In Further Defense of William Easton.

A while ago I posted this stirring defense of William Easton, the insurance company CEO that is imprisoned, tortured and brutally murdered in Saw VI.

Well, last night we went and experienced Saw VII, which I guess technically should be called Saw 3D. I have serious problems calling it Saw 3D, though, considering all of the following statements are true:

• It is the seventh movie in a series that has always used the title format “Saw #”.
• The 3D was a stupid blurry mess, and I’m sure the movie will be more enjoyable on a boring ol’ HDTV.
• Putting “3D” in a movie title is only clever if it happens to be the third movie in a series.

There’s a lot to discuss about Saw VII, if you’re as big a fan of the franchise as I am. The main thing I noticed, though, is that the Big Bad Ending Twist really solidifies my defense of William Easton.

Of course, to talk about that I have to spoil the Big Bad Ending Twist. So…

Heed the Spoiler Gnome, kiddies.

The Big Bad Ending Twist is this: in the original Saw one of the captives was Dr. Lawrence Gordon, Jigsaw’s physician. Dr. Gordon famously sawed off his own foot to escape the death trap, and was last seen crawling away from the film, where he presumably bled to death.

Come to find out, he didn’t bleed to death.

After crawling most of the way down a vile, disgusting hallway, Dr. Gordon finds a scalding hot water pipe and uses it to cauterize the bloody stump of his leg. After passing out from the blinding pain, Jigsaw found him, cleaned his wounds, and congratulating him on surviving the game.

Jigsaw died frr rllz in Saw III, and since then the series has been predominantly about the power struggle between his various accomplices. That came to a head at the end of Saw VI, where the psychotic Detective Hoffman narrowly survives being strapped into a death trap by Jigsaw’s ex-wife Jill Tuck. Indeed, much of Saw VII‘s plot revolves around Hoffman hunting Jill down for revenge.

Which he gets, in the most gruesomely satisfying way possible. Twice. I knew there was a reason Jill existed in this goddamn series!

Anyway, they can’t leave it like that. Jigsaw dead, twisted-ass Hoffman on the loose… no, it just wouldn’t do. Just as Hoffman has killed everyone in the ZIP code and is about to sail off into the sunset, he gets whacked and bagged by anonymous assailants in world-famous Jigsaw-brand pig masks.

One of them is Dr. Gordon who, it is revealed, has been Jigsaw’s “most valuable asset” ever since he survived his ordeal.

Now, I’m fine with the twist, as-is. The door is finally closed on the despicable Hoffman, the story arc set in motion way back in Saw III is ended, and Jigsaw’s legacy (if indeed he has one) is in the hands of someone who won’t twist or pervert his message. At this point the series can bow out gracefully, or it can come back reboot-style with Gordon as Jigsaw, without needing to carry the baggage of the rest of the movies. Either way, the ending works wonderfully.

“Brick, how does all this related to William Easton?”

As I detailed in the original defense post (here’s another link, in case your scroll wheel is broken), Easton isn’t guilty in the same sense the rest of Jigsaw’s victims are. In the case I laid out, Easton was singled out for a death trap because Jigsaw disagreed with his philosophy on health care. Jigsaw wanted to pursue a radical new cancer treatment not covered by the insurance provided by Easton’s company. The reason Easton gave for denying coverage was: Jigsaw’s doctor hadn’t signed off on it.

Which is to say, Dr. Gordon hadn’t signed off on it.

As far as I can tell there are several ways this could have played out, depending on when the exchange between Jigsaw and Easton took place, and whether Dr. Gordon continued on as Jigsaw’s physician once he began assisting him with the games. No matter how you cut it, though, the “Easton needs to go in a trap” scenario still doesn’t make sense.

If Jigsaw spoke to Easton before Saw I, then it was Gordon’s fault, not Easton’s, that Jigsaw was denied coverage. This may in fact have been why Jigsaw picked Gordon for a game in the first place. However, a non-trivial amount of time elapsed between Jigsaw being denied and finally being killed. If Gordon was in his employ that entire time, and was still acting as his physician, he could have changed his mind at any moment.

If Jigsaw spoke to Easton after Saw I, then he’s flat-out lying to Easton when he trash talks Gordon.

If Gordon’s original assessment about Jigsaw’s candidacy for treatment was made in error, as Jigsaw seems to think, Gordon would have had a lot of incentive to take a more personal interest in Jigsaw’s health. If, however, Gordon’s assessment was based in sound medical reasoning, it would have been a serious breach of professional ethics for him to sign off on the treatment regardless of how much he and Jigsaw enjoy each other’s company while prepping unconscious bodies for self-mutilation.

The point is, there is not a single point in any of these scenarios where Easton is complicit in his own game. Either Jigsaw was denied fairly and was just lashing out, or Gordon made a serious mistake and then never bothered to correct it. Easton didn’t deserve to be punished in either case.

It’s possible, of course, that it doesn’t really matter. In the end it wasn’t the cancer that got Jigsaw. It was… well, a saw.