By E. Christopher Clark
It’s time to be honest with myself, right? I am totally incapable of getting these Lost posts up on the day after the show airs. After all, I have a job. In fact, I have two. So, I’m just going to re-title the column for now and aim to get these before the next episode airs. Cool?
Cool.
So, without further ado, here are my thoughts on last week’s episode of Lost, “What Kate Does.”
He’s Alive!
The more time I spend reading reactions to Lost on the Internet, the more I hate my fellow Lost fans. Now, admittedly, “What Kate Does” was not an episode on par with “LA X”. But that’s kind of the fucking point, isn’t it? If we maintained the pace of “LA X” throughout the season, we’d all be burnt out by mid-season. “What Kate Does” was about Lost settling in for the final long haul.
There are those who are probably out there complaining about the lack of movement in the story. But keep in mind that this episode found Sayid getting tortured in order to determine whether he’d been claimed/infected/whatever. This episode also found the end—at least I think so—of the show’s love triangle. When Kate sees how deeply Sawyer cared about Juliet, that whole bit of business is over. Sawyer is a walking dead man, waiting to find himself in the way of a bullet or a knife or an explosion. He isn’t concerned about other human beings anymore, least of all Kate. So, all of the motherfuckers who spend their time bitching about the damn love story should have loved this one.
Still, they need something to complain about. And it seems that any episode featuring Kate in the lead is fair game. But, let’s be honest: this episode was not about Kate anymore than it was about Sayid and Claire. We got just as much story about them as we did about Ms. Austen. At least that’s how I see it.
Some notes on the present-day action:
- Best line of the episode: “Of course, he’s fine. He’s an Iraqi torturer who shoots kids. He definitely deserves a second chance.”
- Why do the Others always want to talk to everyone alone? That’s a repeating pattern that seems a bit forced to me as a plot device.
- Notice how old-fashioned Dogen’s torture equipment is. He has to turn a crank. I’m glad that they’re continuing to find innovative ways to allow the Others distrust of technology to come through.
- Why are the Others suddenly giving Jack and company so much respect (relatively speaking)? When Jack asks the guards to step aside, they do so almost immediately.
- When Sawyer finds the box he left in the floorboards—this is a very important moment. It’s so important that the rest of this episode could have sucked—and I don’t think it did—and this moment still would’ve redeemed it. Here is proof-positive that the reality they’re in now (the reality they’ve been in all along?) has been impacted by the events which happened in the 1977 we spent so much of last season exploring.
Kate the Bitch
Kate is extra-bitchy in the alternate reality, and I like it! I mean, here is a version of the character who gets to develop without the love triangle as her primary storyline. I’m sure that’ll come into play later in the alt, but I love that the story right now is all about Kate and Claire. I loved getting back to that Kate who makes friends easy and enemies even easier.
And I loved the arrival of Dr. Goodspeed! How could you not? He got some real yuks, too. I loved the line, “I just don’t want to have to stick you with needles if I don’t have to.”
Did you notice Kate’s moment in the mirror, by the way? This is leading me to believe that they are all aware that something is not quite right on a deep, deep level
One last thing: Does the flash-sideways sound effect change subtly with each episode? Kate’s flash-sideways sound effect doesn’t seem to feature the sound of the bomb as prominently. There’s a much crunchier sound taking center stage.
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