Is Sayid’s body possessed by Jacob? Or Juliet? It appears not. Sayid seems to still be Sayid, though with a twist. And in addition to this, we got a provocative hint about something from last season that bears discussing. And though she appeared briefly last week when Kate hijacked the taxi, this episode more or less marks the official return of Cleer to the series.

The episode title “What Kate Does” is a callback to the Season 2 episode “What Kate Did”, wherein we learned that Kate killed her step-(or so she thought) father by burning his house down. She doesn’t do anything nearly as dramatic this time around: she steals Claire’s purse and luggage, drives to an auto shop where the proprietor (Jeff Kober, recognizable to Buffy fans as both one of the more menacing, drug-dependent vampires from the series … and Rack) helps free her from her handcuffs. She then feels guilty for stealing the possessions of a pregnant girl, and drives back to the airport to ask Claire if she wants a ride.

I want to go on record as saying that I enjoy Kate as a character, and always have. But Kate-centric episodes invariably kind of suck. It’s not always easy to figure out why this is, but it’s very easy to pinpoint where this entry in the Kate-o-pedia goes off the rails: despite the fact that she’s repeatedly had a gun waived in her face by this crazy broad, Claire not only accepts the offer of a ride from Kate (in a stolen taxi cab), but she asks Kate to join her at the door of the prospective adoptive parents of her unborn baby, and then shields her from police in the hospital after having contractions. This is nonsense, and I don’t see how anyone watching could have done anything less than smack their heads at the incredulity. Are the two cosmically connected because of the island and because Kate helped deliver Aaron before everything got turned back? I don’t know, but that kind of development was not earned.

Oh, the OB-GYN who treats Claire at the hospital is Ethan. You may remember that he once stuck her with a bunch of crazy needles, but now he doesn’t want to poke her with needles unless it’s absolutely necessary. Claire doesn’t have her baby today.

Meanwhile (or three years later, actually) on the island, Dogen takes Sayid into his office and tortures him. Sayid pleads that he doesn’t understand, isn’t withholding information, and would gladly tell him whatever he wants to know. I’m not sure whether or not we’re supposed to take this scene at face value, and it seems to me a distinct possibility that none of this torturing actually occurred. But Sayid certainly believes it did. It seems a just dessert for someone who tortured people for a living. Sawyer gets off a wonderfully bitter line to this effect: Sayid tortured children. Why shouldn’t he get another crack at life?

Sawyer takes advantage of some commotion to present his pistol and make his escape from the temple, despite Dogen’s urging. Kate agrees to go after him, and Jin goes with her. They are escorted by two Others, Justin and Aldo, who apparently can’t keep straight which information is secret and which isn’t. When Kate almost steps on what looks like a Rousseau-trap, Aldo remarks that the French woman has been dead for years (three, in fact), before being hushed by Justin. Kate springs the trap, and she and Jin take off alone into the jungle. Jin, who only wants to find Sun, leaves Kate, and she continues her pursuit of Sawyer.

When she finds him, he’s mourning Juliet in their old house. He blames himself for her death because he convinced her not to leave the island. He throws the engagement ring he planned to give her into the ocean. And then Kate cries. Have you noticed that Kate has spent most of her time on the island just following people around, either immediately behind them or tracking them through the jungle?

Dogen diagnoses Sayid with The Sickness (I guess), and prescribes one green capsule. Jack smells a rat and refuses to give it to him, and actually tries to swallow the capsule himself. Defeated, Dogen reveals that the capsule is full of green poison. Why would you want to kill Sayid? Jack wants to know. And then Dogen explains that there is a darkness growing within Sayid that will eventually overtake him, leaving nothing of the original Sayid behind — a process which has already claimed Claire!

And sure enough, while trying to escape Justin and Aldo, Jin steps in a bear trap. Before they can dispatch with him, Claire emerges from the foliage brandishing a shotgun and a hairstyle very reminiscent of Danielle Rousseau. And here’s the interesting question posed by tonight’s episode: Was Rousseau really the only member of the French party to avoid infection, or was she actually the only one that was infected? Is that why Ben took Baby Alex — to protect her?

As for the rest … blah. I’m getting really tired of seeing Sawyer storm off alone into the jungle (knowing Kate will eventually follow him). And Kate’s whole L.A. adventure just didn’t move me. As for Cleer, I’m certainly curious to know what happened to her over the past three years on the island, but like with Kate, I didn’t care all that much about what happened to her or her baby in that hospital. I wonder if the writers might not be in a real quandry here. These new and improved 2004 scenes aren’t going to be worth a damn to viewers unless we become convinced that they matter. Right now, I don’t see how they matter in the slightest.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Despite some shallow writing, Josh Holloway and Naveen Andrews give nice performances in this episode. But once again, “what Kate does” turns out to be “brings everything to a screeching halt”. And it’s too early in the season for that.

Before we reach the end of the series next year, I hope we get some explanation for why the Others don’t want other people on the island. Why are they “hostile”? Why are they on the island in the first place? Other than the technological differences (VW buses versus horses), they don’t seem all that different from the Dharma Initiative. They both crave information from each other, yet tend to greet interlopers with violence and demands rather than questions. We know the Others ultimately wipe out the DI — so there’s no hope of any kind of peaceful coexistence there — but what will be the fate of the Others in 2007 and beyond?

It appears that will be determined by Mr. John Locke.

As you might expect, “Follow the Leader” was about leadership, specifically how one acquires a leadership role and what he or she does with that power once in possession of it. As demonstrated in this and previous episodes, authority rarely goes unchallenged on Mystery Island. While Eloise Hawking is killing her future son Daniel, Charles Widmore discovers Jack and Kate lurking in the woods. Once they are dragged into camp, Eloise picks their brains about Daniel, whom she realizes is from the future. Jacks tells her about Daniel’s plan to detonate the nuclear warhead and, you know, put everything back the way it’s supposed to be or something. Kate abhors this plan — people will probably die and worse, she and Jack will never meet — but Eloise agrees to take them to Jughead, despite Widmore’s protestations.

Jack has been the leader of the Losties since the beginning, and though he seemed relieved to not have that responsibility in the Dharma village, there are just some parts of our nature that cannot be changed. Jack makes decisions. He’s not a follower. And Jack decides he wants to blow up the nuke even though it’s buried underneath the village. Kate follows for awhile, but can’t tolerate it when Jack talks about changing the course of the future as his “destiny”. The word carries too many shades of Locke, and so Kate bolts (but not before Sayid appears out of the jungle and shoots one of the Others).

Sayid has no qualms about changing the future. He believes he’s already done it, in fact, because as far as he knows, Benjamin Linus is now dead. Kate breaks the news that she rescued Ben, and Sayid makes a mental note to strangle her as soon as it becomes convenient. In the meantime, Sayid joins Jack, Eloise, and Richard Alpert on their journey toward the bomb.

And I know I mentioned this last week, but it still bugs the hell out of me: if whatever change they’re able to make actually stops their plane from crashing, then it also means they won’t have ever journeyed back to 1977. And if they never travel to 1977, then they won’t be there to blow up the bomb! Surely someone will figure this out before long, won’t they?

Back at the village, Radzinsky has basically staged a coup, and is torturing Sawyer and Juliet. He wants to know the location of the Others’ camp. Sawyer — selling out his former friends in order to save himself and Juliet — finally agrees to give up the location in exchange for their safe passage on the submarine. Dr. Chang has finally been convinced that Daniel was telling the truth about the electromagnetic discharge, but with Radzinsky calling the shots, the best he can arrange is to get the women and children off the island. This provides the completely predictable explanation for why he abandoned his wife and baby Miles. Of course we don’t know for certain that the map drawn by Sawyer is accurate, but he seemed too defeated in that moment to not tell the truth. Where just a few weeks ago he was enjoying his comfortable DI life, now he’s sick of it. “Good riddance” he says to the island as he slumps down into the sub.

Radzinsky’s tenure as leader of the DI will be a disaster, of course, and he’ll spend his last days living in the Swan station pushing the button and drawing maps on the blast doors. Just like Idi Amin.

The third leadership situation this week puts us back in 2007 with Locke and his merry band of post-Dharma Initiative Others. Locke walks into the Others’ camp carrying a dead boar, proclaiming, “I brought dinner.” After brushing off Richard’s questions about, you know, where the hell he’s been for the last three years — and after pulling off the neat trick of sending Richard to provide first aid for a time traveling Locke recently shot in the leg by Ethan — Locke demands to be taken to see Jacob. And not only that, he asks everyone else to come along too (much to Richard’s chagrin). When Ben asks Locke what he plans to do, Locke drops this bombshell: he’s going to kill Jacob.

I have speculated previously that I thought Jacob was actually Jack, trapped in some kind of interdimensional vortex or something metaphysical like that. That still may be the case, and I’d like to think it is. But when Locke says he wants to kill Jacob, I don’t think he means it literally. During his speech to the Others, he asks if any of them has seen Jacob. I believe he means to “kill” Jacob by demonstrating that he doesn’t exist. Kill the myth of Jacob. And yet if he does that, it will probably be the least Locke-like thing he’s ever done. Maybe he really is different now.

The island is still speaking to him though. So at least he’s not giving up all his faith. I do hope, though, that he’s wrong about Jacob (or that I am), because I’ll be disappointed if that’s all just a big hoax. But it was interesting to me how eager the Others were to follow Locke. Who has been leading them over the past three years? Richard? Probably not, since … well, that’s never been his job. If Locke’s quest to destroy Jacob (whatever that means) doesn’t go the way he hopes, what will that say about his destiny? Will the Others still follow him? I don’t know, but maybe being dead for a week causes you to lose some of those incidental worries.

By the way, if I’ve never said it before, I want to mention how much I enjoy Nestor Carbonell as Richard. What a wonderfully underplayed performance week after week. I’ve come to really enjoy that character, and I’ve never been more intrigued about his true identity.

I thought this was the most solid episode of Lost since “316″. It gave us three strong, thematically connected storylines, and left me anxious to see the resolutions to all three. I don’t have much interest in the Sawyer-Kate-Juliet triangle. I do kind of want to know what the hell happened to Rose and Bernard. It’s been three years! Where are they?!

I feel properly prepared for next week’s season finale. I don’t know if they’re going to give us another game-changing plot twist in the form of an altered crash-free timeline, but though it doesn’t seem reasonably possible, I’m curious to see how it plays out.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Best exchange of the night: Chang quizzing Hurley on his age in an effort to prove he’s a time traveler.

CHANG: “So you fought in the Korean War?”
HURLEY: “…There’s no such thing?”