Lost: Season 5, Episode 11 Review: Whatever Happened, Happened
Whatever Happened, HappenedOriginal Airdate: April 1, 2009
Writers: Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse
Director: Bobby Roth
Next on the “Why be on board” roster is Kate, and how she went from being determined never to see any of them again to collapsing at Jack’s house. Kate’s been criticized for not being developed beyond her position in the love triangle. The decision to have her take care of Aaron was clearly a way to bring some life to her story. While her other episode this season was underwhelming, the new direction was refreshing, and works a lot better here despite it being far from a perfect episode.
At the heart of the episode is Kate as protector for Aaron and Young Ben. The flashbacks flesh out Kate’s three years raising Aaron, in particular her time with her old partner-in-crime and mother of Sawyer’s baby Cassidy. This isn’t anything most people hadn’t already suspected since they explained that Kate was doing something for Sawyer on the main land, but it is a nice call back.
Interestingly, Kate tells Cassidy the truth about what happened. Perhaps this was due to Cassidy being an experienced con woman, but this tidbit may explain in part why Kate was OK with the lie, aside from the full pardon: she had someone to talk to about her experience.
It leads to Cassidy to call Sawyer out for abandoning her and his daughter and question his motivation for jumping out of the plane in the first place. While this serves to add doubt to Kate’s feelings, it felt odd she wouldn’t jump to defend him. This wasn’t the Sawyer from the first two and a half seasons: he clearly jumped out to make sure the Oceanic Six made it to the boat, not jumping ship out of fear of commitment. Ultimately it’s a contrivance to fit with the present action of Sawyer distancing himself because of his relationship with Juliet, but still tagging along the mission to save Ben.
The stronger parallel between Kate’s flashback and present is her role as caregiver and protector. Obviously she dealt with some of that with Aaron in the first part of the season and deals with it again as her guilt over basically conning Aaron turns to paranoia. As much flack as I give Kate, I have to give credit for Evangeline Lilly’s performance. She does a great job carrying this episode and as far as the flashbacks are concerned these are some of the strongest Kate has had since before her past was explained. The part where she frantically scoured the grocery store after losing Aaron got to a lot of parents that I heard from and read about. Her performance certainly pushes my rating up a bit.
After the grocery store scene, she decides to place Aaron with the only relative she knows of, as it is the closest to making it right, while resolving to return to the island to bring the rightful mother back to her child. It explains her appearance at Jack’s home: she’s completely drained after making one of the hardest decisions of her life. Of course that is the big hanging piece of this story. Claire has been missing for 3 years, and one can wonder how she would feel about Kate’s arrangements (in an interesting coincidence Kate sings “Catch a Falling Star”, a song Claire requested the would be adopted parents sing, to Aaron). Unfortunately in the main story, the chaos to deal with immediately pushes Claire to the side as far as important threads are concerned.
It would’ve been nice to have Claire mentioned in the present, but clearly Kate’s experiences raising Aaron and losing him motivate her to save the young version of a man who tormented her and her friends for years. Clearly her time as a mother affected her judgment, as it’d be harder for her to be so gung ho about saving Young Ben.
Between Young Ben’s shooting and the flaming bus crash, the noose continues to tighten around the 77ers. It doesn’t help when the heat goes directly to Jack who, like Roger, owns a set of maintenance keys. So the new 77ers hit the mattresses in one of the Dharma homes, a fate that seems to fit the new Jack, content with letting things play out without taking an active role in it.
Of course, the big thing about Jack’s non-involvement is that by not helping Young Ben he’s breaking his Hypocratic oath to do no harm. Jack’s swung around to the other side of the faith/science spectrum, and it isn’t much better there.
During the crisis Roger is proven not to be a completely horrible dad as he confides in Kate about dealing with raising a son alone. While it doesn’t justify child abuse, seeing this other side of Roger helps show he’s not just a one dimensional jerk, and it can also be something Kate could tell Ben later (assuming they make it to the same time line).
They may have meant to explain this, but why is no one batting an eye to Juliet, a mechanic as far as Dharma is concerned, performing major surgery? Shouldn’t that be a tip that they aren’t who they say they are? Did Dharma just give people jobs by picking them out of a hat rather than on merit (which is a horrible way to assign work unless everyone’s a surgeon)?
Clearly Hurley & Miles’ conversation explaining the rules of time travel was added in anticipation for all the head scratching fans have done this season. While initially this scene bothered me by continuing to make this scenario more complicated for those who were falling fast in any understanding, the wink to the audience hit more the second time. Hurley is the voice of the audience, so of course he’d be confused, and amongst his confusion Miles, who takes place of MIA Daniel, explains the rules: for the time travelers this is their present and for those they’re visiting it is their past. Whatever happened here always happened and they can’t change that, meaning Ben can’t die because he’s alive to torment the Losties 30 years later. It’s reinforcing the paradox rule the writers set up, but clearly they’re out to challenge it this season with the uncertainty of Young Ben’s fate in this episode.
That Richard could heal Young Ben at the expense of Young Ben having no memory of what happened is a cheap out. Yes, having the Losties interact with Young Ben would be problematic with them meeting him decades later and him giving no sign of previous acquaintance, but the characters seem to forget that Ben is a talented liar. He was certainly convincing back when he pretended to be Henry Gale, couldn’t he have pretended not to recognize the Losties before meeting them? Not to mention they totally missed on explaining that the “her” Juliet reminded Ben of was herself.
There’s also a problem with the implication that the healing will make Young Ben one of them. He doesn’t need much motivation to go to their side anyway, why add a supernatural element? This kind of influence on character development doesn’t work. Regardless, it helps reinforce the notion that the survivors are ultimately responsible for their problems as their actions in the last two episodes allow Young Ben become Ben.
One blooper that deserves some critique is that Young Ben’s gunshot wound moves from his left chest to his lower right abdomen. It seems like a really obvious mistake someone would’ve picked up, as if they knew the original location of the bullet would’ve certainly killed him, so they gave him a gut shot to bleed out slowly. For consecutive episodes, the lack of continuity is really discouraging.
For a character who hasn’t always had the most to do, this Kate episode is a much desired improvement. It gives her character some much needed depth, and Lilly is up for the challenge. It also has interesting questions about time travel, the “kill Hitler when he’s young” conundrum and while it takes an easy out, the character development is really strong.
At the heart of the episode is Kate as protector for Aaron and Young Ben. The flashbacks flesh out Kate’s three years raising Aaron, in particular her time with her old partner-in-crime and mother of Sawyer’s baby Cassidy. This isn’t anything most people hadn’t already suspected since they explained that Kate was doing something for Sawyer on the main land, but it is a nice call back.
Interestingly, Kate tells Cassidy the truth about what happened. Perhaps this was due to Cassidy being an experienced con woman, but this tidbit may explain in part why Kate was OK with the lie, aside from the full pardon: she had someone to talk to about her experience.
It leads to Cassidy to call Sawyer out for abandoning her and his daughter and question his motivation for jumping out of the plane in the first place. While this serves to add doubt to Kate’s feelings, it felt odd she wouldn’t jump to defend him. This wasn’t the Sawyer from the first two and a half seasons: he clearly jumped out to make sure the Oceanic Six made it to the boat, not jumping ship out of fear of commitment. Ultimately it’s a contrivance to fit with the present action of Sawyer distancing himself because of his relationship with Juliet, but still tagging along the mission to save Ben.
The stronger parallel between Kate’s flashback and present is her role as caregiver and protector. Obviously she dealt with some of that with Aaron in the first part of the season and deals with it again as her guilt over basically conning Aaron turns to paranoia. As much flack as I give Kate, I have to give credit for Evangeline Lilly’s performance. She does a great job carrying this episode and as far as the flashbacks are concerned these are some of the strongest Kate has had since before her past was explained. The part where she frantically scoured the grocery store after losing Aaron got to a lot of parents that I heard from and read about. Her performance certainly pushes my rating up a bit.
After the grocery store scene, she decides to place Aaron with the only relative she knows of, as it is the closest to making it right, while resolving to return to the island to bring the rightful mother back to her child. It explains her appearance at Jack’s home: she’s completely drained after making one of the hardest decisions of her life. Of course that is the big hanging piece of this story. Claire has been missing for 3 years, and one can wonder how she would feel about Kate’s arrangements (in an interesting coincidence Kate sings “Catch a Falling Star”, a song Claire requested the would be adopted parents sing, to Aaron). Unfortunately in the main story, the chaos to deal with immediately pushes Claire to the side as far as important threads are concerned.
It would’ve been nice to have Claire mentioned in the present, but clearly Kate’s experiences raising Aaron and losing him motivate her to save the young version of a man who tormented her and her friends for years. Clearly her time as a mother affected her judgment, as it’d be harder for her to be so gung ho about saving Young Ben.
Between Young Ben’s shooting and the flaming bus crash, the noose continues to tighten around the 77ers. It doesn’t help when the heat goes directly to Jack who, like Roger, owns a set of maintenance keys. So the new 77ers hit the mattresses in one of the Dharma homes, a fate that seems to fit the new Jack, content with letting things play out without taking an active role in it.
Of course, the big thing about Jack’s non-involvement is that by not helping Young Ben he’s breaking his Hypocratic oath to do no harm. Jack’s swung around to the other side of the faith/science spectrum, and it isn’t much better there.
During the crisis Roger is proven not to be a completely horrible dad as he confides in Kate about dealing with raising a son alone. While it doesn’t justify child abuse, seeing this other side of Roger helps show he’s not just a one dimensional jerk, and it can also be something Kate could tell Ben later (assuming they make it to the same time line).
They may have meant to explain this, but why is no one batting an eye to Juliet, a mechanic as far as Dharma is concerned, performing major surgery? Shouldn’t that be a tip that they aren’t who they say they are? Did Dharma just give people jobs by picking them out of a hat rather than on merit (which is a horrible way to assign work unless everyone’s a surgeon)?
Clearly Hurley & Miles’ conversation explaining the rules of time travel was added in anticipation for all the head scratching fans have done this season. While initially this scene bothered me by continuing to make this scenario more complicated for those who were falling fast in any understanding, the wink to the audience hit more the second time. Hurley is the voice of the audience, so of course he’d be confused, and amongst his confusion Miles, who takes place of MIA Daniel, explains the rules: for the time travelers this is their present and for those they’re visiting it is their past. Whatever happened here always happened and they can’t change that, meaning Ben can’t die because he’s alive to torment the Losties 30 years later. It’s reinforcing the paradox rule the writers set up, but clearly they’re out to challenge it this season with the uncertainty of Young Ben’s fate in this episode.
That Richard could heal Young Ben at the expense of Young Ben having no memory of what happened is a cheap out. Yes, having the Losties interact with Young Ben would be problematic with them meeting him decades later and him giving no sign of previous acquaintance, but the characters seem to forget that Ben is a talented liar. He was certainly convincing back when he pretended to be Henry Gale, couldn’t he have pretended not to recognize the Losties before meeting them? Not to mention they totally missed on explaining that the “her” Juliet reminded Ben of was herself.
There’s also a problem with the implication that the healing will make Young Ben one of them. He doesn’t need much motivation to go to their side anyway, why add a supernatural element? This kind of influence on character development doesn’t work. Regardless, it helps reinforce the notion that the survivors are ultimately responsible for their problems as their actions in the last two episodes allow Young Ben become Ben.
One blooper that deserves some critique is that Young Ben’s gunshot wound moves from his left chest to his lower right abdomen. It seems like a really obvious mistake someone would’ve picked up, as if they knew the original location of the bullet would’ve certainly killed him, so they gave him a gut shot to bleed out slowly. For consecutive episodes, the lack of continuity is really discouraging.
For a character who hasn’t always had the most to do, this Kate episode is a much desired improvement. It gives her character some much needed depth, and Lilly is up for the challenge. It also has interesting questions about time travel, the “kill Hitler when he’s young” conundrum and while it takes an easy out, the character development is really strong.
Overall Score: 8/10
posted by Matt @ 3:14 PM
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