Lost - "What Kate Does"

Episode Title: “What Kate Does”

Brian’s Deeper Meaning Guess: Let the alternate reality and loop theories run rampant! As if people (read: me) weren’t going crazy enough about what’s happening with the Off-Island action on Lost this season, this week’s episode title adds more fuel to the fire with “What Kate Does”, a clever play on the Season Two episode “What Kate Did”. If you recall, “What Kate Did” was the episode where we finally learned out what Kate did (so it wasn’t just a clever name) that caused her to become a criminal on the run from the law – which was blowing up the house of her drunkard biological father Wayne. Other episode highlights include the appearance of the weird black horse from Kate’s past on the Island, Kate being an irrational girl by making out with Jack one minute and running away from him the next, and Eko telling Locke “do not mistake coincidence with fate”.

So what does the episode title mean?

The writers clearly want us to reference and remember “What Kate Did” so that we can compare and contrast to what we see happen in “What Kate Does”. Since Kate killed Wayne in “What Kate Did”, does that mean she doesn’t kill him in “What Kate Does”? Actually, the answer to this question was hinted at during this past year’s Comic Con video, I just didn’t believe it at the time:

Since introducing Off-Island flashbacks would confuse things to the point where my brain explodes, confirmation about what Kate did to originally be arrested will likely only come in the form of a passing discussion between characters (like Claire and Kate), or being displayed on TV as the national manhunt for her goes on (like in the clip above). But aside from finding out if Kate really does have a new criminal past in the Off-Island action this season, it’ll be interesting to see where her storyline goes from here. She’s on the run from the law with a pregnant lady in a cab. I can’t think of any way that this ends well for her. I’m also struggling to figure out her storyline will intersect with any other characters in the Off-Island timeline aside from Claire, which makes me think it can’t carry on very long. Although it seems clear that the overall Off-Island storyline will continue for a while, I’m wondering if this will be the last we see of Kate in the timeline. One way or another, it seems like her Off-Island story will come to a quick conclusion. Either being caught and thrown in jail, finding somewhere to lay low and going into serious hiding, or driving off the edge of a cliff with Claire, Thelma and Louise style.

(Note: I’m also wondering if the “What Kate Does” title is a red herring to make the audience subconsciously accept that the Off-Island action is taking place AFTER the Off-Island action we saw in Season Two, during “What Kate Did” – when in reality, the scenes we are seeing in the current Off-Island storyline took place during a PREVIOUS loop in Jacob’s plan. Very tricky Lost writers, very tricky indeed…)

Meanwhile, back on the Island, what Kate does is far more interesting. Being held captive by a new subset of mysterious Others, it seems like there’s a lot of potential for a ton of answers to start coming fast and furious as the Others explain the dangers behind Anti-Jacob, their “mission” on the Island in serving Jacob, and their intentions for our Survivors. Even though it’s technically a Kate-centric episode, since all the On-Island characters aside from Sun / Frank / SmokeLocke / Alpert are together, what happens to Kate happens to everyone, which helps keep the storyline tight and allows it to build momentum over the next few weeks. There may be a slightly larger focus on Kate than the other characters (expect Kate to be the one to console Sawyer over the loss of Juliet), but all-in-all, I think the centricity of the episodes is going to be more about the Off-Island storyline than the On-Island storyline from this point forward.

Guest Stars: None listed, again.

Guest Star Breakdown: Love it. I would love it even more if Lost can somehow go all season without listing their guest stars. Keep us in the dark, keep the surprises coming!

Episode Description: Kate finds herself on the run, while Jack is tasked with something that could endanger a friend's life.

Episode Breakdown: Love it. It’s like the Lost writers are trying to destroy my episode preview Blog posts by giving me absolutely nothing to go on. I’m assuming that the “Kate finds herself on the run” line refers to the Off-Island action, unless she decides to run away from the Temple, which seems like a terrible idea with SmokeLocke running around. As a general rule of thumb, when the all-knowing, kung-fu-tastic Others are afraid of something, you probably should be afraid of it too.

This means the only information we have about the On-Island action this week is “Jack is tasked with something that could endanger a friend’s life”. The episode “LA X” ended with Dogen requesting Jack’s presence in private. Jack refused and began fighting off the Others as Sayid woke up and interrupted everything. It would stand to reason that once the excitement about Sayid’s revival calms down, Dogen and Jack will once again have that meeting – and in it, Jack will receive his “mission”.

So what is this mission going to be? I have to say, this has the potential to be a pretty big reveal. It could be something as monumental as the reason why Jack had to come back to the Island after he left, or even why fate brought him to the Island in the first place. Is he destined to become the next leader of the Others, the next vessel for Jacob, or is he the key to stopping Anti-Jacob or SmokeLocke? Or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

What about endangering a friend’s life? This part is a little more puzzling, although the list of potential Jack-friends on the Island is pretty small. Currently joining Jack at the Temple are Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Jin, Miles, and Sayid, so you would think the endangered friend would have to come from that list (although depending on the job he is tasked, I suppose Sun or Frank could come into play). Sadly, I’ve got no solid theories about who this endangered friend might be, but given that Sayid nearly died last week and might be some type of zombie who is only alive thanks to funky Island magic, he’d be at the top of my list.

…and that’s it! Lost did me a favor with the lack of information for this week’s episode, since I’m still getting used to Lost airing on Tuesdays. It doesn’t give a lot of time for the turnaround between previous episode analysis and next episode preview – I’m pretty much going to have to do both each weekend so that the Blog doesn’t interfere with my “Chuck” watching on Monday nights.

Until tomorrow night, Happy Losting!

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