S4E4 - Eggtown

Man, oh man. It’s amazing what a nice twist can do for an otherwise average episode. I feel like the Aaron reveal was so monumental, we should start with it and work our way backwards… kind of like eating your dessert first.

FLASHBACK COUNTDOWN:

So, I was maybe half right with the whole “I need to get back to him” comment Kate made to Jack at the end of last season. She did mean a baby, but not her own! Now I’m still wondering if Desmond’s flash of Claire getting into a helicopter will still happen. There’s obviously so much that has yet to happen, she could very well hop on a chopper and still not make it. If the preview from next week is any indication, it’s apparently a fairly treacherous ride back. So a few possibilities here…

1) Claire dies before being rescued and Kate decides to take the baby. Perhaps as Claire’s final request?
2) Claire decides to remain on the island for some reason. This is an interesting possibility because then the obvious question would be why would she decide to remain and give up Aaron. Or if she didn’t give him up willingly, why would Kate feel so strongly about taking him away?
3) Claire does make it off and is one of the Oceanic Six, but something happens to her afterwards and Kate raises Aaron as her own.

One good point Courtney made last night was that if Kate already claims Aaron as her child once they are all rescued, it would be easy for anyone to do the math and figure that she would have had to have been pregnant pre-flight, which would be fairly easy to confirm she was not considering how closely she was tracked by the Feds. Maybe this is why she was so adamant about not letting her mom visit as well as not bringing him to the trial, she doesn’t want him in the public eye because people might start asking questions.

Taking one step backwards, the brief conversation between Kate and Jack after the trial REALLY had me thinking that the baby was his and the reason he didn’t want to see it was because he just didn’t want to be involved with the parenting. It certainly would have fit with her comment to him, which I have taken the liberty to insert my assumed subtext:

“I understand why you don’t want to see him (because you’re a dead beat dad), but until you do (take responsibility for your child) there can be no ‘you and I going for coffee.’ (because you can’t have your cake and eat it too.)”

I thought THIS was going to be the twist. That Jack is the future father of Kate’s baby. Of course then she drops the Aaron bomb and bam, that theory is shot. But then what are we to think of this dialogue between them? Was it just a trick to get us to think that Jack and Kate eventually hook up only to sucker punch us in the end? I would think not. So this leaves us with the obvious question of why would Jack be SO hesitant about seeing Aaron?

As far as her sentencing goes, ten years probation without leaving the state, I think it will be an interesting obstacle in the future because I’m pretty convinced that at some point they will all believe they have to go back to the island.

Continuing our countdown, to me, Jack’s testimony was the next biggest surprise because of one comment and I may need a little help with it. He said there were eight survivors of the crash, right? But then went on to say that Kate saved him, but couldn’t save the other two. I wonder if that has any significance or if that’s just part of the story they all agreed to tell. I just don’t know why you would bother to say there were eight survivors if two of them drowned right after.

ISLAND COUNTDOWN:

Island-wise I feel like there were only two things worth noting, maybe three. The first being Miles’s attempt at blackmail. Even Ben seemed offended and you would imagine he’d jump at any chance to not be found or at least left alone. It seems Miles enjoys squeezing money out of folks, both living and dead. The most interesting piece was Miles’s claim to know who Ben was and “what he could do.” Obviously he was some financial power based on that desk stash of cash, but what else is he keeping up his sleeves?

The second noteworthy snippet was the emergency line conversation with Regina. First of all, the fact that there was an emergency line that was perfectly functional and the freighter folk didn’t bother to tell them seems odd. And secondly, the fact that the chopper hadn’t arrived yet is suspect. We know that Sayid, at least, survives so either there was a problem with the chopper and it has to crash land (on the “Alcatraz” island from the beginning of last season maybe?) or this is just a side effect of the time distortion?

And the last thing, weird, but still noteworthy, was Dan and Charlotte’s little “exercise” just before Jack confronted them about the sat phone. I have a feeling that Dan is a little unstable so maybe he’s off his meds or something and Charlotte is just helping him keep it together mentally. That seems reasonable. Any other theory about why it would be difficult to memorize three playing cards is beyond me. No one else seems to suffer from memory loss.

That’s about it. I thought we were supposed to discover another member of the Oceanic Six, but it was just Kate who we already knew survived, unless they’re counting Aaron, but I doubt it.

Biggest mystery of the episode... WHY IS IT TITLED "EGGTOWN?"

Comments? Theories?