From the Field

The Outsider’s Guide to Lost’s Last Season: Episode Two

February 10th, 2010

The air outside is thick with snow and Chicago’s streets are layered with frosty berms of powdery white. Inside, the air is thick with tension. Sawyer is asking Kate about the Temple guards—”How many of them did you see?”—and it’s clear that he’s contemplating his odds. “I’m going to bust out of here,” he says, and he sets his teeth. A minute later he makes good on that promise, and thus begins another rousing episode of Lost’s last season!

Sawyer (or James, as Kate affectionately refers to him) is a rugged drifter with little apparent allegiance to the rest of his island companions. The stringy hair and squinty eyes convey a sense of paranoia and distrust, and I’m sure he smells faintly of booze and petulance when standing nearby. He is the prototypical Lone Wolf, and he barely gives the rest of the group so much as a nod before walking back out into the jungle after wresting the gun from a Temple guard:

The look on Stony-face’s face said it all: Thanks to the self-interest of Sawyer, they were all doomed (for unspoken reasons). Resigned to his powerlessness, Stony-face allows Kate and Jin to set off as a search party to track down Sawyer. They soon split ways (naturally), and the rest of the episode rolls on into a series of space-time flips between L.A. Kate and Island Kate. My narrative studies might be leading me a little astray, but I’m pretty sure that L.A. Kate and Island Kate are one and the same person, existing in parallel worlds or at different points along the space-time continuum. It’s still a mystery, but what I know for certain is that L.A. Kate is a murderess on the run who’s hampered by a heart of gold.

And her patience! My god, the store of patience this woman has for the pregnant blonde she unintentionally takes hostage and whisks away in a stolen taxi. The pregnant blonde turns out to be Claire, a character who apparently has some attachment to Island Kate, and she is positively helpless. She arrived from Australia scared, insecure, and alone, and she soon finds herself kicked from the cab when L.A. Kate suddenly remembers that she is, in fact, on the run from the law. Claire is left stranded at a bus stop while L.A. Kate drives to a tire shop and has her handcuffs graciously cut from her wrists by a helpful law-snubbing shop mechanic. And then, a twist: Kate’s heart of gold grows heavy at the sight of Claire’s baby clothes, and she soon returns to pick up the pregnant Claire and shuttle her to an adoptive family’s home—the baby, you see, is meant to be given to an American couple.

But then! A second twist: the adoptive American couple is no longer together! The lawless murderer and her pregnant companion arrive at the home to find an apologetic woman who effectively says:

To which Claire responds by immediately going into labor. Claire and Kate wave goodbye and speed on to the hospital in the stolen cab.

Enough action for a snowbound evening in Chicago? Well think again, because I haven’t even covered the torture session, a martial arts-enhanced Heimlich maneuver, and Jin caught in a bear trap. Shots ring out, Claire appears on a ridge, and the episode ends with her back on The Island. The world of Lost is nothing if not bewildering.

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