took it out and had her read it him, and it said (paraphrasing): "Dear Mr. Sawyer, you slept with my mom and my dad found out and killed her, and then he killed himself, and if I ever find you I'm going to kill you too."