Eggtown
The episode's island plot takes place in late December 2004, 90-plus days after the crash of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815.
Flashforwards show Kate Austen (played by Evangeline Lilly) on trial for her numerous pre-island crimes, after her escape from the island.
John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) is keeping Ben Linus (Michael Emerson) prisoner in the basement of the house that he has claimed in the Barracks.
Before Kate leaves for the camp at the beach, she slaps Sawyer across the face after he suggests that she is just pretending to be mad as an excuse to go back to Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) and continue their love triangle.
Meanwhile, Jack returns to the survivors' beach camp with Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell) and newcomers Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies) and Charlotte Lewis (Rebecca Mader).
Jack and Juliet grow increasingly uneasy over a series of unsuccessful attempts to contact the freighter by satellite phone and verify that Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick), Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews) and Frank Lapidus (Jeff Fahey), who departed for the freighter by helicopter the previous evening,[5] have arrived safely.
When Diane, the prosecution's star witness, no longer wants to testify against her daughter, the District Attorney makes a plea deal: Kate gets ten years probation, but must stay in the state of California.
[17] Lindelof and Cuse confirmed that the episode was primarily named as such because Locke fries eggs for Ben's breakfast and secondarily because the story deals with Kate's possible pregnancy.
[18] "Eggtown" continues Lost's pattern of featuring numerous literary references,[19] which may allude to a favourite book of the writers or a story similar to that of a character.
[21] Sawyer reads The Invention of Morel, a 1940 science fiction novel by Argentine writer Adolfo Bioy Casares about a fugitive who hides on a deserted Pacific island where the people are only images and do not exist.
[27] Amidst speculation that Lost would be pulled from the schedule, 780,000 Australians tuned in to "Eggtown" and made it the nineteenth most watched show of the night.
[31] Nikki Stafford of Wizard described it as a "great episode" and observed that it features "the first conversation between Jin and Sun [of the] season.
[32] Digital Spy's Ben Rawson-Jones called it the best of the first four episodes of the season with four out of five stars, saying that "the courtroom scenes were very well executed, with a marked difference in the characterisation of Jack [who] has become known as the trustworthy, honest type since Oceanic Flight 815 crashed, so his blatant lies about the island under oath were definitely dramatic.
"[33] Erin Martell of AOL's TV Squad reviewed "Eggtown" positively, writing that it "not many shows could mix topics like blackmail, grenades, and motherhood into one episode, but Lost pulled it off.
"[37] Patrick Day of the Los Angeles Times found "Eggtown" to be set at a slower pace than other episodes of the season and said that "the witness stand as forum for revelation … holds no appeal for me.
[39] Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger dubbed "Eggtown" "the weakest episode of the season",[40] partially because he also was unimpressed with the lack of plot twists and does not find Kate to be a compelling character.
[41] The San Diego Union-Tribune's Karla Peterson gave a mixed review, writing that "last night's Lost was not amazing, until it slammed us upside the head with a plot curveball that left us unable to remember whatever doubts we may have had, say, one minute before.
