Rewatching LOST: 1.22 "Born to Run"

With the raft nearly ready to depart and rescue suddenly a possibility, Kate makes a play for Sawyer’s spot on the raft. Locke and Sayid show Jack the Hatch.

• On the beach, Charlie shares with Kate his theory that if and when the raft gets all of them rescued, they’ll be famous, though Kate is turned off by this idea. They’re interrupted by a commotion over at the raft where one of the survivors, Dr. Leslie Arzt, is warning the boat’s planned passengers — Michael, Walt, Sawyer, and Jin — that monsoon season is upon them and their last safe chance to launch the raft for several months may have already come and gone. Michael decides to launch the very next day, and Kate boldly tells Michael she’s coming with him. She tries to convince him that taking Sawyer is a bad idea, and when that doesn’t work, her desperation grows to the point that she even criticizes Michael for taking Walt on such a “dangerous” voyage. But Michael is offended, and rebuffs her, stating that the raft is unequivocally full.
• Sun approaches Jin at the raft and tries to talk to him. She expresses concern that he’s going on the raft, but he will only confirm that he is definitely going.
• Sayid takes Jack into the jungle to see the Hatch, at Locke’s behest. Jack is surprised by the sight of it — which has been dug out of the ground even more since we last saw it — and argues with Locke about lying and keeping secrets. Locke counters that Jack did the same thing with the steel case full of guns. When Jack agrees with Locke that they need to open it, Sayid is appalled. He believes it was never meant to be opened from the outside, and that can only mean that whatever is inside is too dangerous to be tampered with.
• When Sawyer demonstrates a lack of knowledge when it comes to surviving on the open sea, Michael begins to reconsider his assertion to Kate that the crew roster would remain as is. Sawyer immediately confronts Kate and reveals that he’s deduced her secret: she was the Marshall’s prisoner on the plane. He also knows that she wants on the raft because it’s her only chance of not being taken into custody again when rescue comes. He promises her there’s no way she’s getting his place on the raft, but she shoots back an equally dark threat that if she wants his spot on the raft, she’ll get it.
• Walt questions Michael about their plans after being rescued, wanting to be reassured that they’ll come back to get everyone else. Michael mentions that the island may be hard to find again, but they’ll try. Michael gets suddenly sick with severe abdominal pain and sends Walt to get Jack. Walt runs until he comes across Sun and Kate, who are chatting quietly. Kate volunteers to find Jack.
• Kate finds Jack, Sayid, and Locke when they’re returning from the Hatch. Jack diagnoses Michael and advises him to take it easy. Michael insists that work on the raft has to be finished so they can launch tomorrow, but he’s unable to summon the strength he needs. Jack tells Locke privately of his suspicion that someone doped Michael, deliberately. When Jack takes Michael new water to drink, Michael realizes Jack’s thinking and suspects it was Sawyer who did it.
• Locke questions Hurley — who seems to be in-the-know when it comes to camp gossip — about who might have tainted Michael’s drinking water. Hurley mentions Sawyer, but then lets slip Kate’s fugitive status to Locke, who didn’t know about it. Locke asks Jack about this, only to get his own words handed back to him by Jack about using discretion when keeping secrets.
• Claire gives Charlie a haircut, though he’s preoccupied with writing music for the first time since the crash. He’s obsessed with thoughts of being rescued and his plans for getting back to civilization, but Claire has no idea what she intends to do if they’re rescued. Charlie tells her she can stay with him in L.A. until she can sort out her plans, and she agrees.
• Jack returns to the caves to search his medical supplies to see if anything is missing — anything that could have been used to poison Michael. Kate finds him there and asks about Michael’s status, and whether or not he’ll be able to go on the raft. Jack cuts to the chase and asks if she poisoned Michael, but she avoids the question by acting offended and leaving.
• Walt approaches Locke privately and tells him that he didn’t poison his father. Locke assures him that he didn’t suspect it, even though he knows Walt burned the first raft. And he promises to keep Walt’s secret. When Locke places a reassuring hand on Walt’s arm, Walt seems to suddenly read Locke’s thoughts, and warns him, “Don’t open that thing” — referring to the Hatch. Locke plays dumb, but Walt emphatically repeats himself, “Just don’t open it!”
• Sawyer gives Michael some Pepto-Bismal as a peace offering, but Michael sees it as an admission of guilt and tells Sawyer he’s a dangerous criminal and he’s off the raft. Furious, Sawyer spots Kate nearby, grabs her and tells her it’s time to “set things straight.” He drags her into the argument and empties her backpack, where he finds a passport that belonged to Joanna — the survivor who drowned (in 1.05 “White Rabbit”) — and shows it to everyone. Kate had burned the photograph but was intending to keep the passport and assume Joanna’s identity on the raft, when it was rescued. Left with no choice, Kate comes clean to all of the survivors and publicly announces her past as a criminal and a fugitive. Once the truth is out, the crowd breaks up, but not before a lot of disappointed looks are thrown at Kate.
• Alone, Sun watches as Jin and the others work hard to finish up work on the raft. Jack finds her and tells her he knows she was the one who poisoned the water — but not to make Michael sick. She was trying to make Jin sick, so he wouldn’t be able to leave. Sun says she didn’t want Jin to die out on the raft, and didn’t know how to convince him not to go, so she used just enough of the drug to make him sick but not hurt him. She had no idea Michael and Jin would get their water bottles mixed up. Jack promises not to tell her secret, but advises her to find a way to say goodbye to her husband.
• That night, Kate is alone at a campfire when Sawyer comes to tell her he’s back on the raft, which is leaving the next day. He expresses some regret over how things went down earlier, so she asks him why he’s so adamant about being on the raft. He replies that there’s nothing on the island worth staying for. She wishes him well, and bids him goodbye.
• In a quiet moment alone, Walt confesses to his dad that he was the one that burned the first raft, because he didn’t want to leave the island, and he apologizes. Surprisingly, Michael is quick to forgive him, and even offers to stay on the island if that’s what Walt wants. But Walt has changed his mind since then, and now he wants to get off the island as soon they can.
• Sun visits Kate and tells her that Jack knows what she did to Jin’s water bottle. But Sun says she didn’t tell Jack that it was Kate’s idea.

• Some time before her involvement in the bank robbery in New Mexico, but after whatever crime(s) put her on the run from the authorities, Kate received a letter informing her that her mother Diane was dying of cancer, and went home to Iowa to try and help her. Given her fugitive status, she enlisted the help of a childhood friend named Tom Brennan, a doctor now, who she was in love with even though he was married. While waiting for an MRI appointment arranged by Tom for her mother, Tom and Kate went out to an enormous tree and dug up an old toy lunch box that they’d buried together as children. The box was a time capsule, with memorabilia from their childhood friendship, and inside were a number of items, including Tom’s toy airplane — the same one for which Kate would later rob a bank and battle Sawyer over the steel case on the island. Also inside is a cassette tape on which the two of them recorded in 1989, where they confess their dreams: Tom wanted to grow up, marry Kate, and have children; Kate just wanted to get her driver’s license and run away from home with him. Reminiscing about how things turned out, they engage in a passionate kiss, before heading off to the hospital. At the hospital, Tom assists Kate in sneaking into a private area where she can speak to her mother. The two engage in an emotionally painful reunion, where Kate apologizes for everything she’s put her mother through. But her mother reacted in horror, and started screaming out for help. Kate had no choice but to run, but Tom got dragged into her escape when she commandeered his car. She tried to convince him to get out of the car before she executed a dangerous escape attempt, but he refused, and when the car crashed, Tom was killed. Kate was devastated, but fled the scene to avoid capture by the police.

• Why did Kate want to run away from home as a child?
• What crime did Kate commit that affected her mother so personally, that her mother would react with such fear of her own daughter?
• What became of Kate’s mother? Did she die from her cancer?
• Why did Walt warn Locke not to open the Hatch? What’s inside that he’s afraid of — so afraid that he suddenly wants to leave the island?

• Tom Brennan was a childhood love of Kate’s, who became a doctor as an adult. He married and had a son with a woman named Rachael, though his feelings for Kate never died, and vice versa.
  Question: Who is the man that Kate claimed to have loved and killed? 1.12
• During an attempt to reconcile with her estranged mother with Tom’s help, Kate was found out and chased by the police, and Tom was killed during her escape, making Kate indirectly responsible for his death.
  Question: How did [Tom Brennan] die? 1.12

• “Born to Run” is the third Kate-centric episode of the series.
• The fan-beloved Dr. Leslie Arzt, a background survivor who suddenly jumped to the forefront, stands in stark contrast to Season 3’s Nikki and Paolo, who were introduced to the show in much the same way — but got considerably more screen time, and were universally reviled by fans.
• Arzt’s note that Antarctica is the only land mass south of the island reminded me of Penny’s tracking station, which we only ever saw once, in closing moments of the Season 2 finale. We’ve never been told exactly where that station was located, but Antarctica is the most likely theory, based on the extreme weather conditions there. Was the mention in this episode a little foreshadowing, perhaps? I wonder if we’ve seen the last of that station, or if Antarctica has a further role to play.
• Wow, I did not remember that Tom’s airplane was inside a New Kids On the Block lunchbox — which we now know was the very same lunchbox Jacob bought for Kate when she was a little girl, after she tried to steal it.
• The date when Kate and Tom recorded their taped message — August 15th — is an occurrence of the Numbers (8/15).
• I was never a huge fan of the Tom Brennan storyline. Were you? From a writer’s perspective, it was just a complication used to drag out the underlying mystery of Kate’s criminal past, which was infinitely more interesting. I am gratified, however, upon rewatching the episode, to see that the answers regarding Kate’s big crime — which would be revealed later in the Season 2 episode “What Kate Did” — were planned at least as early as this episode, as evidenced by the various seeds planted here. Most prominent among them was the startling reaction of Kate’s mother to seeing her daughter again.
• The first episode of Season 1 to deal with a solo character’s flashbacks was “Tabula Rasa,” and it put the focus on Kate. “Born to Run” is the last episode of Season 1 to deal with a single character’s flashbacks, and it also focuses on Kate. Nice little bookends for the season.

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