• The way in which the Temple Master attempts to manipulate Jack here, and Jack’s subsequent stubborn refusal to be manipulated, recalls for me the way in which Eko admitted his sins, but refused to feel guilt. I think what we’re seeing here is an inner course-correction for Jack, who swung from bullheaded control freak to passive convert and now seems to be swinging back to the midpoint – to a kind of “Doubting Thomas” state.

Ben talked about Doubting Thomas in Season 5 – about how Thomas is most remembered for doubting the resurrection, and how he needed to see the evidence for himself before he would believe. That’s exactly Jack’s state of mind here. Jack’s willing to give Sayid the pill, to take the leap of faith required, but he’s not willing to do so blindly. He wants to know what’s in it.
 
Interestingly (to me at any rate), if Jack were Abraham on Mount Moriah he wouldn’t have passed God’s test. Lost has made a point of referencing the Sacrifice of Isaac story several times over the course of its run. The notion of sacrifice is a continual thread in this show, most recently popping up in “LA X,” where Hurley was shown holding a copy of Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling,” in which Kierkegaard argues on behalf of Abraham’s loyalty to God and his willingness to sacrifice Isaac. So are we meant to wonder whether Jack’s making a terrible mistake in not going through with the sacrifice of his fellow castaway? Or are we meant to be critical of that philosophical position? The show, much to my pleasure, doesn’t make it clear. I’d love to hear what you think. Did Jack make the ‘right’ choice in “What Kate Does”?

• I’m assuming , since Jacob seems to specifically pick Jack for his mysterious purposes, that this stubborn, Doubting Thomas element of his character is something valuable to Jacob, not a potential threat. But who knows?

Hurley: “You’re not a zombie, right?”
Sayid: “No. I am not a zombie.”

• The question is, what is he? Is he still Sayid inside? Our glimpses of Rousseau’s crew, and the information she’s given us about them, imply that people who are “infected” will act as if they haven’t changed at all when it suits them.

• Hurley’s zombie comment is a cute meta-reference. Lost’s writers have joked in the past about doing a seventh “zombie season” of the show and Hurley’s line references that. But it also potentially references what’s happening to Sayid. In a very real sense, if what the Others say about the infection is true, Sayid is becoming a zombie. More on this below.

• Sayid’s moment by the pool with Jack is a nice one – again, the kind of small character moment that I appreciate in the middle of all this Island madness.

• Here’s something I actually love about this episode: the overarcing plot wants these characters to stay at the Temple and learn about what’s happening, in part because we want to know what’s happening. We want our big confrontation and we want our answers. It’s a uneasily junkie-esque feeling, and I’m jonzeing just as bad as anyone. But these characters aren’t really interested in pushing that plot forward. They’re interested in what’s become important to them as characters, and that doesn’t include Temples or Smoke Monsters. And that’s part of why I’m maybe generous with this episode – because Jin’s character as constructed over five seasons would absolutely drop everything to go find Sun – their renewed connection is what’s most important to him. Kate would absolutely ditch Jack to go be with Sawyer – her maternal, protective instinct was awakened with Aaron, and she’s determined to reunite them. It’s what’s most important to her. Acknowledging that means a less propulsive episode, but it also means that we’re not driven by the plot so much as we’re driven by what these characters want within that plot, and that’s personally much more satisfying to me overall, even when there’s wheel-spinning involved. Does that make sense?

• Claire’s baby decides to try coming early, just as she’s being told that the adoptive mother’s husband has left her (an echo of Claire herself, who’s boyfriend left her far along in the pregnancy). In terms of time, Claire goes into labor here far earlier than she did in Season 1. Aaron’s sudden, early arrival mirrors the births of Locke, Ben, and (I think) Ethan. 

Ethan: “I just…don’t want to stick you with needles if I don’t have to.”

• Ethan makes his off-Island debut as Claire’s attending physician in the hospital. Whether on the Island or off it, Ethan seems destined to be a part of Claire’s pregnancy. He introduces himself as “Ethan Goodspeed” here, and it’s the first time we’ve heard that name used. Previously, we’ve known Ethan as “Ethan Rom,” an anagram for “Other Man” and an apparent alias. Last season it was revealed that Ethan is Horace Goodspeed’s son, and while his interest in babies and fertility remains undiminished, Ethan seems entirely lacking in the homicidal tendencies that characterized him on the Island.

• Ethan’s appearance raises the question of when he left the Island. We’ve seen that in these off-Island flashes, Dharmaville was built. We know that Ethan was born to Horace and Amy Goodspeed, who were important Dharma figures. It stands to reason then that Ethan was probably born on the Island, but that he left at some point afterward instead of becoming an Other.

• Did Ethan’s mother, Amy, die in childbirth? We’ve seen that the Island is underwater in 2004, the year the off-Island castaways occupy. With the Island underwater, then either Juliet was presumably never recruited (she came to the Island just three years earlier, in 2001), or was recruited but left the Island when it sank. If she’s off of the Island, and the castaways never crash on the Island, then neither she nor they will go back in time. If neither Juliet nor the castaways ever went back in time, then Juliet could not have been present for the birth of Amy’s baby. With Dharma’s doctor assigned to the Looking Glass, that would mean big trouble for Amy Goodspeed.

• Kate’s now attended to Claire twice during labor, first on the Island in Season 1 where she delivered Aaron into the world, and again here, at the “Angle of Mercy” hospital where Claire opts to delay Aaron’s birth. If I’m right about the “second snake in the mailbox” (see the link at the top of the column), then she’s been given a second opportunity to be there for Claire, and to see mother and baby safely united. Claire seems to summon the name Aaron out of thin air during the contractions, interestingly enough. Is this evidence of my “Constant” theory? Something else entirely?

Sawyer: “I think some of us are meant to be alone.”

• Kate and Sawyer’s scene on the Galaga dock is deeply affecting stuff to me. It’s maybe John Holloway’s finest work to date and again, I’m kind of impressed by Evangeline Lily here as well.

• The engagement ring that Sawyer planned to give to Juliet looks quite a bit like the ring that Desmond purchased for Penny from Ms. Hawking, no? The image of Sawyer pitching the ring into the Island’s waters also recalls Desmond’s ditching of the ring in “Flashes Before Your Eyes.” Will Sawyer find Juliet again, ala Des and Penny? I suspect the answer is yes, and that when they meet in the world of the “second snake,” they’ll go for coffee.

Jack: “What’s that?
Dogen: “It’s a baseball.”

• Hilarious. If you’re wondering, that’s the question we get an answer to in this episode.

• We learn Temple Master’s name – it’s Dogen. His namesake was a Japanese Buddhist Monk Philosopher(!) who emphasized the spiritual and the temporal were one and the same. The name Dogen derives from a combination of “do” (way/road) and “gen” (strict/solemn).

• Incidentally, Dogen is played by Hiroyuki Sanada, who, unbeknownst to me, is apparently a huge star in his native Japan. This is awesome, though I’m not sure I can articulate why.

• Jack’s conversation with Dogen here brings up something potentially interesting. The Temple Master’s explanation for using a translator involves maintaining an intentional distance between himself and the rest of the Others, allowing him to make difficult decisions. This calls to mind the now-infamous Season 3 episode “Stranger in a Strange Land,” where Jack was told that “he walks among them, but is not of them,” as well as the difficult decisions that Jack has made, like, say, the detonation of a hydrogen bomb. Will Jack become the Temple Master? Are the ‘candidates’ meant, not just to fill Jacob’s position, but to fill a number of positions?

• Dogen claims that he was brought to the Island “like everyone else,” seemingly confirming that Jacob and/or the MiB have directly or indirectly drawn castaways, Dharma and Others alike to the Island.

• This is the Jack I love: wild-eyed, chuckling, popping strange pills because fuck you, Others, that’s why. While we’ve spent a good portion of this episode spinning our wheels in terms of the plot, moments like this still make the episode feel as though its “moving forward” for me. If the castaways are “pawns” in some Great Game then they’ve begun refusing to move as ordered. They’ve begun acting as variables, each in their own ways, forcing the Others to begin divulging their secrets.

• The name of Claire’s hospital is “Angel of Mercy,” recalling the angelic and saint-based names of the locations that Locke visited in “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham.”

• The Detective who visits Claire in her hospital room is named Rasmussen. Professor Rasmussen was awarded the Fermi Award in the field of nuclear energy in the “development of probabilistic risk assessment techniques.” Rasmussen’s also a polling service and weirdly fun name to say, but that’s got nothing to do with Lost.

Dogen: “There is a darkness growing in him, and once it reaches his heart, everything your friend once was will be gone.”
Jack: “How can you be sure of that?”
Dogen: “Because it happened to your sister.”

• YOWZA! Tonight, the whole “sickness” mystery became just a little clearer, and much, much spookier. As discussed above, waaaay back in Season One Rousseau mentioned a “sickness” to the then-and-now-bewildered castaways, and other than the brief scenes with Rousseau and crew in “This Place Is Death” we’ve never heard about it again. Some people, myself included, suggested that the nosebleeds and murderous consciousness-jumps of Season 4 might provide a possible explanation for the sickness, but it looks like this til-now-mysterious word has another explanation altogether.

In the Back To The Island column for LA X, I spoke about the similarities between the submersion of Sayid in the Temple waters and the burying of a cat behind a certain Pet Semetary. That comparison got a little stronger tonight as Dogen and Lennon explained (oh-so-obtusely) what was happening to Sayid.  Somehow he’s become “infected.” And now, apparently, he’s being ‘claimed.’

What does this mean? And how is this different from the loss of “innocence” that Richard described in Season 5 when referring to young Ben Linus? Is there a difference? If not, why are the Others going around “infecting” people? This isn’t the 70’s anymore, people. Think before you go dipping yourself in a dirty pool.

If we accept that Dogen is now telling the truth it sounds a lot like Sayid’s going zombie on us in a sense. Wade Davis, Harvard Ethnobiologist, claimed in his book “The Serpent and the Rainbow” that people have created zombies by drugging, burying, and destroying the minds of intended slaves. When these unfortunate souls are unearthed, they are ‘hollowed out’ inside – mindless servants of whoever made them. Davis’ claims have been hotly contested, and from what I gather, real evidence of these practices is scarce.

The process Davis described sounds not unlike what Dogen talks about here, in a spiritual/biological sense. Sayid’s been “infected,” he’s been killed instead of buried, and now he’s risen again, with something unexplained spreading inside of him that will somehow wipe away the man that Jack has come to know and assumedly make him a servant of the MiB, or simply too dangerous to be allowed to live.

• We’ve seen that the spring has potential power to physically heal a person, and we saw that it did not work on Sayid. Did the spring itself, discolored as it now is, infect Sayid? If so, why would they put him in there? To test it? Was Sayid somehow “infected” at some other point? It seems so, since Dogen drops a shocker on us and tells us that “Jack’s sister,” aka Claire, was also infected.

That’s iiiiinteresting. It potentially explains Claire’s weirdo/creepy appearance in Jacob’s cabin, alongside Christian. It also helps to explain why no one could find Claire – maybe she didn’t want to be found, or was off doing something zombie-esque.

Justin: “Aldo, no. We can’t. He’s one of them.”
Aldo: “He may be one of them.”

• Just before joining the ranks of the dead on this Island, Aldo’s arguing with Justin over shooting Jin. Justin wants to keep him alive because he’s “one of them,” (an echo of a phrase we’ve heard many times before) but Aldo corrects him, saying “he may be one of them.” I’m still pretty convinced that they’re referring to the candidates we’ve heard Bram and Ilana talk about, and that one of those candidates is meant to be Jacob’s potential replacement. Lost ends with Aldo and Justin getting shot by a very feral Claire Littleton, looking an awful lot like a certain crazy-eyed Frenchlady from oh-so-long-ago.

So, what’s happened to Claire? Has she truly been “infected”? If so, why did the Others let her live? Is she a danger to Jin? Will Jin join the ranks of potential proto-zombies?

Next week, on Lost:

Each week, I’ll talk briefly about the scenes shown to tease next week’s episode. If you want to remain “spoiler-free,” just skip this paragraph.

It looks as though things are going to start heating up, as Anti-Locke approaches Sawyer and informs our favorite burgeoning-nihilist that Locke is dead, Richard warns the castaways that Anti-Locke wants “everyone dead,” including everyone they care about, Sawyer appears to descend to a mysterious cave located in a sheer sandy cliff face, but falls (echoing Season 1, and Boone’s fall from the Beechcraft at the behest of Locke). We hear him ask “what is this place,” and we hear Anti-Locke promise to tell someone who looks like Richard “everything.”

It looks amazing. Is Anti-Locke luring Sawyer into the depths of the Island? Will we learn more about the nature of the Island itself? Or is this more slight-of-hand misdirection?

*****

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What Kate Does (S6, ep. 3)

Dogen: “You just have to trust me.”
Jack: “I don’t even trust myself. How am I supposed to trust you?”

• The general consensus on Tuesday night’s episode seems to be that it was average at best, boring and/or infuriating at worst. Personally, I enjoyed “What Kate Does,” much to my own surprise. Let’s be honest: fans of Lost know that each season’s Kate-centric episode is going to be something of a snoozer overall – a lot of running, and a sprinkling of intriguing mythology. It’s practically tradition at this point. As a result, I went in to tonight’s installment expecting Kate’s story to underwhelm me, and while I’m already more than ready to move on to next week (Anti-Locke and Sawyer! Is it next Tuesday yet? How about now?), I’m not writing this episode off at all.

Yes, it’s almost physically agonizing to go through an hour of the show at this point without much in the way of answers or seeming forward momentum. At the same time, Lost spent a good amount of time this week laying solid emotional groundwork in both its on-Island and off-Island scenes – something that I genuinely appreciate. I’m as eager/half-crazed for answers as everyone else, and while I wouldn’t try and argue that this was a great installment I will say that this is one of those episodes I suspect is going to play much better for people on the eventual DVD, because it’s a surprisingly potent character piece. I don’t know that Josh Holloway’s ever done better work on this show, and this might be the most grounded and ‘real’ Kate’s felt for me in a while, both on and off the Island. Knowing that you can put the next episode on right away is going to make this episode automatically much more enjoyable for some folks. Your mileage may vary, as always.

• Speaking of on/off the Island: I’ve cooked up a potential theory regarding the separate timelines/universes that we’re watching now, something I’m referring to as “the Second Snake.” If you’d like to read it you can do so here –  I’ll be referring to it later on.

• As a brief reminder: There are a ton of excellent sites out there offering full recaps of each show and running down exactly what happened in a given episode. I favor Drew McWeeny’s Hitfix recaps. They remind me of events without robbing me of the chance to do some thinking about an episode on my own. If you’ve got a suggested full-recap site for your fellow fans I encourage you to list it in the comments. These Chud columns are intended for those of you who have seen the episode in question, and they’re meant to help deepen your experience of watching the show, focusing on the themes, allusions, literary references, philosophical ideas, mythical touchstones, patterns, and minutia of Lost. I love writing about the show, but there’s no way for me to catch all the detail. Please post things I’ve missed in the comments.

Thoughts:

• “What Kate Does” functions as a title-mirror to the Season 2 episode “What Kate Did,” and while there’s some nifty symmetry throughout this episode, it doesn’t appear to be thematically-important, so much as it is just consistent.

Lennon: “He’s alive.”

• The resurrection of Sayid Jarrah has left our favorite tortured torturer in a seeming state of confusion and amnesia. Like young Ben Linus, Sayid’s most recent memories appear to have vanished. In the comments for my “LA X” column, commenter “antilucid” suggested that the spring may work to physically push a person’s body back to the point in time just before they were hurt, causing their memory loss. This is the kind of off-the-wall idea that I love – nice theorizing, “antilucid.” Given that the spring does NOT appear to have worked, however, I’m wondering whether Sayid’s amnesia is genuine, and a result of the “infection,” or whether he’s faking his amnesia the way that Robert faked concern for Danielle.

• Looks like that “literal reincarnation of Jacob” thing was a wash, and I’m glad. To be honest, I didn’t love the notion and what we wound up with tonight is much, much cooler as far as I’m concerned. It’s possible that a “Jacob, reincarnated” storyline will still pop up, since we’re still waiting on the meaning of the term “candidates,” as well as an explanation for Jacob’s piñata-Ankh list (what, no candy?).

Great Sawyer Line: “’Course he’s fine. He’s an Iraqi torturer who shoots kids – he definitely deserves another go around.”

• Judging from the apparent passage of time, it’s been less than 24 hours since Sawyer lost Juliet and, unlike Claire’s non-reaction to the death of Charlie, it’s hitting him hard and it’s hitting him consistently. From his character’s point of view, Sayid’s Lazarus act is bitterly offensive and ironic, and that reaction is utterly human. I love the way that Holloway sells this scene. There’s nothing “fair” about what’s happened to Sawyer, and there’s no comfort or peace to Juliet’s passing. From his perspective, Sayid’s resurrection is a dark joke, a thumb in the eye from “God” or fate or whatever. James Ford has never been more vulnerable or more open to potential manipulation than he is right now, and that’s something Anti-Locke will likely try to take advantage of next week.

Miles’ unease around Sayid recalls his unease around Claire in Season 4. What triggered that S4 unease in Miles? Well, Claire’s house got blowed up real good. In my Rewatch Column for that episode, I suggested that Claire might have died in the explosion, but her apparent survival after the fact made that suggestion more than a little wonky to say the least. Now it seems as though she may not have survived, that her brush with death may have somehow “infected” her, or (more likely) that her as-yet-unseen time with Christian lead to her “infection.” On Chud’s Season 6 thread, someone suggested that Christian may have talked Claire into breaking the circle of ash around the cabin – an idea I really dig.

• Miles’ ability to sense potential weirdness around “the infected” should come in handy later in the season, when I presume there may be questions about who’s infected and who’s not, about who can be trusted.

• Arzt’s ass makes its triumphant first appearance on the show. I enjoyed this character when he popped up at the end of Season One, but I’m enjoying him much less so this time around. Really, Arzt? A Dustin Hoffman riff?

• As Kate is attempting to run (run, Kate, run!) from Her Favorite Marshall, she glimpses Jack waiting outside of the airport. There’s a moment of definite déjà vu/recognition there (as well as the swelling sound of that on-Island/off-Island transition-whoosh), and it brings up the theory I was tossing around before Season 6 began – that the Jughead detonation would send memories/knowledge of their Island life back in time to their ‘past’ selves the way that we see Eloise the rat experience in The Constant. Are we seeing something along these lines here?

• I was half-convinced that Claire wasn’t pregnant when Kate kicked her out of the car, but I was wrong. She’s very, very pregnant here, off-Island, just as she was in the first season flashbacks. As in the first season, Claire has flown to LA in order to give her baby up for adoption. We don’t know whether or not she’s had her creepy interactions with Richard Malkin in this “universe,” but judging from the way people’s pre-crash lives have already been shown to be altered, it’s possible that they never crossed paths, and that Claire was never warned that she had to raise her child.

• Jack and Co. help Sayid out into the sunlight, where there’s a nice comfortable above-ground tomb for him to sit on. The bullet wound that Sayid received from Roger Linus has healed almost completely, leaving a small mass of scar tissue. We saw that the spring’s muddy waters weren’t capable of healing the Temple Master’s hand in “LA X,” so how is it that Sayid’s wound has closed? Is rapid healing a ‘side benefit’ of infection?

• Lennon proves himself kind of shaggily likable, but utterly untrustworthy, when he tells Sawyer that they won’t hurt Sayid.

• Sawyer’s command to Kate (“Don’t come after me”) and his self-exile darkly mirrors Jack’s similar command and self-exile among the Others in Season 3.

• The Others appear to be protecting the castaways from Smokey, but we’re still not clear on why. Simple humanitarianism is pretty much out of the question – these folks are pretty casual with their murder when they want to be – and so it seems safe to assume that they’re being protected because they were on the list, a nice echo of the fact that most of these people were pointedly not on Jacob’s Season One lists.

• Aldo the Other makes his first reappearance on the show since Season 3’s “Not In Portland,” where he was shown cold-chilling reading Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” before being knocked the heck out. He’s played by Rob McElhenney, best known as Mac from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” and I want him to die.

• Continuing Lost’s admirable tradition of hiring great character actors, the creepy, grizzled dude who helps Kate with her cuffs is played by Jeff Kober, one of those “hey, I know that guy” guys. I know Kober best from his work as the psychotic vampire unleashed on a depowered Buffy in “Helpless,” and as the bad guy in the near-forgotten Lou Diamond Phillips movie “The First Power.” His IMDB credits read like a listing of every show on television. Whether you were watching XFiles or Sons of Anarchy, you know creepy grizzled dude’s face.

• Look at that, Claire’s gotten her unborn baby a stuffed killer whale, and Kate comes across it as she rummages through Claire’s things. In Season 4’s “Something Nice Back Home,” it’s Kate that gives a then-three year old Aaron an identical stuffed whale.

Unexpectedly amusing exchange:

Aldo: “You better not slow us down.”
Kate: “You better not slow me down.”

• If I had a quarter for every time someone packed a bag or filled/drank from a water bottle on this show I’d be a rich man.

Sayid: “Please…whatever you’re thinking of doing…”

• Sayid’s words here are a direct echo of Season One’s “Solitary,” where Sayid is first captured by a crazy-eyed Rousseau. The torture he undergoes here also mirrors that episode, and it reaffirms something we’ve known from the beginning – Sayid gives Locke a real run for his money in the “unluckiest man alive” division. He’s watched three women he’s loved die before his eyes, he’s been tortured on a regularly-scheduled basis, he’s been shot, beaten, manipulated, murdered and now, infected. The dude cannot catch a break.

• Speaking of torture: what’s up with the Others’ holistic Pit of Despair? First, the Temple Master blows dust all over Sayid, then electrocutes him, then burns him with a hot iron. What’s going on here? For one, the tests seem to revolve around three of the so-called “classical elements” – air, earth and fire (and water featured heavily during Sayid’s ‘drowning’ in the last episode). Is it ash that’s shaken over Sayid’s chest? Are they looking for some physical reaction to its touch? Are they looking to see whether Sayid is slowly ‘ghosting,’ allowing some of the dust thrown to settle through him? You’d think that Sayid’s OBVIOUS, EXCRUCIATING PAIN would maybe reassure them. Instead, the Others seem genuinely troubled by what these “tests” tell them. More on this below.

• Sayid is branded here by the Others in a manner that for me recalls Juliet’s branding in Season 3. He’s marked as an “outsider” by the touch of the iron, albeit in a much different sense. That thematic thread runs through this episode.

• We get solid confirmation that the Others are protecting the castaways from Smokey, thanks to AldoOther. Kate’s ability to spot a decoy trail recalls both her tracking of Naomi and their initial rescue attempt of Claire.

• I like JustinOther. I’d like to see him stick around. He’s a regular Chatty Cathy compared to the rest of the Others, and the dynamic between he and Aldo is an amusing one. Unfortunately, the end of this episode suggests our time with surprisingly-likable JustinOther may have come to a close.

• Every show is made better with the addition of certain elements. Giant bags full of rocks definitely belongs on that list. Someone’s been setting booby-traps up in the jungle again ala Rousseau who, as Justin notes, has been dead for years.

Sayid: “They didn’t ask me any questions.”

• First potential Star Wars reference of the season? Lost has a fondness for Lucas’ space-opera (Michael and Jin = Solo and Chewie at the end of Season One), and once in a while it likes to slip an homage in. Sayid’s line recalls Solo’s line toward the end of Empire.

• Jack gets a great Badass Moment at the Temple, ordering the Others to step aside. It becomes less badass when I remember that the Others have been waiting for Jack to come and talk to them.

Lennon: “He’s…yeah, it’s…there’s not really a literal translation. The closest thing would be…‘infected.’”

• Now there’s a word we haven’t heard in awhile. Waaaay back in Season One, Rousseau told the castaways that her crew had become “infected” when they arrived on the Island. In Season 5, we saw that this “infection” turned Robert, Rousseau’s babydaddy, into a duplicitous would-be murderer. If Rousseau hadn’t removed his firing pin he would have killed his lover and his unborn child without apparent remorse or hesitation. Is that the same infection now threatening Sayid? It seems likely. Based on the ending of this episode, it looks as though we’ll get more first-hand info on this concept of infection before long. Apparently, all that torture stuff was a “diagnosis,” which is messed up. The Temple Master was clearly watching Sayid’s face when he burned him with the iron – what exactly did he see there that convinced him the man was “beyond saving”?

MORE AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!