Lost Rewatch: I Do

 

At this point in Lost we know that none of the memories the survivors have are happy ones. We’re still not sure what force drew them to the island (though in this episode we do get our first hint) but at this point one of those commonalities might be the misery that the survivors endured before they got on the plane. All of their backstories involve painful memories and even the ones that show them truly happy are tempered either by the fact that they end up on the island in the first place or in some cases, flashbacks that show the future of these outcomes. Most of the time it is because of their families; just as often it has to do with romantic love.

We’ve seen this play out with Jack’s marriage, Locke’s relationship with Helen, Jin and Sun’s troubled marriage before they got on the plane and Sun’s illicit affair with Jae Lee and just two episodes ago, Sawyer’s relationship with Cassidy. When we see Kate in the motel room with Kevin, what’s particularly remarkable is that Kate spends the lion’s share of the episode looking genuinely happy in a way we haven’t seen on the island or any of her flashbacks. Kate has spent her life lying to people about who she is, but we’ve always known that she cares too much about people and it always comes back to bite her. Even as she goes through her wedding to Kevin, its obvious she’s spent their entire relationship lying (he only knows her as Monica) which makes it ironic that this love and marriage may be the most pure happiness Kate has known to this point in her life. (And I’m not just talking about her husband; her clear fondness to Kevin’s mother in their brief scene speaks volumes about just how little love Kate has known from her own mother in her life.) The smiles that we see her show in the first several flashbacks are the broadest we’ve ever seen from Kate – really from any character in their flashbacks so far.

But we know that Kate can’t stop running. When she calls the Marshall and tells her that she wants him to stop chasing her, the fact that he choosing to mock her relationship with Kevin is not just his typical level of brutality. She calls Mars for a very sad reason: this is one of the longest relationships she’s ever had and for all his sadism, he is telling her a brutal truth. When she takes the pregnancy test in this episode, she clearly has decided if it was positive she’d stay. That said, when Kate tells Kevin in the final minute about how she can’t be a mother or domestic, it’s not just her trying to make Kevin hate her. At this point in her life, she truly believes she is both unworthy of love and that she is unfit to mother a  child. (There is a bitter irony in this considering the radical turn of events for her in the second half of the series.) Kate might tell herself she did what she did because her cover might be compromised or because she didn’t want to hurt Kevin. The truth is simpler: just like with Jack on the island, she doesn’t think she deserves a man as good as Kevin and she doesn’t want to hurt him by being near him.

Now events in the cages are moving towards their climax. Jack tells Ben, without surgery he will be dead soon – and that he has no intention of operating. I have to tell you I took a particular relish in the scene between the two. Jack has been cruel and malicious so often; this is the first time he is actually acting that way towards someone fully deserving of his contempt.  Jack knows fully well these people can not be trusted and that he holds all the cards.

The problem is the Others do still have leverage and they are prepared to use it. Pickett spends much of the episode itching to kill Sawyer and for most of the episode Sawyer barely seems willing to fight. Kate basically is told by everyone that Sawyer’s number is up. Alex shows up in the middle of the episode for the first time since Kate and Sawyer went on the chain gang and she now sounds desperate in her search for Karl. If we ever had any doubts that Alex has never been drinking the same Kool-Aid, it’s very clear by her actions in this episode: she tells Kate what’s going to happen to Sawyer before Juliet tells her the same thing. (This is incredibly ironic considering in the next episode we will learn who Alex is – or rather, who she has been led to believe she is.)

Juliet then brings Kate into see Jack. This is the first time Jack has seen her since the three of them were taken and the scene between them is heartbreaking. Both of them are desperately trying to keep a brave face through most of it – until Kate tells her why she was here. Jack has frequently treated Kate unjustly in the past two seasons, but it’s hard to blame his feeling of betrayal here when she tells him why. That Sawyer actually takes Jack’s side on this when Kate tells him about where she went is another brilliant irony.

The scene that followed was subject to interpretation at the time. Nikki Stafford believed that Kate’s decision to have sex with Sawyer was possibly another manipulation by the Others, that they did all this so that Jack could see and that this would end up making him into the willing surgeon. I don’t blame Stafford or her followers for thinking this way but I never bought into this theory for several reasons.

First, there’s the timing. Pickett has made it very clear he’s going to kill Sawyer the next day. As we see, this is a promise he has every intention of keeping regardless of Jack’s accommodation. (There’s a deleted scene in the episode where Ben tells Danny to lay off Sawyer and its clear he’s not happy about it.) Sawyer has just made it very clear to Kate that escape is not possible: they are on a different island and they have nowhere to go. At that moment, Kate has no reason to believe that her fate will be any different from Sawyer’s, given how Jack reacted when she pleaded with him.

Both Kate and Sawyer have spent their lives on the run – Kate from the law; Sawyer from any human connection – and at this point, they realize there is nowhere left to go. Kate may very well love Jack more than Sawyer, but the two have been violently attracted to each other all series and at this point, she needs to feel a connection to somebody to fend of the loneliness that’s going to come.  Neither feels they have anything left to lose, so they just give in.

The second part of the theory is that Jack was let out of his cage in order to see the video of Kate and Sawyer in the cage, post-coital. I don’t believe this either, because we hear the voice of the person who let him out and its clearly Alex. We might not yet know of the connection between Alex and Ben but given what we saw before we have no reason Alex wants to help him. (Again, that deleted scene would make this very clear.) I genuinely think she was trying help Jack escape to destroy Ben. I think there’s a possibility Ben might have let Alex do this – he is a master manipulator, after all – but it would have been a huge gamble on his part: Jack very easily could have put a bullet in him right there.

And last, it’s worth remembering that Jack did not agree to this surgery with the sole intention of helping Ben. When Jack and Juliet are scrubbing up, the way he behaves we wonder if he’s decided to go along with this because he believed Juliet’s video dumbshow the previous day. Then the operation begins and we realize that Jack, at least right now, still thinks that Juliet is an Other.

The final five minutes are among the best moments that the series has done so far. Just as Ben goes under, Pickett storms out and we realize that he never intended to give Jack the benefit of the doubt. (He mentions in passing “Shephard wasn’t even on Jacob’s list.” We’ve just heard the magic word for the first time on Lost – and in typical fashion, it’s complete misdirection.)

Pickett pulls Sawyer and Kate out and there’s another brutal struggle. Again Sawyer has the drop on him, but again Kate’s vulnerability causes him to give up the advantage. He drops to his feet, knowing death is coming.

The last three minutes of the episode feature some of the best moments Evangeline Lilly has shown on the series so far. Kate keeps so much inside that she has rarely shown emotion on the island, except in moments of guilt. Now Sawyer is facing an execution, right in front of her and she is in turmoil. She begs in a way we just haven’t seen and it’s on deaf ears. There’s something just as heartbreaking as Holloway says: “Close your eyes” as he kneels before Pickett.

But just as fate intervened before Sawyer’s near certain death at this point in Season 2, it does so again here – only this time it’s a much closer factor. Because Jack has taken control of his destiny and made it very clear that he has every intention of letting Ben die if his terms are not met. (Credit to M.C. Gainey as Tom in this scene; this is the first time we’ve seen his character truly shaken in a way.) Jack then makes it clear that Kate needs to run for it. She has one hour to get away and if she doesn’t, he will let Ben die. Of course, he doesn’t know when Kate tells him that she can’t leave, she’s being literal.

Jack’s shouting: “Damn it Kate, run!” was the perfect cliffhanger for the fall finale of Lost, as the viewer really didn’t know at the time how this would turn out. Even at this point, we figured all three of the leads were going to live at least a couple of more seasons but they were in a place where escape looked impossible. Was Jack just going to let Ben die? (They had just made Michael Emerson a regular, but we’d been down that road in Season 2 as well.) It was the kind of moment that usually made TV fans count the weeks until the show returned – which is why it was so bizarre that when it came back in February, many fans did not.

As I said before I don’t deny the opening six episodes of Season 3 didn’t have their issues and its hard to entirely blame them. Eko died last week and not only do we barely mourn, we only have two short scenes with the people who witnessed it. And that’s just that group; we’ve still barely spent enough time with most of the survivors on the beach. Nor will these problems be resolved with the show’s return; there will eventually be a partial reunion and then yet another division of our characters. Throw in the fact that are quite a few weak episodes to come and is understandable why some viewers would have thrown up their hands and decided that this island just wasn’t worth it any more.

But I was loyal to TV series to a fault back then. I still had faith that the mysteries would be revealed (I had always been a sucker for mythology shows) but more importantly, I was deeply invested in the characters. At this point, I wasn’t invested in the end game (though in the next few weeks, we would learn just how the series would play out) so much as I still wanted to see what would happen next. And when the show came back in February, it more than delivered.

 

Note: In a note that presages his future, the first time we see Nathan Fillion as Kevin, he is in a police officer’s uniform. Three years later Fillion would move from cult star to TV sensation as the title character in Castle and follow it up in The Rookie. I guess he was destined…to always do police work on ABC,