"LOST" RETROSPECT: (5.11) "Whatever Happened, Happened" (Or . . . The Emergence of Saint Kate)
I first wrote this article following the original airing of the "LOST" Season Five episode called (5.11) "Whatever Happened, Happened":
"LOST" RETROSPECT: (5.11) "Whatever Happened, Happened" (Or . . . The Emergence of Saint Kate)
While looking back at some of the articles I have written about "LOST" and its characters, I discovered that I had written a good number of them about one of the lead characters, Kate Austen. One would believe that I found her to be a compelling character. Not really. In fact, I found her rather frustrating. My real problem with Kate was that I found her to be one of the most badly written characters on this show and in the history of television . . . and she was the series' female lead. And I found that disturbing. My dislike of the character went up a notch after I had first watched the Season Five Kate-centric episode called (5.11) "Whatever Happened, Happened", which was set during the series' Dharma Initiative period of 1974-77.
As far as I was concerned, "Whatever Happened, Happened" was a badly written episode. At least this was my initial view. It seemed as if I had witnessed the emergence of a character called "Saint Kate", instead of an interesting episode about the reasons behind Kate Austen's choices throughout the series' Seasons Four and Five. But I felt that showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof had given no reasons given for Kate's sudden desire to save the life of one of the show's main antagonists, Ben Linus - who was a boy in his early teens in 1977. Instead, the episode portrayed her in a state of frantic over young Ben's condition that did not make any sense. Even worse, it seemed as if the episode had went too far and had Kate donate blood to him in some heavily contrived attempt to make her seem selfless and worthy to the fans.
First, I want to focus on the situation regarding young Ben's shooting. Why did the series' lead, Dr. Jack Shephard, refuse to save Ben? Was his reason the same as former Iraqui soldier Sayid Jarrah's? Because Ben eventually grew up to be the manipulative and murderous man who gave them so much trouble after Oceanic Flight 815's crash during the fall of 2004? Why did Jack suddenly become anti-Ben again, after the pair seemed to be on the same page about returning to the island, earlier in Season Five? I had read several articles about this episode in which many claimed that Jack was to blame for creating the adult monster, Ben Linus. I find this hard to accept. It seemed as if they are trying to absolve for shooting the fourteen year-old Ben in the previous episode, (5.10) "He's Our You". And that did not work for me.
Speaking of Sayid's crime, Ben's memories of the incident disappeared, following his healing by Richard Alpert inside the island's temple. If this was the case, what in the hell was the point of Sayid shooting Ben in the first place? What were Cuse and Lindelof trying to achieve? Was the shooting nothing more than a contrived event to make Kate lovable to the fans again? Was it a plot line to explain how Ben became so murderous? Hell, they could have done that and allowed Ben to retain his memories of the shooting. To this day, this whole "erasing Ben's memories of Sayid's crime" made no sense to me. What was the purpose of it? To explain how Ben "lost his innocence"? Ben was already on that road by living under an abusive father.
But you know what? Despite Sayid shooting of him, Jack's refusal to save him or Richard's memory-wiping cure, the one person who was mainly responsible for Ben Linus's moral downfall . . . was Ben. Other people have come from traumatic backgrounds and managed to make decent lives for themselves. Ben never really had an real excuse. Sayid had to deal with his crime of shooting an innocent boy. Jack has to deal with his refusal to treat that boy. But they were not mainly responsible for Ben's crimes. Ben was.
When I first heard that Kate might finally confess about the lie surrounding Aaron Littleton, the son of fellow castaway, Claire Littleton; I thought she would end up confessing to former lover James "Sawyer" Ford, Dr. Juliet Burke and the other castaways. Instead, she confessed to Sawyer's old girlfriend, Cassidy Phillips. I found that disappointing. And up to that point, Sawyer did not know that Kate had lied about being Aaron's mother, so that she could keep him for herself . . . and away from his grandmother for nearly three years. Nor did Sawyer know that Kate had no intention of returning to the island to save his life. And she still had the murder of her father, Wayne Jensen, hanging over her head.
When Kate finally decided to return to the island, she told Cassidy that he intention was to find Claire and reconcile the latter with Aaron. All I could do was speculate on how she intended to achieve that miracle. Mind you, Kate succeeded in the end. But only by pure dumb luck. Was Kate really that stupid at the time? Surely she must have realized that there was no way to achieve this at the time of her return to the island. She, Jack, and a few others were stuck in the 1970s. She did not know about the runway that Frank Lapidus had used to land Ajira Flight 316 in (5.09) "Namaste". John Locke had destroyed the Dharma submarine back in Season Three's (3.13) "The Man From Tallahassee". And Kate knew about the destruction of Kahuna the freighter from Season Four. To this day, I still wonder how she had planned to send Claire back to Aaron before leaving Los Angeles? Or had she simply been talking out of her ass?
You know, ever since (4.04) "Eggtown", Kate's story arc has been badly handled by the writers. It started with her ludicrous attempt to get information from one of the Kahuna passengers Miles Straume about her status as a fugitive. Then it developed into the story line surrounding her custody of Aaron that went no where. The only thing that the Aaron story line achieved was a temporary estrangement between her and Jack. It was revealed in (5.04) "The Little Prince" that she had decided to claim Aaron as her own, because she was traumatized over losing Sawyer. And yet . . . "Eggtown" made it clear that she was willing to use Aaron to re-start a romance with Jack. If Aaron represented as a substitute for the loss of Sawyer, why did she have a photograph of both Aaron and Jack on her mantlepiece inside her Los Angeles home? Was this a symbol of her continuing desire for both Jack and Sawyer? Or what?
And the story line surrounding her return to the island . . . contrived and badly written. After refusing to return to the island for Sawyer's sake, she visited his ex-girlfriend Cassidy, confessed the Aaron kidnapping, vowed to return to the island in order to find Claire Littleton and send the Australian woman back to her son and mother . . . without knowing how to achieve this all of this. The only thing Kate did right was hand Aaron over to his grandmother, Carole Littleton. And I saw that coming a mile away. Once Kate had returned to Los Angeles, she used Jack for comfort sex and later rejected him after boarding Ajira Flight 316.
Following all of the above, the producers dumped "Whatever Happened, Happened" episode on the viewers in order to make Kate favorable to the viewers again. At least it seemed so to me, at the time. They had her acting like a frantic Florence Nightengale on behalf of a kid she hardly knew. I could have understood if she had felt perturbed over young Ben's situation, like the others (except for Jack). But Cuse and Lindelof . . . they took it too far with Kate's frantic desire to save Ben, which included her donating blood to him. And they even used this episode to blame Jack for Ben's slide into darkness. I guess that the show's writers and producers' attempt to redeem Kate in the eyes of the viewers worked. The viewers eagerly lapped up this shit. But Lindehof and Cuse achieved this at a heavy price. In the end, all they did was sacrifice any semblance of artistic achievement for bad characterization and mediocre writing.
There is a little post-script to all of this. In the late Season Six episode, (6.13) The Last Recruit", Kate finally admitted to Claire that she had been wrong to keep Aaron from his grandmother for nearly three years. And at that moment, my dislike of Kate Austen finally evaporated. Ironically, following her confession, many of the series' fans became increasingly hostile toward her. Perhaps they could no longer pretend that Kate had an excuse for keeping Aaron. Who knows?