I’m on a quest to re-watch every episode of Lost, one per day. As I polish off each DVD, I’ll post my thoughts on the episodes contained therein.
“What Kate Did”
SYNOPSIS: Jack is tending to a feverish Sawyer when Sawyer mutters that he loves Kate. Kate later watches over him so that Jack can attend Shannon’s funeral, at which Sayid says a few eloquent words. Sawyer suddenly wakes and grabs Kate, yelling, “Why did you kill me?” Kate bolts, leaving Sawyer on the floor and no one to enter the Numbers into the computer. Jack and Locke arrive at the Swan just in time to reset the clock. Jack finds Kate in the jungle, and Kate has a meltdown, kisses him, looks crazy, and runs off. She returns to the Swan and pours her heart out to Sawyer as he sleeps. Then Sawyer regains consciousness, and Kate seems well again. Meanwhile, Eko gives Locke a missing part of the orientation film, Jack connects with Ana Lucia, and Michael gets a message from Walt on the Swan’s computer. In the flashback, we learn that Kate blew up a house with her mother’s abusive boyfriend Wayne inside and had her mom collect the insurance money. But what she didn’t realize is that Wayne was actually her biological father. Later, her mom gives her up to the feds.
THOUGHTS: Kate lets her freak flag fly! It seems like every character on the show has an episode in which they become crazed, and here’s Kate’s. Her checkered past begins to manifest itself on the Island, what with an emblematic black horse and Sawyer’s channeling of Wayne’s spirit. The Island’s doing? Seems like a safe bet. Her crazed kiss with Jack was at once bizarre and also satisfying. At least they’re finally acknowledging their mutual attraction! But the real shock of the episode was Michael communicating with Walt—or, at least, someone pretending to be Walt. And it’s about time, since we haven’t heard anything (except dialogue played backwards) from Walt for the past eight episodes. This is the start of a whole bunch of craziness from Michael which will lead directly to the events of the season finale.
“The 23rd Psalm”
SYNOPSIS: Hearing that Charlie has a Virgin Mary statue, Eko demands that he take him to where he found it, so the two of them set off into the jungle. Charlie, reluctant to give up his stash, tries to lead Eko astray but underestimate’s Eko’s intelligence on the matter. They have a run-in with the Monster, and Eko just stares the black smoke down as it seems to scan his memories before it recedes from whence it came. They finally reach the Beechcraft, and Eko recognizes one of the corpses as his younger brother, and he grieves. Then, he and Charlie burn the wreckage. Later, it is revealed that Charlie has a stash of the statues. Elsewhere, Claire finds out what’s inside the Virgin Mary that Charlie has, Locke teaches Michael how to shoot a gun, Hurley flirts with Libby, and Michael receives instructions from Walt via the Swan computer. In the flashback, we see that Eko became involved with drug runners at a young age only through protecting Yemi’s innocence and that he grew to be a ruthless drug lord. He coerced Yemi, a priest by that point, into letting him smuggle heroin out of the country in the Virgin Mary statues aboard a missionary plane. But there’s a shootout at the airport between the smugglers and the military, and Yemi is taken aboard the plane instead of Eko. Eko, already dressed in a priest’s clothes, then adopts Yemi’s identity.
THOUGHTS: Finally we get insight into the enigmatic Eko, a man who we’ve seen be serenely spiritual and meditative at times and brutally violent at others. Now we know why he has this duality—it reflects the two identities he lived with before the crash. Still, though he has done heinous things, they began with an act of brotherly compassion, albeit a twisted one. That one act set his life down a very dark path and one that he seems to be trying to atone for now. This episode features some phenomenal acting by Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje that makes me sorry that he wasn’t on the show for longer. I’m also sorry because his character is always so multi-faceted and intriguing, probably due to the fact that he’s one of the most mysterious characters on the show. And that’s probably why he received three centric episodes during his time on the show, as opposed to far-less-mysterious Shannon, who only had one in the same amount of episodes.
“The Hunting Party”
SYNOPSIS: Michael ambushes Jack and Locke in the Swan and locks them in the armory so that he can take the guns and go after Walt without them interfering. Kate and Sawyer find the men there. They decide to go after Michael, but Jack tells Kate not to come. A while into the trek, they hear gunshots and then find shell casings from Michael’s gun. Later, they’re surprised by the man from the boat who took Walt, accompanied by other Others. He tells them that they’re on the Others’ turf, and there can be a truce as long as the Losties never go any farther. But in the mean time, he demands that the three of them give up their guns and go back immediately. Jack derides this threat, but then the Others reveal that they have Kate hostage. So Jack relents, and the Losties retreat. Kate apologizes to Jack, but Jack is still angry. He later asks Ana Lucia how long it would take to build an army. In the flashback, Jack is asked to do another impossible surgery, but no miracle results from this one. The bereaved daughter kisses Jack. Jack confesses this to Sarah, and Sarah says that she’s leaving him because things haven’t been right for awhile and she’s been seeing someone else anyway. She tells him that he’ll always need something to fix.
THOUGHTS: Plot-wise, this was a pretty simple episode. Just one “A-mission”: Jack, Locke, and Sawyer chasing Michael across the Island and being stopped by the Others. No real subplots. But that’s no critique—indeed, a precise focus lies in that simplicity. Michael is acting irrationally, the other guys are acting quite rationally, but they’re blocked by the Others, who are acting unreasonably, bullying the Losties into submission. The flashback provides a nice counterpoint—an antithesis, really—to the previous Jack flashbacks. Whereas Jack was successful at surgery and at love before, now he fails both, and the next few Jack-centric episodes will continue this bleak chapter of Jack’s pre-Island life. And that’s good, because angst is one of Matthew Fox’s strong points as an actor.
“Fire + Water”
SYNOPSIS: Charlie has a series of dreams which convinces him that Aaron is in danger, and he tries to convey this to Claire, but she’s still upset with him over his heroin stash. She demands that he stay away from her. He goes to Locke for help, but Locke is unsympathetic since Charlie seems to have relapsed. When he conveys the religious nature of his dream to Eko, Eko suggests that maybe the dreams mean something and that maybe Aaron should be baptized. Increasingly desperate about the situation, Charlie starts a fire near the camp as a distraction and takes Aaron to the water. But Claire spots him and alerts the rest of the group. Locke takes Aaron from Charlie and then beats Charlie. Jack tends to Charlie’s wounds, and Charlie tells him that he never actually used the drugs. Locke puts Charlie’s stash inside the armory and changes the combination for the lock. Meanwhile, Hurley becomes closer to Libby, Kate and Sawyer notice that Jack’s been spending more time with Ana Lucia, and Eko baptizes both Aaron and Claire in the right way. In the flashback, Charlie’s brother Liam sabotages all of Charlie’s efforts to revitalize Drive Shaft and is too high to even be a decent father to his new daughter. He abandons Charlie to sober up in Sydney.
THOUGHTS: And now it’s Charlie’s turn to act bonkers. Again I have to wonder how much the Island had to do with Charlie’s vivid dreams. Is it all part of a greater plan? Poor Charlie does get a bum rap in this episode (in addition to a serious rap on the head from Locke). To a certain degree, he deserved it for lying about his stash. But on the other hand, it seems plausible that he never actually used, and his dreams did seem pretty convincing. Maybe he needed to be knocked upside the head to straighten himself out, but I always thought Locke was excessively violent with him. At least redemption is down the road for Charlie, as well as a reunion with Claire and Aaron. Not all of the characters have endings that happy, least of all Locke.