Rewatching LOST: 1.12 "Whatever the Case May Be"

When Kate and Sawyer find a metal briefcase from the plane, Kate goes to great lengths to open it. Elsewhere, the survivors on the beach are forced to relocate, and a very distraught Charlie receives help from someone else who’s missing a loved one.

• Four days have passed since the events of the last episode (“All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues”).
• Sawyer follows Kate deep into the jungle for her “protection,” believing she could be just as much in danger as Claire was from Ethan and his people. But Kate is just picking fruit from trees that haven’t been picked clean. After some friendly arguing, the two of them discover a beautiful lagoon, and Sawyer talks Kate into joining him for a swim. They engage in some playful frolicking until they come across some dead passengers from the plane, buried under the water still strapped to their seats. Sawyer decides to salvage whatever he can from the bodies, and Kate dives down after him, spotting a metal brief case that she eyes with great interest. Kate asks Sawyer to help retrieve the case, which she says belongs to her. But when he’s successful in bringing it up, he realizes the case doesn’t actually belong to her, and tries to get her to reveal what’s so special about it to her. She doesn’t play along, instead telling him to keep it for himself.
• As Sawyer mentioned in the last episode, the tide has shifted suddenly and everything on the beach is being washed out to sea, including the fuselage of the plane, which will be completely gone in a few days’ time.
• On the beach, Jack asks Sayid to take him to meet Danielle Rousseau as part of his search for Claire. Since Danielle knew of others living on the island, Jack believes she could be helpful in finding them, and thus, Claire. But Sayid plays down his insider status with Danielle, even going so far as to say that the Whispers he heard in the jungle were nothing but the wind. Trying a different tack, Jack asks if the maps Sayid stole from Danielle might be of any use, but Sayid replies that the maps contain equations unlike any he’s ever seen, and French writings he can’t translate. And with all the bad things that keep happening on the island, he’s not sure that translating the maps would lead to anything good.
• Shannon demands an explanation of Boone when he returns to the beach after helping Locke with the buried metal object in the jungle. But he lies to her, claiming to be searching for Claire, and says that at least he’s trying to contribute to the group, whereas Shannon is just useless. He returns to Locke, delivering to him the group’s one and only axe.
• Late that night, Kate sneaks into Sawyer’s tent and tries to take the metal briefcase from him, but he wakes up and stops her. When he flirts, she demands that he hand it over, but Sawyer senses that the case means something important to her, and refuses. The next day, he tries to pick the lock, but is unsuccessful. When slamming it into a large rock doesn’t work, he climbs a high tree and drops it, but Kate is waiting and snatches it. Sawyer chases her through the jungle and finally catches up to her and takes it back. But frustrated with his inability to open it, he offers to just give it to her if she’ll tell him what’s inside it. She stubbornly remains silent.
• Despite his earlier misgivings, Sayid decides to translate the maps. He approaches Shannon and asks for her help, since she’s the only one of them that speaks French. Later, while Shannon tries — unsuccessfully — to remember enough French to translate the maps, Sayid makes small talk, asking about how she learned to speak French. She explains that she lived there for a while.
• Charlie sits on the beach for days on end, staring at nothing while everyone else works to move their supplies inland. Rose approaches him and tells him he’s hardly the only person on the island who has a reason to be sad, and gets his help in moving a large object. Later, she cuts to the chase and tells him that no one blames him for what happened to Claire. But he’s suffering from a terrible case of survivor’s guilt, and a part of him wishes he’d died, instead of coming back empty-handed. Rose suggests that he ask for help.
• Kate goes to Jack for help in getting the case from Sawyer. She appeals to him as “the only person who knows” about her past, but Sun is nearby, and overhears much of their conversation. She tells Jack that the case belonged to Marshall Edward Mars, but lies in saying that Oceanic Airlines forced him to check it instead of carrying it on the plane. She wins him over by claiming that there are four 9mm guns in the case, along with ammo. Kate tells Jack that the key is still in the same place Mars always kept it: in his wallet, in his back pocket. When Jack points out that he buried the Marshall, Kate asks him where. But Jack sees through her, and asks what else is in the case. She claims that nothing else is there, but Jack will only help if she agrees that the two of them will open the case together. They go dig up the Marshall, and Kate tries to take the key for herself with a little slight-of-hand, but Jack sees her maneuver and takes the key away from her.
• When Shannon’s translations result in gibberish, Sayid becomes frustrated and the two of them argue. Shannon runs off, hurt.
• Jack gets the case from Sawyer by threatening to withhold the antibiotics he’s been giving Sawyer for the knife wound he sustained during Sayid’s torture (in “Confidence Man”). The two of them have a tense standoff before Sawyer finally relents, but he warns Jack that Kate’s a skilled liar and will play him just like she plays everyone else.
• Inside the case, Jack finds everything Kate said he would — the guns, some money — along with a small toy plane inside an envelope labeled “personal effects.” Jack demands an explanation, pushing her when she cages up, and in an emotional outburst, Kate admits that the plane belonged to the man she loved — a man she also killed.
• The survivors’ move inland from the beach complete, Charlie finds Rose that night at a camp fire and strikes up a conversation about her husband, Bernard. She confirms that he was in the tale section of the plane, and reiterates her belief that he’s still alive and that she’ll see him again. “There’s a fine line between denial and faith,” she tells him. “It’s much better on my side.” Unable to stand it any longer, Charlie finally breaks down and cries, and asks Rose for help. But she says she’s not the one who can help him, and she leads him in a prayer for the people they’re missing.
• That same night, Shannon goes to Sayid and tells him a story. The man she lived with in France had a son who watched the movie Finding Nemo religiously, and the notations Shannon recognized from Danielle’s maps are lyrics from the song “Beyond the Sea,” which played over the end credits of the movie, dubbed into French.

• Some time ago, Kate helped rob a bank in New Mexico, after first infiltrating the bank as a customer under a pseudonym. Not only did she play the victim in front of the bank manager in order to help get the key to the vault, she was romantically involved with the head robber and planned the entire scheme. Once the robbery seemed to be working and they’d gained access to the vault, Kate turned on her fellow thieves and shot all three of them. She then demanded access to a safety deposit box, and retrieved from it the toy plane that she would later go to great lengths to get back, on the island.
• Whatever else her crimes may be, Kate is an admitted murderer.

• Kate does know how to use guns after all, as we learned from her bank robbery flashback.
  Question: Since she’s a criminal fugitive, does Kate really not know how to use guns, or was she just pretending in front of the survivors, in order to preserve her secret? 1.02
• Kate once helped rob a bank in New Mexico, though she had no interest in money; she was after a toy airplane that belonged to someone she loved, which was stored there in a safety deposit box.
  Question: What crime(s) did Kate commit? 1.02

• Is there anything to Sayid’s suspicions that the tide’s sudden, drastic change wasn’t normal?
• Who is the man that Kate claimed to have loved and killed?
  Answered in 1.12.
• How did he die?
  Answered in 1.12.
• What is the significance of the song “Beyond the Sea” to Danielle Rousseau?

• “Whatever the Case May Be” is the second Kate-centric episode of the series.
• Kate’s safety deposit box was #815. A nice early reference to the cursed numbers, and also the very same numbers as the doomed Oceanic flight. Are the writers winking at us by putting a toy plane inside safety deposit box #815? Oh yeah, they are.
• There were a lot of little bits and pieces throughout this episode that I enjoyed — particularly the scenes between Rose and Charlie — but overall, “Whatever the Case May Be” was the first Lost story I couldn’t completely swallow. To this day, I can’t quite accept that Kate’s motivation for all of the things she did in this episode — fighting with Sawyer, lying to Jack, digging up a dead body, all in single-minded pursuit of the metal briefcase — was just to get her hands on a tiny toy plane that once belonged to someone she loved and is responsible for the death of. Okay, so it was her last remaining memento of a departed loved one, and she’s got tons of personal guilt piled onto his death, but still… All that build-up about what’s in the case that Kate could want so desperately, and it’s just a toy plane? Come on.
• I did enjoy the ending with “Beyond the Sea,” a fitting song if ever there was one for a show about a deserted island.

Image credits: “Rewatching Lost” logo by Robin Parrish. Season 1 cast promotional image and Oceanic Airlines logo: American Broadcasting Company.