Lost - 'What Kate Does' (6x03)

Last week's Lost had me feeling some uncertainties about the season's direction, and this week's only enhances that with an episode that feels right out of the problematic characters in cages era of the third season, backing it up with an alt-verse storyline that felt tacked on and inessential at best, outright illogical at worst. The cliffhanger ending and teaser for next week look great, but this week's episode was not a winner.

Let me start with the worst of it, the alt-verse Kate storyline, which didn't seem to add anything to the universe of the show. The big problem with any alternate universe is that you're not going to invest in the characters in the way that you have in the main universe. That usually leads to stories that have shocking twists, think Peter Parker's marriage to Gwen Stacey in House of M, or just pile on the spectacle, kill a bunch of characters and get out, like “Days of Future Past,” or Buffy's “The Wish.”

The Lost alternate universe is weird primarily in the way that it's being used. The very first moments of the alt-verse were fantastic, with the exciting trip to the drowned island, raising the question of how one change can create a butterfly of consequences. I'd be curious to explore the entire alternate history of the island, and the Dharma Initiative, and even see what happens to our characters, but that's something that I'm not particularly interested in on an emotional level, it's something I want to do on an intellectual level.

As such, it's mildly interesting to see that Claire winds up with Aaron anyway, and that Ethan happens to be a doctor on the mainland, and that information may play a big part in the prime-verse storyline down the line. But, even if it does, that doesn't make up for the fact that it's about the journey not the destination, and this Kate story didn't work. It felt like some leftover scripts from season three, repurposed for a new era. I have no idea what this story told us about the character that we didn't know before, namely that even though she does bad things, she secretly has a heart of gold. I didn't need to see that again, and certainly not in a storyline that seems inherently consequence free.

The creators promised to bring back a season one feel, and unfortunately, that's very much the case here, with a series of meandering island stories, intercut with a pointless off island story that has enough interesting ideas and a good cliffhanger to keep things moving. Notably, this episode featured none of the great characters introduced from seasons two through five, except for Miles who has to announce he's going to “the food court” just to get a line in the episode.

The fundamental flaw of many peoples' approach to the show is the idea that the off island flashbacks were character based storytelling while the on island stuff is all convoluted mythology. Character development in a six year series isn't telling us how someone got to where they were when the show began, it's about letting them change and develop in the moment. I feel like Juliet/Ben and the freighter people were a conscious effort to bring in characters who were more interesting than the first batch of characters, and now spend so much time with Jack and Kate drags the show backwards.

The series' most effective character arc happened not off island, but in the Dharma stuff that turned Sawyer from rogue to hero and domesticated man. One of my big problems viewing this season is that I was so invested in that Dharma stuff and the relationship between Sawyer and Juliet that I find myself hating Kate and Jack for ruining that, and being trapped in a position like Sawyer, lamenting the loss of those days.

And, I will commend the episode for showing us more of Sawyer's pain. And, the most effective Kate moment here was her crying on the dock, after realizing just how badly she'd screwed things up. I get the sense that she always felt like Sawyer was on the shelf, waiting for her if she ever wanted him, and knowing that he fell in love with someone else hurts her, and makes her realize how many things she's messed up in her life.

Elsewhere, the temple storyline is reminding me a lot of season three's troubled polar bear cages arc. It started out interesting as we get a glimpse of a new world on the island, but by this point, it's basically our characters sitting around doing nothing, asking questions that aren't answered, and being manipulated by all powerful enigmatic figures. The problem with this from a plot construction standpoint is that it reinforces the show's worst tendencies to be willfully obscure and make us focus on how many questions aren't being answered. I don't care about answers at this point, I think most stuff has been answered, but if you're not going to give answers, the episode has to have more to it than asking questions.

It's also frustrating to have an episode where Jack and Kate totally dominate, leaving everybody else on the sidelines. Hopefully they'll have the week off next week when we return to Locke, Ben and the rest of the gang, as well as the reborn feral Claire.

In terms of questions raised this episode, the big issue seems to be the nature of the Smoke Monster, and the way that his infection works on Claire and Sayid. Are they implying that Rousseau herself was infected by the Smoke Monster, hence her at times mentally off behavior? If that's the case though, it doesn't seem worthy of killing. But, this may be a more insidious infection. It would make sense to have Claire and Sayid corrupted so that Fake Locke will have some people to back him up in battle. Could we be building to a big battle where the Fake Locke revives everyone who's dead on the island and puts them into battle against the living?

It could also imply that Ben's own corruption and lying nature is a result of his corruption in the temple healing pool. That would tie together a lot of things, and would it mean that Sayid would essentially become Ben? The question then is why would the temple people let Ben go if they want to kill Sayid? Perhaps being actually dead makes your condition worse than if you were just injured then healed. As in all stories, every good things comes at a price.

It's also notable that some of the Others from Ben's group are in the temple. The question that raises is whether Ben knows about the temple and its healing properties in the present day. He went there as a kid, but do these guys know about what he's doing now? Is he exiled from their group? I'm imagining we'll get some clarification on this once the two stories come together. I do really like the idea of the Smoke Monster as incarnation of this essentially evil force, and I think it helps tie together a lot of disparate elements of the mythology in a satisfying way.

So, there's some good elements in this episode, most notably all the Sawyer stuff around the ghostly Dharma barracks as he struggles to come to terms with losing Juliet. However, the basic structure of the season still has me very concerned. I have no idea why they feel so resolutely committed to the off island/on island structure, particularly when the backhalf of season five, which featured no off island, was by far the show's high point. This alt-verse structure recalls the worst of seasons one through three, and even if it is vindicated by a great plot twist down the line, these episodes will still be dramatically flawed.

But, let's hope things pick up next week when we get a more interesting set of characters back and dig deeper into the mysteries of Fake Locke and perhaps even finally see Jin and Sun reunited.