In preparation for tonight's episode, I went back and watched two earlier Kate-centric Lost outings: the first season's "Tabula Rasa" and the second's "What Kate Did."
Now "What Kate Did" isn't a bad episode. As its title suggests, it answers the big question about Ms. Austen, and it has a very cool scene between Locke and Mr. Eko, in which Eko tells a sort of parable -- interestingly enough -- about "rebuilding a temple."
But "Tabula Rasa"? That's great stuff. It doesn't dwell too much on Kate and Kate alone, but rather how she connects to the other characters, while still telling us a lot of what we need to know about her.
She's "born to run," as the title of another episode would tell us one day, but her fear of being caught/tied down never allows her to completely abandon her humanity. She saves the farmer who's turned her in from a burning car -- sure, she had caused it to crash -- and makes sure the marshall has his oxygen mask on as the plane starts to go down.
Plus, the episode managed to spend a little time with pretty much all of the characters, and established how cool Locke is/was by having him carve a working dog whistle to track down Vincent.
It set a standard that all future Kate episodes really failed to live up to, including tonight's installment, "What Kate Does."
Still, this one came pretty close, although it lacked a lot of the zing of last week's premiere. But with the end of the season this close, the show can't afford to waste a lot of time, which meant the episode moved the island story forward while bringing us back to the other reality for some interesting, puzzling glimpses of what might have been. More on that -- and that means spoilers -- coming up.
We'll start with Sayid, Claire, and how maybe we will actually get what the producers used to joke about: the Zombie Season of Lost.
The idea was that if the show ran for a seventh season, it would have run out of ideas and we'd see the characters fighting zombies.
But given what's happening with Sayid and Claire -- and assuming Dogen is telling Jack the truth -- my thoughts go back to Stephen King, and his novel Pet Semetary, which puts forth the idea that bringing anything back from the dead changes it. More specifically, it turns them bad.
Sayid, we're told, has been "claimed" by some sort of "darkness," the same darkness that apparently overtook Claire, who's now become something of a blonde Australian Rousseau, living in the jungle and setting traps.
What's happening with off-island Claire is actually a lot more intriguing. After being car-jacked, well, cab-jacked by Kate, she enlists her new friend in going with her to see the family who'll adopt her unborn baby. The meeting goes wrong (dad left mom, mom doesn't want to raise a baby on her own), Claire starts contracting, Kate takes to the hospital, where they're met by Dr. Goodpseed. More to the point...Dr. Ethan Goodspeed.
The man who was our first introduction to the Others is -- in this reality -- a friendly, caring obstetrician. Of course, he would've left the island before Jughead exploded (he was just a baby then), and thus was never corrupted by Ben (as a member of the Others, Ethan was, remember, still a doctor).
What's interesting here is that for the second time this season, Lost has paired two people who were antagonists on the island and put them in an off-island situation where they treat each other with compassion.
It's also interesting how Kate sort of did a double-take when Claire said the baby's name was Aaron, as if that sounded familiar. She also had the same reaction earlier in the episode upon seeing Jack. As we see more of this world, will we see other characters have these same sort of deja vu moments?
Or maybe -- as the Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan argues -- the idea is that in both realities, people's basic natures are still the same: Kate comes back to the island to help Claire, just as the non-island Kate risks capture to get Claire to the hospital. And is this Kate innocent? The Kate crashed on the island never made such claims.
Kate's story on the island wasn't that involving, but it might mean an end to the Sawyer/Jack/Kate triangle, Kate having seen how much Juliet meant to Sawyer. Please, Lost gods, be kind to us.
Other thoughts:
- It would be nice to know, before the end of the season, if there are actual good and bad guys on either side of this battle, and if so, who they are.
- This never occurred to me before, but the alternate timeline isn't exactly on track with the show's original Flight 815 timeline, if we're to believe the date on Claire's ultrasound. (Thanks to Lostpedia for catching this, and to the Zap2It website for pointing it out.)
- I wasn't watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia at the time of Lost's third season, so when Rob McElhenney showed up playing Aldo, it didn't mean much. Consequently, seeing him reprise the role tonight -- only to be shot down by Jungle Claire at the end -- was pretty cool. Also, his exchanges with Justin reminded me of Lenny and Carl talking about the Stonecutters: "It's a secret." "Shut UP."
- It's good the explanation for Dogen's pill was simply: poison. If he actually was going to try to fix Sayid with some sort of herbal remedy, things would've gotten silly very quickly.
- Most of what I really liked about this episode involved the temple: Hurley in charge, Jack getting wiser and yet more self-destructive (and most importantly, much more sympathetic). Also, was this the first time Jin and Kate have shared any significant screen time?
- Is it just me, or has the show changed the sound effect it uses for switching between storylines? The whoosh sound that used to signify a flashback/flashforward was about to begin or end -- like a plane flying overhead -- has been replaced with a different sound it seems, sort of like a plane coming in for a landing. At the end of the show's journey, that seems appropriate.
- Next week: a Terry O'Quinn hour. Locke and MIB were sorely missed tonight.
Tom Coombe
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