Review: Lost 4.4: Eggtown

Kate faces trial. for a history of bad episodes.

Ah, Kate. Never before has the "Ms. Fanservice" character been so disasterously empty, so vapid and void of any likeable characteristics, so troublesome and irritating and yet so revered by the plot. She is a character that didn't deserve to live beyond the first series, and exists soley as a means of causing conflict between the characters. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a Kate-centric episode, and carries around her usual selfish, unlikable shade like the plague. Luckily, it seems to be saved by its suddenly more noticably brilliant performances from the rest of the cast, emphasised by the central character's nihilistic presence.
     I'll deal with the Flashforward plot first, since that at least follows a cohesive, if dull, storyline. A few years after the return, and Kate is being put on trial for all the shit she did to her stepfather (blowing his house up) before she fled to Australia and boarded Oceanic 815. Her defence is less useful than a ham sandwich at a bar mitzvah, however, because before fleeing she confessed to her dying, disabled mother. Their only defence so far is to call in Jack (who manages to weasel in everywhere...) as a character witness, telling the tale of the Oceanic 6 to a crowded courtroom as he would to a small child. After persuading her mother to let her go, she gets off scot-free, and is revealed to be taking care of Aaron, the son of fellow survivor Claire. If I'm honest Kate was played against type here, as although she was still moody and irritating, she at least found some honesty and proffessionalism. The opposite of what happens in the present.

Kate, in her natural habitat.

     Speaking of the devil, Kate is buzzing about Locke's camp to prevent that particular trial from ever taking place. The episode, unlike last week, tries its best to give us a few moments for other characters and hopefully take our minds off the main lead. Here's the lowdown: Kate is trying to interrogate Freighter boy Miles on what the outside world knows about her and her absurdly long list of crimes. In return, Miles wants a few minutes to give a ridiculous ransom demand to Ben. She does this, and it all goes to plan. Hmmm. Oh, and she fucks Sawyer inbetween. (Or at least pretends to, it is later revealed. I really couldn't care.) Having seen the trial, we know the answer to her question, and any tension in the episode is forever lost, like this damn programme.
     Elsewhere, and any scene without Kate seems to be a vast improvement. Usually boring Koreans Jin and Sun share some heart-warming talk about where their baby is going to live, that ultimately leads to nowhere, and Jack calls the freighter and discovers that after a day or so, the helicopter with Sayid and Desmond still hasn't arrived. A nice set up for next week's episode, then, which covers that very fact. Locke had some great scenes with quiet schemer Ben, that really don't belong with anything else this episode has to offer.

"Taken from my own bookshelf..."

     This episode is certainly more enjoyable than last week's retread of old storylines, even if the motivations behind certain character's actions are a bit iffy (summed up nicely with Kate's mantra, and motto, of "Do you know who I am?",which provides some rare non-sexual double entendre.) It is certainly quite bad in a lot of places, but in those sections it often crosses the border into So Bad It's Good. If anything can be said of it, it's that I wasn't bored, which is a one-up on most Kate episodes. It seems as if the writers are either trying to compensate for all the Kate-Hate by throwing a lot of other characters in, or they've simply identified how empty the character is and knew that they couldn't fill an episode with it. Either way, it shows that the writers care, which is nice. Eggtown (weird title excluded) was an episode that would have been perfect if not for the horrifically bad character at its centre, but considering that, it made a decent ommelete with rotten eggs.
     Next week, the best episode of Lost that I've seen. Only the fifth... out of fourteen. God help me with this series.

Thanks.