The Back to the Island Column for "What Kate Does" has been smacked with a big bag of rocks for your reading pleasure on Chud.com. Please feel free to Digg it if you dig it!
Friday, February 12
What Kate Does (S6, ep 3)
The Back to the Island Column for "What Kate Does" has been smacked with a big bag of rocks for your reading pleasure on Chud.com. Please feel free to Digg it if you dig it!
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Thanks Morse, I can't wait to read it.
ReplyDeleteIt was certainly a slower episode, but I enjoyed it and it's probably the first time I found Jack likable in a long time. Also was great to see Claire again in more than a cameo.
- Does this mean that Ben had been "claimed" also as a boy?
- I'm glad they showed Sawyer grieving further and that they didn't dispel with that grief with a single scene in the first episode and then move on with the business of the story (like they did when Claire learned Charlie died in Season 4). Honestly, if fans hadn't loved that Juliet/Sawyer pair so much, this may not have been included to this degree this season.
- Does it seem like everyone is sort of better off if the island didn't exist? Like maybe they would find their redemption without it? Kate's still a criminal, but even her path seems positive. Hell, even Ethan seems balanced.
- For about 10 seconds they had me thinking that Aaron was only born because of the island, that he would have died without it. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the parallels of Ethan giving Claire a drug regimen to keep her from having the baby too soon and whatever he did on the beach and in the Staff.
This episode seemed to (possibly) dispel the notion that Jacob was somehow "reborn" in Sayid. If anything, it suggests that the MiB has somehow staked a claim on Sayid and he is no longer safe to have around. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteHey, folks.
ReplyDeleteTil we knowmore about the spring and/or the sickness, it's hard to know what's happening to Sayid. Is he really 'changing' or is that something Dogen and Lennon are also lying about? If he is changing, does it mean that he'll go completely 'evil'? Catatonic? Amnesiac?
Was it the spring that 'infected' him? If Sayids survival is so important (as was claimed last week) why are they trying to kill him this week?
I agree about the Sawyer stuff. Honestly, I was too busy being impressed by Holloway's work to notice how little narrative ground we really covered.
A few other things I noticed, though none of it has really congealed into a concrete idea of what's happening:
ReplyDelete(1) Sayid is supposedly "infected" after being submerged in the water. We're led to believe that this might be Smokey/MIB having taken over or claimed his body, and possibly that this also happened to Rousseau's crew.
Is this possibly what happened to Ben, and why (a) Ben's Others were living apart from the Temple Others; and, more intriguingly, (b) what Widmore meant when he told Ben "I know what you are, boy" when he was being banished from the Island. In other words, did Widmore know that Ben was "infected" by Smokey/MIB?
(2) And, if I'm right about what Widmore meant, does that possibly mean that Widmore has been claimed by one side (Jacob?) and Ben by the other (MIB?), and THAT's why they can't kill each other?
(3) Was the pill that Dogen made the same thing that Desmond and others were injecting themselves with? And, to that end, was Ethan injecting Claire in order to protect Aaron from being "claimed" by Smokey/MIB (or, on the other hand, Jacob)? AND, if it's the case that newborns on the Island could be "claimed", is that what caused someone (Smokey? Jacob?) to cause the problems with Island births?
(4) I've seen other people make this comparison online -- is Claire the new Rousseau (living in the wild, setting traps, etc.)? And if so, how does this jive with Dogen's explanation that Claire had been claimed/taken over?
That's all I can think of right now.
Most jarring to me was the switch from a sense of urgency ending last week (fortifications going up, people running about dispensing ash bags to make (concentric?) rings) to the sense of calm this week (Lenon casually reading a book, waiting for Jack to visit).
ReplyDeleteErik, I didn't note an awkward switch from urgency to waiting. Basically the urgency was to surround the Temple with ash and send the warning flare when hey realized Jacob was dead and the Monster/MIB might be on the move. However, once those two tasks were completed, it was a matter of going about their business. If you've ever battened down a home or structure before a hurricane, storm or other event, it's kind of the same idea. I hope maybe his helps explain or smooth over that transition for you.
ReplyDeleteThis occurred to me while watching the episode last night, but I just went back and confirmed -- the scene in the cab with Kate, Claire and the driver is DIFFERENT this week from last week.
ReplyDeleteLast week:
Kate: Enters cab. "Go, go now."
Cabbie: "Lady, I already have a customer."
Kate: "I said go."
Claire: "What are you doing?"
Kate: "Go now."
Scene ends.
This week:
Kate: Enters cab. "Go, go now."
Cabbie: "Lady, I already have a customer."
Kate: "Dammit, I said go."
Cabbie: "OK."
Kate: "Easy easy, slow down. Hey, just slow down, slow down."
Cabbie: "OK, OK, you said go..."
Kate: "Just get us out of here."
Scene continues to Arzt, etc.
Suggests to me that we may be seeing several versions of this "alternate" theory play out. So maybe my theory elsewhere (and the general Second Snake theory) might be off.
Does this type of "sickness" mean the Frenchies went down in the hole, found the temple, got past all the NINJA/PIRATE others, and took a dip? Temple security must have been considered a luxury in the post Dharma/ pre-oceanic days if so.
ReplyDeleteI believe the Dharma "sickness" is based upon the release of gas from the purge.
Sorta thought they would find a better way to kill Aldo beyond the typical gun shot. Stunt casting is a rare thing on this show.
Total Sidebar, but I noticed last night how it was kind of cool how this American-produced show has three Asians in the main cast and then introduced a fourth in prominent guest spot. There were a couple of scenes last night and in LAX where you had a Chinese-American, a Korean and a Japanese man all in the same scene. And it wasn't forced at all or a conceit. It just fit the story.
ReplyDeleteFor all the mistakes that may appear about cultures or traditions from other countries, it's pretty impressive how willing LOST continues to be to push perhaps-unspoken casting and story-telling conventions in American television and to recognize that the audience is smart enough to keep up.
Thought everyone would appreciate this:
ReplyDeletehttp://thedw.us/post/382525844/lee-bretschneider-lost-valentines-day-cards
The more I think about the way Dogen tried to trick Jack into giving the pill to Sayid, the more of a bastard I think Dogen is. He told Jack that he had to convince Sayid to take the pill, after confirming that Jack through his actions had hurt of killed others. I doubt the poison would only work if ingested willingly. Dogen didnt want to be the person who killed Sayid (or have any of his followers kill Sayid). This is the same way that the MiB used Ben to kill Jacob. Maybe because Sayid is now claimed through his resurrection in the pool, none of the "Others" can harm him as per the rules.
ReplyDeleteIf Claire is infected and is acting very similar to Rousseau, this kind of implies that Rousseau was infected too. Maybe the rest of Rousseau's crew wasn't infected after all. She was the one that killed them all. Although the scene Jin witnesses where she shoots Robert implies he was infected because he intended to shoot her, maybe he was acting out of self-defense and not out of infection-driven madness.
ReplyDeleteThe "may be one of them" line could refer to the fact that the list only had a Kwon last name and not a Jin or Sun. So Aldo might not be convinced Jin is the right Kwon.
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ReplyDeleteI want to expand on what Steve mentioned above. I had noticed a while back, and have had many a discussion with a friend of mine, that the opening scenes have been refilmed differently then the previous episode. This actually started with the Season 5 episode "This Place Is Death" final scene as Jack, Ben, Sun and Desmond walk into the church and find Elouise Hawking. The next episode, "316" starts off with Jack and Co. waking up on the island, but then moves back to the scene in the church (46 hours earlier - Alias rendition episode) and the scene is completely different. This is also the episode where Elouise Hawking says to Sun "for the first time, I do not know what is going to happen next". Coincidence???
ReplyDeleteThere have been a few other episodes that this has happened in, making the theory that "time looping" has occurred. Now is the meaning of "LA X" is that we are seeing the 10th loop of this event in time? Probably not, but it is odd that the scenes are being intentionally refilmed to show variances. I know Morse you mentioned about Ben blowing out the same match twice. Just throwing it out there.
Steve & Darth,
ReplyDeleteI'm honestly not sure what to make of these discrepancies. I've suggested before that they might be evidence of the existence of quantumworlds, and I still think they maybe indicate that the castaways have already looped before, that these changes are meant to illustrate subtle (and not so subtle) changes in their interactions depending on which loop we're seeing.
Thanksso much for your thoughts - they're great.
Best,
M.
In regards to the sunken island and questions about if Others were evacuated before it sunk in the alt-timeline: I think it's possible that in the alternate timeline, the island never existed. The island could very well exist in its own pocket-universe, kind of outside normal time and space. Let's assume that the alt-timeline takes place after the end of the on-island stuff this season. If that's the case, maybe the on-island stuff will end with the island sinking and the off-island stuff starts right where it does in LA X. Then we can still have the island sunk and looking the way it does with Dharmaville and all but the entire history has changed to where no one has ever been to the island. To me, this would just make so much more sense than the island sinking and Others/dharmafolk being evacuated at some undetermined time in the alt-universe. The island, I think, is the same in both universes. I guess we'll see.
ReplyDeleteMorse, in your article you speculated that Claire broke the circle of ash, but wasn't it Locke? If I remember correctly, Locke kicks his foot through it, stops, bends down and scoops up a handful of ash when Ben first takes him to the cabin. We've subsequently seen each character notice the break as they've come upon the cabin. I've been assuming that this was an early example of MiB using/manipulating Locke.
ReplyDeleteChristopher,
ReplyDeleteI don't remember seeing Locke kick the ash in Man Behind The Curtain. As I recall it, he sees the ash, stops, picks up a handful and checks it out. If you're right that certainly explains it.
Morse is right. Ben and Locke both stare at the ash, Ben steps over it. John bends down, picks up a handful of ash and stares at it. Ben calls John's name a couple times, John looks up, drops the ash, and steps over it.
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ReplyDeleteI think Jack should try to kill himself at the end of every episode. It'll be like South Park . . .
ReplyDelete