The Tail Section

LOST: I Do — The Perils of Kate (RECAP)

Lost News — November 9, 2006 at 4:46 pm by Brinson

“I Do” was, without question, one of the best episodes of LOST I have ever seen. Before you start slinging rocks at me, give me a chance to explain.

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If we were to examine this sociologically, I would be willing to bet that there is a common thread between old-school Star Wars fans, and the people who loved this episode; particularly ones who are old enough to have seen the first flick on it’s original run.

Star Wars is this crazy thing. If you ask people why it was so successful, they say things like “the visual effects”, “the music”, etc. etc. Only a few people like Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers nailed it out of the chute: it was the combination of the purest elements of hero mythology mixed with the impossible-peril formula of 30’s serials.

Impossible-peril is basically exactly what it says: nobody, but nobody, gets in this much trouble. The cinematic example that gets revisited over and over again is “The Perils of Pauline” which came out in 1914. The success of this serial was the completely unbelievable amount of dangerous situations this character found herself in and the Dickensesque “plot conveniences” that she escaped through. Why would something so unbelievable be so enjoyable? For the same reason sound in space and banking space-craft are enjoyable: they are too ridiculous to be dismissed. Things happen too fast, are cut too well, and there is such a staccato of plot redirections, that the idea that his much adventure could never manifest for one little group of characters doesn’t really have time to take hold. That is what George Lucas injected into the core of Star Wars, and that is what beats at the heart of LOST as well, and it came to the front last night.

Face it, if we were given just another weird, inexplicable paradigm shift, wouldn’t we all be chalking it up to “LOST” business as usual? Rather then give us what we expected, they left us where Louis J. Gasnier would have left us back in 1914, with our characters tied to a railroad track, steam engine barreling towards them, screaming for help as the iris constricted taunting us that we’d have to return at some future date to find out what happened. Did we really want another reality-shaking reveal? I’m with the gang that says no-more-mysteries, just keep the story moving forward.

As a final note before I dive into my blow-by-blow recap, while it was never officially said… watching the preview for the next episode it is obvious that is part one of a two part episode. It probably would have saved the producers a little in the public lashing department if ABC had marketed it that way, but clearly that is the case. Now on with the story.

“I Do” is Kate-centric. Flashback scenes are surprisingly sparse in the episode, and the thematic cross-over is basically that Kate’s romances are plagued by themes of imprisonment; both literal and psychological. We find Kate mid-fugitive, living in Florida under the name of Monica, Married to a police officer (played by “FireFly” alum Nathan Fillion), settling into the surreality of suburban house-wife. She calls the marshal at one point and asks him to stop chasing her. The marshal makes her a deal, if she can settle down… he’ll stop chasing her, indicating that he may know a little more about her than we do. This forces Kate to confront her inner conflicts. She breaks down crying at the negative result of a pregnancy test, it is a cathartic moment for her. She seems sad, but maybe that sadness is at the relief she felt when she saw the result. Shortly after she drugs her husband; confessing to him as he drifts away to barbiturate heaven both her fugitive status and the sense of bondage she feels trying to be the “good wife”. She loves him, but is full of regrets over trying to be what she is not. Kiddos and Taco night aint for Kate.

In real-time island, Jack goes over test results with Ben and Juliet. He tells Ben he has a week to live, Ben is naturally gung-ho to do the surgery. Jack tells him he isn’t going to do it. Ben is disappointed (yeah, right.)

We get a glimpse of the Pearl station party from last week covering up Eko. Locke blames the death on another bear. Locke informs Sayid that the monster killed Eko, which Sayid doesn’t seem to believe in for some reason. The writers have seemed to forgotten that in season one EVERYBODY saw the monster moving through the tree-line ripping up trees. I find it dubious they are trying to do some retroactive re-writes here. On the upside, Locke expressing to Sayid that the monster may be what brought them there is the punctuation mark to: Locke is definitely back!

The interesting reveals begin to circulate when Kate and Sawyer are brought to work breaking rocks. First, Alex shows up and attempts to rescue Kate and Sawyer, she tells Kate they will kill her boyfriend like they did Alex’s. (Carl?) Next is a scene with Juliet arriving and talking to Pickett. Pickett says it was supposed to be two weeks, Juliet says their schedule has been moved up. Pickett asks, “Because of her?”. Juliet replies “Because of him.”

She then takes Kate to see Jack. Kate tells Jack he must do the surgery or they will kill Sawyer. Jack is furious. It’s hard to say whether it is because Kate cares for Sawyer, or that he is being coerced. But either way; Doctor Jack is pissed and ejects Kate. We cut away to Ben watching this on the monitors. He has that look on his face that makes us say “what the hell does that look mean”. Disappointed? Angry? Or something else? I might as well tell you, my theory is that the tumor is a rouse.

Theory break: What Ben really wants is for Jack to change his perspective, just like he said. When Ben said “I don’t want you to save my life, I want you to want to save my life…” it was in the context of that perspective change. The island doesn’t want a shade of gray. When Yemi-Beast asked Eko to confess, it wanted his perception to change. It wanted to know that Eko knew what he did was bad. It could not handle the fact that Eko did what he did to survive. Flash-back to season one, Mr. Locke… two sides, one light, one dark. No gray. Ben is trying to redeem Jack, for some reason.

Eko’s burial is a little light. A nice cgi ray of sunshine stretches to his grave as Locke eulogizes, thanking Eko for restoring his faith. He places the Jesus-stick as Eko’s tombstone. The final interesting piece to this scene is Locke noting the inscription that has already caused some big time speculation “Lift your head and look north.” Clearly, Locke sees this as a sign.

Yes people, Skaters rejoice, they do it. After Sawyer tells her that there is no escape, she gives in. It’s an interesting bit of crossover with the flashback scenes that precede and following basically focusing on Kate’s submission to domestic life, and the evolving disdain for it. We don’t know if it is her fugitive status, or just her resistance to a bucolic life playing behind it. It is interesting though that these scenes are edited in this context. It makes those of us who enjoy reading between the lines wonder how sincere her love of Sawyer is. Is love born of captivity true?

Jack receives a mysterious message through his intercom: “Try the door.” Sure enough, it’s open. He finds a little armory closet, gets himself a gun, and proceeds down the hall where he finds the monitor room. He sees Kate laying in Sawyer’s arm and his surrender is palpable. I’ll foreshadow a bit here and say that his expression is more like “Oh well… at least she is happy…” than “HEY! That was mine!”, so when he turns to face Ben who taunts him over Kate’s choice, his outrage seems a little out of place (for good reason.)

He puts the gun on Ben and tells him he will do the surgery, but he wants off that island. Ben says “done”. Later, as the surgery commences, something very interesting happens. Pickett leaves with one of his henchmen and makes the comment that “Shepherd wasn’t even on Jacob’s list.” WHOA! Who is Jacob? The full low-down on my theory on that is here. In addition to that though, Jack is not one of the “good ones”? So that goes along with my bit of theorizing above, that the surgery, change of perspective, is all Ben’s way of trying to redeem Jack. From what, to whom, is the big question, right?

So the surgery seems to be going along fine when pulls out the biggest weapon he has to level the playing field. Ben’s heart rate increases, and his blood pressure starts to drop. Jack knocks out one of his assistants and calls down Mr. Friendly. Jack has cut Ben’s Kidney sac and Ben will bleed to death in one hour unless he saves him. If they want that to happen, they are going to let Kate (but not Sawyer) go.

Meanwhile, Pickett and Henchman are about to kill Sawyer when Mr. Friendly rings through and tells them to give the walkie talkie to Kate or Ben is going to die. Jack tells Kate to run, and says when it is safe he will radio her and ask her to tell him the story he told her when they first met. Interestingly enough, she refuses to leave without jack.

Sawyer still has a gun to his head, Jack is screaming at her to run, Ben’s heart rate is quickening… and we cut to black.

Sweet MURDER you say! Perhaps Carlton and Damon said it best when they said the success of this ending would be hinged on the level of outrage fans exhibit. Yes, some of you may be mad because you were expecting some patented LOST weirdness: Kate clones, maybe a living tumor that jumps out and does a tap dance, the entire world flickers like a video screen and all of a sudden they are standing on a frozen wasteland, the theories and proposals from fans were indeed very interesting. You might say they cheated us, because LOST has redefined through just these type of weird overtures what the cliff-hanger is. The fact of the matter is, they didn’t lie at all! They went straight back to the genius of Mr. Gasnier, and left us with three Paulines, each with their fates suspended in peril, while the blackness taunted us that we must wait to find out their fates. You call it cheat, I call it genius… either way, I bet most of us, (and maybe a few more), tune in thirteen weeks from now to find out what happened.

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