Summary: Flashbacks show Kate meeting Cassidy and giving her support on Sawyer's behalf. Later, after almost losing Aaron in a grocery store, Kate decides to leave Aaron in the care of Claire's mother while she returns to the island to bring Claire back. On the island, Jin brings Ben back to Juliet who can't save him. She asks Jack to save Ben but Jack refuses to do it. Kate decides to take Ben to the others and Juliet helps her sneak out. Sawyer catches up[ with Kate and helps her the rest of the way. Richard takes Ben and takes him to the temple. Juliet confronts Jack about his decision and Jack explains that he is waiting to find his purpose. In the present, Ben wakes up and finds Locke staring down at him.
The Good: Kate's flashback story in this episode is excellent. Much like Sayid's last episode, this episode fills in some gaps and tells us what resulted in Kate choosing to return to the island. The story here is really well told. Kate as a mother works surprisingly well, and Evangeline Lily thrives in the role. Her performance in this episode is outstanding and makes me buy into the idea of Kate settling down and finding inner peace in parenting Aaron. But the peace is only temporary. The guilt of leaving Claire behind and taking her baby is haunting Kate and it manifests in a brilliant scene at the grocery store (see: Best Moment). As a result, Kate decides she has to go back, and we get the climax of this story: Kate finds Claire's mother and leaves Aaron in her care, vowing to bring Claire back. Impressively, the episode has set up this scene so that it has a significant emotional resonance, and Kate's motives to do this make perfect sense. The show also goes a step further by giving us a terrific farewell scene between Kate and Aaron, one that has quite a bit of impact. You get the sense that Kate is sacrificing something to do what she believes is right, and that does more to make me like and relate to this character than anything else the series has done with Kate. It's a well-written story arc with some great emotional weight. The story with Cassidy was pretty well done too. It was nice to see "Lost" continue the relationship that these two built back in "Left Behind", and I thought that their scenes together were well done. Cassidy helped illuminate Kate's inner struggle in an organic way, helping Kate come to terms with why Aaron is so important to her and why Sawyer leaving her behind hurt her so much. It's a really smart way to examine Kate, and adds some extra depth to what was already a pretty compelling flashback story. The island story had a lot of good moments, and there was tension throughout with Ben's life in the balance. I was pleased to see Kate play a central role in saving him, and the episode did a good job of setting up this decision by having Kate form a small connection with Roger. Roger is surprisingly sympathetic in this episode and I really liked that. "Lost" always does tremendously well with making its characters a mix of good and bad, instead of focusing too far on good or bad. Jack's role in this episode was terrific. His choice to not save Ben was fantastic and helped shed light on Jack's motives and the inner change he experienced before returning to the island. Hearing him say that he doesn't yet know why he's come back to the island was a fantastic moment, especially with how it echoes Locke. Lastly, I reallyu laughed at Miles trying to explain time travel to Hurley. There were some really funny jokes in there and Hurley also asked some really good, important questions. The Bad: Though Kate and Sawyer did have an excellent scene towards the end of the episode, I found it difficult to buy into the storyline of Kate being screwed over by Sawyer and having to get over him. Especially since she quickly ended up getting with Jack afterwards, and since we have never seen her feel conflicted about Sawyer at any point after she left the island. It feels like a forced storyline, and it's much weaker than the storyline with Aaron. I have some nitpicks too. Richard saying that Ben's "innocence will be gone" is one of those frustratingly vague lines that is needlessly mysterious. I can't tell if the writers are using this to raise even more questions, or if they were too lazy to come up with an actual effect that this healing process would have on Ben. I would have liked to have something more specific to explain why this healing that Richard did would have been bad for Ben in the long run. I never liked the idea of Juliet calling her people "the others". Juliet lived with them for 3 years, it makes no sense that she would call them "others" instead of "my people" or something else like that. The Unknown: What will happen to Ben now? What did Richard mean when he said that Ben's innocence would be gone? Where did he take Ben? To the smoke monster? We know the monster guards the temple. Richard mentions Charles and Ellie, and I can only presume that they are Widmore and Eloise. We know Richard was leader before, so why did he step down for these two? I'm curious to learn more about how the leadership of the other changed, and also why it had to change from Richard. Was it Jacob's decision? How will Kate, Sawyer and Juliet explain Ben's disappearance? Will they be discovered? What is Locke going to do with Ben? Best Moment: Kate losing Aaron in the grocery store was an excellent scene. The way the episode staged a perfectly normal occurrence as a mysterious and scary event was perfect, and it brilliantly brought up Kate's inner conflict to set up her decision to go back to the island to find Claire. Character of the Episode: Kate. Conclusion: Kate's always been a weak spot for "Lost" and her episodes typically haven't been the best. But this was probably the best we have seen from the character yet, as we got a really compelling flashback story that added more weight to an exciting and dramatic island story. This is the best Kate-centric episode so far, and a great episode overall. Score: 70
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
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