Lost: Running on Empty

True confessions time!

I was pretty excited about creating my own blog in 2007. Up until that time, I’d been using the blog feature on MySpace (anybody out there remember MySpace?!), but after seeing how cool some of my friends’ sites looked, my blog just seemed sad.

Anyway, I’d set everything up, but I got absolutely stuck on what to call the damn thing. Seriously, I stared at that “What do you want to call your blog” line for 20 consecutive minutes.

At the time, I’d been re-watching season 2 of “Lost”, more specifically the episode titled “What Kate Did”, which chronicled the original crime (blowing up her abusive stepfather — who actually turned out to be her biological father) that made her a fugitive. Due to a combination of frustration and lack of imagination, I decided to adapt that episode title to my blog and call it “What John Thinks.”

More than 700 entries (including this one) and almost three years later, the “What John Thinks” name has stuck around long enough for me to recap the episode of “Lost” that inspired my blog title. (Freaky time jumps are, apparently, NOT confined to this show.)

Well, not exactly. As you know, the latest episode of “Lost” is actually called “What Kate Does” and it chronicled Kate’s well-documented need to keep moving over the course of two separate realities.

This is the part of the recap where I apologize for the pompous and self-serving intro, but what can I say? It’s hard for me to really get into this column because I really didn’t care for this episode too much.

During the first few seasons of “Lost”, the Kate episodes were always my least favorite. It always felt to me like the show worked overtime to make her interesting and alluring to viewers. However, I’ve warmed to Kate (thanks in large part to exceptional work by Evangeline Lilly ) in recent years.

So I think seeing her in all her fugitive-y, not-quite season 1 glory made me feel (subconsciously?) annoyed with her all over again. I realize any episode following last week’s game-changing premiere was going to be somewhat of a letdown (and it was smart of the show to not even try to top “LA X”), but this ended up feeling a lot like a filler episode. When a show is in its last season, and has as many mysteries as “Lost” does, I don’t ever want to feel like I’m watching a filler episode.

Following last week’s premiere, it seems like the show will settle back down to its formula of featuring one character every hour. I’m a big fan of the flash-sideways twist, and I remain curious to see what the writers have in store for all the other characters in their Los Angeles lives, but I hope it’s a little more interesting than Kate’s story.

We picked up right where we left off this week with Kate carjacking the cab Claire was in, ordering her driver to run Arzt over (“I’m walkin’ here!”) before ditching Claire on the side of the road to get her handcuffs taken off by a friendly (and flirty) chop shop owner. Kate eventually picked Claire back up (God knows why Claire would get back into a car with a crazy carjacker) and drove her to the nice family who was supposed to adopt her baby. Turns out the prospective father had abandoned his wife, and she’d backed out on adopting Claire’s baby because she didn’t feel like she could do it alone. (I expected Claire to go, “Um, hello!?” while pointing at herself.) At that very moment, Claire went into (false) labor and was taken to a hospital and comforted by Kate/Joan Hart.

Now, I fully admit that I’m a victim of my own expectations here. I didn’t expect MAJOR deviations in the flash-sideways stories, but I definitely let myself hope for a cool twist – like maybe Claire not being pregnant. (I guess I’ll have to make do with Dr. Ethan Goodspeed ironically proclaiming that he didn’t want to stick Claire with a bunch of needles if he didn’t have to.)

Instead, what we got were a Sideways Kate and a Sideways Claire who bore little-to-no difference to the people we met after they crashed on the Island. I’m sure there are subtle differences (Kate’s wanted for murder, but maybe she didn’t kill her father this time; also Claire’s ultrasound said Oct. 2004, which is interesting since Oceanic 815 famously crashed in September of that year). More importantly, there were a few instances (Claire pulling the name Aaron out of thin air, Kate sorta recognizing Jack) that seemed to indicate the Sideways characters were recalling their Island lives. However, all this does is support the popular notion that the Sideways story is some sort of “what coulda been”, whereas the Island drama is what really happened. I liked it better when we didn’t really know which scenario was real and which represented “what coulda been.”

Still, Lilly did solid work in the episode, and, though she was never my favorite character, it’s great to have Emily de Ravin back on the show. In fact, Claire figured prominently into the most interesting part of this episode.

Back on the Island, the castaways were coping with Sayid’s resurrection. (LOVED the way he patiently told Hurley, “I am not a zombie.”) The Others coped with Sayid’s return with a painful test — administered by the mysterious Dogen — that wasn’t too far away from the punishment Sayid doled out to captors in his life as a torturer.

At first, I assumed the Others were somehow testing Sayid to make sure he wasn’t some sort of impersonator (ala Fake Locke/Smoke monster), and Dogen informed Sayid that he’d passed the test to see whether he was infected or not.

Since the Others are a bunch of lying liars who lie, it turned out that Sayid had actually failed his test with flying colors. Dogen tried to convince Jack to give Sayid a poison pill, insisting that it was medicine.

Now maybe it’s because I (unfortunately) see a lot of Jack in myself, but I’ve really enjoyed Matthew Fox’s character this year. When Kate insisted on going after a heartbroken Sawyer following his escape from the Temple, Jack didn’t get jealous or try to resist – he simply held Kate tenderly and wished her good luck.

When Jack seemed to become more of a Man of Faith last season, he (as he seems to do) dove in head first without checking to see how deep the water was. (Like single-mindedly pushing that Jughead plan.) This year, there appears to be more of a balance. For example, he probably could’ve been a sap after everything he’s been through and witnessed, and believed Dogen when he said that Sayid’s pill was medicine. A healthy dose of Jack’s stubbornness clicked in, causing him to call Dogen’s bluff (and nearly killing him). This Jack seems to be the best of both worlds. All he cares about is taking care of his castaway friends, but unlike old Jack, he’s not afraid to admit when he’s wrong or unsure of himself. (“I can’t trust myself.”) He didn’t even need Dogen’s little speech about being a leader last night.

I think Jack’s headed to a good place this season. I can’t say the same for Sawyer. Yesterday we learned that he’d intended on proposing to Juliet, and that he blamed himself for her death, making him the third person (along with Jack and Kate) to claim responsibility for her death. Josh Holloway is acting the hell out of Depressed Sawyer, but I’m selfishly hoping something happens that pulls the character out of the deep funk he’s in so he and Juliet can somehow have that coffee she referenced in the season premiere. As of right now, it’s looking like he’s going to be completely consumed by darkness.

Which is apparently what’s going to happen to Sayid if Dogen can’t find a way to kill him first. I suppose the most important development in the show’s mythology is that Sayid’s condition gave us a bit more insight into the sickness the show introduced way back in season 1 through Danielle Rosseau. I’m guessing most of us assumed Sayid had been reincarnated as some sort of version of Jacob last week, so it was interesting to learn that he actually appears to be the latest version of Claire (and, probably, Christian).

Speaking of someone being the new version of someone else, how are you liking Claire as the new Rosseau. (The accent, the griminess, that baby being taken away.) As I mentioned before, it’s good to have Emily de Ravin back in the mix (and it’s especially exciting to have her back in the mix on the Island), but I was mostly grateful that she took out Justin and the exceedingly annoying Aldo (who Kate had knocked out three years earlier).

Last week, I said that I was optimistic about the prospect of the Temple Others being different from the more Poser-y Others who chose to live in the Dharma barracks. Aldo’s existence (along with Dogen revealing that he was brought to the Island) pretty much blows that idea out of the water. Oh well.

What’d you think of this week’s episode? Does Dogen, in fact, have a sense of humor? (I think he does.) Finally, why won’t anyone ask Miles to tell them what Sayid said while he was “dead”?