"Born To Run" is well-acted and well-directed, but its greatest virtue is its script: both the present and the past stories are cleverly structured mysteries, and both contain chilling, genuinely unpredictable twists. The "Who poisoned Michael?" plot may seem like a rehash of the "Who burned the raft?" plot of "In Translation", but it succeeds again because it plays fair with the viewer (all the clues are right in front of you) AND still manages to come up with the last person you'd suspect as the guilty party AND after you think it's all over it throws another twist on top of all that. Evangeline Lilly is very good here: "I don't know what you're capable of", Jack tells her, and thanks to her performance, the viewer will not be sure, either. The other strength of the script is the dialogue, with some of the creepiest and at the same time funniest lines referring to the hatch: from Sayid's "Do you notice anything about that hatch? It has no handle! Could the reason for that be any more obvious?" to Walt's "Don't open it, John. Don't open that thing!". Walt's psychic powers might have been hinted at in "Special", but here they're displayed more clearly: "We don't have to leave (the island)", his father tells him. "Yes we do", is his response.
Perhaps Kate's second best episode of the entire series, after the undisputed champion "Tabula Rasa". *** out of 4.
Perhaps Kate's second best episode of the entire series, after the undisputed champion "Tabula Rasa". *** out of 4.