SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't yet seen this episode of Lost, you should avoid reading this article and the user comments, as they will discuss events that happened during the episode.
| 64 |
| Previous Episode: 89 |
Season 6, Ep. 3: "What Kate Does"
A relatively uneventful, Kate-centric episode, "What Kate Does" again splits time between 2004(?) in Los Angeles and 2007(?) on the island. The former scenes focused exclusively on Kate and a very pregnant Claire, while, back on the island, the temple captives attempted to figure out what was going on, and -- more specifically -- what exactly happened to bring Sayid back from the dead.
Of course, if you were expecting answers to those concerns, you didn't get very many of them during the episode, although you did get a brief return appearance from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Rob McElhenney, who, as his character alluded, had made an even briefer appearance in a season three episode, with a similar outcome.
What did reviewers and recappers think of these new events (or lack thereof)? We run down their comments below. Please remember that the individual critic scores listed below should be considered very approximate, since assigning scores to episode reviews -- which tend to be 99% recap and 1% opinion -- is far from an exact science. (If you do see what looks like a very precise number, it is because that reviewer actually posted an exact score or grade for the episode.)
| Score | Publication | Reviewer |
|---|---|---|
| 83 | TV Overmind | Sam McPherson |
| I enjoyed the episode, but it felt more like a season four episode and not quite like a season six one. | ||
| 75 | Entertainment Weekly | Jeff Jensen |
| 'What Kate Does'' grows more and more interesting the more I think about it. Granted, it's my job to think about Lost, like, a lot, but put the episode's good stuff on a scale and I'll wager it'll outweigh the lame stuff. [You can also read Jensen's earlier comments on the episode.] | ||
| 75 | The Onion A.V. Club | Noel Murray |
| For the first half of “What Kate Does,” I confess to being a little antsy. Beyond my usual anxiety over “Kate episodes”—which tend to be among Lost’s weakest—I worried that Lost was falling back into multiple bad habits. In the second half hour, a lot of my fears were allayed. [Grade: B] | ||
| 74 | TV Fanatic | M.L. House |
| The main problem is that it's difficult to get emotionally invested in any 2004 scene. | ||
| 73 | IGN | Chris Carabott |
| "What Kate Does" slows the pace down significantly from last week and focuses on telling a character-driven story. This is a welcome change; especially after the heavily plot-driven season five. However, with questions to answer and so much ground to cover during this final season, a better balance between plot and character wouldn't have been such a bad thing. | ||
| 70 | Chicago Tribune | Maureen Ryan |
| [It] obviously wasn't as jam-packed as "LA X" but nonetheless kept the season's momentum going. | ||
| 70 | Cultural Learnings | Myles McNutt |
| “What Kate Does” doesn’t have the sense of surprise we had last week, and the complete lack of movement in terms of Locke/Smokey and that group of castaways does make for a smaller story by comparison. But I felt like the small scale of the story helped highlight moments like Sawyer and Kate on the dock, and helped remind us that the purpose of the flash sideways is not to blow our minds but rather to jog our memories. | ||
| 70 | Los Angeles Times | Todd VanDerWerff |
| I can see why some fans think this one was a filler. I prefer to think of it as a breather, a brief pause between all of the bigger events. And even though it had me nervous as it started, I was definitely happy to see it pull itself together in the end. | ||
| 70 | TV Squad | Jonathan Toomey |
| As far as 'Lost' mindf#%ks go, this one is a doozie, because it's forced us to reevaluate everything we remember about these characters, right back to the pilot episode. | ||
| 70 | Zap2It | Ryan McGee |
| Was this episode on par with last week's premiere? Absolutely not. Did it contain scenes of incredible beauty, based on character work and stakes earned over five seasons? Indeed it did. [Editor's note: You can also read McGee's recap of his own recap -- now that's meta!] |
||
| 67 | Television Without Pity | Cindy McLennan |
| [Grade: B-] | ||
| 60 | Fancast | Tracy Phillips |
| Kate episodes are known for being somewhat of a drag (much like the character these days), and this one had a tough act to follow after last week’s smoke-monster of a premiere. It also didn’t help that it was Locke-less... Mostly it served as one of those ‘bridge-building’ outings, laying the groundwork for the next wave of awesome. | ||
| 60 | HitFix | (Monkeys as Critics) |
| [The episode] ends up moving a bunch of pieces around the chess board without advancing much of anything. ... Still, the bits that do move things forward this week do so in interesting ways, and the things that confirm what I think is going on make a compelling case for where I think the season's headed. | ||
| 60 | Time | James Poniewozik |
| For now, we're in a disorienting place, in a way not unlike the much-maligned start of season three. There, we also had characters separated, and/or imprisoned, and the introduction of a whole new set of Others we didn't quite know why we should care about. A lot of fans did not care for the start of season three, but we know how spectacularly that season ended. | ||
| 60 | Variety | Brian Lowry |
| The second episode of "Lost" was a slower-moving affair than the two-hour premiere, with precious little learned about the new "Others" harboring several members of the original cast. | ||
| 50 | The New York Times | Mike Hale |
| [The Los Angeles storyline] was kind of boring and seemingly pointless. | ||
| 40 | What's Alan Watching | Alan Sepinwall |
| "What Kate Does" was a less thrilling experience. Interesting in spots - mainly on the island - but mainly it left me wanting to jump ahead to the next episode for a more serious fix. ... I can see lots of things introduced here paying off interestingly down the road, maybe even as soon as next week, but there wasn't enough meat for the episode to really succeed on its own. | ||
| 30 | St. Petersburg Times | Eric Deggans |
| A dizzying meditation on some of my least favorite characters which offered no real revelations on the series' biggest mysteries.... This episode felt like the show's writers were running in place, leading us through a lot emotional changes -- look, Sawyer's crying over lost love Juliet and Claire has reappeared on the island looking like a Lost Boy! -- without much explanation or sense. | ||
What did you think?
Did you enjoy this episode of Lost? Do you like where this season is headed? Let us know in the comments section below. As a courtesy to other users, please do not include spoilers of any kind in your posts, although you are welcome to discuss all events shown in this particular episode of the show.
