Mommy Kate

Ben is in critical condition from the gunshot wound as everybody in the village runs in circles trying to figure out how to save him, save for one very stubborn doctor.  We also get some Kate flashbacks in this episode, where we find out exactly what happened with her and Aaron.  It’s all in this week’s Lost, after the jump.

Episode 11: Whatever Happened, Happened
Full Episode Online: ABC Official Site

Man down
Jin wakes up to the radio crackling. He picks up, and it’s Phil, asking him wehre he’s been.  He tells them Sayid attacked him, and then goes over to young Ben, turning him over to reveal the blood on his chest. Ben starts to say, “Please help.” Okay, so he’s not dead.  Predictable, but still kinda disappointing. Jin carries Ben back to the van and drives off into the night.  Back at the camp, Horace is blaming the fire in the van on Sayid. Jack steps out from the crowd and asks how it could have been Sayid’s fault, since he was in prison. Horace said he had an accomplice, and that it’s one of the people in the Dharma Initiative.  The group breaks up, and Kate goes over to help a dashing young man winch the truck out of the house. He asks her her name, and he introduces himself as Roger Linus.  Oooh, Linus?  Ben’s dad? “It’s nice to meet you, Roger,” Kate says.  Right then, Sayid drives up in the van with the wounded Ben in the back. He pulls Ben out and Roger runs over to him, saying, “That’s my kid!” He pulls him out of Jin’s arms.

Cassidy
Back on the mainland in flashback mode, Kate drives Aaron to a house, picking up and singing a soft lullaby as she carries him to the door.  The door opens and Katie says, “Hi, Cassidy.” “I never thought I’d see you again, what are you doing here?”  she asks. “Sawyer sent me,” Kate says solemnly.  She goes into the house and Cassidy flips open an envelope full of money, calling Sawyer a son of a bitch. Kate said that Sawyer told her to find her and ask her about Clementine.   Cassidy says she’s asleep, and that she can’t be woken up.  Cassidy tells Kate Sawyer didn’t jump from the copter because he was trying to do the right thing, but because he was trying to get away from her. “You don’t have to explain yourself, Kate. You got the same look on your face he did, when he ditched me.”  Kate is silent, and Sawyer asks her whose Aaron was. Kate says she was pregnant before she met him, silently sitting into a chair.  “That’s not your baby, is it?” Cassidy says. She asks Kate why she’s lying to him about Aaron since she told her the truth about everything else, and Kate’s only response is that “I have to.” Looks like this episode will focus on Kate and exactly why she came back to the island, and so far we’re off to a good start – maybe this will help bring some closure to the situation between her and Sawyer as well.

Who’s gonna save Ben?
On the island, Sawyer monitors the bay of cameras when Kate comes down to ask him what happened.  She says that the kid who was shot was Ben, and she wants to know what’s going on, but Sawyer says it’s too dangerous for them to be talking. Suddenly Horace and Jin and others come in, asking why she’s there. Sawyer dismisses Kate, explaining she was merely telling him if she saw anything suspicious.  They dismiss her, and Horace tells Sawyer about a new guy, Jack, who’s causing trouble.   Sawyer says he’ll talk to him, and brings Miles with, instructing him to grab up Hurley, Jack and Kate all into one house and keep them there.  Sawyer then walks over to Roger’s house to see how Ben’s doing, meeting Roger on the way in.  He asks Roger for his keys, and with a worried look, Roger says he doesn’t have them on him.  Thanking him, Sawyer goes in, and they’re operating bloodily on Ben, but it’s not going well. Juliet tells him they need a real surgeon, and Sawyer, determined, bangs out he door. Whoa, is Jack gonna save Ben a second time?

“Then he dies.”
Speaking of Jack, Miles is keeping Hurley, Kate, and the good Doc company, and he’s standing at the gun with a door.  Hurley is contemplating time travel out loud, muttering to himself, while Miles tells him that nothing can change – Ben was always shot by Sayid, they just never knew it. “The good news is that Linus didn’t die, so the kid can’t either,” Miles explains. Sawyer bangs into the room. “Doc, I need you to come with me.”  Jack asks where, and when Sawyer explains that Ben will die if nothing happens, Jack refuses.  Sawyer persists, telling him he’s their last hope. “Then he dies,” Jack says grimly, to the stunned silence of everyone in the room.  Later, the house is still quiet, and Kate asks Jack what he’s doing – he’s making sandwiches. “He’s just a boy, you can’t let him die!” “I already saved Benjamin Linus, and I did it for you, Kate,” Jack says.  “This is our fault. We brought Sayid back, we caused this!”  “Did you ever think that the island just wanted to fix things itself, and what if was just …getting in the way?”  Kate says she just wishes everything would go back to the way it was. Jack laughs harshly. “You didn’t like the old me, Kate.”

A father’s love
Back in the operating room, Juliet watches over the barely alive Ben. Into the room comes a nurse announcing Kate, who’s giving blood because she’s a universal donor. Juliet asks why Jack wouldn’t help Ben, and Kate says that if she understood why Jack does what he does she wouldn’t be here.  Roger bursts into the room and asks what’s happening with his kid. Juliette tries to dismiss him, but Roger won’t have it, and Kate offers to keep him company while Juliet attends to Ben.  “Thanks,” Roger says, after Juliette walks away.  “LaFleur asked me where my keys were. That man don’t ask any questions he don’t know the answer to,” Roger says. He reasons that Ben must have took them, then, to free the prisoner. He blames himself for it, and tells Kate he thought he was going to be the greatest father ever.  Ben’s mother died the day he was born, and Roger says he tried, but he guesses a boy just needs his mother.  Soon after Ben starts convulsing violently, and it starts to look even worse for him.

Questions
Hurley’s trying to figure out exactly how time travel works, and is driving Miles crazy. “If all this already happened to me, why don’t I remember any of it?”  “Because once Ben turned that wheel, time isn’t a straight line line anymore. The experiences of our past and future occurred in this past. Any of us can die. This is our present.”  Hurley continues questioning, running through a whole confused line of thought until he comes upon one worth mentioning: “If Sayid came back and tortured him, then why wouldn’t Ben remember getting shot by that same guy when he was a kid?”  Miles is stumped. “I hadn’t thought of that.”  Hurley sits back triumphantly, but still kinda confused.

Rebels
Juliet comes out of the operation room and tells Roger he needs to go get supplies. Roger thanks her and leaves, and Kate, who was sitting nearby, asks if Ben is any better. Juliet says he’s stable, but she can’t fix it.  “He is going to die. He is in a medical situation that is not resolvable,” Juliette says.  “We have to do something,” Kate says.  Juliet is silent, and Kate stare at her in shock.  “We can ask them. the Others,” Juliet answers. Ah-ha! So that’s how Ben gets involved with them! She and Kate carry Ben out on the stretcher and put him in the van discreetly, and Kate’s about to head off when Juliette says that she’s going to come with them.  Kate refuses, says Juliette has a whole life here; she can’t abandon it.  She’s about to leave, and Juliet says that when Sawyer asks her about where Ben went, she’ll have to tell him the truth, but she’ll give her as much of a head start as possible.

Broken heart
Kate has just stormed off from the meeting on the docks with Ben and a few of the Oceanic Six, and she takes Aaron to the store to get him a juicebox.  She gets a phone call from Jack, declines to answer, then turns around and notices Aaron is missing.  She asks around for him, but no one’s seen him.  She runs around the whole store, not finding him once, but then she sees a lady taking him to the customer service counter to make an announcement. Kate grabs Aaron up into her arms, on the verge of tears, clutching him to her chest as tight as she possibly can.  Soon after that she goes to visit Cassidy, telling her about how they’re all going back to the island. Cassidy thinks they’re all crazy, and Kate says Jack doesn’t think they were ever supposed to leave.  “I lost him,” Kate murmurs after a second of silence.  Cassidy asks what she means, and Kate explains about the experience at the supermarket, and how the only thing she could think was, “It’s about time.” “Why would I expect him to be taken?”  Kate asks.  Cassidy’s answer is simply, “Because you took him, Kate.”  Kate explains that Aaron needed her, because Claire was gone.  Cassidy’s answer is again, simply, “You need him.  Sawyer broke your heart; how else were you supposed to fix it?”

Saving a life
In 1977, Kate stops the car when Ben starts coughing in the backseat. “Tell my dad I’m sorry I stole his keys,” He manages to hack out.  Kate tells him he shouldn’t talk, and then sees another blue van driving up behind her. Inside is Sawyer, and he comes out of the car. “I knew you were gonna stop me, but I can’t just can’t let that kid die,” Kate says. “Dammit Freckles, I’m not here to stop you,” Sawyer sighs. “I’m here to help you.”  Kate can’t help but smile.  Sawyer disables the pylons, and as they’re about carry off Ben, Kate asks why he’s helping her.  He explains how Juliet told him everything.  “No matter what he’s going to grow up to be, it’s wrong to let a kid die. So, that’s why I’m doing this,” Sawyer explains.  “I’m doing it for her.”  He turns away and carries Ben off, followed closely by Kate, who looks crushed by Sawyer’s words. As they’re walking, Kate brings up Clementine, and how she took care of her. Sawyer asks what she’s like, and Kate says she’s beautiful and full of attitude.  “Bet you and Cassie had a lot to talk about,” Sawyer says, half-smiling.  Kate explains Cassidy’s reasons for Sawyer jumping out of the helicopter, and Sawyer says that, “You and I would have never worked out, Kate. I’m no more fit to be your boyfriend than I was that girl’s father,” he says. Suddenly shouts ring out from the bushes – they’re surrounded by Others at gunpoint, who tell them they’ve violated the truce. “We know,” Sawyer snaps. He explains how Ben was shot, and it’s both their problems, so unless he wants a war he better help them.

Jack and Juliet
Juliet bangs into the house where Miles is keeping Hurley, asking where Jack is.  She goes into bathroom where Jack is just finishing a shower Juliet says that she needed him, and he wasn’t there.  Jack explains how he refused because it was Ben, and Juliet points out that it’s not Ben yet; he’s just a kid.  She says that it’s up to Sawyer and Kate to finish it, and Jack asks what she means. She explains, and then says that Jack came to the island for himself.  “I came back because I was supposed to,” Jack says.  “Why were you supposed to?” “I don’t know,” Jack admits.  “Well, you better figure it out,” Juliet replies, immediately leaving.

Goodbye, Aaron
Kate knocks on Claire’s mom’s door, Carole, and tells her she’s “Kate Austen.” “I know who you are,” she says, inviting Kate in.  She tells her about Jack coming there the other night, saying something about someone named “Aaron” and then running off like the wind.  “He’s your grandson,” Kate says. “And Claire’s alive.”  Mrs. Littleton is shocked, and asks why they left Claire behind. Kate explains how Claire disappeared, and how they looked everywhere.  Kate says that when they were rescued, she knew Claire wanted the baby to be adopted, but she just couldn’t; she needed to protect him. “Why did you lie? Why didn’t you come to me in the first place?”  Carole asks.  “Because I needed him,” Kate says, tears trickling down her cheeks.  She hands her a picture of Aaron on a tire swing, and Kate says that he’s in her car asleep, and he’s ready whenever she is.  She told Aaron that she was his grandmother, and she explained to Aaron that she was leaving but would be back soon. “Where are you going?”  “I’m going to find your daughter,” Kate says.  Later, she’s saying goodbye to a sleeping Aaron, cradling her hands around his head, sobbing softly before giving him a last goodbye kiss on his forehead. Wow, powerful stuff between Kate and Aaron, it really deepens the connection between those two in ways we haven’t seen before, and makes us better understand why Kate guarded him so jealously.

Alpert’s Ultimatum
In the jungle, escorted by Others, Sawyer says sarcastically to Kate, “Got ‘em right where we want ‘em.”  Richard comes out of the bushes and asks if the boy in Sawyer’s arms is Ben. “You know him?” Sawyer asks, confused.  They tell him they need him to save Ben’s life.  Richard says that if he takes him, Ben will never be the same again – he’ll forget everything that’s happened, and his innocence will be gone. “He will always be one of us,” Richard says. “Do you still want me to take him?”  “Yes,” Kate says, and almost immediately Richard relieves Sawyer of Ben and carries him in his own arms. One of the men says to him in a low voice something about Ellie and Charles finding out, and Richard fires back, “I don’t answer to either of them.”  He stalks off into the jungle. “Where are you taking him?”  Kate asks.  Sawyer leads her away and towards the guards, while Richard carries Ben to a clearing where one of the temples is. Pressing his back up against the wall, he opens and door and his and Ben’s figures disappear into darkness, the door closing behind them.  Ben’s adult figure re-emerges from black, waking up in a bed, one lone and terribly familiar figure watching over him.  “Hello Ben,” John says. “Welcome to the land of the living.”

Review
Even though we didn’t get to see what would happen if Ben actually died, this episode did offer its fair share of twists and turns, and found time for some lightheartedness too.  For starters, the Juliet/Sawyer/Kate love triangle is starting to become much more interesting, as they clash with each other and it becomes more and more clear Sawyer isn’t acting like we’d expect him to be, that maybe he truly does love Juliet. Or it could all be just up and down antics for Sawyer and Kate’s eventual reunion. Aside from this, discovering exactly how Ben fell into the hands of the Others was fascinating, as was Jack’s refusal to save the boy’s life leading directly to this happening.  Hurley and Miles’s talks on time travel were amusing, too, and offered some much-needed humor to an otherwise cry-scene heavy Kate-centric episode. (It was about Aaron, what did you expect?)  Nevertheless, seeing Kate go through all this really brought us up to date with her, so her whole attitude on the island now makes a lot more sense.  And what’s with Alpert going into the temple??  He says he answers to a higher authority than Charles and Ellie – is he going to see Christian, or the smoke monster, or what?

-Thomas Anderson
aka MovieBuzzReviewDude. Check out his movie/media/pop culture blog here.