"You're Not A Zombie, Right?" - 6x03: What Kate Does

Torture? Poison pills? Ethan? Wedding plans? CLAIRE?!?!

More like Crazy Jungle Claire! Danielle Rousseau may have been dead for three years, but Claire sure seems to have taken her spot!

Since I have tomorrow off from school already (the rare preemptive cancellation, due to the impending snowstorm...that will probably turn out to be only a dusting...not that I'm complaining, since that would be the best of both worlds), I can spend a little time here on the blog this night. I'll do a sliiiight recap and a reaction for tonight's episode, "What Kate Does."

First, I have to say that about halfway through the episode, I realized how much this one felt like old school, Season 1 Lost. Maybe it wasn't a classic episode, but it had a certain quality to it that reminded me of an early series episode. This is what the producers had promised in the off-season, and they seem to be delivering in this first "normal" episode of Season 6. (Season premieres tend to be odd ducks, between all the hype, the long wait for new content, the two-hour runtime, and all the twists and turns the writers/producers tend to throw our way, all in an effort to dazzle us and get us hooked again. As if we ever escaped their clutches in the first place!) Tonight was more calm, collected, and traditional, if you will. Damon and Carlton said that this season will have a Season 1 feel, and I think this one did because of two main aspects: the focus on character, and the surprise ending. Or was I the only one surprised? I will give myself credit for being surprised that Claire was a focus of this first post-premiere episode, and I wondered why they went that way. Now we know. Or at least it has our attention.

But let's start at the beginning. Even in alternate universes, Kate is a badass. She's kicking ass, faking names, and pointing guns at pregnant ladies in taxis. She tells Dogen - he's the Japanese (self-proclaimed, at least) leader of the Others - that she can be very convincing when she wants to be. Does she mean when she's aiming weapons at them, or dropping Rousseau traps on them in the jungle? I don't know if there's more to that comment than this; I will have to meditate on it. (I will also meditate on how Kate can try to convince me anytime, but there is no place on this blog for that...) Regardless, she commandeers the taxi, and away she goes from the World's Most Incompetent Marshall.

As she does this, by the way, she sees Jack standing on the corner either in her mirror or out the car window, and she reacts. Does she recognize him? This is the first of at least two examples of Kate having some form of deja vu in this episode. Claire, as we saw last week, is also a passenger in the taxi, and she is begging for Kate to let her out, but Kate refuses until Claire gives Kate her bag. She gets out on the sidewalk, and it's here where we see that she is still pregnant in Alt 2004.

On the Island, Kate tells the Others that she is going to track Sawyer to bring him back. Ahhh, Season 1... Two Others, Aldo (remember him standing guard so inadequately outside Room 23?) and Justin McBlabbyblabberson escort Kate and Jin into the jungle, where Kate promptly takes them both out. She tells Jin, "I'm escaping."

Kate pulls into a mechanic shop (?) and makes the guy working there (one of those actors who have been in a thousand movies, but you don't know his name and can't quite place him) help her remove her handcuffs and let her change clothes. She starts going through Claire's bag and sees a picture of a happy Claire pointing to her pregnant belly, some new baby clothes, as well as a large Orca stuffed animal. Not sure what that means yet.

Meanwhile, at the Temple, Sayid has indeed woken up - you know, from the dead. The Others "ask" to speak with him privately and "convince" him to go with them. Naturally, Dogen straps him to a table, submits him to electric shock acupuncture, and brands him with a hot poker, all to "diagnose" him. But it's okay, because Lennon says that he passed. And then immediately confirms with Dogen that he's lying about that. They tell Jack that Sayid is "infected," and that he needs to take a pill that Dogen has hand-made. Jack balks at this idea, but Dogen lays a hardcore guilt trip on him - how many people have died because of decisions you've made? This is your chance to redeem yourself. Jack has to do it because it will only work if Sayid willingly takes it, and the chances of him taking it from Dogen at this point are slim to none. Jack tells Sayid about this, and he replies that the only person he trusts is Jack. Whatever Jack thinks he should do, he'll do.

Claire is randomly sitting on a park bench when Kate pulls up to the curb in the taxi. (For an escaped murder suspect who just had the run of a place owned by a jovial mechanic with several cars lying around...she decides to keep the getaway car. Of course.) After a brief conversation, Kate offers to drive Claire to where she was going to: Langston Street in Brentwood, the home of the couple who agreed to adopt her baby. Claire admits that they didn't show up at the airport to meet her, but refuses to believe that they just abandoned her.
They abandoned her. When they arrive, the potential adoptive mother, Mrs. Bascomb, is looking pretty rough. Her husband has left her, and she just can't raise a baby on her own. Claire and Kate are both upset that she didn't have the decency to call to let Claire know, but apparently Claire's anger and panic causes her to start having contractions.

On the Island, Kate arrives at New Otherton, which is in shambles, much like the version we saw last season, when Sun and Lapidus meet Christian Shepard. After all, this is the same time period as that scene. She follows a banging sound into Juliet and Sawyer's house, where Sawyer is ripping up a floorboard in the bedroom. Kate watches silently as he lifts out a shoebox, opens it, and takes out a black velvet-looking cloth. As expected, Kate steps on a creaky board, and Sawyer discovers her.
As this is happening, Jin is still with the Others (though I can't remember if they catch him again or if they come to shortly after Kate leaves). He asks them where the Ajira plane landed, and Justin begins to spill the beans but Aldo warns him not to tell.

In Alt 2004, Kate and Claire rush into a local hospital to help Claire with her contractions. Kate goes into the hallway to find a doctor, and... Paging Dr. Ethan! Dr. Ethan Rom to the Losties' room! Claire's doctor is Creepy Ethan! He introduces himself as Dr. Goodspeed, which of course is his real name - he is Horace and Amy Goodspeed's son. Claire resurrects her "My bay-bee, what's wrong with my baaaayy-beeee?!" routine from Season 1 - 4.5. Ethan tells her that she can give birth now - if she wants to. (Does that really happen in real life?) She says she's not ready, but Aaron's heart monitor immediately flatlines. Suddenly, Claire yells, "Is Aaron okay?" Kate noticeably reacts to this name, and if I remember correctly, she reacts to hearing the name Aaron at least twice. Aaron is fine - he was simply turned away from the heart monitor. Ethan says, "I have a feeling Aaron is going to be a handful!"

On the Island, Kate approaches Sawyer, who is sitting at the end of the submarine dock, and they have a little pity party. Kate apologizes for following him here, but also for following him and Juliet onto the sub - if she hadn't done that, they would've left the Island, and Juliet never would've died. On the other hand, Sawyer puts the blame on himself - on that very dock in 1974, he convinced her to stay instead of taking the sub back to the world, "because I didn't want to be alone. But I think some of us are meant to be alone." He says that he was going to ask Juliet to marry him, and it is here when we see what he took out of the shoebox: a ring. He throws the ring into the water. It looks like Sawyer is staying in New Otherton.

Back at the Temple, Dogen is spinning a baseball. Jack asks what it is, and Dogen says, "It's a baseball." (What does the compass do, Richard? It points north, John.) Jack asks Dogen why he doesn't speak English when he obviously can. He responds, "I have to remain separate from the people I'm in charge of," and says something about how it makes it easier to tell them to do things that they don't want to do. I think he them says something about how this is the reason he was brought to the Island. Jack asks what he means by that, and Dogen says, "You know exactly what I mean." Jack then presses him on the pill - he's demanding to know what's in it. Dogen says that Jack just has to trust him. Jack then says something interesting: "I don't even trust myself; how am I supposed to trust you?" He then challenges Dogen's trust of him and tries to swallow the pill, but in a panic, Dogen makes Jack cough it up. When Jack demands to know what's in the pill, Dogen finally tells him: poison!

In Claire's hospital room in Alt 2004, the police are inquiring about "Joan Hart," the woman who checked in with Claire. Claire covers for Kate, and when the police leave, Kate comes out from behind a "Personnel Only" door - the second one in as many episodes (she snuck into a "Staff Only" door at LAX last week in order to escape). Claire finally asks what Kate does, I mean, did, and Kate says, "Would you believe me if I said I was innocent?" Claire says she would, but Kate doesn't confirm or deny it. After giving Kate her credit card, Claire says that she doesn't know why she said the name Aaron. "It's like I knew it or something." Kate tells her she thinks she should keep it, which of course has a double meaning: she should keep the name, and the baby.

In the Temple, instead of completely freaking out at the revelation that Dogen and the Others were trying to poison Sayid, Jack has tea with them instead. He asks them why they want to kill Sayid, and they say that the best way it can be explained is that Sayid has been "claimed." There is a darkness growing inside of him, and once it reaches his heart, "everything he once was will be gone." And when Jack asks how they know this, Dogen tells him, "It happened to your sister." OMG!

Which brings us to the final scene in the jungle. Aldo, who turns out to be a bloodthirsty, murderous thug, is about to shoot Jin, who tried to escape from them, but got his foot caught in a bear trap. Ouch! Aldo aims his rifle at Jin, but suddenly shots ring out, and both Aldo and Justin fall to the ground. (It was nice knowing you, Justin!) Jin looks to see who just saved his life, and who does he see but...a wild-haired, dirty-faced, crazed-looking Claire!

What a way to end this episode! A few things I noticed:

Rousseau has been dead for years. We saw Keamy's men kill her in 2004, so that fits. But are they making Claire her replacement? If she has this infection and she is the poster child for how bad it can get, what will that mean for her character? Will she be crazy like Danielle, the other woman on the Island who had her baby taken? Is she even Claire anymore?
Danielle was always talking about the sickness - is this "darkness" what she was talking about?

Sayid only remembers being shot. Why? He was in and out of consciousness, true, but he was alert enough to give directions on how to dismantle the bomb. Is this a clue that either he's already beginning to lose himself, so to speak, or that he's not really Sayid anymore because someone else has taken control of him, as so many fans suspected at the end of last week?

Aldo was the kid who Kate hit with the rifle butt to get into the now-infamous Room 23 in Season 4. It turns out he wasn't long for this world, but it seems that the world is better off without him.

Sawyer throwing the ring in the water is somewhat reminiscent of when Desmond threw Penny's engagement ring (I think?) into the water. I honestly thought there was a possibility that Sawyer was going to be killed off tonight. When he walked into the house in New Otherton, not acknowleging Kate on the way by, and closed the door, there was a part of me that was convinced that after a few seconds we were going to hear a single gunshot. I'm glad that didn't happen, but Sawyer is in a very, very bad place right now.

Why would Claire trust Kate so easily, and vice versa? Are they being influenced by their life on the Island? Do they sense something about each other that stems from their experiences together in our "original" timeline/universe? Another thought - Kate reminds Sawyer and us in this episode that she came back to the Island on Ajira 316 to find Claire, hoping that if she can reunite her with Aaron, their time on the Island won't be a waste. Maybe this is influencing them in Alt 2004?

At press time - that's when I press the "Publish Post" button - there were no screencaps available from my usual places, so those will have to wait, unfortunately. For now, I will end things here. I just checked out some message board comments elsewhere, and the majority of fans were not fans of "What Kate Does."

What did you think? Please comment below!

Until next time...
Good Luck & Namaste,

~Matt