Locke bringing Ben something to eat in LOST: Eggtown(2008).
© ABC

Mania Grade: B+
Episode: Eggtown
Starring: Evangeline Lilly, Josh Holloway, Matthew Fox, Michael Emmerson, Elizabeth Mitchell,
Written By: Elizabeth Sarnoff, Gregory Nations
Directed By: Stephen Williams
Network: ABC

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LOST: Eggtown

This has really been a great season so far. Week to week, LOST hasn’t disappointed pushing the series back to the top of my list of best shows on TV. This week we get a flash forward for Kate, a look at small town living in the barracks, and another stinger ending. Sure, that ending was predictable but the more subtle aspect of it is really what’s important.

Last week, we learned that Kate had decided to stay at the barracks and it was assumed by Jack she did so for Sawyer. The truth is that Kate had another motivation for staying, to find out what the people on the freighter know about her. She moves in with Claire and Aaron rather than Sawyer and we get an almost idyllic scene of Kate and Claire having coffee on the front porch of their house. Kate needs to get the information she seeks from Miles and Locke’s not revealing where he’s hidden Miles. Locke says he’s not a dictator at one point but he definitely rules the roost in this little town Problem is he trusts Hurley, who can’t keep a secret, so Kate “Scooby Doo’s” him to learn where Miles is being kept. Miles agrees to tell Kate what she wants to know but first he needs a minute with Ben. So, bouncing around the barracks like a pinball, Kate seeks out Sawyer’s help to make that happen. The scene between the two of them over a box of DHARMA wine is pretty great, one of the best of the episode. Sawyer helps Kate, but he also works the plan so that Locke continues to trust him. I appreciated this decision because it’s consistent with his character. It would have been easy for Sawyer to just throw in with her regardless of the consequences but that’s more of a Jack thing. Sawyer’s instinct for survival at any cost overrides any decision he might make.

To her chagrin, Kate learns from Miles that the people on the freighter pretty much know everything about her. She also learns Miles’s motivation for desperately tracking down Ben, money. He tells Ben that he has one week to get him 3.2 million (Could he be any more specific about the dollar amount?) bucks and he’ll tell his boss that Ben is dead. There’s one of those conversations between the two of them that speaks volumes but says nothing. You know what I mean, like: “I know who you are and you know who I work for” and so on. Locke is a hard man to get along with. Kate gets paid back for her treachery by being banished from the barracks and Miles gets a grenade in his mouth. How long before the people in the town turn against Locke? Here’s something else, if the only reason Kate went to the barracks was to find out what the people on the freighter knew about her couldn’t she have found those answers from Charlotte or Daniel back on the beach? The plot motivations for getting Kate back in the barracks are obvious. We needed to hear her and Sawyer discuss her potential pregnancy. I wish we’d seen more conflict in her about where she needed to be so her trip to the barracks didn’t feel so much like a plot device. Maybe she’s checking out what it would be like to stay on the island in case the people on the freighter do know too much about her. In her mind, she’s considering living with Sawyer and the others versus going home and serving jail time. This makes sense but it’s not really touched upon in the episode. One interesting note is that Locke tells Miles that he’s “responsible for the well-being of the island” not the well-being of the people that are following him. Again, when will the “sheep” realize where Locke’s true loyalties are?

Not much really happens on the beach this week. The “way to long out of the picture” Jin and Sun get some screen time but what they say doesn’t have much bearing on the plot. They just discuss where they want to raise “their” baby after they leave the island and Jin reveals that he’s been learning English so they can live in America. The more important information is that the helicopter has been gone for over a day. When Charlotte finally calls the freighte,r she learns that the helicopter never made it to the freighter. This is another piece is the time gap puzzle that ties into the zinger at the end of the episode that comes as part of Kate’s flash-forward.

We’ve known for some time that Kate is one of the Oceanic Six but what we haven’t known is how it is that she seems to be walking around free as bird after all the crimes she’s committed. In this episode, we get that answer. It’s sort of an easy way out TV answer but it’s satisfying enough. This is one of those questions I just wanted out of the way so we could move on with out it being an issue so I’m glad to finally have the answer. One important moment came as Kate was leaving the courtroom and Jack was waiting for her. He wanted to “go for coffee” but Kate told him there would be no going for coffee until he could come over to see him (her previously referenced son). Apparently, there’s some guilt there and Jack’s not ready to take that step. In the courtroom, Jack also told a story about their only being eight survivors of the plane crash and two of them died while on the island. So, the question remains, what happened when the six get home? We’ve seen Jack carrying this guilt in other flash-forwards in previous episodes and while we now have a new layer we still aren’t any closer to the answer. We do however get the answer to who “he” is as referenced by Kate in a previously shown flash-forward that featured Jack and Kate. The he is in fact not Kate’s baby, its Aaron Claire’s child. I predicted this from a while back but what did surprise me in the closing seconds of the episode is just how old Aaron is.

Aaron’s advanced age, Daniel’s continued testing, and the missing helicopter are drawing us closer and closer to a truth about the time gap on the island. Days on the island, can apparently represent years in the real world. In court, we learn that Kate disappeared on the plane back in 2004 and if we are to assume the flash-forward is current then the castaways have been gone four years even though on the island only around a hundred days have passed. A much older Walt that appeared on the island last year also seems to play a part in this mystery and now we see Aaron who has aged a good bit too. 

This was a near perfect episode of LOST, with some answers and more questions. My only complaint is Kate’s choice to visit Miles. I think she could have easily gotten the information from Charlotte or Daniel without going back to the barracks. I did justify her decision, but I don’t think the writing of the episode justified it. We were left to assume why Kate made the choice she made and you know what they say about assuming….