Fox on the run

The game is nearly up, the hounds are at my door. – Tom T. Hall

In First Impressions, we examined Kate’s character as revealed in the first hour of Lost. The conundrum of Kate’s characterization isn’t fully realized for several episodes, but one giant piece of the puzzle is finally divulged. And it’s a doozy.

Hour two begins by explaining Charlie’s sudden outpouring of companionable magnanimity. A flashback reveals the likable rock star is a drug addict. Prior to the crash, Charlie hides a stash of heroin in the first class bathroom. He doesn’t offer to find the front of the plane out of some overdeveloped sense of citizenship; he needs a fix. He needs it so bad he’s willing to face an unseen menace to get it.

Focus shifts to Walt, the ten-year-old son of Michael. While searching for his dog, Walt unearths a pair of handcuffs. Michael’s reaction to this discovery is unspoken but clear: who on board had handcuffs? Why? Is there more than one threat lurking on the island?

Jack, Kate, and Charlie return to find two man battling on the beach – Sayid, a former soldier in the Iraqi Republican Guard, and Sawyer, the razor-tongued Southern with a penchant for political incorrectness. With Michael’s help, Jack tears them apart. What is going on? Sawyer accuses Sayid of bringing down the plane because his ethnicity suggests terrorist in Sawyer’s narrow world view. Sayid takes exception to this unflattering estimation and hurls a few epitaphs of his own.

The embers of unease flare when Michael presents the handcuffs. Sawyer jumps all over this as proof of Sayid’s duplicity. Kate intervenes: Stop! She’s been having trouble making eye contact since handcuffs became the topic of discussion but has more luck with the subject of transceivers. The one they found is not functioning. Can anyone fix it? Sayid offers, which twists Sawyer into a belligerent bunch. Good-natured Hurley - who has a teeny, tiny weight problem - takes a stab at diplomacy by encouraging fellowship in the communal interest of self-preservation. Shut up, lardo is Sawyer’s democratic response. Jack confronts Sawyer and demands he give it break. Antagonism rolls off Sawyer. Whatever you say, doc. You’re the hero. The battle lines between Jack and Sawyer are now drawn with indelible dislike.

Boone enters the conversation. So, they found the cockpit. Any survivors? Jack doesn’t hesitate. No. Kate and Charlie exchange a complicit glance. Really, it’s more or less true. Why frighten people more than they already are?

Sayid confers with Kate. The transceiver is functioning but the battery is low and there’s no reception on the beach. They must get to higher ground. He peers passed her to the giant mossy mountains deep into the island. Kate stares up at them, her gaze dragging along what stands between the beach and those mountains – the monster-infested jungle. The look on her face says it all. Oh, man. Not there. Not again.

Kate approaches Jack, who is working on shrapnel man. Jack considers removing the shrapnel. Yesterday he refused to contemplate it but he thought the guy would be in a hospital by now. If he does nothing, the man will die. If he removes it and controls the bleeding and the guy doesn’t go into sepsis and he finds some antibiotics then, maybe . . . . Kate explains why she must re-enter the jungle. Jack is dumbfounded. You saw what that thing did to the pilot. Kate doesn’t disagree but they don’t know they’re any safer on the beach. Jack can’t leave his patient so he pleads with her to exercise extreme caution.

Sayid and Kate prepare for their hike. Combative siblings – pugnacious, pampered Shannon and earnest, exasperated Boone - crash the party. Shannon’s impromptu decision is her first contribution to the rescue effort, but rankling her stepbrother is the main motivator. Boone is swept in by a mix of rivalry and chivalry. Charlie, sufficiently fuzzy from a heroin hit, decides to tag along. Is he for real? That must be some drug.

They pass Sawyer, who’s perched on a scorched section of wreckage: scowling brow, five o’clock shadow, cigarette dangling from his mouth. A vision of swarthy insolence. He withdraws a note from his pocket. Whatever it says has the power to slice through the bravado. Malice melts away, replaced by a searing vulnerability few would believe. He refolds the letter, stuffs it back in his jeans, and chases the hiking party. A changed man? Kate voices her surprise when he struts into their midst like a presumptuous peacock. I’m a complex guy, sweetheart. Hmm. Probably not.

They trudge for miles and reach a sparsely wooded area. Sawyer thinks this is a good place to try the radio. Sayid disagrees. Naturally. They square off like pit bulls until a strange rumbling silences the vitriol. Something bowls through the tall grass towards them. Everyone bolts but Sawyer. He braces, pulls a handgun from his waistband, and shoots. The pop of gunfire halts them in their tracks. They pivot to find a white bear charging Sawyer. It collapses a few feet from his position. They circle back and stare. It’s a . . . polar bear. On an island. Near the equator.

Recovering from astonishment, Kate wants to know where Sawyer got the gun. Off the body of a U.S. Marshal. Kate blanches. How does he know the guy was a marshal? The guy’s badge. Seeing an opportunity to even the score, Sayid theorizes Sawyer is the prisoner. That’s how he knows about the marshal. Insults are exchanged, hostility mounts, and Kate grows more agitated. Suddenly she grabs the gun from Sawyer and aims at him. Everyone – except Sawyer - tenses. Has Kate finally snapped? No. She wants to take the gun apart. Sayid walks her through the steps. She tosses Sayid the clip and offers Sawyer the empty pistol. Sawyer clamps a hand on her wrist and yanks her to him. Machismo crackles. I know your type, he murmurs. Kate meets his sizzling gaze with disgust and something close to shame. I’m not so sure.

Unsettled, she wrenches away and flashes back to her last minutes on the plane, pre-crash. She is seated next to shrapnel man, pre-shrapnel. Pensively she stares out the window. The man notes she looks worried. I’d be worried too, I was you. When she doesn’t react, he needles her. There’s always an off-chance they’ll believe your story. He says this with such malicious satisfaction, we dislike him. When he smirks, victor to victim, we hate him. Kate takes a drink and we see what we didn’t see before – her hands are cuffed. He is the U.S. Marshal and she is the fugitive being escorted back to the states.

Turbulence rattles the plane. Kate turns to the marshal to ask one favor. He smiles the reptile smile of the morally superior. Before she can finish, the plane freefalls two hundred feet. Everything not strapped down – including people - smash ceiling to floor. A metal suitcase flies out of the overhead compartment and cracks the marshal on the head, knocking him cold. Oxygen masks deploy, people shriek, engines whine, klaxons screech. Kate’s handcuffs are bolted down; she can’t reach a mask. Panic-stricken, she manages to extract the key from the unconscious marshal and free herself, grabbing a mask and snapping it on. Throughout her struggle we hear the horrendous stress the airframe is under as it groans with metal fatigue. Without hesitation, she grasps another mask and secures it to the marshal’s bleeding head. Agonizing seconds tick by as the doomed plane convulses with strain. Finally the wing section sheers off.

Jiminy Cricket! How Kate doesn’t wet herself is beyond me. I need a valium just writing this.

Meanwhile, Jack is performing emergency surgery on the marshal. His assistant, Hurley, faints when Jack pulls the shrapnel free and blood flows. Then the marshal wakes while Jack is sewing him up. Jack cannot catch a break. Rather than shout with pain, the marshal grabs a fistful of Jack’s shirt and rasps, Where is she?

Ominous. Most rational people would clamor for morphine. This guy wakes in blinding agony, his one and only priority Kate. As dislikable as the marshal is, we can’t help wonder: how bad is Kate? Does she pose a threat to the welfare of the other castaways?

Halfway up the mountain, Sayid pulls out the transceiver and gives it a try. There’s reception but they’re getting feedback – another transmission is blocking their signal. A transmission emitting from the island. A man on the radio intones a series of numbers, followed by a frantic woman pleading in French. The male and female voices alternate in a loop. Sayid realizes the male iterations indicate how many times the message has been repeated. While he calculates that figure in terms of time, Shannon attempts to translate the woman’s urgent request: Please help me. I’m alone now . . . Someone please come . . . the others, they’re dead. It killed them. It killed them all. The battery dies and everyone lapses into a bleak silence. Sayid fills it with this bit of good news: the distress call has been transmitting for over sixteen years. Someone else was stranded here before them. A long time ago. Were they rescued? Not likely, as the message is still broadcasting. Guys, Charlie finally mutters, where are we?

And so ends the premiere episode. The enigma of the island is just beginning as is our understanding of Kate Austen. Hard to imagine resourceful, courageous Kate a criminal, but the clues were there. The first time we see her, she’s holding her wrist – her un-handcuffed wrist. Jack’s ironic statement that you’re not running now. Her inability to make eye contact when the handcuffs are discovered. Her discomfort with the animosity between Sayid and Sawyer, stoked by the existence of the handcuffs and all they imply.

We see now why the writers kept this from us. Such information would have warped our initial impression. We would have formed a completely different opinion of Kate had we known. Regardless, there are still flashes of the Kate we’ve come to know and trust. She doesn’t hesitate to place an oxygen mask on the helpless marshal when the plane took a swan dive, even though his treatment of her was reprehensible. Sawyer hasn’t exactly endeared himself to anyone, yet she went so far as to disarm him to prevent someone from coming to harm – because of her, however inadvertent her influence.

Without the filter of suspicion, Kate embodied the characteristics of the primary heroine: likable, loyal, gutsy, and sympathetic. Now with specter of guilt hanging over her head, we question her integrity. Is she a danger? Is the hiking party actually more at risk from Kate than from jungle monster? Guilt implies conscience. We want to believe whatever Kate did, she was justified. But is that the case? And will others share that feeling when they learn Kate’s background?

Find out in the next episode.