What Kate Does When Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia

LOSTaways-

The title of this blog-post will make sense to a few of you, and will be found funny by even fewer. The "Other" named Aldo in last night's episode, "What Kate Does," was played by an actor (Rob McElhenney) who is one of the creators and stars of the F/X comedy show Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia. If you haven't seen it, keep your decency and self-respect and skip it.

Before I get in to the parsing of this week's episode, a thought occurred to me regarding Jacob, the statue, and the time-travel flashes we followed in Season 5.

So the statue is about 30-stories tall. It has been there since at least the 1800's (as seen in the Season 5 finale). The first time we see it (2004, island time), all that is left is one section of the foot (from just above the ankle to the base). What in the world, other than a massive explosion, could bring a 30-story structure down? Well, maybe a Noah-like flood, right?

I don't even know what my theory is, but that statue had to have been brought down by the nuclear blast or the flooding of the island (which we saw in the side-by-side, new reality in episode one of Season 6). Perhaps we will see yet another time-travel flash to before 1974 (when Sawyer, Juliet, Myles, and Jin arrived in Dharma time) and there the statue will be brought down.

But on to this week's "What Kate Does":

The episode was one of those "we're setting some things up, but we can't have every week be the type of deal where you are blown away by new revelations" weeks. Like any good novel/story, you have to develop your characters and set up the plot twists to come. Since there weren't any huge developments, other than the final scene's revelation that Claire is the new Rousseau, which we will get to later, I won't spend a great deal of time recounting the play-by-play.

Let's separate the episode into "On-island"-"Off-island" categories for the purposes of this blog.

Off-island:

Things picked back up with Kate trying to bolt, yet again; but after having her hands freed by a Kris Kristofferson look-alike at a body shop, the angel of her shoulder her to go back and try helping Claire out. Claire, who apparently hasn't taking any acting lessons since we last saw her in Season 4, accepts Kate's ride to the house of the people who were gonna adopt "my baaaaaaabbbbyyyyy". (It's like nails on a chalkboard when that Aussie chick talks.) Predictably, things don't work out, thanks to the adoption husband pulling a Tiger Woods on his wife, and Kate gives her "I'm shocked and sickened by everything everyone says" look at takes Claire to the hospital.

(Note: If you want more in-depth theories about what all the allegorical and metaphorical meanings of Kate's off-island story might be, read Doc Jensen at EW.com)

And who is waiting for them, but our old Other friend Ethan, the son of Horace Goodspeed, and protege of Benjamin Linus. He's also the guy who, on the island, kidnapped Claire (after sticking her with needles), and eventually ends up deader than Yemi when Charlie (who ends up deader than Ethan) puts a cap in his front-side. The obvious question is: What the heck is Ethan doing on the mainland, as an OBGYN? On the island he had been the Others' resident surgeon, the offspring of Dharma's "first couple" (Horace and Amy), and presumably, at some point, a recruit (kidnapped or otherwise) to the Clan of Other.

Depending on when the island sank under-water, as it is in this new time-line, we can guess that Horace was never on the island (because it was at the bottom of the ocean); therefore his son (Ethan) would not be running through the jungle hanging the dude who wrote "You All Everybody" from tree limbs and kidnapping pregger chicks.

But in the hospital, Ethan seems to be a good guy. I say "seems" because we very likely could find out that the Others (or something like them) still exist and he's keeping tabs on Claire for some mystical, higher purpose. Either way, it was a very cool plot-point to have Ethan be Claire's doctor in Brentwood, CA.

The only other thing of note is that Claire already "knew" to call the boy Aaron. When she said the name everyone in the room, Ethan and Kate, both looked up and took note. Now this could have been an understandable reflex reaction to having a pregnant lady scream the name of a baby that hasn't been born yet, but it definitely had a Biblical feel to it. John the Baptist was named before he was born by an angel of God. Jesus got his name in similar fashion when the angel Gabriel told Mary all about her son before she was even pregnant.

Claire was warned in Season 1 by a psychic about the "danger" that surrounded her baby, and the need for her to raise him. But then the dude called her 4 months later, gave her $6,000, and sent her to L.A. to meet a family he had found that wanted to adopt the baby. So did this happen again? In that same fashion? Who was that psychic, anyway?

In Season 1, Claire had a dream one night where Locke, whose eyes were one-black, one-white, has this conversation with her:

CLAIRE: What's happening?

LOCKE: You know what's happening.

CLAIRE: But I don't understand. Why --?

LOCKE: He was your responsibility but you gave him away, Claire. Everyone pays the price now.

Pretty creepy. Was the Locke in this dream the Flocke of the future, representing the Smoke Monster he would become? What did he mean "gave away", because she had Aaron with her until Season 4?


On-island:

These parts of the episode were infinitely more interesting.

Sayid wakes up from his temporary morbid slumber and it freaks even the New Others out. My boy Dogen has Sayid brought in for some "tests", which our favorite Iraqi promptly fails. The electro-shock therapy test I did not get, but the blowing of the ash dust over Sayid did make much more sense. We've now seen ashes associated with the Smoke Monster multiple times. There was the line of ash around Jacob's cabin (which turned out to be the home/prison of Smokey). There was the circle of ash that Bram put around himself in Jacob's bunker last week to keep the smoke monster from killing him (which worked out really well, right?).

I'm guessing that if the Smoke Monster has "claimed" you, or is you (in the case of Flocke), the ash being dusted over your bare chest would hurt much more than it apparently did to Sayid.

This, in conjunction with what Dogen had to say about the "infection" spreading, leads me to conclude a few things.

One is that Sayid, to my friend SVB's delight, isn't beyond saving. Not that he will be saved, but that he isn't a LOST cause just quite yet. I foresee some miracle of the island, or ridiculous "task" that Jack will have to do to save his once-dead friend. This might also mean that Jack can save his sister (Claire) as well, who apparently has already been "claimed" for the dark side.

Second, that the infection Sayid has right now is the same one Rousseau was so adamant about, both in Seasons 1 and 2, and in her back-story last year. If you care to recall, she shot her scientific research team with a rifle (and left them to rot on the beach), including her husband/baby's daddy. She said that when they went down in to the Temple after their one-armed friend Montand that they were never the same again. Other people who have "gone down into the Temple"? Ben and Locke last year (but Locke, as we now know, was the Smoke Monster and made Ben go ahead of him so that he could turn into Alex and tell Ben to go back up and follow...well...himself). Ben as a little kid. And now this year Jack, Hurley, Kate, Sayid, and Jin (and sort of Sawyer, who was brought in later).

What is it about the Temple that drives people bonkos? Is it a dip in the frothy wading pool that does something to them?

This got me thinking about the over-riding theme of "good vs. evil", "dark vs. light", etc., and how and why people are "chosen" or "claimed" throughout the course of 5+ seasons. (Side note: anyone notice that Claire had a Shamu stuffed animal, whose colors are obviously black-and-white...like Backgammon...like Locke's eyes in Claire's dream?)

When Richard took Ben from Kate and Sawyer last season to save his life from the gun-shot wound Sayid gave him, he said something to the effect of: "Doing this is very risky." A similar thing was said by the New Others last week when they took Sayid down under the allegedly healing waters (which, mysterious even to the New Others, were darker than usual). This is assuming, of course, that Richard took Ben into the same pool of water to "heal" him when Ben was a boy. With all of the "lists" and "who is good, who is bad?" stuff going on in LOST since it began, the fact that the waters of the Temple heal some and not others (or as Jin would say, "Udders...Udders") is logically consistent with what we know about the island, Jacob, etc. The Others (and New Others) seem to be only slightly more informed than our 815 survivors have been when it comes to WHY someone is good or bad. They are told as much by either Richard or Ben (via Jacob), and then sent to kidnap (or in the case of Juliet, "convince") them.

The Japanese leader of the New Others, Dogen, really intrigues me, and I look forward to a back-story or side-ways, alternative flash on him. He said he was "called" to the island, and I doubt they'll leave us hanging for very long on what that call entailed.

Dogen concocted some green (not eco-friendly...although, maybe it was...who knows) pill for Sayid to take, and that turned out to be poison. The pill had a very Matrix, Alice in Wonderland vibe to it, like Jack had this choice to make (on behalf of Sayid), but the new Man of Faith didn't have enough of it to suggest to Sayid he take it. Although, he did shove it down his own trap in an attempt to call Dogen's bluff. That took some degree of faith and/or insanity. Whatever it is that has infected Sayid is bad enough that the New Others feel he needs to be executed. This strikes me as odd though because Sayid's name was on Jacob's list inside Hurley's guitar case. Does the waters of the Temple pool killing someone supersede even Jacob putting your name on a list? After all of that, are the followers of Jacob really going to let Sayid bite the big one, and at their own hands, no less?

Kate's story on the island consisted of doing what she always does: the wrong thing. Nothing has bugged me more in LOST more than Kate's attitude of superiority, especially over men who are just trying to help/protect her. Jack let her down off the island with his jealousy and Michael Jackson-like consumption of narcotics, and Sawyer's no saint, but in Kate's world...Kate always knows best. Always. Jack says in Season 3, "Kate, run back to our people with Sawyer and please don't come looking for me", but because of her stubbornness, she comes to Othersville and because of that Locke blows up the submarine Jack and Juliet were about to hitch a ride to freedom on. This week she ignored Sawyer's request to be left alone for his memory lane reunion tour back in Othersville, and Jin ends up with a bear trap around his gams.

As Kevin McCallister's uncle Frank famously said, "Look what you did, you little jerk!"



I don't really care that much about what happened between Kate and Sawyer back in Othersville, but what stood out was Sawyer's heartfelt monologue about "not wanting to be alone", yet at the same time he was beginning to recognize that perhaps some people in this world are meant to be alone...doomed to suffer. This is such a complex and difficult issue (broadly called "The Problem of Evil"), but who hasn't felt these exact same things at some point in their life. Justified or not, especially when compared to the real suffering and loneliness people all over the world experience, Sawyer's remarks struck a chord with anyone who has a pulse.

And, being the Dostoevsky-obsessed blogger I am, I could not help but hear the old Russian's voice in my head after watching Sawyer's scene on the submarine dock. Specifically, his classic work The Brothers Karamazov, touches on the very ideas brought up this week. I won't go on one of my wild tangents here, but so many of the characters in Fyodor's novels feel just as Sawyer does. That despite their best attempts to "go straight" and avoid trouble and do the right, they are destined to suffer and succumb to their fatal flaws. These are tough questions to ponder, but they are necessary ones to ponder. The book is also about redemption though, and we've already seen some of that among the LOST characters, and, hopefully, we'll see it in spades by the end.

On that note, Claire shows up at the end of the episode. But instead of "redeemed" we learn that she has gone over to the dark-side and apparently forgot how to bathe. We really don't know anything else about Claire's 3-year ordeal since we saw her last (in Jacob's cabin, sitting with Christian Shepard, her dad, and smiling at the real John Locke who came in to find out how to move the island). She has set up traps and snares like her old pal Rousseau (who helped her escape from the Others when she was pregnant...but then took her baby at one point too) and I'm hoping we'll get a glimpse of what Claire's World has looked like this whole time...and how she ended up in a cabin with her dad...and if she's still as obnoxious as ever.

Few thoughts/theories before we part:

-Did Sayid really die? He had no recollection of it, and Miles seemed skeptical when he learned that Sayid didn't see or hear or remember anything.

- I've tried to come up with some explanation as to why Dogen had a baseball in the scene when he tells Jack that the pill is poison...and I got nada. Maybe its a call-back to Field of Dreams or something. If you have any theories, lay 'em on us in the Comments section below.

- Why was Aldo telling the other Other dude not to tell Jin or Kate about the location of the Aijira Flight 316 survivors? He was so angry about being hit in the head with the butt of a gun, I realize, but what's with the secrecy?

- This upcoming episode is entitled "The Substitute."


That's all for now, folks. Take care and stay out of the deep end...of the Temple pool, should the water be a murky-brown.


Love,
Pants of Locke