Lost, 'What Kate Does': Reviewing episode two – The Star-Ledger

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 12:06 am

By Alan Sepinwall/The Star-LedgerFebruary 10, 2010, 12:12AMEvangeline Lilly as Kate on “Lost.”A review of “Lost” coming up just as soon as I go to the food court…“What are you doing?” -Jin
“Escaping.” -Kate

“This ain’t ‘Sliding Doors’ or any other kind of ‘What if?’ story. Promise.” -Damon Lindelof

After the season premieremade me giddy to be back on the island, and intrigued by what washappening off the island, “What Kate Does” was a less thrillingexperience. Interesting in spots – mainly on the island – but mainly itleft me wanting to jump ahead to the next episode for a more seriousfix.

Now, some of my lack of enthusiasm comes from this beinga Kate episode, but not all of it. Kate’s never been my favoritecharacter, but I’ve liked some of her previous spotlights (“Whatever Happened, Happened”was one of last season’s stronger hours). but because the character’sstill fairly opaque after all these years, and because EvangelineLilly’s one of the less compelling members of the cast, it tends to puther episodes at a disadvantage from the jump, and one that “What KateDoes” could never quite overcome.

Last week, I enjoyed the2004 scenes in part because it was fun to be reminded of how characterslike Jack and Locke and Jin behaved at the start of the series, in partto get to play What’s Wrong With this Picture? on things like Shannon’sabsence or Sawyer’s lack of self-loathing.

As Lindelof told melast week (in the line quoted above), the 2004 scenes are more than asimple what if?, and the use of a new sound effect to transition fromone timeline to the other – as opposed to the familiar whoosh used toconnote flashbacks and flashforwards in seasons past – suggestssomething hinky’s happening. Maybe Faraday’s plan for Jughead workedbelatedly, and the season will build towards the timeline being rest tothe LA X one, or maybe the two realities are on a collision course, butthere’s more to the mainland scenes than just wondering what might havebeen if the plane hadn’t crashed. (Like finding out, for instance, thatthe couple who were going to adopt Aaron had, in fact, just split upand wouldn’t have been able to take in little Turnip-Head.)

It’sa new puzzle, but until we have a better sense of what it means, weeither need to get a lot of fascinating clues, or those scenes have towork as a good standalone drama the way the better flashback episodesdid. and “What Kate Does” didn’t offer up enough of either.

We got a few clues: Ethan (going by his parents’ last name of Goodspeed, rather than his Nom de OthersRom) working as a kind and patient mainland OB/GYN (because he got offthe island as a baby in “The Incident” and never went back once it sunkfor whatever reason), and there was a sense that both Kate (in her lookat Jack, and then her reaction when Claire said Aaron’s name) andClaire (in her “It’s like I knew it or something” comment about thename) remembered bits and pieces from the timeline we know. mainly,though, the 2004 scenes were a chance to see Kate play ultra-capablefugitive again, and to have her meet Claire in one timeline whilesearching for her in the other, and those scenes in and of themselvesweren’t that interesting.

Maybe I’ll enjoy the 2004 scenesmore when we get to some other characters (I look forward to seeingalt-Jack and alt-Locke become BFFs), but this week it was largely adistraction from all that was happening on the island.

Andeven the island scenes were only sometimes satisfying. Though thecircumstances aren’t exactly the same as when Jack was eatingsandwiches and watching Red Sox games in season three (here, he drinkstea and admires Dogen’s baseball), nor is Jack’s mindset, it’s stillanother instance of Jack being held captive by The others and demandinganswers they’re incredibly slow to give. Dogen finally starts openingup at episode’s end after Jack does his clever/suicidal gambit with thepoison pill (given Jack’s head space at this point in the story, Ithink he’d have been just fine if Dogen hadn’t Heimlich’ed him), butuntil then, parts of the episode reminded me of one of the series’ mostfrustrating stretches.(*) as Hurley puts it, “They caught us… again.”

(*) They even brought back Rob McElhenney from “It’s AlwaysSunny in Philadelphia” as Aldo last seen being hit by Kate’s rifle buttin “Not In Portland” as Kate and Sawyer were making their escape fromAlcatraz.

On the plus side from the Temple scenes: I quitelike the gravity and mystery of Hiroyuki Sanada’s performance as Dogen,and I was even more intrigued by how un-Sayid-like Naveen Andrewsseemed, seeming so timid and confused and in pain – and sounding oddlyclose to Andrews’ native British accent – as Sayid the torturer washimself tortured. Is this, in fact, Sayid? He appears to have Sayid’smemories, but then, so does Smokey-as-Locke. but if it were Jacobanimating Sayid’s corpse, Dogen and company wouldn’t be so eager topoison him. The start of Dogen’s story about Claire, and Jin’s glimpseof Claire looking very much like Rousseau (and clearly havingset the Rousseau-ian traps Kate, Aldo and Justin stumbled acrossearlier) could suggest that the “infection” involves people on theisland being possessed by the island’s dead. (Maybe Sayid’s Britishaccent suggests a Charlie influence?)

But the strongest partsof the episode took place in the ruins of new Otherton, with Sawyerstill grieving Juliet (just as he opened season five mistakenlymourning Kate and the rest of the Oceanic Six, only more hardcorebecause he spent three years loving this woman) and Kate recognizing,as Jack did last week, that her return to Craphole Island has been acomplete and utter fiasco. She has no idea how to find Claire, isrunning from The others again, and Sawyer (whom she may have come backfor, in addition to her desire to find Claire) is both in love with adead woman (whose death Kate feels partially responsible for) and in nocondition to help her go Claire-hunting. being in Josh Holloway’s orbittends to bring out a spark in Lilly that isn’t always there oppositeother characters, and the scene at the dock was a strong example ofthat.

Mainly, though, “What Kate Does” was a table-settingepisode. I can see lots of things introduced here paying offinterestingly down the road, maybe even as soon as next week, but therewasn’t enough meat for the episode to really succeed on its own. Iimagine this is one that will play better as part of a DVD marathon,especially for those of us going back after we already know what the2004 scenes are all about.

Some other thoughts:

•Hurley’s leadership of the group seems to have already come to an end,as he was happy to let Jack deal with both Sayid and Dogen, but hisbrief tenure did lead to a hilarious bit of Ken Leung deadpan sarcasmas Miles explained to Sayid that Hurley had assumed a leadershipposition.

• Say this for the Dharma Initiative: they may havebeen dumb to stay on the island and dumber to let Ben Linus massacrethem, but they know how to build a bungalow colony. Pipes still work 30years after they were built, and 3 years since anyone lived there anddid any work on them.

• Jeff Kober,who played the helpful mechanic, is a familiar enough face that I wassurprised he only appears to have been cast for a one-scene part. Maybehe’ll pop up again fixing another character’s car, as the 2004 storiesrevive season one’s six degrees of separation storytelling?

•Funniest exchange of the night: Hurley asks Sayid if he’s a zombie, anda tired, pained, recently-resurrected Sayid (or whoever he is) replies,quietly and seriously, “No. I am not a zombie.”

• Joan Hart,the name Kate gives to the hospital, is an alias she’s used before,first mentioned (I think) in season one’s “Born to run.”

• When the cab nearly runs over Arzt, and he screams, “Hey! I’m walking here!,” he’s re-enacting this iconic, improvised scene from “Midnight Cowboy.”

•No time for Smokey or any of the other beach people this week, but goodto know that Jin is finally attempting to reunite with Sun. Here’shoping he doesn’t spend most of this season like Michael in season two,running aimlessly around the jungle screaming, “SUUUUUUUUUUUN!!!!”

What did everybody else think?

Lost, 'What Kate Does': Reviewing episode two – The Star-Ledger