Episode 3 - What Kate Does
18 March 2010
Review
Present: Sayid is taken away and Dogen electrocutes him and sears him with a hot poker. He claims he was testing him. He tells Jack that Sayid is infected and that he must take a pill to get better. Jack won’t do it and forces them to admit that the pill is poison and Sayid has been “claimed.” Sawyer escapes and heads back to the barracks. Jin, Kate and two others go after him and Kate knocks her minders out. She follows Sawyer while Jin searches for the Ajeera flight. The two Others catch up to him but are shot by Claire.
Flashback: Kate takes Claire’s money and bags and leaves her by the side of the road. When she finds the baby gear in the bag she has a change of heart and returns. She gives Claire a lift to the home of her baby’s adoptive parents. The wife says her husband left her and she can’t take the baby. Claire goes into early labour and Kate takes her to a hospital. There Doctor Ethan Goodspeed offers to help Claire and delay “Aaron’s” birth.
The Good: Making assumptions at this stage about what is going on in the flashsideways is likely to leave me looking foolish. But there are a lot of hints here that what we are seeing may be a reality where the characters end up finding some kind of peace, happiness and resolution. If that is the case then Claire’s story does seem to work out pretty nicely.
The end of their time together leaves Kate in the position of having convinced Claire to keep her baby. Which is of course why Kate came back to the island. So perhaps this is the resolution to that story, Kate reunites Claire with her baby who Claire now realises she does want to keep after all. The way she blurted out the name Aaron was a straightforward way to show that she had already come to think of the baby as hers.
Along the way there were nice ironies or continuities of course. Kate is by Claire’s side as she is about to give birth, just as she was on the island (120). Ethan is once more Claire’s doctor and in a very appropriate reversal of attitude tries to avoid sticking any needles in her (215). Ethan’s appearance again seems to reinforce the feeling that this is the happy ending universe. His mother left the island before jughead detonated and so he never joined the Others (I am assuming all this) and became a doctor, able to help people in the “real” world.
Although I have a lot of problems with Kate’s story, I don’t mind her feeling guilty when she sees the baby clothes. We know she had already dealt with fears about motherhood (306) and then became a very committed mother herself. So wanting to do right by a rather helpless pregnant girl seemed perfectly fitting for her.
Josh Holloway (Sawyer) is an underrated actor. As he plays a cocky, swaggering guy rather than someone more emotional (Locke) or cerebral (Ben) he is unlikely to be given award nominations. But he plays Sawyer with real conviction and here he conveys the sheer weight of his grief with real skill. It’s all the sadder because Juliet’s insecurity was based around him leaving her, yet he clearly had no intention of doing so. I liked that he, Kate and Jin had no intention of staying in the Temple. They have no particular reason to trust the Others and haven’t been told why the smoke monster poses more of a threat now than it did before.
On a slight tangent I also liked the way the characters interacted, given that they spent three years apart. Jack has one of his countless wishing-Kate-well moments. But when you think that they were engaged a few months ago it takes on a new perspective. Similarly it seemed odd to hear Sawyer condemn Sayid for being a torturer and claim he was no friend of his. But again, Sawyer spent three years with a new set of friends and only knew Sayid for a few months.
The return of Aldo (307) was a nice bit of continuity and gave him an excuse to not want to share any information with Kate. His bitterness over Kate knocking him out back in the day is pretty funny when you think about it. What was Kate supposed to do, not try and escape? Jin looking for Sun is also consistent. Though it would be nice to know if Jin was ever tempted to give up on her as three years passed.
The Sayid being “Claimed” story is intriguing. It’s not clear if this is what happened to Ben (511) or to the French team (505) or something slightly different. Hopefully it leads to a full explanation from Dogen soon and the interaction with Jack is a step in that process. Jack is a good doctor for not passing on a pill on blind faith and he is finally learning to get answers – here swallowing the pill to see what will happen. Dogen (another philosopher name for those keeping count) does at least attempt a bit of a logical explanation for his behaviour when he has to. His use of a translator to aid his leadership was a convincing explanation and of course was aimed to resonate with Jack. And I particularly liked his comment “You know exactly what I mean” when Jack questioned how he was “brought” to the island. Jack has arrived twice so he knows by now that he was “meant” to be there.
I liked Miles asking Sayid what he saw while dead, a fair question, especially from him. Hurley asking Sayid if he is a zombie is both easy comedy and a nod to the producer’s podcast.
The Bad: But despite all that, this was not a particularly good episode. I think a lot of that had to do with its pace and placement. Coming on the heels of the excellent opening two episodes this felt unimportant and plodding. The logic holes didn’t help but even without them this would still have felt like the writers were squandering one of the precious few hours they have left to tell this story.
The Sayid story was at a snail’s pace and the drama was not well communicated. Dogen comes to ask for Sayid to follow him, and then ends up taking him by force. Dogen tells Sayid that he passed the test before telling Jack that he failed. He tells Jack to give Sayid medicine but eventually admits that it is poison. At each step of the way Dogen is being deliberately unhelpful and by the third attempt viewers will probably feel this isn’t Dogen being uncooperative, it is the writers stretching the story out. We also have to suffer through Lost’s worst habit which is a lack of questions. Jack doesn’t ask what kind of infection Sayid has and doesn’t press them for more details as surely anyone would. At least he asks what is in the pill but as a doctor he could have asked many more probing questions. Dogen claims Sayid must take the pill willingly. Is that true? Does that somehow make the poison more effective? Because if they just want to kill Sayid why not shoot him? If these points had been made with more urgency and honesty then it wouldn’t have felt like such a drag.
As for Kate’s story, that showcased Lost’s other great failure, the Kate Austin character. I have argued all along that she never came across as a real killer on the run. She was always too nice or too nasty, drugging and deceiving her husband one week, gunning down bank robbers the next. Here there is a litany of problems one after another.
Assuming that this universe is similar to the original one, remember that she was just betrayed by the man who took her in for several months (103). Yet she turns her back on the mechanic immediately, showing a trust and lack of urgency which make her look like the worst fugitive ever. Her decision to return for Claire is incredibly dumb, not for sentimental reasons, just for practical ones. She must have been gone for at least forty minutes, minimum. So the first implausible thing is that Claire is still there. They seemed to have driven only a few hundred yards out of the airport so Claire should have walked back to find the police. Even if they drove further she still should have done that and Kate should have assumed that was what she would do. But worse than that is that Kate is driving back toward the Marshall and the police who by now will have met the aggrieved taxi driver and be on the lookout for her. Remember she just got off the plane and amazingly escaped once more, she should have been driving away like crazy.
She then starts to trust Claire who starts to trust her, both pretty implausible given their situation and Kate now leaves her stolen taxi outside a residential home and wanders off. She is exposing herself more and more to getting caught, so next she ends up at a hospital. Again she is putting her freedom in serious jeopardy to help a pregnant girl. Which is wonderfully moral but not consistent with her bank shooting, Cassidy conning, husband drugging past, so how does this seem credible? And yes I am aware that in this universe none of that might have happened but still, she is not a convincing fugitive.
The Unknown: Kate gave a couple of funny looks which might mean something. She seems to recognise Jack and then reacts slightly to Claire using the name Aaron. Both may be coincidental but they could also be similar to Jack recognising Desmond (601).
For what it’s worth Sayid’s accent does sound different to what I am used to hearing. He is probably just trying to simulate his exhausted state but with this show it’s best to point out anything which seems unusual. Speaking of which, why is Dogen a baseball fan?
The fact that there was a couple in L.A. waiting to adopt Claire’s baby is an interesting one. As this is a different universe we don’t know if Richard Malkin (110) was involved in getting Claire to go on 815. But if he was this would change his story a bit from what seemed supernatural to what now seems coincidental.
Claire of course looks like Rousseau in the present. Which is interesting considering Dogen implies she has a dark heart and as far as we know Rousseau killed her team because they had been infected, not her. We shall see how that plays out.
Justin warns Aldo not to kill Jin because he is “one of them.” Is there some greater significance to those named on Jacob’s list? Are they the people Jacob warned were coming (517)?
Best Moment: Sawyer mourning. Really good acting.
The Bottom Line: Unlike most shows, the more I pick this apart the more good things I can see. But that doesn’t change the overall impression which the episode creates. And that is of wasted time. With so many revelations and character moments to get to Dogen’s equivocations and Kate’s idiocy feel like the brakes being slammed on a train that was picking up speed.
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