Kate to Jack in the Season 1 finale: I've got your back.
Me, knowing full well that Juliet won't even show up until two seasons from now, and she and Sawyer won't even say that until two seasons after that: 😠 That's Suliet's line 😠
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Lost (TV 2004)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Juliet Burke/James “Sawyer” Ford, Juliet Burke & James “Sawyer” Ford
Characters: Juliet Burke, James “Sawyer” Ford, Miles Straume, Jin-Soo Kwon
Additional Tags: Eventual Romance, Fluff, Domestic Fluff, Romance, DHARMA Initiative (Lost), 70s suliet, in the dharma days!
Summary:
It all starts at the Dharma pool party.
Or: Sawyer wasn’t prepared for the idea of Juliet in a swimsuit.
“What Kate Did” is an absolutely beautiful, painfully perfect episode and here’s why.
It starts off with Jin and Sun (THE married couple of the island, in this episode their role is to be symbols of Kate’s story) getting out of their tent after they’ve visibly had back-from-the-raft-and-back-together sex. Hurley (THE character associated with mental hospital/madness) watches them as they hug and smile. Sun’s eyes move to watch Sayid digging the grave for my poor girl Shannon (JUSTICE FOR SHANNON!). So we as viewers know that today’s themes’ menu will consist of marital love, supposed madness& certain death. I hate these writers. Ugh, they’re TOO good.
We’re then shown the inside of the Swan with Jack-the-Doc flirting with tending fevered, wounded Sawyer. The bisexual man spoils the moment because, in the haziness of his septicemia, he declares that he loves her, her being Kate. But who are Jack and Sawyer for Kate? We’ll discover it in this episode while the fourth, hidden theme is slowly unearthed.
Next scene of course there's Kate, climbed up on a tree picking forbidden fruits and oh-oh! She sees a black horse, a dark horse perhaps? What the hell is that? It’s obviously something related to her past, hence flashback!
Kate’s flashback is… heartbreaking. She’s on the steps of her mother’s house, waiting for her stepfather to come back home. He’s drunk and awful and a piece of shit and he molests her. Kate rightly puts a bomb under the house and it explodes.
She goes to her mother to inform her about the insurance she had taken out on the house under her name. This is important and we’ll see why later on.
Back to the present Kate asks to watch over Sawyer while Jack attends Shannon’s funeral. She’s definitely not okay.
At Shannon’s funeral Sayid gives a little speech where he declares that he loved her. Back at the bunker, Kate is talking to an almost-sleeping Sawyer who abruptly wakes up and shouts at her: “You killed me! Why did you kill me?”. Kate runs away.
In the subsequent flashback she’s also running away. The marshal finds her, though, and informs her that her own mother has given her up.
In the bunker, Jin is freed from his handcuff, foreshadowing Kate’s supposed freeing by the end of the episode. But will it be a liberation for Kate?
Jack finds Kate in the jungle and we have this amazing scene here:
Kate then says that it’s the island, it’s crazy and it’s driving her nuts. (important). Kate kisses Jack.
Themes Convergence Point: Kate is sitting beside Shannon’s grave (reference to the man she's put in the grave) and talks to Sayid (who was in love with Shannon). She reveals she’s going crazy and asks Sayid if he believes in ghosts. Sayid replies that he saw Walt (Walt's name' ll come back by the end of the episode, ugh these writers, I hate them, they're too good) in the jungle before Shannon died: does this make him crazy too?
Flashback to Kate and the marshal in the car: he’s the exposition guy for this scene telling us that Kate was basically a normal girl (straight A’s, couple of speeding tickets, no history of violence) and asks her why she killed him (her stepfather) now. The exposition continues as the man claims he has Kate figured out:
MARSHAL: White trash mom divorces dad, starts up with some guy who's a drinker. Then he knocks her around a little bit, she marries him, because, you know, that's what happens. And then this drunk, this Wayne, he moves into your house, and you get to lay there every night and listen to him doing your mom right there in your daddy's old bedroom. And even that wouldn't be so bad if he didn't beat her up all the time. But she loves him. She defends him. If that don't make a person want to kill somebody I don't know what does. But the question is now, why now? Why after all these years did you just decide to blow poor Wayne up? He come knocking on your door late at night?
KATE: He never touched me.
I’m not necessarily saying that the Marshal is a reliable narrator but I’m inclined to think that, in this case, he is. I think that Kate was a victim of abuse, the text doesn’t explicitly say so in the sense that Kate rejects the Marshal’s implications but we actually saw her stepfather molesting her at the beginning of the episode. So, I don’t know, the text tends more towards ambivalence but a close reading suggests that she was unfortunately a victim of sexual abuse. And this is only a part of the unfortunate story of Kate Austen.
After that, the car the two are in crashes, Kate manages to escape and it’s in that moment that she sees the black horse.
As many symbols, horses and specifically black horses mean a lot of things, too many to list here. My interpretation for its presence in this episode is threefold:
Black horse as in “Kate is a dark horse”: She’s the mysterious, enigmatic type that one way or another manages to win. So far she has showed that she has surprising skills in her pockets and knows her way around winning people over. Yes, she’s definitely a dark horse. In this sense, Kate is facing her own self and is coming to terms with her.
Black horse as in “Good vs Evil”: Twice in the episode Kate states that she will never be good. So it’s safe to assume that the black horse represents the “evil” she thinks she has inside herself.
Black horse as “Past trauma”: Twice in the episode Kate’s past abuse is mentioned. Black horse can represent repressed emotions and I think it’s fair to say that Kate’s got some of them.
Back to the island, after the kiss Jack is chopping wood, an activity that’s strictly connected to Sawyer (Hurley explicitly says so) and Hurley asks him if he’s mad at Sawyer. Jack asks why he should be mad at him and Hurley says because he’s doing something that Sawyer usually does.
[Jack chopping wood, as Hurley approaches.]
HURLEY: Hey. [Jack doesn't answer.] So, Rose's husband's white. Didn't see that one coming.
JACK: Is there something you need, Hurley?
HURLEY: No, just taking a walk, thought I'd say hey. -- Who's taking care of Sawyer?
JACK: Sun is.
HURLEY: So, you're like, mad at him?
JACK: [laughing] Why would I be mad at Sawyer?
HURLEY: Maybe because he's the one that always comes down here and chops wood, and now you are? It's like, transference.
JACK: What, are you a shrink now?
HURLEY: Well, that's what they call it in the mental hospital.
JACK: I'm not mad at anyone.
Note how the themes of madness and marital love have come back (“Rose's husband's white” Sun, THE wife, is taking care of Sawyer, the transference, the mention of the mental hospital, told you Hurley is associated with that). How fucking brilliant is this scene, uh? It’s so good I hate the writers a little bit (a lot).
Back to the Swan Kate symbolically takes over the role of Sun (who’s symbolically The Wife) and takes care of Sawyer.
We see the final flashback: alone and on the run, Kate pays a visit to her father and we have the big plot-twist: Sam Austen is not her biological father, her stepfather Wayne (whom she’s killed) is. Here’s the dialogue, also notice the mention of the war in Korea (Sun and Jin are symbols in this episode) and that Sayid (Kate was talking with him on the island in a pivotal moment) appears on the TV screen in Sam Austen’s office.
KATE: Why didn't you tell me, Dad?
AUSTEN: Tell you what?
KATE: I was making a scrapbook -- a surprise for your birthday. So I called one of your COs to get some pictures of you in uniform. The pictures that he sent me had dates on the back -- photos of you in Korea up until 4 months before I was born. Why didn't you tell me that Wayne was my father? Why?
AUSTEN: I didn't tell you because I knew you'd kill him. And your mother loved him. You were 5 years old. I wanted to take you along with me. She wouldn't let me.
KATE: So why didn't you kill him?
AUSTEN: Because I don't have murder in my heart. I'm going to have to call them.
Fucking great scene. This is the 4th reiteration of the “I love you” theme and twice it’s referred to Kate’s mother’s love for an abusive piece of shit. So how should we interpret all this love? It’s doesn’t feel…healthy. It doesn't bode well for our Kate since she was the first recipient of the first "I love you" of the episode.
Back to the bunker, Kate talks to Sawyer:
KATE: Can you hear me? Sawyer? -- Wayne? [Sawyer stirs.] I'm probably crazy and this doesn't matter, but maybe you're in there somehow. But you asked me a question. You asked me why I -- why I did it. It wasn't because you drove my father away, or the way you looked at me, or because you beat her. It's because I hated that you were a part of me -- that I would never be good. That I would never have anything good. And every time that I look at Sawyer -- every time I feel something for him -- I see you, Wayne. It makes me sick.
Kate will then see the black horse in the jungle, approaches it and nuzzles it before it walks away.
Meanwhile Jack’s on the beach sharing a drink with Ana Lucia and we have this little dialogue:
ANA: Are you going to try to convince me that everyone here doesn't hate me?
JACK: Only if you're going to try to convince me that every woman in the world's not crazy.
Finally the episode ends with Michael sitting at the computer desk, replying to an ominous “Hello” that appears on the PC’ screen. He states that his name is Michael and to that “the computer” replies: "Dad?".
The episode literally ends with this frame:
The hidden, eventually unearthed theme of the episode is fatherhood.
Kate's fathers: the bad, abusive stepfather who turns out to be her real dad and the father she kills and her other father who's a soldier, a morally good person who's abandoned her, though, and left her to her abuse. The Good Father, the Soldier Father who didn't have murder in his heart but sure had some space to abandon a child in the hands of two abusive people.
Kate is drawn to Jack because he represents (in her mind) “the good” or, even better, “The Good Father”. He’s Sam Austen, the guy who doesn’t have murder in his heart (while she does, as he clearly implies or rather downright states when he says that he knew she would have killed Wayne). Kate is attracted to "The Good" but resents the fact that "good" is, for her, forever associated with her being a killer. As in, her good father could never while she, a bad, bad girl could because she has murder in her heart (this is, of course, what Kate thinks, it clearly doesn't reflect the reality of a girl who's victim of terrible abuse and deception by her own parents).
Sawyer, on the other hand, is Wayne, “The Real, Bad Father”, the father who’s biologically a part of Kate, the bad part confirming her suspicion that she would never be good, that she would never have anything good.
And since transference was invoked in this episode, what’s Kate doing with Jack and Sawyer if not that? She basically sees her two fathers in them, the good and the bad and it’s interesting that while she metaphorically kisses the first (while being in a “crazy” state of mind), she favors the second, the one that’s bad and that she has killed.
In this respect, the scene where she nuzzles the black horse is a bit unsettling. Is she at peace with her past and her trauma? The scene is hopeful but I suspect this is not the case. Has she accepted that she will never be good and/or have anything good? I suspect so. Out of the three meanings of the black horse I think that, in this respect, number 2 is the more fitting. "Evil" is what's inside Kate (or so she thinks), it's a part of her, a apart that's forever weaved with her biological, abusive father. The black horse is the Bad Father that she's killed. Sawyer/Wayne, on the verge of death, comes back to life.
And what about Kate's mental state? Is she doing okay? Unfortunately, I don’t think so (and who could blame her, honestly?). Even if he says it half- jokingly, Jack too seems to think she’s a bit crazy, playing into the old stereotype about women being crazy. And the text, unfortunately gives him the last word, casting a thin veil of shadow over Kate's mental wellness.
But is Jack doing okay? Is he a reliable narrator? Clearly not, because the text addresses him, too, as “being mad at someone”. He's also subject to the transference. Interesting that the text uses "crazy" to descrive Kate and "mad at" to describe Jack. Much to think about, right?
Hurley thinks Jack’s being mad at Sawyer (hence the transference and the wood chopping) but the last dialogue with Ana Lucia confirms that he’s actually mad at Kate. He’s chopping woods like Sawyer does not because he’s mad at him but because he wants to be him. Apart from my “Jack is enamored of Sawyer” headcannon, the episode seems to confirm that he wants to be Sawyer because Sawyer is the guy Kate’s in love with. The guy Kate chooses is the Bad Guy, the Black Horse, the thing that makes her sick. And you know what? Jack wants to be that person, our beloved, Good Doc wants to be a little Bad, folks.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE this episode. BRILLIANT, BRRRRRILLIANT.
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