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There's this science teacher, named Art, who I can't remember ever having seen before, but the lostaways all act like he's an old buddy all of sudden, so maybe Art is Rose's roommate now or something, and he spouts a lot of blather about winds and rain as a way of telling Mercutio that he should have been on his raft yesterday if he wants to go north towards a possible rescue, instead of south to Antarctica. And maybe their good buddy Art could have mentioned this YESTERDAY. But whatever, the lostaways are spurred into action to get the raft ready as soon as possible. And Kate fights with Sawyer about getting a spot on the raft, and Mercutio ends up poisoned (not fatally). And everyone assumes Sawyer did it, as you do, because he's the criminal, so he makes Kate tell everyone that she was the marshal's prisoner, which makes everyone give her the stink-eye, including a heroin addict/vigilante (Charlie) and an attempted murderer (Shannon). Only it was noted herbalist Sun who did the poisoning, except it was meant for Jin, in order to keep him on the island (although, to be fair to the Kate-haters, it does turn out to have been Kate's idea).
In the flashbacks, Kate the kon artist heads home to visit her dying (of cancer) mother, taking great pains not to get spotted by cops. She enlists the help of her ex-boyfriend Tom, who's now a doctor, and they go dig up a time capsule that they buried when they were young, dumb, and full of gum. The capsule holds Tom's toy plane, so we know he's toast. And sure enough, Kate gets spotted by the cops, and she flees. Tom accompanies her, despite her protests, and dies, either by bullet or by car accident (probably bullet).
Sayid and Jack and Locke argue about opening the hatch. And the hatch doesn't get opened, and the raft doesn't set sail. But after Locke touches Walt, Walt spookily tells him not to open it, despite apparently not knowing about the hatch. In the same spooky/soothsaying vibe, after coming clean to his father about burning the first raft and not wanting to leave the island, Walt now says they have to leave.
Are each of the three remaining episodes going to be five hours long? Because there's lots of shit they need to start wrapping up. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Holy shit, how much did I miss last week? Sun's garden has gotten amazingly out of hand, with what looks like acres upon acres of corn, growing row on row. And not only that, but somebody discovered a car? Or possibly we're jumping right into the flashback this week. A green convertible drives through our shot, from up above, and, judging by the hair, it's driven by a blonde woman or someone from the band Poison. The car parks, and the woman gets out and opens the trunk, which looks empty until she lifts up where the spare tire well, which holds instead several license plates from various states, which she has apparently taken the trouble to fasten down, since they are arranged rather neatly. She selects one, and gets to work removing the Alaska one from the back of her car.Behind her, a family checks out of a motel, which is right by a huge field, so maybe Kevin Costner built this right after the ball diamond. The cleaning woman wheels her tray of cleaning supplies down the walk, and after she goes into a room to make it up, Blondie strolls by (which means she took that plate off amazingly quickly), grabbing a couple of towels and some shampoo and darting into the just-vacated room, switching the "please make up as soon as possible" door-hanger over to the "please do not disturb" side.
Inside, Blondie -- and can I point out how annoying it is that the director has gone to such pains to avoid showing her face, when WE ALL KNOW it's Kate -- strips down to her bra and goes to work stripping the blonde from her hair, in a Janet Leigh-esque shower scene that doesn't end up with her getting stabbed. It ends with Blondie (now Brunettie) turning around so that we see that it's -- gasp -- actually Kate.
Kate walks into some hotel, I guess, and she's wearing these giant sunglasses that totally don't make her appear to have something to hide, and she tells the dude there that she's expecting a letter, "one for guest arrival" is what it sounds like she says, and she says her name is "Joan Hart" and the dude pulls out a box of letters and finds the one marked Joan Hart, and we get a quick shot of her new license plate, from Ohio, and you're like, "Why are you showing us this now?" and then you realize the state slogan is "The heart of it all," like, nice one, Kateser Soze.
Outside, Kate reads a letter that makes her cry a whole lot more than any letter has ever made me cry, especially one that also contained a bunch of twenty-dollar bills.
Kate's on the beach, playing with that toy plane that she killed a bunch of bank-robbing idiots to get, and if you were to ask yourself, "Who am I not in the mood to be annoyed by right now?" the answer would likely be Charlie, so that means you're out of luck, because he yells "platinum" from behind Kate, and he strolls up, unfortunately with his guitar strapped on, and he sits down and says he figures that Driveshaft's album sales probably spiked big time when everyone found out that he likely died in a catastrophic plane crash. He's so deluded. Is that really the reaction when someone from a one-hit wonder dies? Like, would you rush out looking for a Dexy's Midnight Runners album if that guy died in a plane crash? I'm guessing no. But Kate just indulges Charlie's fantasy of how insane it's going to be when he comes back. She takes this to mean he believes the raft will be successful. "Of course it'll work! Take a look at that thing! It's not a raft. They built a sodding boat!" says Charlie. And he blathers on about the rafters being picked up, then the helicopters coming, making them "eternally and ridiculously famous." In a surprising twist, Kate looks conflicted, which Charlie takes to mean that she doesn't want to be famous, and I guess Charlie's lone brain cell is completely preoccupied with plucking away on the guitar.
A commotion's brewing over at the raft, however, with some guy -- whom we haven't seen before, I don't think -- shouting at Mercutio. He's an older guy, kind of portly, and he looks dead familiar but I can't place him, so he's a Hey! It's That Guy!, but one in which I actually can't place, so I'm just going to say he was on Law & Order, or NYPD Blue, because, odds are. ["He was also one of Sam 'Tommy Lee Jones' Gerard's Deputy Marshals in the movie version of The Fugitive. The one who explains 'hinky,' towards the end." -- Sars]
Anyway, he's sarcastically saying that the rafters could wait three or four weeks before launching. "I was just assuming you didn't want to die," he says. Mercutio asks when would be a good time to launch, and this guy says three or four months. "Come on, even the weatherman on TV don't know what's gonna happen. Why are we listening to Art?" says Sawyer, in one of the more contrived information-conveying lines I've ever heard from the mouth of a character not nicknamed Potato Face. "Because I'm a doctor, and you're a hillbilly," says Ol' Buddy Art, making the most of the one episode he'll actually get lines in. "You're a damn high school science teacher," says Sawyer, like it's funny we've never heard of "Art" here before, even though as a man of science he probably would have proven himself useful before now. Jack says to let Art speak, and he says that it's been raining every afternoon (also news to us), which means it's the beginning of monsoon season. As he speaks, Sun strolls up so she and Jin can shoot painful looks at each other. "Monsoon season is bad," says Art helpfully. Then he says that right now the trade winds are blowing north, which is where the shipping lanes are, which is where they'll have a good shot at getting picked up. "When the monsoon season hits, the trade winds are going to shift to the south. The raft goes with the wind," he says. And in a line that nicely sounds exactly like something a high school teacher might say, he asks, "Can anyone tell me what is the only piece of land that's south of us?" Jack says it's Antarctica, which gets him a big ol' gold star. Mercutio asks when they should leave, then. "Yesterday," says Art, and he strolls off, and why nobody asks him why their ol' pal Art couldn't have mentioned this to them a LONG time ago is completely beyond me.
Kate moves from "conflicted" to "troubled." It's subtle, I know. Then she goes after Mercutio, who's striding purposefully up the beach. She quizzes him on whether he believes Art, and Mercutio isn't sure, but figures they shouldn't take the chance and is going to get loaded up ASAP. She asks him if he's got enough supplies, and he interrupts her blatant ingratiation to ask why the sudden interest in the raft. "Because I'm coming with you," she says. Mercutio has this look on his face like it never until now occurred to him that more people might want to hitch a ride than he's actually got room for. Commercials.
You know, just the other day I was chewing some gum and thinking that the one thing it needed was more "xylotol," so thank God for Trident.
Mercutio's telling Kate tough luck, since there's four of them on the raft, and that's it. Kate's all incredulous, including Sawyer? Mercutio says that Sawyer had stuff they needed, so he bought his way onto the raft. Kate says that Sawyer doesn't know anything about boats, unlike her, who spent two summers crewing J-boats. She even tries pointing out that the deal Mercutio made was for the first raft, which burned, but Mercutio doesn't want to argue semantics. Tough noogies, Kate. And then she tries acting all surprised that Mercutio's taking his son, what with how dangerous it is. As opposed to, I suppose, leaving him without his father on the worry-free island. Anyway, it's the wrong tack to take with Mercutio, who snaps that he'll decide what's best for his boy. In this case, that means getting off the island.
Flashback. Kate's carrying a huge bouquet of flowers, which let's all assume she stole, through a hospital corridor. She looks more made up than she does on the island (makes sense, I'll admit), and I have to say I much prefer the freckled-faced "natural look" of Island Kate, but that's neither here nor there. She tells the woman at the desk that she has a delivery for "Diane Janzen," and the woman says Diane just came up from ICU and gives Kate (with the audio not matching up to the video at all) directions to her room. Kate's all smiles going around the corner, at least until she sees a state trooper sitting on a chair in the hallway, presumably outside Diana's room. She shifts the bouquet of flowers so that it blocks her face from the trooper's view and strolls on by the trooper. So the police are looking for Kate? In that case, why not have a couple of plainclothes cops in the hospital? Why scare her away from this person's room? And if this cop is supposedly here because of the possibility of Kate showing up, why is he not checking out the people in the hallway, especially a woman of Kate's build who has a bouquet of flowers suspiciously hiding her face?
So when I saw Mackenzie Astin's name in the credits, I freaked somewhat, worried that I was going to have to deal with two annoying hobbits this week, but then I remembered that that was Mackenzie's brother Sean. Anyway, Mackenzie appears to be a doctor at the hospital, and he gets into his car in the parking lot, and his car happens to have a Kate in the back seat. He's startled but seems pleasantly surprised, calling her "Katie." He asks what she's doing there, and she tells him (his name is Tom) that Diane's dying of cancer, and Kate felt she owed it to her to come back. "I heard," he says. "I'm sorry." She says she is too. He then asks if there's any particular reason she's hanging out in the backseat of his car, and she tells him she needs his help. I think some sweet smiling and batted eyelashes are upcoming.
Back on the island, Sun comes up to Jin, who's working on the raft and asks if he's going. He doesn't respond. "Please, Jin, talk to me," she says. So he pauses for a moment and tells her that he is, indeed, going. Dude can hold a grudge, can't he? Sun sadly (yet sexily!) walks away.
Jack's following Sayid through the jungle, bitching all the way, since Sayid hasn't told Jack where they're going, and Sayid says he felt it's better if Jack sees it (the hatch, I'm presuming) for himself. Not surprisingly, Jack doesn't agree, and says he's turning around and going back right now if Sayid doesn't tell him where they're going. Just then Locke pops up, to say that he asked Sayid not tell Jack what was up, because he wanted Jack to keep an open mind. "Open mind about what?" says Jack, but Locke just points through the trees, and the three of them continue on to the hatch excavation site. Jack's stunned. "My god. What is this thing?" Locke: "Exactly. I guess it's time we talked about that." Locke's all smiles, and you'd think that, considering everything that's gone on with Locke lately, he'd be just a titch less smirky.
Back at the raft construction site, Sawyer's asking Mercutio why Jin's packing a bunch of fish if they're heading out onto the ocean. "We can't catch fish?" asks Sawyer. Mercutio asks if Sawyer knows anything at all about surviving on the ocean. Sawyer's a little taken aback before asking if Mercutio himself does. Mercutio's response is that it doesn't matter, since he built the damn raft. Then he says maybe Sawyer's not the best person to go out onto the ocean with. "You're going to vote me off, Mickey?" asks Sawyer. Mercutio doesn't say anything, so Sawyer follows up: "And who the hell's gonna take my place?"
Why, it's Kate! She's burning the picture in a passport beyond any recognition when Sawyer stomps up, demanding to know what the hell she thinks she's doing. She smiles all innocently and says, "Sorry?" and he growls at her not to turn the "'oh, golly' eyes" on him. He says Mercutio told him she was jockeying for Sawyer's spot on the raft. She gets up to leave and says she was just asking questions; Mercutio must have misunderstood. Sawyer, though, ain't havin' it: he grabs her arm and hisses that he knows what she's up to, just like he knows why she wanted the Haliburton case, that she was the prisoner the U.S. Marshal was escorting. "Let go of me," she says, and shakes herself free. "Your only chance of running's getting on that raft, ain't it?" he calls after her, theorizing that after the rafters get picked up and rescuers come for the rest of them on the island, there's going to be a big ol' asterisk (which he pronounces "asterick") to her name. Is this a steroid thing, or is it because Kate played more games in a season than the Babe did? Sawyer tells Kate that her secret is safe with him, but there's no way she's taking his place on the raft. He turns to leave, but her anger turns to a smirk. "Hey Sawyer. I want your spot? I'll get your spot." Sawyer watches her leave, which really isn't the least enjoyable activity ever.
Back at the accelerated raft construction site, Walt tosses his dad a bottle of water, then sits down and asks Mercutio what he and Sawyer were arguing about. "Told him something he didn't want to hear," says Mercutio, sitting down to him. "Why does he want to get on the raft so much?" asks Walt, and Mercutio tells him it's because Sawyer knows it's going to work. Walt wants to make sure that once they get rescued, they'll come back for the rest of the lostaways. Mercutio, who a moment ago had no problem promising his son that they were going to be rescued, then warns Walt that it might be hard to find the island again, though he assures him that they will look. "But there's no guarantees. That's why you and me --" but we never get to hear the end of that sentence, because Mercutio suddenly starts grunting and wincing and clutching his stomach, crumpling to the ground. Walt starts shouting, and Mercutio stops puking long enough to tell his son to go get Jack. Commercials.
Turns out Walt was also born to run, as he's tearing through the jungle, coming upon Sun (note: she's holding a water bottle just like Mercutio's) and Kate, who want to know what the problem is. Walt explains that it's his dad. "His stomach is really bad." Sun's eyes widen slightly. Kate tells her to take Walt back to Mercutio while she fetches Jack. Only after she goes running off that she doesn't seem to know where he actually is, and decides that coming to a halt and screeching "Jack!" while the camera spins around her is the best option available to her at the moment.
The hatch. Jack wants to know how long Locke has known about it, and Locke says about three weeks. "You been out here for three weeks, digging this thing up, and you never told me about it," says Jack. "All due respect, Jack, but since when do I report to you?" says Locke. Good question. Jack shoots back with, "All due respect, John, but you lied." Sayid, taking this all in, looks at Locke like, "Oooh, snap." Locke asks how long Jack had the case of guns before the rest of them needed to know. "You used your best discretion, I used mine," says Locke. Jack's got no answer to that one, so he finally just asks how they get it open. This sets Sayid a-spazzin', surprised that Jack wants to open it. "I brought you here to talk him out of this insanity! Anything could be inside," he says, and Jack shrugs and says best-case scenario, there are supplies. Worst case, it's a shelter. Sayid says he can think of worse cases than that, and points out that there's no handle anywhere visible. "Could the reason for that be more obvious?" I'm wondering if he's going for something specific until he says, "Maybe it was never meant to be opened from the outside."
The trio are on their way back when they hear Kate's urgent shouting. She meets up with them, and tells Jack something's wrong with Michael, and everybody starts running back.
On the beach, Jack quizzes an agonized Mercutio on what he's eaten that day (fruit and fish), if he's drinking enough water (two or three bottles), and where he got that water (the caves, like everyone else). Jack tells him to stay in the shade and not move so much. Mercutio tries to get up, since he needs to get the raft ready to launch tomorrow. Jack says he knows, but insists Mercutio lie down. Kate, Sun, and Walt prepare to take over the ongoing caregiver role, and we zoom in on Kate as we get ready for another flashback.
She's in Tom's kitchen, looking at pictures of the man and his young family, while Tom's on the phone with "Adam," either looking to score some weed or to get some time with the MRI machine as a favour for a friend of friend. Probably the latter; the former might have been me, looking for something to take the edge off the growing annoyance of this show going nowhere. Tom gets off the phone, notices Kate looking at the photo of him holding his young son. "His name's Conner," he tells her, and Conner will be 22 months week. Kate says he's beautiful, which Tom attributes to Rachel. "Where is she?" asks Kate, even if the top she's wearing might cause Tom to answer, "Where is who?" Instead, he says Rachel's visiting her folks in Cedar Rapids and gets back on Sunday.
He tells her he got Diane in for an MRI at 5 AM, which means they have three hours to kill. "Tom --" says Kate, and Tom cuts her off by saying, "You're welcome," and Kate makes this face like, "Oh, yeah, that wasn't what I was going to say, but I'll let him think that." After a length of time appropriate for silent gratitude, Kate asks if Tom thinks "it's still there." He asks if what's still there. "You know what," she says, coolly. Tom looks like he'd really rather not be discussing whatever this is with the beautiful woman from his past in his home while his wife's away, and lamely offers that it's the middle of the night. Kate says this might be their only chance.
That appears to work, because thing we see is Tom's pulling his car up under this huge-ass tree while longhorns go stampeding by in the background. And this tree is apparently either the same tree from Carnivale or just like some tree from Carnivale, which I wouldn't know since I don't watch that show. I tried to like it, and I was intrigued at first, but I eventually had to cut that one loose under the I Don't Have To Watch It Just Because It's HBO legislation that I approved a year or two ago (and you watch yourself, Six Feet Under, as you're about a dream sequence and a melodramatic screaming match away from qualifying). Tom looks around all paranoid as he opens his trunk and gets out a shovel. Meanwhile, Kate marks off six paces from the tree trunk, and they get to work digging. Because if Lost needs anything, it's more digging.
Back on the island, Jack and Locke are striding across the beach, and Locke's wondering if Mercutio's illness was heatstroke, but Jack says Mercutio would have felt that coming on. It's not bad fruit or fish, because Mercutio and Jin are on the same diet, and Jin's fine. Jack finds the cooler with the empty water bottles, and says that whatever felled Mercutio had to have metabolized quickly. "So you think it was the water," says Locke. Jack picks out a particular water bottle and shows it to Locke. "I don't think it was the water. It was something in the water," he says, and sure enough, at the bottom of the bottle is some sort of white residue. Commercials.
Jack asks Mercutio how he's doing, and Mercutio says the cramps are going down, so long as he doesn't move or breathe. Mercutio sees Locke over by the raft, talking to Hurley. "You and Locke kiss and make up?" he says. Jack shakes his head. "Good," says Mercutio, sitting up. He moves to take a swig of the water, but Jack stops him, handing him his own. After about five hours, Mercutio figures it out. "Someone did this to me?" he says. Jack says he isn't sure. Mercutio, however, is more than ready to jump to conclusions. "Sawyer," he says. But as my coach always taught me, when you make an "assumption," you look like an "ass" and the "ump" will "tion" you.
Meanwhile, Inspector Locke is quizzing Hurley. And I love Hurley, but dude could stand to enunciate a little more clearly, you know? It sounds like he's saying, "I know he bambooed you, but yeah, Sawyer was helping me fill the water." I think that's right, but it took multiple viewings to get it, because the crappy old television I'm currently doing this on doesn't have closed captioning. Locke asks Hurley if Mercutio and Jin are getting along, and Hurley says they fight like a married couple building a raft together, which I guess means that Jin is giving Mercutio the silent treatment just like he does with his actual wife.
Jack strolls up, and Locke asks if Jack told Mercutio (about the poisoning). "We think Sawyer mighta done it," says Jack. "Oh, 'cause of Kate?" asks Hurley, but Jack and Locke don't know what he means. "Yeah, I guess she wants on the raft. And Sawyer went off on Mercutio because he gets to decide who goes." Then Hurley, sounding more curious than anything, asks if they think Kate did it. Locke's totally going for the "Poison? Who said anything about poison?" playing-dumb-to-trap-the-suspect interrogation thing, and asks why Hurley would suggest Kate did it. Hurley says, "Well, you know, the whole fugitive thing." Locke's puzzled, while Jack looks away all "awkward!" Hurley looks over at Jack and surmises that Locke doesn't know. Finding out that's so, Hurley gets pissed. "Well how'm I supposed to keep straight who knows what over here? I mean, Steve didn't know about the polar bear!" Heh. Locke ignores this, though, to ask Jack what Kate did. Jack, all Mr. Tough Guy, suggests that Locke can go ask her. Then Locke's pointing out that Jack knew something that he declined to share with the rest of the island, so Jack reminds him of the "discretion" thing, which doesn't work quite so well, since Jack was the first one to get holier than thou over keeping secrets.
Charlie's still got that damn guitar strapped on, and he's playing songs and moving around and just generally annoying Claire, who's trying to either pick nits out of his hair or cut his hair, like how great would it be if Claire "accidentally" stabbed Charlie in the back of the head, thus thwarting any Driveshaft renaissance. "I'm writing again! I'm really feeling it as well!" he says, and he asks Claire what she plans to do when they get rescued, and she says that she hasn't thought about it, and he says she and "Turnip Head" can stay with him, like that's so nice of him, but it's probably making Claire pray that they are never found. But she thanks him, and he says, "Smashing," and then he says the song he's playing now will be track two, and it's called, "Monster Eats the Pilot," and I guess this is supposed to be funny or something, but I can't say that if I were stranded on this fucked-up island and an actual MONSTER had actually eaten the pilot that I'd be writing songs about it, unless maybe perhaps I was Elliott Smith. And since the best song I ever wrote rhymed "futon" with "Yukon," I am clearly no Elliott Smith.
Kate strolls into Jack's operating cave, and she asks him how Mercutio's doing, and Jack says he's going to be fine. And then there's indiscreet, there's rude, and then there's Kate asking if someone's going to be taking Mercutio's place on the raft. Jack interrupts her to ask if she poisoned Mercutio. She's shocked. Shocked! She waits a moment before saying anything, and when she finally speaks, this is what she says: "Do you really think I'm capable of that?" Not really the toughest question in the world to answer, if you ask me. But she asked Jack, who thinks about it before making a shruggy face and saying, "I don't know what you're capable of." Kate's killed people; Jack knows that she says she killed the man she loved, and although he doesn't necessarily know the details, he knows she was under armed escort by a federal marshal. But mainly, he KNOWS THAT SHE RECENTLY DRUGGED HIM, so when he says he doesn't know what she's capable of, let's assume that he means he doesn't know the upper limit of what she's capable of, because she's certainly capable of and experienced in DRUGGING PEOPLE. I mean, good GOD. So she looks all hurt, like, give me a break with the wounded puppy look, Kate, and she turns around and stomps off into a flashback.
Kate's still digging in the ground, and Tom comes up with a couple of beers, like any excuse for a party for Tom. And Kate can't believe he brought beer, but Tom says no self-respecting Iowa man goes anywhere without beer, and if that's some kind of Iowan stereotype it's news to me, and furthermore what is up with this show's depictions of doctors, like can there be one doctor on this show who isn't an alcoholic? And Kate and Tom chug their beers that apparently induce Straight Talking and Buried Object Finding, because Tom sits on the hood of the car and tells Kate that it's not fair, her coming home. And all she says is she knows, and she gets back to digging. And she hits paydirt almost immediately, and looks up at Tom all ecstatic. She reaches down, and it appears that striking the item with her shovel completely dislodged it from the earth, because all she has to do is brush a little dirt off and she pulls right out of the ground a small rectangular box. She's thrilled. Tom looks a little more conflicted, though, and Kate catches his look and tempers her enthusiasm a little bit.
As they lean against the car and brush more dirt off, we see that it's a New Kids on the Block lunchbox. And of all the logic-defying aspects of this show that we're expected to swallow, there are some things some viewers just refuse to believe, and one of those things is, apparently, that a lunchbox from the '80s could have been out of metal instead of plastic. Anyway, inside is a red baseball cap that makes both of them say "wow," like I guess baseball caps don't exist anymore. Also inside? Tom's plane, which he says he can't believe he let Kate talk him into burying, but she says it was his idea. He flies the plane around with his hand a little bit, like WE SEE THE DAMN PLANE ALREADY, WE KNOW TOM SOMEHOW WINDS UP DEAD, LET'S MOVE ON. There's an audio cassette in there, and Kate says, "Kate and Tom, 1989." If you guys see my Martika tape, pass it along, 'kay?
So they sit in the car and listen to the tape (which was recorded August fifteenth, or 8-15, in another appearance of that number). Young Kate Austin mocks young Tom Brennan for putting his "stupid" plane in the time capsule, and Tom defends his plane by explaining that he got it when he got to go to Boston by himself. And young Kate sarcastically says, "Oooh, that is cool, just like this time capsule!" like nice portrait of the con artist as a young bitch here, and apparently Kate has always been this way. Young Tom says it'll be cool to dig up the time capsule 20 years from now. Young Kate wants to know how he knows they'll still be together. "'Cause we'll be married. You'll be a mom, and we'll have nine kids," which is certainly what boys young Tom's age spend all their time thinking about, and young Kate laughs and says she doesn't think so, and says that when she gets her license they should just get a car and run away. "You always want to run away," says young Tom, and young Kate reminds him he knows why, and young Tom says yeah. Meanwhile, the flashback Kate and Tom no longer seem to be enjoying the incredibly depressing time capsule tape with its implications of hurt and pain and possible molestation lingering beneath the surface. "Funny how things turn out," says Tom, and Kate agrees, although neither seem to find things super-hilarious. They look at each other, and then lean in for the inevitable tonsil hockey, which is even more tender than the time Kate kissed Sawyer. They break, neither of them looking particularly proud of what they've just done. Kate apologizes, and Tom just says that they should get to the hospital. Kate agrees, and they drive off.
Locke's in the jungle, scraping out a coconut to make some sort of paste that he's slathering on his leg wound, and Walt strolls up and asks him what he's doing, and Locke explains, and it all sounds very small-talky, and Locke just outright asks if there's something Walt wants to tell him. "I didn't do it," says Walt. "Didn't do what?" says Locke. Walt says he heard that Jack thinks someone made his dad sick, but he didn't do it. Locke contrivedly asks if Walt thought that because Locke knows Walt set fire to the first raft, that he thinks Walt's the one who poisoned his dad. Have to admit, the thought crossed my mind. Locke, squatting in front of Walt, explains that they're friends, and Locke didn't tell on Walt before and he's not going to tell on him now. Taking Walt's wrist, Locke says he knows Walt wouldn't do anything to hurt his dad. Walt seems visibly frightened by Locke's touch, but not really in a "Bad touch! Tell an adult!" kind of way. He shakes his arm free and Locke asks what the matter is. "Don't open it! Don't open it, Mr. Locke! Don't open that thing!" says Walt. "What thing?" asks Locke. "Just don't open it!" says Walt, who runs away. Locke glares after him, like, damn, how many people did Sayid tell anyway?
On the beach, Mercutio's still taking it easy, and that notoriously lazy bastard Jin is relaxing too. Sawyer tosses Mercutio a bottle of Pepto Bismol, since they can't have their "pilot out of commission." Mercutio looks at Sawyer like he can't believe the nerve, and asks him if he's feeling guilty. Sawyer's confused. "You're off the raft," says Mercutio, tossing the bottle away, and I'd just like to interject that Pepto Bismol deserves some kind of criminal charges for their mind-blowingly annoying diarrhea Macarena commercial. "We had a deal!" snarls Sawyer, and Mercutio says the deal was voided when Sawyer tried to poison him, a scurrilous charge that Sawyer denies. "You said you needed four!" says Sawyer, and Mercutio says he has four. "You've been stealing stuff off of dead bodies, keeping it for yourself, using it to buy favours...you're a liar and a criminal, and I'm not letting you near my boy!" Would it be mean-spirited of me to point out to Mercutio that all of this was true even before he got poisoned? Nice try, pal. Meanwhile, Jin's looking at Sawyer like, is this true? Either that, or he's desperately wishing he was speaking to his wife so she could translate what the crazy round eyes are yelling at each other. "I'm a criminal, huh? I poisoned you because I'm a criminal?" He moves towards Mercutio, but Jin pushes him back, so Sawyer calls him "boy," so I guess Sawyer is one Southern redneck who gets his racial epithets mixed up.
Conveniently, Kate is right nearby, so Sawyer stomps on over to her and growls that he had no idea she wanted on the raft so badly, and he grabs her by the arm and drags her over to Mercutio so they can set things straight. Meanwhile, a crowd is gathering. Well, right now it's just Charlie and Hurley, but that counts. "Tell him!" says Sawyer, and Kate doesn't say anything, so Sawyer grabs her backpack and dumps everything on the ground. Kate tries to stop him as he goes for the passport, but he snags it and asks the growing crowd of gawkers if they remember Joanna, the one who drowned, and wonders what Kate's doing with her identification. Mercutio takes the passport to examine it. "Could it be she'd do just about anything to get on that raft?" says Sawyer. "So she could get herself rescued? Run off with a new identity before half the reporters in the world descend on this damn island? She might even poison the captain himself..." and at this point Kate interrupts Sawyer's increasingly irritating speechifying with a "shut up." And as everyone looks at poor, forlorn Kate, Sawyer says she doesn't care about anyone but herself, which, I mean, coming from Sawyer...anyway, flashback.
Diane's being wheeled into the MRI room by Tom and another doctor or intern or whatever, who takes off after Tom thanks him. Kate comes out from hiding in the MRI room, and Tom says he'll be right nearby in the office.
So Kate takes about five hours to make her way over to the bed, where she says, with much trepidation, "Hi, Mom." "Mom" looks like hell, lying back with her eyes closed. "Can you hear me?" asks Kate. Diane's eyes flutter open, and she weakly grunts, before looking at Kate, her eyes finally focusing. Kate's face half crumples, but she does her best to keep her shit together, and takes her mom's hand. "It's me, Kate," she says, smiling when her mom appears to recognize her. "Katherine?" her mom says, a couple of times, but doesn't seem to have the strength for anything more that. Kate just about breaks down, and she apologizes for everything she's put her mom through. Her mom doesn't say much to this, just watches as Kate starts crying. Turns out Evangeline has better range than I give her credit for. And then, it all goes to shit, because Diane's eyes widen in recognition, with not a little fear thrown in there, and despite Kate trying to soothe her, starts yelling for help. I fail to be moved by this, mainly because this is how my mom reacted the one time I forgot to call her on Mother's Day. So either this is a good Catholic mother's guilt trip or Kate's mom is scared of Kate for some reason.
Katie Mama's cries attract the attention of an orderly, who comes over, and Kate scoots, bumping into a hospital security guard, who demands to know what's going on. Kate half-heartedly attempts to say that she's the woman's daughter and was running to grab a doctor. Hospital Rent-A-Cop don't play that, and grabs Kate by the arm, but before he can finish saying, "We got a situation here," into his walkie-talkie, Kate grabs him and knocks him out with a nice uppercut. So far, I don't think this hospital visit is going as planned.
And imagine how Tom feels! Just a few hours after Kate comes back into his life, he's made out with his ex-girlfriend after they dug up their time capsule, and now a bedridden cancer victim at his hospital is screaming for help while the ex is standing over the body of an unconscious security guard. This is why I can't stay friends with ex-girlfriends. He asks what happened, and she simply says she needs his car keys, and peels off down the hallway to the parking lot, Tom running close behind, instead of, perhaps, helping Diane or the unconscious guard.
Kate's in the driver's seat as they peel out of his parking spot, sirens blaring already in the background. Much squealing of brakes and trading of paint with other cars in the garage as Kate tries to make her escape, but the siren-wailing cop car pulls up just past the entrance/exit, blocking the only way out. Kate yells at Tom to get out of the car, but he refuses, telling her that things can work out for her and she can have a real life if she cooperates, and maybe that should be "real life in prison," but she points out that the cop is radioing for backup (the portly, red-faced cop in question seems to be exerting himself rather strenuously to do so). And now Sheriff J.W. Pepper is pointing his gun at the car, and Tom is still refusing to get out, like if I were Tom I'd be out of that car in two seconds flat and yelling, "Also, I better get my Ben Folds CDs back!" When it's clear that Tom ain't going anywhere, Kate makes this irritated "whatever" face and floors it. ["One of the many moments this season when I asked the TV out loud if we're supposed to sympathize with this snotty character, because if we are, they need to get a better actor for the role." -- Sars] Sheriff J.W. squeezes off a couple of shots that hit Tom's car's windshield before Kate slams into the car and past, careering off down the road. Much more brake-squealing, shots of Kate frantically spinning the wheel. Dead giveaway absence of shots of Tom. Kate then T-bones some other car, stopping her getaway cold, and maybe someone could explain to me how it is that con artist Kate has eluded capture for so long, when it takes her about ten seconds to crash a car?
And then we see Tom, motionless, face bloodied. Kate calls his name, but he doesn't respond. She starts to spazz as she sees the blood, and oh Jesus, here comes Niagara Falls again. Another siren is getting louder, and we see a cop approaching, so Kate, after taking a last look at Tom and the spilled contents of the time capsule (which she leaves behind, so we're going to have to have another Kate flashback episode that explains more about the plane), hoofs it out the car and over a railing and down into one of those concrete water things that are mainly good for teenage drag races and Terminators chasing people. I don't know what they're called. ["'Culvert'?" -- Sars]
We fade into Sawyer, back on the island, saying, "You want to tell us why you need to run so bad? You want to tell us the truth?" Kate takes about four hours, with everyone watching her, to admit that she was on the plane with the marshal, that she had been wanted and was caught, and being transported back to the States. "No matter what I say about what happened, what I supposedly did...I'm going to jail," she says. Charlie, the heroin junkie/vigilante, looks shocked. "But I didn't poison you," she tells Mercutio, who totally doesn't believe her. He gives the passport back to Sawyer. And the shunning begins, with everyone turning their back on Kate and walking off, like how much do I not buy this reaction from everyone, and Kate stands there looking all forlorn on the beach, before kneeling down and gazing at Tom's plane, all symbolically crashed in the sand. Commercials.
Late afternoon. The men on the beach look like they're putting the finishing touches on the raft. Sun's watching them, especially her husband. Jack strolls up, and I'm sure he just wants to shoot the breeze and doesn't have any sort of purpose to his visit. He watches her watch Jin. "Looks determined," he notes, and Sun says he is. "You don't want him to go, do you," says Jack. It's a statement, not a question, and Sun smiles, shakes her head, and says no. "Is that why you tried to make him sick?" he asks, and Sun's rather surprised. Jack points out that with Mercutio and Jin working so closely all the time, it'd be easy for the two of them to get their water bottles mixed up. Sun watches Jack for a moment, then looks at her husband, before finally saying, her voice close to breaking, "I didn't want him to die out there. I just didn't know what to do. I only used to enough to make him..." Jack nods. "I wasn't trying to hurt him," she says, displaying enough remorse to save her even from a Texas judge. She asks if Jack's going to tell the others, clearly worried that she's going to be cast out like Kate. Jack says he doesn't see any reason to tell them (using that discretion that he's so disdainful of when it's other people using it). But then he tells her that Jin's leaving: "If I were you, I'd say goodbye." He walks off.
Nightfall. Kate's standing by herself, by the fire reserved for those on the island who have fallen from grace. Sawyer strolls up, tells her (not with glee) that he's back on the raft. Mercutio's plan is to "cowboy up" (god, what an irritating turn of phrase) and set sail tomorrow. Kate just looks at him. "You here to say sorry, Sawyer?" He laughs and says that "sorry" doesn't suit him. "You cornered me, Freckles. I did what I had to do." Kate shakes her head at the idea that she cornered him. "You said if you wanted my spot, you were going to take it," he reminds her. "Guess I believed you." He pauses. "So that's that." This is what passes for an apology, for him. He turns to leave, but she asks him why it's so important for him to be on that raft. "'Cause there ain't anything on this island worth staying for," he says, looking right at/through her. I know this is supposed to be some kind of shot to the heart, and Kate's in pain, but if the writers could make up their minds as to whether Kate's supposed to be with Archie or with Reggie, I'd buy the emotion here. Kate struggles a little bit, before smirking and saying, "Be safe, Sawyer," and he just says yeah.
Walt scoots over to where his dad's lying against a tree and asks him if he's feeling better. Mercutio smiles and says that he is. He tells Walt not to worry, and that they're going to be sailing home soon, but before he can finish, Walt admits to burning the first raft. Stunned, Mercutio waits for his son to explain. "I didn't want to leave, and I thought I could stop it. Sorry. I'm really sorry, Dad." Mercutio looks like he wants to pop his cork, but he lets that subside, before telling Walt that it's okay, and the two of them can stay on the island. "We don't have to go," he says. Walt says, "Yes, we do." There's something about his son's innocent self-assuredness that gives Mercutio pause. Only this time Walt doesn't explain; he just looks out to the water.
Kate's shelter. Sun comes up, wondering if it's okay to approach the leper, and tells her that Jack knows. Kate's all, oh no! until Sun says she didn't tell Jack that it was Kate's idea. Kate smiles, and thanks her. "Why should you be punished? You were only trying to help me," says Sun, adding that Jack said he wouldn't tell the others. Kate says Jack's good at keeping secrets, because this is a theme that hasn't been explored in at least thirty seconds, and then Sun starts rambling about how when she was a little girl, she believed that once she found the man she loved, she would be happy, forever. Kate just says, "Yeah, me too." At least until you get him killed! Am I right? See, the ladies know what I'm talking about.