Lost – “What Kate Does”

If Lost never quite ends up occupying the same hushed, hallowed ground as shows like The Wire and Mad Men, it won’t be because it wasted an hour on Jack’s tattoos or failed to answer some mystery. No, I’d say Lost’s single biggest flaw is its failure to ever truly crack the character of Kate. In a way “What Kate Does” doesn’t just offer a glimpse into a world where Oceanic 815 never crashed, it gives us a peek into a series where Kate is a crafty fugitive defined more by her friendship with Claire than by which side of the love triangle she bounced to this week.

“What Kate Does” starts off a little shaky – Sawyer inexplicably runs off into the jungle, Kate goes to chase him, and Dogen (as we discovered his name is) won’t answer anyone’s questions – but picks up some steam along the way. We start in the Temple, where Sayid is alive, but Dogen and Lennon smell a rat, so they want some one-on-one time with Sayid. Before they can get it, though, Sawyer busts out and tells them not to follow him. Kate says that she can track him anyway, so she, Jin, and a couple of Others (one of whom is named Aldo, but is really Mac from Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, more on that in a bit) leave to go bring him back (but not before Kate has a tender moment with Jack).

Meanwhile, when we left AlternaKate she was getting away from the Marshall by hijaking a taxi that was already occupied by AlternaClaire. After being stalled by Arzt, the cab driver makes a run for it, so Kate slides up to the driver’s seat and lets Claire go (but not before taking her purse and luggage). Kate finds a mechanic and gets him to break her out of the cuffs and she goes to change, where she finds a picture of a pregnant Claire and a toy that Claire bought for her AlternaBaby.

Kate goes back to meet Claire where she (and we) find out that not only is AlternaClaire still pregnant, but she still wants to give up her baby for adoption. Kate decides to drive Claire to meet the potential parents, and Claire accepts a ride from a potentially dangerous criminal.

Meanwhile, in the present, Aldo reminds Kate that he was guarding the brainwashing room that she, Sawyer, and Alex broke into back in Season 3 (he neglected to mention that if Dolph Lundgren had been guarding the room, you can bet they’d have never broken in). He’s kind of angry and out for revenge, but Kate gets the jump on him and the Redshirt Other and knocks them both out. She tells Jin she’s going after Sawyer, but Jin declines, because he wants to find Sun.

Back at the Temple, the torturer becomes the tortured as Dogen puts Sayid through three tests (first he sprays him with ash, then he electrocutes him, then he pokes him with a hot iron). Sayid fails, so Dogen calls Jack up and tells him to give Sayid a pill. Sayid is “infected” and if Jack doesn’t give it to him, the sickness will spread (more on this later, although I think you all have an idea where this is going). Jack talks to Sayid who says he trusts Jack and will take it if Jack tells him to.

In LA, AlternaKate and AlternaClaire visit the potential parents for Aaron, but it turns out that they’re separated and/or getting a divorce so she’s not interested in raising a kid by herself. Then Claire’s water breaks and Kate drives her to the hospital. I thought we might somehow end up seeing Dr. Juliet Burke, but it was even crazier than that as Claire’s physician turns out to be Ethan Goodspeed (and I’d, once again, like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that, according to the chronology of Lost, Ethan is 27 years old in 2004)! Ethan mentions he wouldn’t want to stick Claire with needles, but Claire decides she wants to pause the whole giving birth thing. She also spontaneously names her child Aaron (did Kate react to that?) during a brief scare and seems to start leaning towards keeping him.

Kate catches up with Sawyer and the two of them reconnect. Sawyer confesses that he was going to propose to Juliet and that he blames himself for her death (in a really heartbreaking scene. I know because of Lost’s pacing and the way several episodes can just span a couple days, sometimes it feels like the characters are dealing with death at a weird rate, but I think they’ve done a good job with Sawyer so far). Kate tells Sawyer that she came back to find Claire and reunite her with Aaron, so they go their separate ways.

In L.A., AlternaClaire lies to the police to get them off of AlternaKate’s trail. Kate asks if Claire would believe her if she said she was innocent (although she never says if she is or what exactly she did) and then Claire gives her a credit card and the two part ways.

If you’ll indulge me for a moment while I get big picture, I think the Alterna815 stuff shows exactly where Kate’s stuff went so awry. I realized some things about Kate while watching this episode. First of all, I had forgotten how much fun she was in season one – back when she was an awesome fugitive – and it was fun to see her doing that again. But, in the ensuing time, think of how little she’s grown. Jack has dealt with his issues of faith, Sawyer has killed The Real Sawyer and grown into a leader, and Locke has seen his belief in the island tested and manipulated in a really sad way. But Kate hasn’t gone through anything like that and, perhaps more to the point, has never had the chance to engage with any of the show’s mysteries. The Aaron stuff all happened way too fast and seemed to come out of nowhere, as does this new, deep friendship with Claire.

Which is too bad because Evangeline Lilly and Emilie de Ravin actually have a great deal of chemistry together. And, what’s more, Kate felt much more human to me in the scenes with Claire than she has for a long time with Jack and Sawyer. In the present day/island timeline, I don’t think Kate is as much friends with Claire as she is bonded to Aaron and looking to set things right on that front. But Kate was far more interesting and believable in the alternate universe than she was in the one we’ve been living in for five years.

But we’re still not done with this episode. Jack goes back to Dogen and says he won’t give Sayid the pill unless he knows what it is, but Dogen continues to obfuscate until Jack takes it himself. Dogen forces the pill out of him and then admits that it is poison. Sayid, he says, has been “claimed” by a darkness that is slowly taking him over. And once it reaches his heart…well it won’t be good. In fact, he says, it will look like what happened to Jack’s sister.

And speaking of Claire, she shows up just as Aldo is about to shoot Jin and kills both him and the Redshirt. And in the island timeline, she seems like a total badass!

So, after a weak start, “What Kate Does” rallied a bit. I thought the LA stuff worked well (even if we didn’t really get any more insight into what the deal with it is) and the Temple stuff was interesting. I still don’t really care about whether Kate ends up with Jack or Sawyer, but this episode gave me some hope that there will be more to Kate’s endgame than that.

Jonah’s Score: 68

Tangled Up in Wires Grade: B

Some Therorizing and Thoughts:

-So, Ethan, huh? Either he was on the sub that got off the island, or the nuke didn’t kill everyone. Either way, its another indication (the only real one this episode) of the differences between the two timelines.

-Is AlternaKate really innocent? This video from Comic Con begs to differ.

-For those of you keeping track of the parallels to season one, remember that there was an early episode where Claire couldn’t feel the baby moving either. Also she comes up with the name Aaron randomly.

-Mike also pointed out to me that both season one and season six started with a two hour premiere and then followed it with a Kate episode. In season one, the next episode was “Walkabout” so we’ll see if next week is a Locke episode.

-Finally, on the parallels front, Sayid tortured Sawyer over the asthma medicine in season one. Here Sayid was being tortured, but unlike Sawyer he may be guilty.

-But, that said, this week didn’t really clear anything up about Sayid. If the ash was protecting the Temple, how could Smokey infect him? If he’s Jacob, why does he think he’s Sayid right now? And if he’s Sayid, why did he fail the test?

-Dogen told Jack that he was brought to the island, just like Jack was. Anyone else reminded of Jacob’s conversation with Smokey?

-Also, it looks like the Smokey/dead person connection is more complex than it seemed at first. Can it be Claire, Sayid, and Locke all at once? Are they all still alive in some way?

-What if “LA X” stands for the 10 815ers who Jacob summoned to the island: Jack, Kate, Locke, Sawyer, Sayid, Hurley, Jin, Sun, Claire, and Aaron.

-We saw last season that Smokey had something to do with The Sickness, but Dogen confirmed it for us here.

-Who was more distracting to you? Mac as an Other or Jimmy Barrett from Mad Men as a member of the Dharma Initiative? And why was the fact that Jacob is played by one of the guys who hassles The Dude in The Big Lebowski or that Lt. Daniels was Abaddon or the fact that Michael Emerson and Jeremy Davies were both in a bunch of stuff before Lost not nearly as big a distraction? Are they just better actors? Is it the difference in the size of roles? Or do they have a broader range of work?

-Am I remembering wrong about Kate and Claire being besties? I know they always liked each other, but it seems like the show is emphasizing their relationship in a way it never did until after Kate and Aaron left the island. It certainly feels like its been all love triangle, all the time, which is a shame.

-Don’t forget about our TUIW conversation on Thursday, where Mike and I will unpack this episode some more and predict what’s coming next.

-I want to give a shout-out to everyone who commented last week. The comments were all extremely insightful and got me rethinking some things, so please keep them coming.

-And a big thanks to everyone who read last week and still decided to come back for another close-to-2000 word opus about Lost. You guys are awesome!