Meet Kevin Johnson

"Meet Kevin Johnson"

"Meet Kevin Johnson" is the eighth episode of the American Broadcasting Company's fourth season of Lost and seventy-seventh episode overall. The episode was written in October and November 2007 by supervising producer Elizabeth Sarnoff and co-producer Brian K. Vaughan and directed in November 2007 by co-executive producer Stephen Williams. The episode was aired on March 20, 2008 on ABC in the United States and on CTV in Canada.

The majority of the episode's narrative consists of a continuous flashback focused on Michael Dawson (Harold Perrineau, Jr.), revealing his activities after his departure from the Island in the episode "Live Together, Die Alone", and his purpose aboard the freighter Kahana as a spy for Ben Linus (Michael Emerson).

The episode's airdate was heavily influenced by the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike and rescheduled several times. The episode's script was completed on the same day that strike action began. ABC pledged to air the completed eight episodes, regardless of the strike's resolution, thus making the episode a potential season finale. The resolution of the strike allowed five more episodes to be produced, to the happiness of several reviewers who thought the episode's ending was unsuitable for a season finale.

Plot

The narrative of the episode primarily focuses upon Michael Dawson. Between the events of the second season finale, "Live Together, Die Alone", and this episode, he becomes a spy on the Kahana, a freighter dispatched to find the Island, at the behest of Benjamin Linus.

The beginning of the episode shows two concurrent storylines. One storyline is set at the Barracks, the former home of the Others. During a community meeting, Ben confirms to several members of John Locke's (Terry O'Quinn) faction that Michael is his spy. The second storyline is set on the Kahana. Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews) confronts Michael about his purpose on the freighter.

The episode's narrative then shifts into an extended, uninterrupted flashback. Michael has returned to Manhattan, New York City, and has become estranged from his son Walt (Malcolm David Kelley). He tries to commit suicide several times; he is unsuccessful, and is told by Tom (M.C. Gainey) that the Island will not allow him to kill himself. Tom gives Michael an assignment: he is to infiltrate the Kahana, owned by entrepreneur Charles Widmore (Alan Dale) (who, according to Tom, faked the Oceanic 815 wreckage that was found in the Sunda Trench), and kill everyone on board. He is given a bomb to achieve this purpose. Michael attempts to detonate the bomb; it does not explode, and was used to show Michael that Ben does not wish the death of the unknowing crew members. Appalled that Michael is working for Ben, Sayid exposes his duplicity and turns him over to the captain of the freighter, Gault (Grant Bowler).

The end of the episode focuses upon Danielle Rousseau (Mira Furlan), her daughter Alex (Tania Raymonde), and Alex's boyfriend Karl (Blake Bashoff) travelling towards the "Temple", a sanctuary used by the Others, at Ben's request. Along the way, both Karl and Rousseau are shot by hidden assailants. To avoid being shot herself, Alex calls out that she is Ben's daughter.

Production

The episode marks Cynthia Watros' second appearance as Libby since the character was murdered by Michael late in the second season. Watros was given star billing in the second season; however, she became the first only starring actress to not receive an episode with flashbacks from her character's perspective as she was killed off late in the season, although she did appear in a few flashbacks of other characters' episodes. While a flashback episode was originally planned for Watros's character Libby in the second season, it did not happen, and despite statements that Watros would appear in flashbacks throughout the third season, this also failed to happen. The writers stated that Libby's mysterious backstory will be revealed through multiple flashbacks of a new character not aboard Oceanic 815 introduced in the fourth or fifth season. In the episode, both of Libby's appearances are hallucinations. The first appearance occurs in a hospital after Michael's suicide attempt; the second occurs when Michael attempts to blow up the freighter.

Shooting commenced in early November and concluded on November 27, 2007. Because the cast and crew did not have an immediate deadline, filming of this episode was more spread out than usual and did not overlap with the surrounding episodes, although it was produced simultaneously with the Lost: Missing Pieces mobisodes directed by executive producer Jack Bender and one scene from the premiere. Perrineau claims that "we [the cast and crew] busted our butts doing this one [and] it felt like we were making a movie because there's so much stuff that happens in this episode". Evangeline Lilly, who plays Kate Austen, called it "one of the best episodes of the first eight."

The Writers Guild of America went on strike on November 4, 2007—the day that the writers finished editing the final draft of "Meet Kevin Johnson"'s script. The show runners wanted to hold the eight episodes until they were able to produce more of the season because they thought that the eighth episode's "very cool" but inconclusive cliffhanger was not written to end the season, comparing it to "the end of an exciting book chapter [but] not the end of the novel." ABC decided that the eight episodes would be aired from January to March, regardless of whether any more episodes were produced in the 2007–2008 season. Despite picketing on most days, Cuse, a member of the WGA negotiating committee, continued to oversee post-production from mid-November, until negotiations between the Guild and the AMPTP broke down in early December, after which he boycotted his producing duties on the show until the strike was resolved. After the strike ended on February 12, 2008, the writers pleaded that ABC air "Meet Kevin Johnson" on April 17 with the second pod of episodes due to "the eighth episode [being] non-traditional and the start of something new", according to Cuse. Jorge Garcia, who plays Hurley Reyes, agreed that "it's a pretty shocking end but it doesn't close out the way our previous ones have ended [because] it doesn't have that closure to it [and] ends in a sense of dissonance." Despite this, ABC prioritized scheduling Grey's Anatomy, Ugly Betty and Lost's returns all for April 24 (Lost would have begun broadcasting a week earlier to coincide with the completion of May sweeps).

Reception

Kristin Dos Santos, a reviewer for E! Online, rated the episode highly. The ambiguity of the sixth member of the Oceanic Six caused her to say "Goddang, I love this show". She theorized the attack of Rousseau and Karl to be masterminded by Ben, and proposed a drinking game in which the player drinks "every time Benjamin Linus allllmost [sic] convinces you that he's playing for the "good guys"—but then does something so despicable you want to climb through your screen and squish his little beady eyeballs like peeled grapes". A staff reviewer for TeamSugar, a women's online community, also positively reviewed the episode. The reviewer thought Michael pawning Jin's watch for "a gun that doesn't even succeed in killing him" was "heartbreaking", and equally lamented Michael's post-departure life and Rousseau's apparent death. She also thought Tom's off-island appearance was "super cool", because "it sets up the possibility for a number of people to get off the island, courtesy of Ben, as long as they work for him", and provides a greater leniency for the writers when creating storylines. Jay Glatfelter of The Huffington Post said the episode was "a shocker", and opened his review with the sentence: "Well Michael is officially back... but what the hell?! Rousseau is dead?!". Speaking of the quality of the season as a whole, Glatfelter gave it an "A-". Elissa Bass of The Day, a newspaper that serves New London, Connecticut, gave the episode a negative review. Tom's explanation that the Island will not let people kill themselves was "the biggest bomb dropped", but "other than that I’d say it was a pretty anticlimactic hour." Similarly, Steve Heisler of Time Out Chicago "wasn't all-too-pleased" with the episode. However, he applauded the show's writers for subverting speculation about Walt's growth by not showing him.

Katey Rich of Blend Televison parodied Michael's elongated cry "Walt!" in "Exodus, Pt. 3" in her recap of the episode. She answered several questions in her review by using the episode's plot, and finished answering the question "Who ambushed Rousseau, Alex and Karl?" with the answer "No clue. Seriously. Even with all the answers in this episode, I'm still puzzled." Daniel of TMZ said the episode was "solid, but not spectacular" and gave it a "C+". He theorised Rousseau's attackers could be either from the freighter or Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell). Liz Lacy of MeeVee found the episode's break from interspersed flashbacks "disorienting". Overlooking that, she included Tom's homosexuality in the "surprising gay characters" count. Speaking of the attack on Rousseau, she thought that "after hearing the big "Someone. Will. Die." I felt a little cheated when Alex's boyfriend went down. What a yawner death. And then they whacked Rousseau!" Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger agreed with Lindelof's and Cuse's statements that the episode would be an inefficient season finale, saying the episode contained "lots of balls up in the air but no immediate peril for anyone but a minor character like Alex, and a cliffhanger ending that felt rushed and very un-"Lost"-like." Overlooking the ending, he said "[Michael's] struggle to deal with the guilt from his Faustian bargain to save Walt was another moving example of how the writers this season are really trying to build on the emotional impact of everything that's happened before." and overall rated the episode highly as a "middle chapter" to the story. Likewise, Erin Martell of TV Squad was thankful the episode did not close the season, but noted that it "wasn't a bad episode" and "did have its moments".