Ep 511 - "Whatever Happened, Happened," Thanks to Kate and Jack

The Tease

Aaron's story revealed! Ben's Fate is Sealed!! Kate's Errand for Sawyer is...Congealed!! (Ok, no more rhyming teases), all this, plus Hurley's theories on time travel, in the extra-trippy "Whatever Happened, Happened."

Flash…forward?

This episode focused on Kate, and solved her three biggest running mysteries - 1) What did Sawyer ask her to do before jumping out of the helicopter; 2) What happened to Aaron; and 3) What made Kate come back to the island?

2005

Kate drives up to a tract house, with baby Aaron in a car seat. She takes him out and sings, "Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket."

Aside Number 1 - if we didn't already know that Kate and Aaron would be separated one day, this would be the first clue - any parent in the Shephard/Littleton extended family who sings this song to a child seems to disappear from that child's life. See - Christian to baby Claire, Claire to Aaron, and even Ethan to Aaron in the creepy Others nursery.

The house belongs to Sawyer's former con victim/lover, and Kate's former partner in crime, Cassidey, who recognizes Kate from their Iowan escapades and Kate's Sixer fame. She can’t believe Kate survived the plane crash. Kate tells her – Sawyer sent me. She brings money, and tells Cassidey the story. "He told me where to find you, and said to take care of Clementine."

Aside Number 2 - first Kate mystery solved. Not that it was a huge surprise - there was only so much unfinished business left for Sawyer off-island, and caring for the daughter he never met was the only real possibility the show gave us. It's interesting to see in this episode how the Kate-Cassidey friendship grew, particularly since it was at the heart of the Kate-Jack breakup. It's also interesting to see that the one member of the Oceanic Six with the best track record for lying actually spilled the beans about what really happened almost immediately upon returning.

Cassidey asks why Kate trusted her, and Kate responds, "because I thought your daughter should know her father cared." (Project much, Kate?) Kate tells Cassidey about Sawyer’s heroics, but Cassidey thinks he was just being a coward, and running away from a possible "real" relationship with Kate, just like he did with Cassidey. (Project much, Cassidey?) Cassidey asks if Aaron is Sawyer’s. For the first time, Kate slips back into lie mode, claiming she was pregnant before the crash. Cassidey calls her on this, and gets Kate to admit Aaron's not her child, and Kate insists she has to lie for Aaron's sake.

2007

Back, for the fourth time this season, at Slip 23 in Long Beach, Kate leaves the Sun/ Ben confrontation, accusing Jack of pretending to care about Aaron. In the car, Aaron says he’s thirsty, and needs some milk. They go to a store, and Aaron says he wants a juice box. Kate ignores a cell phone call from Jack, but then looks up, and Aaron is gone. She sees him holding hands with a blond woman, who looks surprisingly like a fun-house mirror version of Claire.

Kate takes Aaron back to Cassidey's house, where they're greeted by Clementine, who calls her "Auntie Kate."

Aside Number 3 - Once we knew Cassidey and Clementine were the big secret, this was no real surprise - we'd already seen 2007-era Kate get "caught" on the phone with Cassidey by Jack, which led to his getting suspicious and acting jealous over Sawyer, which led to their breakup. Still, it's nice to see Lost's take on what would happen if Thelma and Louise survived and had kids.

Kate tells Cassidey she's planning to join Jack and return to the island, and about losing Aaron at the supermarket. "As scared as I was," says Kate, "I wasn’t surprised. All I could think was it was about time." Cassidey explains it’s because Kate took him. Kate rationalizes that Aaron was the one who needed her, but Cassidey explains she needed him to fill the void Sawyer left. (Seriously, Cassidey, enough with the projecting!)

At night, Kate goes to a hotel, to Claire’s mother. Kate confesses that Aaron is her grandson, and that Claire is alive. She tells her everything, about the lies, and about the other survivors.

Aside Number 4 - Given that Claire had disappeared before the island did, and the fact that three years have passed since Kate left, it might have been needlessly cruel to tell Mrs. Littleton that her presumed dead daughter was still alive, since Kate had no reason to assume that to be true. I'm just saying she should have chosen her words more carefully, so as not to give a grieving mother sudden hope that may then get dashed again.

Mrs. Littleton asks why they left Claire behind, and Kate explains she disappeared, and left the baby behind. "That’s when I started taking care of Aaron." She again rationalizes that she had to protect him, so she said he was hers. "Why did you lie," asks Aaron's grandmother, "and not come to me?" Kate finally admits, to herself as well as to Claire's mother, "because I needed him." Kate hands over a picture, and says Aaron's asleep two doors down. When she’s ready, he’s waiting for her. Kate says she told him she’s his grandmother, and that she's leaving Aaron with Mrs. Littleton to go back to find Claire. Kate cries over sleeping Aaron, then leaves, with a tearful, "good bye, my baby."

Aside Number 5 - and, mysteries 2 and 3 solved simultaneously. Guilt over having effectively snatched Aaron from Claire and left Claire behind got to Kate. So she left Aaron with his family - his real family - and returned to the island to find and rescue Claire, to reunite mother and child. The assumption, I think, had been that Kate, tired of Jack, needed to go back to Sawyer. At least Juliet should take heart that James was not the focus of Kate's sudden mission to return. Of course, given the speculation that Claire may have died and turned into an island-spirit thingamajig last season, Kate may find herself sadly disappointed.

For that matter, in light of the producers' claim that Emilie De Ravin (Claire) would not appear this season, but would return to the show next season, I toss out this query - does Claire make a better character when she's not actually around? Discuss...

1977

Picking up where we left off in "He's Our You," Jin is awakened by Phil's voice on the walkie talkie, announcing Sayid’s escape. Jin calls in and says Sayid attacked him and headed North. Jin rolls Ben over, and Ben moans, “please help.”

Aside Number 6 - even in light of the surprise attack, and the fact that Sayid obviously shot young Ben, I wonder if Jin was telling the truth here, or covering Sayid's escape. I think the former - after all, Jin has lived here for three years, and I see no compelling reason for him to try to help the guy he once spent part of 4 months with who just attacked him and shot a young boy.

At the barracks, Horace gives out instructions like it's a fire drill (well, there is an actual fire). Jack asks if Sayid was locked up, how did he start the fire? Horace, wondering why the new janitor is bothering to talk directly to him, says suspiciously, "somebody helped him, and it must have been one of us."

Roger asks Kate for help winching the once-burning van out of the building, since she’s from the motor pool. He senses she doesn’t know what she’s doing, and creepily bonds with her over their the fact that DHARMA got both of their skill sets wrong.

He introduces himself as Roger Linus, and Kate is a little taken aback. Jin runs over carrying Ben, and Roger, shocked out of his weird firtation, shouts, "that’s my kid!" Kate totally figures it out now - she's just met young Ben.

Aside Number 7 - please, please, please Damon and Carlton - don't have Kate eschew both Jack and Sawyer to end up with Roger. That would just be...wrong.

Sawyer is checking the security cameras for signs of Sayid when Kate comes to see him. She says she knows the kid was Ben, and Sayid shot him. Horace catches Kate in there, and she leaves before arousing too much suspicion. Horace, Jin, Miles and Phil go to the cell with Sawyer. They find a set of janitor's keys in the door, and realize there are only three people with such a set of keys on the island: Roger, Jack and somebody else. Sawyer has Miles put team Jack under house arrest to keep them away from prying eyes while he figures out his next move. Roger asks Sawyer who did this to Ben, and actually seems worried about Ben. Sawyer asks if Roger has his keys, and Roger discovers he doesn’t. Aside Number 8 - We never really got to see the Roger-Ben relationship between 1971 and the moments leading up to the purge. Did this episode actually help repair their bonds? Did Roger, fearing for the first time that he might lose Ben, actually start to care? If so, it makes Ben's act of patricide all the more revolting. On the other hand, Roger seems like the type who, after Ben (we assume) recovers, will come to blame the kid for making him feel worried and anxious over his health.

Juliet works to save Ben as Sawyer looks on. She can’t find the bleeding – she needs a real surgeon. James knows what he has to do.

Miles stands guard over the newcomers. Hurley watches his had to see if he’s disappearing like in Back to the Future. “You’re an idiot," groans Miles, "it doesn’t work like that.” Sayid, he explains, always shot Ben. "The good news is Linus didn’t die, so the kid can’t either." When asked what happens if he's wrong, Miles retorts, "if I’m wrong, we all stop existing, and nothing matters, does it?" Sawyer then comes for Jack, but Jack refuses to help. Kate stares in disbelief. “If you don’t come with me Jack," urges Sawyer, "that kid’s going to die.” “Then he dies,” says a defiant Jack.Aside Number 9 - What is Jack's problem here? For that matter, why is that Ben has now twice turned out to be a blind spot for Jack's hippocratic oath? More on Jack's petulance later...

Kate sees Sawyer go to explain to Roger what’s happening. She asks Jack what he’s doing. He says they can’t change what happened, and that he’s already done this once, and he did it for Kate (and, he suggests, her love for Sawyer). He doesn’t need to do it again. She points out the difference this time is that Ben's been shot because they came back. Jack muses that he's overcoming his old self's need to fix everything, and pulling a Lockian "let's let the island fix things." Kate says she liked the old Jack, who didn't sit around and wait for things to happen. Jack, like a spurned 14-year-old girl, retorts, " you didn’t like the old me, Kate." Kate storms out.

Aside Number 10 - It seems Jack wants to be John Locke in castaways version 2.0, sitting around waiting for a sign for what his purpose is. (Jeff Jensen's recap this week suggests Jack is actually acting like Sawyer did, though I'd like to point out that Jack is actually withholding aid from Ben, whereas Sawyer only let his fellow castaways think he was withholding aid from Shannon). The difference was, though, that Locke, for all his bumbling, saw everything on the island as a possible sign of why he was there, and took affirmative action, even if, in retrospect, his actions didn't make any sense. Jack - a surgeon, thrown back in time to a specific place in the island's history - sees a boy who needs a surgeon, and says he's not helping because the island has its own way of fixing things. Umm...maybe the island's way of fixing things is to pluck a surgeon from the future and bring him back in time?

Jack reminds me of the joke of the devoutly religious man who drowns in a flood after eschewing offers of resuce from a car, boat and helicopter, because he believed God would save him. The man goes to Heaven and asks God why he didn't send help, and God asks why the man ignored the car, boat and helicopter he sent. I have to agree with Kate - new Jack stinks.

Kate shows up at the infirmary and offers to donate blood (a big move in light of her pilot episode claim to be scared of blood). Kate tells Juliet, "if I understood why Jack does what he does, I wouldn’t be sitting here." Juliet asks if something happened off-island. Kate responds, "we were engaged, does that count?" Roger storms in. Kate gets Juliet to let him stay with her, to watch over Ben. Roger knows what happened to his keys. LaFleur asked what happened, but never asks questions he doesn’t know answers to. Roger laments that Ben did it because of him. Roger asks if Kate’s got kids, and she says "no."

Aside 11 - I wonder if, in Kate's mind this represents a lie, or her finally embracing the truth that Aaron is not her child. That said, he spent three years with Kate, and only 3-4 months with Claire, so who is Aaron's "real" mother?

Roger opens up, "I thought I was going to be the greatest father ever. Guess it didn’t work out that way. I tried to do what I thought she wanted me to do, but I guess a boy just needs his mother." The look on Kate's face is again ambivalent - did Aaron need her, or Claire? Or would either one be better than getting dumped on the grandmother who didn't know he existed? Ben goes into shock, and Roger gets shoed out.

Hurley still tries to figure the time travel thing out. Miles explains how all of this already happened, and time isn’t a straight line for them since Ben turned the wheel. Unlike young Ben, they can die, because they’re living in their own present, while Ben is in his past. Hurley asks why Ben didn’t remember getting shot by Sayid when he first got captured, and Miles can’t answer.

Aside 12 - I'll rant more about this later, but I was very unhappy with this exchange. Why would Miles and Hurley presume to know what Ben did and didn't know? Hurley here assumes that Ben - while already impaled with an arrow and yet still maintaining the lie that he was hapless ballooner Henry Gale - would have volunteered remembering Sayid. In a scene in which Miles was calling Hurley out on his silliness, I was even more annoyed that he couldn't see Hurley's mistake...

Juliet sends Roger to the medical station for supplies they don’t have there. Kate overhears the whole thing. Juliet tells Kate she can’t save him, but then realizes maybe there’s something the Others can do. Juliet and Kate wheel Ben out, and lift him into a van. Kate doesn’t want Juliet to come along, to screw things up for her and Sawyer with the DHARMA people. Juliet says she’ll give Kate as much head start as she can.

Kate drives out to the fence. Ben seems to be in even worse shape. He moans to tell his dad he’s sorry he stole his keys. Another van approaches. It’s Sawyer. She says she can’t let that kid die. "Dammit Freckles, I ain’t here to stop you. I’m here to help you." Sawyer turns off the fence, and says he's helping because, according to Juliet, no matter what he’s going to grow up to be, it’s wrong to let a kid die. "I’m doing it for her," James tells Kate, and maybe himself.
Aside 13 - bad news for Juliet - Sawyer just reverted to calling Kate "Freckles." And Kate just became the driving force in the first time Sawyer was willing to do something overtly anti-DHARMA. Sigh. I really liked Sawliet.

Juliet goes looking for Jack, and finds him coming out of the shower. Hurley and Miles clear out. (I Loved Miles's parting line to Hurley as they exit – "hey ask me more questions about time travel.") Juliet stares down Jack. "I needed you," she demands." She explains that it’s up to Sawyer and Kate, now. Jack pleads, "I came back to save you." "We didn’t need saving," insists Juliet. "We’ve been fine here for 3 years. You came back here for you." Jack re-rationalizes, "I came back, because I was supposed to." Juliet demands to know why, and Jack lamely responds, "I don’t know yet." "Well you better figure it out," she snorts. (Again, Jack, when presented with a situation your skill set is uniquely suited to...sigh.)

Kate offers to carry Ben for a while. She confronts James about his asking her to take care of Clementine, then tells him all about her, that she looks just like him when he smiles. "I bet you and Cassidey had a lot to talk about," says a self-important Sawyer. She tells him Cassidey’s theory about why he jumped from the helicopter. Sawyer laments, "you and me would have never worked out, Kate." ("Kate!" There's hope!) "I wasn’t any more fit to be your boyfriend than I was to be a father." Kate points out he seems to be doing fine with Juliet, and he says it's from growing up over the past three years.

Aside 14 - this is one of those missed opportunities on Lost that sometimes drives me nuts. I'm thinking this conversation would have an obvious time for Kate to say, "y'know, funny thing - back while Cassidey was pregnant, I met her in Iowa, and she helped me temporarily ellude capture by the marshall whose euthenasia you subsequently botched." Maybe, once you've been through two plane crashes, incarceration in a polar bear cage, slave labor, a disappearing island, impossible rescue at sea, baby-stealing and time travel, life's little coincidences don't seem all that interesting. But still, it would be cool for the characters to acknowledge their bizarre connections some time.

The Others suddenly appear, guns trained, and say their presence is a violation of the truce. Sawyer admits this, and says if they don’t want a war, they'll take them to Richard Alpert now. Under armed escort, Sawyer and Kate carry Ben through the jungle. In super-duper Han Solo fashion, Sawyer says to Kate, "don’t worry - we got ‘em right where we want ‘em." Richard emerges, and asks if the boy is Ben. Sawyer asks if they know each other, but Richard doesn't respond. Kate asks if he can save his life. "If I take him," says Richard, "he’s not ever going to be the same again. He’ll forget this ever happened, and his innocence will be gone. He will always be one of us. You still want me to take him?" Kate says yes. One of the Others warns Richard that he shouldn’t do this without asking Ellie. If Charles finds out…but Richard cuts him off, and says he doesn’t answer to either of them. Richard walks Ben off alone…to the Temple, and backs inside.

Aside 15 - I've had a few theories die hard during the series, but I'm particularly disappointed at the notion that Ben wouldn't remember Sayid shooting him. It seemed to make future Ben's use and abuse of Sayid seem like happy vengeance. I wonder how far Ben's lack of memory will extend. Surely he'll return to DHARMA at some point, since he's going to grow up there and be part of the purge. Won't he again encounter the 815ers? The notion that adult Ben's intimate knowledge of the survivors came from growing up with them around is kind of cool, and I hope we didn't just lose that entirely, unless Lost is going to give us something better in exchange.

Now, about Ellie and Charles. So it would appear that Widmore really was the Others' leader, but that he and Ms. Hawking had something of a number 1/ number 2 thing going on. She was the buffer between Charles and his people. Given that Ellie was still around, and it's already 1977, could this mean that Farraday was born on the island? For that matter, was Penny? Is Ellie her mom? Is Charles Farraday's father? Could Farraday's disappearance actually be a reunion with his born people? I hope we get to see more of 70s era Others society.

Just what is Richard's relationship to the Others? He always seems to be just off to the side of their current leader, and more than willing to incite a rebellion when he disagrees with whoever's in charge. Perhaps he should wear Jack's tattoo - the one that means, "he walks among us, but he isn't one of us."

Also, about the Temple...so something really seems to change about people who go in there. Rousseau's crew all changed so much that she felt she had to kill them. I'm thinking Cindy and the kids and the other abducted Tailies went in there, which is why they seamingly lost all interest in escaping their captivity. Temple conversion may also explain why some people didn't time travel with the Locke, Sawyer and company. Which begs the question, if going in the Temple makes you really an Other, was Juliet never brought there? If not, why not? Could it be to make sure she would travel back in time, to send Ben to the temple to save his life?

And one final thought on the 1977 events - it seems as though Jack thought, like Sayid, if young Ben died, he would not grow up to become the big bad we all know and love. Now it's clear - the island gave Jack the chance to change the future, but it would have been saving Ben that would have prevented his conversion. Jack's act of not saving Ben is what caused Ben to become an Other, for realsies. Trippy!

Epilogue - 2007
Ben awakens in the Hydra infirmary, and sees Locke sitting by his bed. "Hello, Ben," smiles John, "welcome back to the land of the living."

Aside 16 - When the man you recently murdered, and whose body you stored in a meat locker, says "welcome back to the land of the living" as you wake up from a blow to the head...you gotta wonder, right?

Anyway, that's all for this week. Next week, it appears we'll see what happened to Ben after slip 23, and why he came back to the island, in the ominously entitled, "Dead is Dead." Until then, Namaste!!