Spoilers below the image!
This week on LOST, we got a bit of a break from the confusion and excitement of the season premiere. In What Kate Does, Kate helped Claire with her pregnancy in one timeline and followed Sawyer out into the jungle in the other, while the newly-alive Sayid was tortured and “diagnosed” back at the temple.
And for an episode in which not a whole lot happened, we had an awful lot to say! Leave your own thoughts and theories in the comments (while remembering no spoilers for upcoming episodes!).
Alright, first things first. What did you think of the episode?
CARA: I have to say, that with an episode title like “What Kate Does” — especially in light of the the Season 2 episode “What Kate Did” being a really great one — I expected that Kate might actually do something, particularly something of significance and importance. And especially after a few seasons of Boring Kate, I was hoping we might get Badass Kate back. Instead, what Kate “did” is what she always does: follow people she was told not to follow, and be a softhearted fugitive. My expectations were pretty high, and then I felt like we got what more or less amounted to a filler episode.
SADY: What Kate does is, Kate follows along on other people’s far more interesting plot lines. Apparently.
JILL: I interpreted “what Kate does” as “Kate runs away.” Or “Kate runs after people.” As in, this is some commentary on her character. I thought the episode was ok; I was particularly annoyed at the replay of the Sawyer runs away, Sawyer says don’t come after him, Kate follows, Jack tells Kate to be safe, blah blah. Haven’t we seen this exact same exchange about 14 times now? Doesn’t it always end badly? And hasn’t Sayid been tortured about as many times? New drama, please!
LAUREN: Now that you say that, Jill, I’m thinking that “what Kate does” is “the same wherever she is,” answering one of the basic questions viewers have had about the alternate reality. The characters we know have essential qualities that will be unchanged regardless of their involvement with the island and one another.
So, in the flash sideways, Kate and Claire are BFFs.
LAUREN: See, I know they’re supposed to “know” each other thanks to all this time they shared in another life (“brutha”), but if someone in handcuffs kidnapped me and hijacked my taxi at gunpoint, I would generally regard that as a red flag.
CARA: Agreed! Things I Would Not Do If I Were Claire: Get in the car with the woman who had just hijacked my cab and kidnapped me at gunpoint, because taking the bus is annoying. But then again, Claire has always been a bit irrational. In any case, I did like seeing two women working together and helping each other. Reminded me of Kate’s other adventure with Cassidy.
SADY: Well, yeah, it was great to see these women together. But I was just not sure about how it painted them both as totally irrational and swayed by the power of Baby. “You kidnapped me! But right now I am concerned about my baby. Will you help me with my baby?” “I have noticed that you are going to have a baby! I will help you, with the baby! We are women. Women care about babies!” That’s how that plot line went, in my own personal head.
I have to say that I thought the appearance of Ethan was particularly well played. What do you think all of the close parallels between the two realities/timelines mean?
LAUREN: I think there is a basic set of events that were “meant” to happen that will happen to the characters in both timelines. Kate was meant to help Claire with her birth. Ethan was meant to be a part of that process. Why? No idea. One thing that was interesting was how upbeat and un-creepy this Ethan was about Claire’s birthing process. Part of what I’m looking out for this season is what other events will be a part of this structure, like, if they make further appearances, whether Charlie, Eko, Ana Lucia, and Boone were meant to die. Also, how the characters we know are affected by the removal of the effects of the island.
JILL: I think that’s about right. The writers have been clear, too, that there’s only one ending — I think each character has some sort of basic life story arc, and they cross over in a few places, and when their lives end, they end. Kate was meant to help Claire with her birth; Boone was meant to follow John; etc etc.
CARA: re: Ethan being un-creepy, I’ve just got to note that Ethan always creeps me out. Ever since his Otherness was revealed when he kidnapped Claire and Charlie, Ethan has always scared the bejesus out of me, and I have a visceral reaction to him. I mean, right after it was revealed that Amy and Horace’s baby was named Ethan I started yelling “KILL IT!!! KILL IT!!!” So him saying that he wasn’t going to hurt Claire? *shudder*
SADY: Yes! Ethan screws me the heck up, just with his face. And although I appreciated the careful parallels, and the implication that no Island = good Ethan, I also started freaking the heck out, going, “no needles! Don’t let Ethan touch you with the needles! NOOOOO, CLAIRE.” (Potential alternate title for this episode: We Disapprove of Claire’s Decisions.)
CARA: Sudden realization! If Ethan is alive and well and practicing medicine off the island, this clearly means one of two things: a) the bomb didn’t cause the split timeline, or b) somehow, the Dharma folks survived a hydrogen bomb going off, as Ethan was on the island cooing in his crib at the time. If it’s the latter, it means that Faraday most likely was born and everything is cool there. If it’s the former … wtf?
SALLY: OMG CARA! I guess this is more evidence for those who think it was something other than Jughead… which I am quickly becoming one of…
LAUREN: Didn’t they women-and-children-first most of the people off the island before the bomb went off?
CARA: They did! But I always assumed that Ethan and Amy had stayed, since Ethan outlived The Purge and went on to join the Others. It seems more likely, anyway, that he stayed than that he left and came back.
LAUREN: Very curious.
Back on the island, Sawyer is understandably distraught, and Kate is predictably unwilling to give him any space.
SALLY: I kept yelling “Kate, just STOP! Pause for a moment!”
CARA: Kate does not understand the concept of “alone time.” Poor Sawyer.
LAUREN: I was really struck by Sawyer’s loss. He and Juliet made a life together on the island, the kind of life he’d never have been able to have on the mainland, and it’s just gone. Kate’s insensitivity to this is pretty appalling.
SADY: Yeah. I also started cracking up when Sawyer told Kate that “some of us are meant to be alone.” Like, “ALONE, Kate. Get it? Meant to be ALONE, without KATE HERE? Like, maybe Kate should LEAVE these people, these people who are meant to be ALONE, so that they can be ALONE AND BY THEMSELVES????”
JILL: I still have a soft spot for Kate, and I think she and Sawyer do have similar personality types and that’s why she keeps trying to misguidedly help him — they’ve both been abandoned and they’re both used to abandoning other people, so it’s important that they’re there for each other, blah blah. But the point where I kind of wanted to slap the writers? When Sayid comes back to life and Kate says to Sawyer, “How is that even possible?” Um… remember how you’re living on an island with polar bears and smoke monsters, and you just returned from the year 1977? Yeah. I think you can suspend disbelief for a moment, sister.
Dogen, the Head Temple Other, says that Sayid has been “claimed” and wants to kill him. He also tells Jack that the same thing happened to Claire. Are we to think that this is “the sickness” that Rousseau was always talking about?
SALLY: I can’t think of anything else it could be. With this news, I firmed up two theories: 1) MIB used Christian’s body the way he’s using Locke’s and 2) when he doesn’t have a dead body to take over, part of his Smokiness gets inside wounded, near-dead people. There are some who say Claire, Sayid & Rousseau’s clan did, in fact, die, but I don’t think it’s that simple. I know Miles got shifty around Claire & Sayid, but I think it’s because he sensed something was going on, not because they were actually dead.
CARA: My theory is that if he does have the sickness, it’s because of the water in the temple. The Others remarked that the water was not clear; presumably, it turned that weird murky brown color because Jacob had died. As it’s believed, based on what happened to Rousseau’s crew, that Smokey is the cause of the sickness, it makes sense that Jacob dying and Smokey taking over did something to the water that made it go from healing to “infectious.”
SALLY: Which makes me wonder – why on earth would they dunk Sayid into the water if it’s normally clear? I mean, really, weren’t they just asking for it?!
SADY: Because they’re EVIL! Is now the appropriate time to bring up my widely-discredited “Jacob and all who follow him are EVIL” theory? Because, you guys, they were all acting really EVIL!
JILL: Maybe I’m a sucker, but I don’t think they’re evil. I mean, that John Lennon-looking guy seems pleasant enough, and the guy from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Kind of a dick, but not EVIL-evil. I think they might be good-ish guys, and I think Sawyer and Kate just effed it up by running.
LAUREN: Well, Jacob told them (via ankh-mail, it’s slower than e-mail but it travels through time) to keep Sayid alive, and we don’t know why yet, so I’m assuming that’s why they put him in the water without knowing whether it would work. I told you guys last week that I was really against the idea of island-zombies, and I know Hurley joked about it in the temple, a writing device Cara mentioned last week, but this is veering very close to zombie territory. I’m pretty sure that if the Others want to take care of this Sayid situation they can avoid the poison and just shoot him in the brains.
JILL: I refuse to believe that this is a zombie issue.
CARA: I also rule out zombies, in no small part because I cannot get behind any theory that involves shooting Sayid in the brains!
LAUREN: Oh c’mon, entertain me for a minute. We’ve got at least two people on the island who were dead, but are reanimated BECAUSE THEY WERE INFECTED! They even used the word “infected!” Just like every good zombie movie from the last ten years. For the record, I’d still lick Zombie Sayid.
SADY: Whatever it is, I just hope Dogen punches the crap out of Jack for being too damn pushy again. In fact, I hope it happens in every episode.
JILL: Seriously, what is with Jack’s Big Macho Man schtick of walking up to giant armed guards and demanding answers? Isn’t it a universal rule of life that when someone has a gun you do not get in their face and make demands? I hope It’s Always Sunny guy punches Jack in the face as soon as he gets back to the temple.
Out in the jungle, one of the Others says that they can’t kill Jin because he’s “one of them.” What on earth does that mean? And did Dogen save Jack’s life from the poison pill because he’s also “one of them”? Is that why he’s so insistent on all of the Losties being at the temple?
SALLY: I think there’s definitely meant to be something special about the Losties. Maybe they’re supposed to stop MIB from taking over? That’s all I’ve got…
LAUREN: Dogen did make some cryptic comments to Jack about “being brought” to the island for some greater purpose, and when Jack denied knowledge of this, Dogen insisted that Jack knew exactly what he meant. Someone needed to call Jack out on his constant denial. His higher purpose is what motivated Jack to bring everyone back to the island — we know they are there for a reason, but I can’t figure out what that reason is. Jacob was really cryptic about this before his death, too, only saying that everything up to “the end” was “progress.” Are they meant to save something physical, like a person or the island itself, or is it something more esoteric, like saving themselves? Are we progressing toward a desired outcome for all, or will there be clear winners and losers?
CARA: It’s possible that the Losties were the “they” that Jacob was referring to as he died and said “they’re coming.” The obvious conclusion is that he meant Ilana and her people, but Smokey didn’t seem too put out by them at all, and he did seem very displeased with the prospect of whoever Jacob was referring to. This is of course just a guess; both of these comments were extremely cryptic, and I think it’s possible that they’re related.
And lastly: CLAIRE! She’s not only back, she’s the new Rousseau!
SALLY: I’d like to say that I WAS RIGHT! CLAIRE IS ALIVE BUT UNDER A SPELL! Granted, I said it was a Christian-induced trance, but if my theories above are correct, then I wasn’t that far off because both Christian and Smokey are MIB.
LAUREN: For all the filler in this episode, I think this was the one satisfying thing. The small explanation about what happened to Claire answered so many questions I had about Rousseau’s life on the island and why she was the way she was. It’s ironic, too, that Sayid, who had such a complicated relationship with Rousseau, may be facing her same fate.
JILL: Yes, the end with Claire was glorious. The Rousseau connection is perfect — what with the baby-stealing and the dirty hair and whatnot. I’m also interested to see when we get back to the whole “a psychic told me I had to raise my baby myself” thing with Claire — what happens if she doesn’t raise the baby herself? But if Claire has the sickness, does that mean Rousseau was sick too? I thought she killed her crew because they were sick but she wasn’t. I’m confused.
LAUREN: Rousseau talked about her crew getting “sick”, and during one of the flashbacks last season, Jin (I believe) witnessed her shooting the last of her crew because they were “sick” too. It adds another layer of irony that Rousseau was sick herself, and that the Oceanic team was following around and taking direction from someone who was really, truly unwell, not just an eccentric, loner island lady.
CARA: I don’t think that Rousseau was sick. I’d always assumed that the reason she was not sick was the fact that Jin kept her from going underneath the temple into Smokey’s lair. If Claire is actually sick, I don’t think that her living out in the jungle is a symptom of that. But hey, I could be wrong. I mean, it’s LOST, right?
SALLY: I’m with Cara, I don’t think Rousseau was sick – she couldn’t fit that pregnant belly down that hole.
LAUREN: I’m totally open to criticism on this one, but I thought that because Claire and Rousseau’s jungle habits are virtually identical, because there is clearly a before and after with Claire’s behavior, and this is related in some way to the “sickness” because it’s such a distinct pattern. And you know what? I feel like I know what I’m seeing, and then you all have to point out what show I’m watching. Thanks.
SALLY: Maybe this is supposed to make us think that Claire isn’t actually sick. Maybe there was another way to get the Smokiness out of her heart and she did that? I think the real key to this is to figure out why Claire is alone in the first place. Did she skip through time with the others? Did Christian abandon her once Flocke was on the island (we still don’t know if he can be in two places at once)?
CARA: Well, I’m sure they’ll answer all these questions and more … by the time the series is over. Maybe!
The theories about MIB taking over not just dead but injured bodies is brilliant. I also love the Claire/Rousseau connection.
Kate episodes are really boring for me and this one is no exception. I hate how she’s crowding Sawyer and I wish she’d just pick and stay with Jack and leave James alone already!
This is my first time here…I wish I’d known about this roundtable five seasons ago! I was directed here from Tumblr (this is deadgrotty).
Welcome, Marie! To be fair, we only just started doing the roundtable this season, when we obtained a couple new bloggers who are LOST fans and a new fan among our longstanding bloggers. (Before, I just did the recaps and analysis all on my lonesome.) So actually, you’re right on time! :)
I still can’t decide whether I dislike Kate because of the writers/producers or because Evangeline Lilly doesn’t do much for me, or a combination of both. She has so much potential to be a fascinating character but they rarely take her anywhere interesting. I also just don’t find Lilly’s performance that convincing. I laughed out loud when she said she could track Sawyer. And her attempts to be badass look like she’s trying too hard most of the time.
I’m blaming bad direction and bad editing for the fakeness of the canteen hit, though. They didn’t even give it a good sound effect.
I thought I’d ask a question that my friend/co-worker has asked me and we have no clue about it:
Since Sayid supposedly failed Dogen’s test, what do you think passing it entails? I guess to phrase that in a better way, how do they know if someone is infected by sticking a hot poker/electrocuting them? Is it because electric sparks/ash are elements releated Smokey/MIB?
@Marie, I just assumed (with no real evidence to back this up) that “passing” the test would mean not reacting to pain normally. Like if Sayid’s body had been taken over by Jacob, as many people had assumed, the torture would affect him differently.
Also? This has become my favorite Feministe feature. Largely because of Lauren’s snark–I wouldn’t lick zombie-Sayid or regular Sayid, but I appreciate you sticking to your convictions.
Put me in the “Rousseau wasn’t ‘sick/infected’” camp. First off, Dogen said that once the sickness finished taking hold, there would be nothing of Sayid left, but Rousseau was clearly haunted by her tragic past, and she still desperately missed her child. She also helped out Claire & co. on their trek to that medical station. And, when we saw her in season 4, she a) was visibly moved to finally meet Alex, and b) punched Ben in the face. All of this – especially her ongoing love for her child, since (call me crazy) I get this feeling that LOST might be trying to say something about the importance of the parent/child bond – makes me think that Rousseau wasn’t sick.
Which also leads me to believe what happened to Claire isn’t like what happened to Rousseau. Claire abandoned Aaron – which real!Claire would never have done, and Rousseau (post the time of the sickness) wouldn’t have done were it not for Ben. I think if she can still love her daughter, she’s still herself at the core.
Re: Ethan. 1) I agree that William Mapother is just somehow inherently a fuckin creepy dude (HIS EYES ARE LIKE SHARK EYES. HE’S LIKE A SHARK WITH JOWLS). 2) We do know that at some point he must have left the island, because everything we’ve seen about Other!Ethan suggests he was a legitimate doctor (didn’t Juliet say something about the Others having a surgeon until Charlie killed him?) and it doesn’t seem to me like Dharma had a med school. And he wouldn’t have gotten into med school without a proper college degree (I feel like this might be too much logic for this show but WHATEVER). Maybe he went to college/med school for this purpose then returned, maybe like Charlotte he tried to find his way back, or maybe Richard Alpert recruited him. But at some point he must have gone off the island and come back.
Also, I’m with Sady in the not-trusting-Jacob-&-co. camp. I don’t know if I’d call them all evil yet, but they’re pretty clearly not totally good.
Ethan was clearly one of those who could leave the island, as he was there to help recruit Juliet. BUT. He wouldn’t have had to leave for med school or whatever until he was an adult. And we know that he spent at least a part of his childhood on the island, because he was there with Ben when he kidnapped Alex (remember how evil little mini-Ethan kept requesting the right to be the one who killed her?). So the question isn’t whether or not he ever left the island and came back — clearly he did — but whether he left the island as a baby, and then came back again as a kid, which strikes me as unlikely at best. So I’m sticking with my Ethan-being-there-means-something theory!
But I love all of your analysis re: Rousseau vs. Claire!
Regarding the sickness and its properties, I think it depends a lot on what they mean by “sickness” and “medicine”, which are fairly vague terms in this context. Lost likes to blur the lines between science and religion anyway, so by “infected” could they possibly also be invoking something along the lines of “possessed”? I mean, the monster is more sentient than a virus or bacteria. In which case, possession might come and go according to its own whims.
Then again, I personally was rooting for Sayid to be a zombie. :D (A hot, hot, hot zombie.) Hurley proved himself once again to be my avatar in this show.
I don’t know…why is it so unlikely that after the “incident” Horace had called his wife and son saying, “It’s safe now! Come back to the island”?
Well, because presumably after the hydrogen bomb went off, something we’re assuming didn’t happen in the original timeline, Horace would be dead, and not calling anybody. But if he survived the Incident in the original timeline, a place you need to cover in concrete like Chernobyl and that requires you to press a button every 108 minutes to ensure that the world doesn’t end, doesn’t sound like the safest place to bring a baby back to. And while we did see some women on the island post-Incident original timeline, we didn’t see any kids — again, probably because it just doesn’t seem like the brightest of ideas.
The concept of infection goes way back – recall the environmental protection (HAZMAT) suits that Desmond and Kelvin Inman (Clancy Brown) wore when they left the hatch, the “vaccine” Desmond gave himself, that were administered to Clair and to Aaron in utero? It certainly was implied that Rousseau’s crew mates were infected by something when they went into the Temple, and they came out acting like homicidal robots.
But recall also that when young Ben was saved by the others, the warning was issued that he would be changed by the process, losing his innocence. Now that we’ve seen the temple’s ritual for “saving” injured people, it’s reasonable to infer that young Ben was held underwater until he “died” (as measured by the giant egg timer) before he was saved.
We may be talking about three different types of infection here, but in terms of Jacob and his nemesis it seems that there are not less than two. When Jacob controls the pool, as he did when Ben was resurrected, he became bound to the others. When Claire (and by implication, perhaps also Rousseau?) was resurrected she was “infected” – I suspect, somehow tied to Jacob’s nemesis – the competing power on the Island who, post-Jacob’s death, was apparently able to “infect” Sayid.
When an “other” says something like “if we don’t kill the infection there will be nothing left of your friend”, I think it’s important to recall that the others lie – pretty much all the time. In specific relation to the pill that would “cure” the infection, they lied to Jack about what it would do. Clearly also they can tackle, tie down and torture Sayid, so why can’t they kill him themselves – why must it be a friend who kills him? And if Jacob wanted Sayid alive but didn’t care about the rest of the group, why did they care that Jack swallowed the ‘poison pill’?
Recall the “Lost Supper” picture, with Locke in the position of Jesus and Sayid in the position of Judas? If the picture shows fake Locke, as I expect is the case, then the hint becomes that Sayid somehow betrays fake Locke – that is, MIB/Jacob’s nemesis/”the monster”. So I suspect that Locke is somehow infected by the spirit of the anti-Jacob, but somehow overcomes the infection to play a key role in the anti-Jacob’s demise. (Despite the Christian imagery, I don’t expect to learn that either Jacob or his nemesis represents absolute good or evil.)
I agree with Isabel’s Rousseau/Claire analysis. I think it’s still possible that Claire might not be infected anymore (though unlikely, IMO), but there was a definite change in her demeanor where there wasn’t one in Rousseau’s.
I also agree with Aaron about there being more than one type of infection at play here. I had forgotten about the HAZMAT suits though… I feel like I’m going to need to rewatch this whole series several times after the finale to figure it all out.
Oh, and Astraea, I feel you on the Kate thing. I tend to blame the writers more than the actress. I feel like at this point, the characters that have come to be my favorites (Locke/Flocke, Ben, most recently Sawyer) are so because they were forced to show multiple sides of their personalities. The characters that have not (Jack, Kate, well… all the women, really), have remained only meh for me. They haven’t really given Kate enough for me to grab on to because nearly EVERYTHING goes back to Jack, Sawyer or that dude from her childhood.
See, I don’t know. Claire didn’t abandon Aaron of her own free will, she abandoned him because she’d already been claimed by Christian/Smoky/MIB/weird negative island force. I feel like her character arc is a direct effect of this “sickness” they say claimed Claire, and because the effects are identical to Rousseau’s there has to be something about that.
I could be totally wrong. Totally, totally, completely, totally wrong.
Like Marie, I have an aversion to Kate-centric episodes. I have warmed up to her character in the last few seasons, oddly enough, even though Cara’s right, she’s been Boring Kate for a while now. It’s just that there was something about her storyline when she got off the Island that ended up grabbing me. Like, remember when she shows up at Jack’s and tells him to never ask about Aaron, never ever? Great moment, I thought.
Total agreement wrt Ethan. He gives me goosebumps, the bad kind.
If Sayid turns out to be zombie after all (please, God, no), I just want everyone to know that there is a great pop song by Natalia Kills that should bring us comfort. It goes like this:
I’m eager to see what happens when the Regular Others mingle with the Temple Others. Some answers have to come out.
(Sayid wants me for my brains.)
Last comment tonight: What did Aldo mean when he said Rousseau had been “dead for years”?
@Lauren – well, Rousseau died in 2004 (around the time the Oceanic Six got off the island), and we’re now in 2007 right after Jacob died, so it’s been 3 years.
In defense of Kate, she did have her own agenda both on and off the island this episode. I wish the writers didn’t feel the need to keep hammering us with love triangle crap, because Kate/Claire is actually quite interesting. I can’t remember the last time two women had a conversation on Lost. And I’m not being facetious, I literally cannot remember. I hope that they focus her storyline on Claire now. I also can’t see how a love triangle even exists after this episode. Kate lied to Jack and went off after Sawyer, not planning on ever returning. That feels conclusive to me. I know it isn’t, because the writers seem to feel that who Kate does is as important a mystery as all of the island ones, but why can’t it be over now? Please? On a different note – JH totally brought it this episode. His acting has improved so much, it’s unbelievable.
As far as the others go, I still have no idea what’s happening. I just know I don’t want anything bad to happen to Sayid, and I wish that Jack had swallowed that pill. Also – Claire! Looking like she might have something more interesting to talk about than peanut butter! She is totally the new Rousseau, but I still miss the old Rousseau. And Alex, too. I hope that Jin finds Sun soon – I love how nobody seems to give a crap that his long-lost wife is out there somewhere, or that they haven’t seen each other in three years, during which time she has had his baby. Much more important to go stalk Sawyer.
Here’s a small point I’m curious about – on the “parallel universe” Oceanic flight (that doesn’t crash)… There’s the scene when Boone tells John Locke he traveled to Australia to bring his sister Shannon back, blah blah blah. But she was NOT on the flight because she refused to join him. I’m wondering why? Is there some inconsistency with our history here (the producers put effort into maintaining what everyone else was doing at crash time) or did Maggie Grace just not want to do an encore episode of the show??
New York Magazine had an interesting essay last week about where the character drama has gone on Lost since Season One, and there’s a mention about female characters. Here’s an excerpt:
“Juliet is dead, too, having first been shriveled from a fascinatingly ambiguous player into a beatific sacrificial sweetheart—along with Charlotte, Ana Lucia, Naomi, Rousseau, Penny, and Libby, spunky women reduced to love interests or unceremoniously offed. (Kate is still around, but I wasn’t thrilled when she was redeemed by motherhood last year—at least in the current season, she’s back to her pen-stealing, con-chick ways.)”
I am a big fan of the show, but this piece got me thinking about why and it really has to do with the depth of the characters and more specifically the female characters. I am angry to see Juliet go because I think she was really quite fascinating; and I think her demise was just a lazy way to jump start the love triangle again. :P
http://nymag.com/arts/tv/reviews/63640/