"LOST" RETROSPECT: (5.11) "Whatever Happened, Happened" (Or . . . The Emergence of Saint Kate)

I first wrote this article following the 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 have written at least five articles that were either about the character, Kate Austen or in which she featured heavily. One would think that she is such a compelling character. But I do not think so. I suspect that my problem with Kate is that she is one of the most badly written characters on this show and in the history of television . . . and she is the female lead. And I find that disturbing. My dislike of the character went up a notch after I had watched the Season Five Kate-centric episode called (5.11) "Whatever Happened, Happened"

"Whatever Happened, Happened" was a badly written episode, set during the Dharma Initiative period of 1977.  It really was. I felt as if I had watched the emergence of a character called "Saint Kate", instead of an interesting episode about the reasons behind a woman's choices. But there were no reasons given for Kate's sudden desire to save a young Ben Linus' life. Instead, the episode had her in a state of frantic over Ben's condition that did not make any sense. Even worse, the episode went too far and had her donate blood to him in a 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 Sayid's? Because Ben grew up to be the manipulative and murderous man who gave them so much trouble during the fall of 2004? How did Jack suddenly become anti-Ben, again? I read a piece on this episode on WIKIPEDIA, which 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 Sayid Jarrah 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, it seems that Ben will no longer have any memories of it, following Richard Alpert's treatment 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 the writers 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. 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 him, Jack's refusal to save him or Richard's memory-wiping cure, the one person who is mainly responsible for Ben's moral downfall . . . was Ben. Other people have come from traumatic backgrounds and managed to make decent lives for themselves. Ben does not have any real excuse. Sayid has to deal with his crime of shooting an innocent boy, himself. Jack has to deal with his refusal to treat that boy. But they are not mainly responsible for Ben's crimes. Ben is.

When I 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. That was disappointing. And up to that point, Sawyer did not know about the lie surrounding Aaron. Nor did he 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.

Regarding Kate's decision to return to the island, she told Cassidy that her intention was to find Claire and get her back home to Aaron. How?  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 did not know about the runway that Frank Lapidus had used to land Ajira Flight 316. Locke had destroyed the Dharma submarine back in Season 3. And Kate knew about the destruction of the freighter in Season Four.  To this day, I still wonder how she planned to send Claire back to Aaron? 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 that ludicrous attempt by her to get information from Miles about her status as a fugitive. Then it developed into the storyline surrounding her custody of Aaron that went no where. The only thing that the Aaron storyline achieved was a temporary estragement 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 in Los Angeles? 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, confessed the Aaron kidnapping and 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 little act. The only thing Kate did right was hand Aaron over to Carole Littleton. And I saw that coming a mile away. Once Kate returned to Los Angeles, she uses Jack for comfort sex and later rejects him after boarding Ajira Flight 316.

Following all that, the producers dumped the badly written "Whatever Happened, Happened" episode on the viewers in order to make Kate favorable to the viewers again. They had her acting like a frantic Florence Nightengale over a kid she hardly knew. I understand if she was perturbed over young Ben's situation, like the others (sans Jack). But the writers . . . took it too far with Kate's frantic desire to save him, 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" finally admitted to Claire that she had been wrong to keep Aaron from his grandmother for nearly three years.  At that moment, my dislike of Kate Austen finally evaporated.