Lost Review: “What Kate Does”

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(read last week’s review here)

Well I guess after last week’s maelstrom episode of twists and turns, we needed a bit of a breather in this week’s follow-up. But wait, no, we don’t have time for breathers, there are only fourteen episodes left goddamnit!

More or less, nothing monumental happened this entire episode except for the very end with a “surprise” moment we expect at the end of EVERY Lost. We were focused entirely on the Temple group of Jack, Hurley, Sawyer, Kate, Miles and un-dead Sayid, who is rather perplexed about what’s going on and why he’s breathing. As for Not-Locke, Ben and Richard? I guess we’ll find out next week, though I purposefully avoid the “next week on Lost” end of episode promos like the plague due to spoilers galore.

The new others, spearheaded by Hippie Guy and Samurai Guy are suspicious of Sayid’s resurrection and take him into the back room to do some “tests” on him, which of course involves electrocuting him and burning him with hot irons. I’m guessing when Sayid crashed on a desert island, the last thing he expected was to be electrocuted against his will not once, but TWICE (remember his previous encounter with Rosseau). Poor dude, though he does kind of have it coming. Sawyer’s fingernails would approve.

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“Oh COME ON!”

Samurai Guy (whose name we learn is “Tonga” I think) tells Sayid he’s passed this torture test, but it’s made clear that he has in fact failed instead, by uh, feeling pain I guess. Tonga brings Jack in and tells him that Sayid is “infected” and he needs to take this magic pill he just made in order to halt his condition. Jack, of course, doesn’t trust this man handing him what appears to be ground up ash (like the kind you spread around for Smoke Monster defense) in a gel capsule, and wants to know what’s in it. Tonga tells him that he believes Sayid is “claimed,” and that something similar happened to Jack’s sister, Claire. He says the pill is poison, and Sayid needs to die (again) before something worse happens to him.

Speaking of Claire, in bizarro parallel universe, Kate is getting busy running from the law by hijacking Claire’s taxi, and leaves her stranded on the side of the road. But once she’s away and hammers off her handcuffs, she discovers Claire’s baby bag and feels bad, so drives back to where she left her and reunites the about-to-pop blonde with her lost stuffed Orca which I think I’m supposed to remember from a previous season. She even drives Claire to the future parents of her in-belly baby, but everyone is thrown for a loop when the mom-to-be says her husband left her and she no longer wants a kid and inexplicably didn’t think to call the girl who was flying halfway across the world to give it to her.The shock of this sends Claire into an early labor (but no, the shock of a plane crash was fine for about two months), and Kate drives her to the hospital where she’s cared for by none other than Dr. Ethan, yes, that Ethan. I believe in this universe Ethan was an infant when the island was hit by the H-bomb, so it seems he was able to escape and go on to lead a normal life. It makes you wonder where the rest of the island’s natives ended up in this storyline, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough. This entire scene was pretty excellent and surreal, as it was pretty perfect mirror to when Ethan kidnapped Claire and gave her baby drugs back on the island. Although he was planning on keeping that baby and probably strangling her to death, so maybe this new timeline isn’t so bad after all.

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“Don’t worry, I’m totally less creepy in alternate reality!”

But back in island-reality, Kate is traipsing through the jungle, running after Sawyer who walked out of he Temple holding everyone at gunpoint. She finds him and witnesses him uncharacteristically break down due to the fact he believes himself responsible for Juliet’s death. But I think he’s being a bit hard on himself, because if he had any idea she would die by being sucked into a pit by a magnetic anomaly, blown up by an H-bomb, then transported 30 years into the future underneath two tons of metal, I’m sure he would have tried to alter that course of events.

Meanwhile, Jin, who was trekking to find Sawyer with Kate until she ditched him, is apprehended by two Others guards, one being a supremely excellent cameo by It’s Always Sunny in Philidelphia’s Mac, who Lost-ites will remember showed up as an Others guard in season three. But all of a sudden Mac and the other guard are dead, and look who it is! Claire shows up toting a rifle, looking like Rosseau incarnate, and we have our cut to black moment.

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Maybe you should show them some of your sweet karate. 

The main question raised by this episode is what exactly it means to be “claimed” and how it’s affected Claire and Sayid. I had previously thought the “claiming” by the Smoke Monster was pretty straightforward. He could take the form of anyone who had died on the island, and exists as a physical entity, but he’s not literally “possessing” the person’s dead body, as evidenced by Not-Locke walking by Dead-Locke in the previous episode.

So what do the others mean here when referencing Sayid and Claire? I assumed they are worried about “claiming” by the Smoke Monster, as he appears to be their only real enemy on the island, but we’ve never seen him literally possess a dead body before, unless you believe he’s been rolling round in Jack’s dad’s corpse this whole time. That’s one body we never did find.

And Claire? Did she die as well? She went all stoned and catatonic when we last saw her over a year ago, and she was in the same room with Smoke Monster Christian. How exactly has she been “claimed.” Am I on the wrong track here? Is this something completely different than Smoke Monster possession? Is it some sort of otherworldly island sickness that’s what drove Rosseau to Crazytown? Judging by Claire’s hair, I’d say that might be a good bet.

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What is in this thing? More importantly, what exactly does it cure?
Also an issue is this whole parallel timeline, which as we guessed, did continue past the pilot. I’m worried that yes, as cool as it is to see all these long-lost characters, it really seems like nothing more than a time-filler in a season that doesn’t have any time to spare. Is it an object lesson about how the castaway’s lives would have been better or worse had their plane not crashed? Or is there some greater significance that ties into Juliet’s dying thoughts which proclaimed her bomb endeavor to be a success? I imagine it’s the latter, but I can’t figure out a way to make these two worlds connect. But hey, that’s not my job, I’m just going to sit back and let the writers guide me home. Or into an iceberg, I’m not sure yet.

Bonus: The episode title this week has greater significance as usual, harkening back to season two episode, “What Kate Did.”

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10 Comments

  1. I vaguely remember Mac from his super small role in season 3, but seeing him return in the final season with more lines was pretty awesome x) He was hilarious to say the least.
    Its good to know that they are solving the questions about Claire, but at the same time I didn’t really want to have her back in the show; she sort of annoys me….
    Good episode in all for me, I’m glad season 6 is keeping my interest

  2. Pretty much agree with everything. This episode to me felt a lot like a filler episode that didn’t advance much in a season that I felt should have very little room for filler though.

    I’m not 100% on board with the new others yet either, especially as it has been three episodes now and they have given almost no information to the survivors except for a few vague pieces. At some point very soon we need to find out their story, motivations, and involvement in the big picture.

    Same concerns with the LA storyline though I suspect like you that it will tie into Juliet’s dying declaration at some point in the season.

    I fully trust the writers though and every season to this point has had a few slower moving episodes so I am not too concerned at this stage.

  3. Samurai dudes name is “Dogen”, i assume the name comes from the Zen Buddhist teacher, as every other name seems to be related to some historical figure.

    As for the “claimed/infected” thing, last season when they gave kid Ben to Richard to be healed at the temple, he said that he would not be the same and that he would lose his innocence. That has to be related.

  4. Haha, I like your ironical comments ^^

    Btw. for the 2 months thing: I check the Lostpedia somethimes after a show (where the have these ridiculously dedicated fans who make an article for every fucking item of each person on the show!?) for the cultural references lost makes and I never really get ect. and there it says
    “Before Claire covers for Kate saying that she was just a cab driver who helped her into the hospital she is looking at the ultrasound of unborn Aaron. The ultrasound is labeled with the date and time October 22, 2004 at 9:29:42am, one month after the crash of flight 815 in the original timeline. “

  5. this was the worst episode of the entire series… the only question it had me asking was “why is mac wearing sleeves?”

    also, i don’t care about claire. i want to know more about alpert, jacob and the man in black.

    i do have faith still and trust the writers but at this point, it almost seems like they’re trying to distract us from what we really care about on the show.

    another thing, sulky and sad sawyer sucks (pardon the alliteration), but jesus… he used to be one of my favorite characters and now he’s just annoying.

  6. This episode spent 40 minutes confirming what I knew by the end of the last one: that sayid had been possessed/claimed. There were at least 3 times in this episode where they could have just told you outright.

    My theory is jacob is claiming syed’s body (that’s why he told Hurly to take syed to the temple).

    I don’t mind the flash sideways but when you juxtapose this with a really elongated answer re: syed’s possesion, you come to the conclusion that this episode was just filler.

    Also, everything in this episode has happened before:
    Syed tortured, check
    Sawyer runs off from the group, check
    Kate follows him, check
    Clair meets ethan (in very similar circumstances), check
    Jack gets hit by Donga, check.

    Granted, there probably is intended symbolism going on here, but after LAX 1 and 2 (where they were just giving you answers left right and centre i.e. smoke monster), this episode seemed far too much filler. The only new thing I found out was clair is still alive and apparently her body was claimed too…..but that all happened in the last 5 minutes! (oh and Jin got his leg trapped)

    I suppose points in favour of this episode are putting the pieces into places i.e sawyer and kate are in X position, Jin and Claire are in Y position and Jack, Syed et al are in Z position – obviously things are going to happen to each party in the upcoming episodes. But did they really need an entire episode solely dedicated to moving pieces around?

    Overall though, I think this episode was weak. And as you rightly said, this is the last season; there’s no time for filler. I am eagerly awaiting the next episode, and apparently there will be a Richard Alper centric one coming soon.

  7. This episode sucked. LOST is brilliant, but this episode reeked of the afflictions that plague Network T.V. shows, ie. writers treating us like we are very very stupid, and apt. to run off to another T.V. show any second if they don’t continue to rope us into new mysteries. And, of course, character motivation that doesn’t make a lick of sense.

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