Lost, Ep 15: Left Behind
DAMN, this show just gets better and better! I was just saying to someone today that Heroes will have some SERIOUS competition when it finally comes back on the air, and tonight’s episode was no exception. Locke apparently knows Kate’s past; Sawyer tries to make nice; Juliet tells Kate that Jack saw her and Sawyer together and she broke Jack’s heart; the Others suddenly break camp, leaving behind Juliet, Jack, Kate, and Sayid; Old Smokey makes a return visit; and we ultimately discover that Kate isn’t just left behind by Locke and the Others, but by Jack. In her flashback, we discover a shocking link to Sawyer through Cassidy, but also that her mother truly believes Kate acted selfishly. Did Kate kill her stepfather for her own reasons, or was she ever thinking altruistically? Did she really come back to the Others camp to save Jack, or was she only thinking that it would make her feel better to save Jack?

Did You Notice?:
-the song playing at the beginning of Kate's flashback is Patsy Cline's "Walking After Midnight," which is the third time we've heard this in a Kate flashback
-Cassidy is pulling Kate’s jewellery con that Sawyer taught her when Kate first finds her; he told her the key was for a “buyer” to come up, which will throw the marks off the scent
-Hurley refers to “Steve,” but it’s actually Scott who is the one left on the island. Looks like Scott’s big con still hasn’t been found out.
-the canisters of gas had ALS Technologies written on them. I don’t think we’ve seen this company before, but I wonder if they’re some division of Hanso?
-Kate being handcuffed to Juliet was reminiscent of her being handcuffed to the Marshal
-Kate being betrayed and left behind by Locke is reminiscent of her mother’s treatment of her
-right after Sawyer tries to gut the fish, he comes over to Hurley and has his hands on Hurley’s clean clothes. Ew.
-Kate seems to go completely mental on Juliet as if she, deep down, she knows Juliet is right about how she shouldn’t have come back for Jack
-Juliet dislocating her shoulder and Kate re-setting it was reminiscent of Jack dislocating his shoulder and Charlie re-setting it in “The Moth”
-Claire looks like she’s trying to suppress a laugh when Sawyer comes up to comment on Aaron, like she’s in on Hurley’s joke.
-when Aaron was first born, Sawyer’s voice was the only thing that would soothe him and let him go to sleep. Now the child cries when he talks to it.
-Diane seems to know Kate’s standing in the doorway before she even looks up, as if she can sense her daughter’s presence.
-Diane tells Kate that if she ever sees her again, the first thing she will do is yell for help, and that’s exactly what she does when Kate goes to see her in the hospital in “Born to Run.”
-all of the things Juliet knows about Jack, she got from a file. Everything Kate knows about him, she knows from knowing Jack.
-even though Juliet had the confidence that Old Smokey wouldn’t come through the fence, when it does come toward her she stands there and looks right at it, just like Eko did
-Hurley handing Desmond the boar when Desmond looks so desolate is reminiscent of the scene near the beginning of season 1 when he’s handing out the little airplane food trays to everyone looking so upset.

Highlights:
-Hurley’s con. I figured it out right from the beginning, but that just made it way funnier to watch Sawyer squirm, assuming it was all based on a lie (and the fact that Hurley has obviously watched way too much Survivor)
-Kate looking out the window and seeing the Others donning gasmasks. It was like something out of an Orwellian nightmare. Brilliant.
-Sawyer smiling at Sun and her scowling back, and him muttering, “I ain’t gonna get the Korean vote.”
-Sawyer gutting the fish
-Sawyer trying to suck up to Claire by saying her “little baby” isn’t as wrinkly as he was a couple of weeks ago
-the look on Sawyer’s face when Claire hands him Aaron

Questions:
-did the Others really tell Locke everything Kate did? Locke coming in to Kate’s “prison” and saying goodbye was like The Stepford Lockes or something. I have NO IDEA what is up with that guy, but he just gets creepier and creepier and now he’s in cahoots with the Others, and we have NO idea what’s going up with his whole daddy issue that he found in a dark room…
-if the Others really have chosen Locke over the rest of them, is it because they think he’s the only truly good person? Why didn’t they take him early on, the way they took the children?
-Cassidy comes off as some sort of expert of the con one minute, and a newbie the next. She’s able to read Kate like a book, then instructs her not to think about her name when faking it. Yet she’s seriously faltering at the gas station, then breaks down about how Sawyer conned her and she’s pregnant. All along I’ve assumed that Cassidy knew Sawyer was conning her the whole time, and was somehow pulling a reverse con on him, and I assume the pregnancy was all a con, too. So is it? Is she being honest? If she IS being honest, I think Kim Dickens is playing the character wrong by making her this all-knowing type who seems quite sure of herself. But I doubt it, because Dickens seems so consistent in the role, and I still think something’s fishy with Cassidy.
-why does Kate sing like a canary to Cassidy when she has worked so long to maintain a secret identity and not tell anyone the truth
-who handcuffed Kate and Juliet together and carried them miles away in the jungle to dump them?
-Sawyer refers to apologizing as “let’s make nice.” Hmm… perhaps a closeted Dixie Chicks fan?
-what is with Juliet’s superstrength? And she’s drugged and carried out into the jungle, yet the moment Kate makes the slightest move to pull a knife from her pocket she awakens like a cat?
-have the Others really left? Was Juliet really left behind? Or is this part of the their ongoing ruse?
-what the hell were those flashes that came out of Old Smokey when Kate and Juliet were hiding in the bamboo? Was it taking their picture or something??
-Hurley says that Claire is really influential. Says who? Why would she be influential when she doesn’t seem to have much to do with anyone but Sun and Charlie?
-why does Sawyer become the bona fide leader in the absence of Jack, Sayid, and Locke, and not Desmond? Is it because the rest of them don’t really know Desmond, and those who do think he’s a little… off? Who would you rather have as leader: The future-seein’, slightly crazy Scotsman, or the mean guy who puts himself before everyone else, steals everyone’s stuff, refuses to share, cons the camp into giving him guns, declares himself Sheriff, has nothing to do with anyone and never helps out but takes what he can get from everyone else’s work, and arranges to have Sun beat up?
-is Cassidy lying at the end about still loving Sawyer? If she’s telling the truth about not calling the cops, how did Sawyer end up in prison?

Nitpicks:
-OK, Juliet is shocked to discover that she’s been handcuffed to Kate. She didn’t know the Others were leaving her behind. Yet in a very dangerous moment, she KNOWS that she’s got the key to the handcuffs in her pants. Can anyone explain to me why we’re supposed to believe she’s really been taken here? Why would she happen to have a key in her pocket to the very handcuffs that the Others have put on her? Why would she know it was there the whole time unless she was in on it from the beginning? Am I missing something?

Numbers:
-Juliet’s shoulder’s been dislocated 4 times
-Kate’s license plate is 4ON DVB; O is the 15th letter of the alphabet; D is the 4th; V is the 22nd and B is the 2nd (22+2=24, a reverse 42)

Next week: “One of Us”: Jack returns to the beach and Sayid appears to be torturing Juliet for information! Another Juliet flashback.