Season 3, Episode 15:
Left Behind
In flashbacks, Kate meets Sawyer's ex-girlfriend Cassidy, and the two strike up a friendship as they discuss their past crimes. Kate asks Cassidy to help her talk to her mother. Cassidy, disguised as Kate, shows up at Diane's house, confirming that Edward Mars is staking it out when he tries to arrest her. Kate talks to Diane at her restaurant, where Diane rejects her and tells her she will yell for help if she ever sees her again. Cassidy tells Kate she is pregnant with Sawyer's child, though she doesn't mention his name and Kate encourages her to call the police on him.
At the beach, Hurley tells Sawyer that the camp are voting over whether or not to banish him. He convinces him to try to be nice to everyone so they will let him stay. Sawyer awkwardly tries to make friends, with some success, although Sun is still angry with him. Eventually, Sawyer discovers that Hurley lied about the vote, and Hurley says he wanted Sawyer to step up, because he's currently the closest thing the survivors have to a leader.
At the Barracks, Locke visits the captured Kate, and tells her he is leaving with the Others. The Others gas the compound, and Kate is knocked unconscious. She wakes up in the jungle, handcuffed to Juliet. The two fight, and Kate accidentally dislocates Juliet's shoulder, before they are chased by the Smoke Monster. They hide from it in a banyan thicket, which the Monster cannot penetrate, though it flashes white light at them, as though scanning them. Kate pops Juliet's shoulder back in. The Monster returns, and chases them past the sonic fence. Juliet reveals that she had the handcuff key all along as she unlocks the cuffs and turns on the fence, which the Monster is unable to get through. Kate and Juliet find Sayid and Jack, and Jack insists on bringing Juliet back to camp.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Beware the Honest Ones: Hurley has always been the most honest member of the survivors' camp, unable to lie or even keep a secret. Here, he manages to convince Sawyer that he's in danger of getting kicked out of the camp so that he'll become a nicer person and take charge while Jack, Kate, Locke, and Sayid are gone. Even Sawyer is amazed that he's essentially been conned by the last person he expected.
- Call-Back: Kate first meets Cassidy when the latter is trying to pull the necklace con-job that Sawyer taught her back in "The Long Con".
- Call-Forward:
- Diane tells Kate that if she ever sees her again the first thing she will do is yell for help, which is exactly what she does in "Born To Run".
- Kate encourages Cassidy to get Sawyer arrested for stealing her money, which it was revealed she had done in "Every Man For Himself".
- Chained Heat: Subverted. Kate and Juliet wake up in the jungle handcuffed together, with Juliet claiming that she was knocked out by the rest of the Others and left behind. While at first it seems that they are starting to get along, it turns out that Juliet dragged Kate out into the jungle and handcuffed them together in order to gain her trust. Her deception is unmasked when the two are menaced by the Smoke Monster, and Juliet unlocks the handcuffs in panic so that she can turn on the security barrier.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Juliet attempts to invoke this by pretending to be handcuffed to Kate. It comes close to working until Kate finds out about the ruse."They left me behind too, they gassed me! I know that you don't care, but the people I spent the last three years of my life with, they just left me! I thought that maybe, maybe if I could make you think that we were in it together. Maybe I wouldn't get left behind again."
- Hazy-Feel Turn: Locke leaves the survivors to join the Others, though his exact motives for doing so remain mysterious.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Kate's quote to Juliet, seen at the top of the page, is self-deprecating about the show's penchant for mysteries with few answers.
- Noodle Incident: Juliet claims that Kate dislocating her shoulder is the fourth time that's happened to her.
- One Degree of Separation: The flashbacks reveal that Kate met and befriended Sawyer's ex Cassidy.
- Staring Down Cthulhu: Juliet stares down the Smoke Monster, albeit through a sonic fence that it is incapable of bypassing.
- You Are Fat: After reminding Hurley that he can't use nicknames for another three days, ten hours, and fifteen minutes, Sawyer calls him "rotund, annoying, and blocking his view."
