Lost - "What Kate Did"

Episode Title: “What Kate Did”

Brian’s Deeper Meaning Guess: This one is a puzzler. There really are a few options to explain this cryptic title…

Just kidding. If you’ve listened to this week’s Podcast, you know that this title isn’t some sort of cruel trick. The writers finally saying “here you go.” Since the first season we’ve debated Kate’s family, the toy plane, whether or not she’s good or evil, how hot she is, etc. – but now we’re finally going to see – definitively – what the original crime she committed was.

My bet? As I mentioned last season, she can’t be evil, so it has to be some crime where she was a victim or acting in self defense. I’m banking on the “abused by her father, then she killed him” storyline. Technically this makes her a “murderer” and “criminal”, yes – but a sympathetic one that allows us to continue to love her without feeling guilty about it.

TV Guide Description: Kate's original crime that started her life on the run is revealed. Meanwhile, the survivors lay one of their own to rest, Kate sleeplessly watches over a feverish Sawyer, and Mr. Eko has a surprise for Locke regarding the hatch.

TV Guide Breakdown: As if the episode title wasn’t enough, the first line of the TV Guide description also promises answers. The Survivors (my official name for the Tailers + Originals) will bury Shannon right next to Boone, but I really don’t feel much emotional connection to this.

Yes, Shannon got a bit of redemption in her episode, but her death now occurred a full three weeks ago. As a viewer, any emotion I’ve invested in her storyline and death are long gone, making this burial scene seem like digging up (bad pun unintended) old storylines. This is one of the major drawbacks of the “show something shocking, then show it from another angle, then move forward” style of episode the show’s writers have twice employed this season. Yes, it makes the story more full and complete, but at the cost of the tempo and mood of the singular plot moving storyline. But I digress…

Kate sleeplessly watches over a feverish Sawyer. This might explain why she looks a bit crazy in the commercials. A lack of sleep will do this to you – make you start seeing things, freaking out about things, and lose all rationality. Here’s my guess for how the episode breaks down:

- Kate refuses to leave Sawyer’s side. She always kinda had a thing for him, he was the bad boy, She’s gone through the emotional roller-coaster of not getting to say goodbye to him before he left on the raft, then thinking he was dead when they found the letters in the bottle, and now he’s back but on his death bed. She feels like she owes it to him (and possibly that she’s the only one who can bring him out of him coma-like state. Let’s be honest, if you were in a coma and hot Kate was sitting bedside, wouldn’t you wake up too?)

- As time passes, she begins to think about her past (queue up the flashbacks) and has some sort of tragic issue in her past. Did she sit bedside with her father after she shot him? Did someone else in her past die? In my mind, it’s gotta be her daddy. Due to the lack of sleep, she begins to confuse reality with these flashbacks.

- Suddenly, she sees Sawyer as her poppa, and freaks out (the previews show Sawyer laying on the ground), perhaps attacking Sawyer?

- The previews also have Kate saying “Do you believe in Ghosts?” Could she be seeing her dead father a la Jack in Season One? Or does she just see him in Sawyer?

- Jack chases after her, convinces her that it’s all going to be okay. There is some sort of emotional scene where she breaks down, and then Jack kisses her. That’s right. A kiss right on the kisser. The shot we’ve all been waiting for since Episode 1.1.

Pretty good episode, right? Yes, but we didn’t even get to the good part yet.

Mr. Eko has a surprise for Locke regarding the Hatch?! This excites me very much. Granted, it’s probably going to be something simple like Eko telling Locke that he’s been inside another “Hatch” where he saw a Dharma logo (remember how closely he was looking at the logo last week?), which will start a trek around the Island to find the other Hatches, but there’s something very fantastic about Locke and Eko.



Again, if you listen to the Podcast, the show’s creators mention how giddy they were to have Locke and Eko finally meet last episode. According to them, their relationship and discoveries drive the plot for the majority of the Season. They’re both men of faith (obviously – more on Eko later), and Locke wants to believe in something extraordinary on the Island. I think it will be these two that delve into the Dharma mystery and start coming up with answers, while Jack / Sayid / Ana concern themselves with everyday survival.

Awesome.

PS – Eko is quickly becoming a favorite character on this show. If I were going to rank the top 5 characters currently on the show (in terms of how interesting they are / awesome they are), it would be as follows:

1. Locke
2. Eko
3. Sawyer
4. Kate
5. Jack


Previously on Lost…

We learn through flashbacks that Ana-Lucia was an LA Cop in her previous life. Her mother is her Captain, she’s got a bad attitude, and is going through some sort of psychological rehab to get back on the force.

Back on the Island, Sayid freaks out after she shoots Shannon and goes after her. She ties him up and refuses to release him, even after Michael and Eko try to convince her otherwise.

Eko realizes that Sawyer is dying, and picks him up and carries him back to the Originals camp, where they bring him inside the Hatch and Jack starts pumping him with medicine.

Slowly, everyone turns on Ana and wants to move on and let Sayid go. In the end, Sayid talks to her and convinces her to release him. We learn that Ana was pregnant and was shot on the job, making her lose her child. The man who shot her was actually brought into police custody, but she let him go so that she could get her revenge. She followed the man (to Australia?) and shot him repeatedly.

The episode ends with a tearful reunion of Vincent and Michael (totally forgot about this one, yet easily the most emotional of all the reunions), Rose and Bernard, Sun and Jin, and Jack and Ana-Lucia. The Survivors are now all together.



Ana. So now we know this “Ana-Lucia”. Verdict? Eh, thanks, she’s okay.

Given Ana’s storyline, I suppose we’re supposed to feel sympathetic for her, and while I understand where she’s coming from, her character is still pretty unappealing to me. She’s a “badass” without Sawyer’s wit and charm, and has a troubled past – but has no mystery to her like a Kate or Sayid. I don’t know, maybe I’m being too hard on her, but I do love Libby and Bernard, who are much more “down to earth” characters who I’m interested in learning more about.

Australia. According to my count, the number of people who went to Australia to murder someone is now up to two (Sawyer and Ana), the number of people who went to collect a body or ended up getting someone killed is at three (Jack, Kate, and Sayid). Yikes – moral of the story, don’t go to Australia, you’ll end up dead.

Rumors. There is a huge rumor running around the Internet that the first episode of next year is a flashback for… the Island itself.

That’s right, it would show how the Island came to be (was created?), the people who have found their way to the Island, what happened to them, etc. The details of the episode are pretty sketchy at this point, but it’s pretty much the most unbelievably cool thing I’ve heard rumored for Lost since the Vincent-flashback episode that got squashed at the end of Season One due to the Internet ruining it for everyone.

Can you imagine? Two big reasons why I could see this happening:

1. It would fit into the “have a cliffhanger, then move away from it for a week, then come back to it once you’ve explained more” motif they’ve been working this season (Shannon’s Death, the Desmond encounter). What’s the cliffhanger? It’s at the end of this post, of course. But showing the Island’s backstory would give us an insane amount of information about that cliffhanger and would make the events that happen in the episode following much more meaningful.

2. It allows us as viewers to understand the Island while we watch the characters discover the same. The “Dharma Film” served as one sort of very clean plot device to explain things that happened on the Island prior to our Survivors arriving which they couldn’t possibly know about. It affords the writers to still be telling the story from our cast’s point of view without having a character (such as Desmond) give an exposition about the history of the Island. The Island flashback would be the ultimate plot device to get pre-CFL, pre-Dharma information about the Island, and allows the writers to keep characters such as Alfred Hanso and the Degroots a mystery.


Stick. Okay, I mentioned this last week, but it’s time to really dive into this whole “Eko Stick” business. What do I think? I think Mr. Eko is John the Baptist or Moses.



Before you write me off as being 100% crazy, let me take you along my thought process:

Remember back in Locke’s original flashback when his loony mother told him he was immaculately conceived? Well, there’s only one dude in history who has been born this way, and that’s JC. The first season was filled with Locke as Christ symbolism. So let’s assume that whoever John Locke is, whatever his purpose is, he’s the “Christ figure” on this Island.

Eko comes out of the water wearing a bleached-white shirt – an image of purity, and as if he was just baptized. Two Others who attempt to take him (because he’s one of the “Good Ones”, per Goodwin), then goes into a sort of prayerful silent meditation for 40 days (the Bible’s favorite number!) to mourn their murder. He gets a stick, or “staff” and shows an interest in the Bible that the Tailers found in the Arrow Hatch.

Check out how the Bible describes the birth of John the Baptist:

“He hid me; He made me a polished arrow, in His quiver He hid me away”

He seems to be a man of Faith. The show’s creators have said that he and Locke will develop a relationship. Like, this kind?



Could Eko be the one to show Locke the way? Is he what Locke has been searching for this whole time on the Island? Or is it vice versa?

Desmond. Where has this guy been? One interesting point brought up on the Podcast that I hadn’t really thought about – hard to believe I know. Everything that Desmond said made it sound like he thought the Island – and world – would be destroyed if the 108 Clock struck 0:00. However, he picked up and ran away when he thought the computer was destroyed. Where did he think he was going? Obviously, you can’t outrun the end of the world.

Unless he knows about some other “safe bunker” (read: Hatch), running seems futile. Did he intentionally make up the story to get Jack and Co. to continue his experiment? Does he really believe bad things are going to happen, but has an escape plan? Or is the “4815162342 antidote” render him safe from the “sickness” that’s sure to follow? Why do I bring this up? Well…

See the Canadian TV Lost Preview Here:
s38.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3JSM2O4B31CUX2VJE59VTQC39Z

I’ll wait for you. You have to type http:// in front of that bad boy, then download it. Trust me, it’s worth it.

Got it? Watched it? Okay, FREAK OUT.

Are you kidding me? Why do the Crazy Canucks get that sweet preview when ours shows five seconds of quickly cut scenes showing Kate crying? My theory is that in order to compete with other

Final Five. Okay, so once you’ve seen the preview, here is my prediction for how the last five minutes of this episode play out (after the last commercial break)…

Locke and Eko are so preoccupied with the film, Locke’s not paying attention to the countdown of the 108 Clock. Jack returns to the Hatch after playing kissy-face with Kate and hears the beeping. He and Locke go racing to the computer, attempt to punch in the numbers, but either accidentally mis-type, or are simply too late and the clock hits zero.

Fade to black.

LOST.


PS – remember the Lost Podcast I referenced a few times this week? You can listen to the 25 minute broadcast here:

http://a.media.abc.com/podcast/lost/Lostpodcast_04_direct.mp3

Trust me, it’s worth it.