Broken Frontier

How do you follow up a explosive two part premier? With a soild character development led flash-parallels and slow-drip reveals, that’s how.

While there were revelations galore in the two part premiere, the third hour of season six, “What Kate Does”, is not nearly as reveal driven as the first episodes were. The episode probably sets the blueprint for future season six Lost episodes in that it features character specific flash-parallels as well as the continuing 2007 island-timeline.

Like the title suggests, this episode is focused around Kate: her chase after the runaway Sawyer in the island-timeline, and her interaction with the oh-so-preggers Claire in the flash-parallel. The episode’s third storyline deals with the island-timeline castaways discovery of the others temple and the shocking resurrection of Sayid.

Like any show with Kate in the lead, there is a lot of running and chasing throughout this episode: Sawyer runs from the temple. Kate runs after. Kate runs from the others. Sawyer runs from Kate... You get the idea.  In the flash-parallel, Kate is on the lam from the cops after her airport getaway. Kate is back to her fend-for-myself ways, but she still finds time in her schedule for a girl-power road trip with Claire. After an exciting afternoon of adoption miscues, an Ethan “Goodspeed” cameo, lying to the Police and credit card fraud, Claire and Kate part ways. I’m really getting suspicious of how the could-have-been-castaways affect each others lives in ways similar to what happened on the island in the plane crash scenario.

The other island storyline features Jack, Sayid and the Others, this storyline concentrates on the overall lack of trust between the castaways and the Temple Others. We do finally learn the name of the Temple Others Japanese leader, Dogen, and he tell us that Sayid has been “chosen” and may become consumed by evil. This storyline is a bit slow moving and doesn't have any really unsuspected twists, just classic Lost trust issues.

The pieces are slowly falling into place on Lost, it’s a testament to the quality of the show that a fairly obvious episode like “What Kate Does” still radiates greatness. The big last second reveal at the end of the show is that there’s a new “crazy island lady” since Rousseau has died. The new crazy woman’s identity should not come as much of a surprise to the attentive viewer, but it will leave you thirsting for more, perhaps even more ravenously than last week. While not as satisfying overall as last week’s beefy two hour premiere, “What Kate Does” brings the big picture a little more in focus.