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Lost: The Other Woman

Jack: "You people had therapists?"
Juliet: "It's very stressful being an Other, Jack."

We got a couple of Big Answers. Numero Uno was that Ben's big enemy on the outside is Charles Widmore. Not a big surprise, since Widmore has popped up everywhere in the story, and I always knew he had to be a major player.

And we finally learned what was at the core of Juliet and Ben's dysfunctional relationship. He loved her and considered her his, and she disappointed him by having an affair with Goodwin instead. Although "disappointment" is a major understatement. Ben deliberately put Goodwin in danger for longer than necessary, hoping that it would get him killed, and it worked. A little David and Bathsheba action there. (Did Ethan piss Ben off, too?)

Ben, that insidious little expletive deleted, has talked his way out of another cell. I'm ready to grab Locke by the shoulders and shake him. Why is he being so gullible? Manipulating Locke is turning into Ben's biggest hobby, and wow, does he love doing it.


The title of the episode referred to Juliet, but not just in relation to the unhappily married Goodwin and Harper. At the end of the episode, Jack kissed Juliet, officially inducting her into the Island Love Triangle, which is now the Island Love Quadrangle. (Has Jack finally given up on Kate?) And Harper mentioned that Juliet looked like "her." I'm assuming that was Ben's "her," his dead beloved, the one who gave him the doll.

Or maybe Harper was the other woman. Juliet and Jack heard the whispers before Harper appeared. It felt for a moment like she was one of the Walking Island Dead, but I guess not. Harper told Juliet to kill Faraday and Charlotte. But how could Ben have sent her when he was locked up? And where was she before? At the Temple with the rest of the Others?

We got a new Dharma station: the Tempest. That whole scene with the alarm and Faraday frantically typing felt a lot like the Hatch and the Button. I'm really unclear about the gas thing. I assume it was intended to keep anyone from tampering with the Tempest station. Did Ben set that up? He's certainly used gas before. But if it was going to kill everyone on the Island, wouldn't it have killed, say, him? And what were Faraday and Charlotte really there to do? Disconnect the Monster?

Character bits:

The flashbacks started right after "One of Us" and then skipped through other flashbacks. We saw the breakup of 815 again and the scene where Ben gave Goodwin and Ethan their assignments, but we didn't actually see Ethan. But they did manage to insert Harper.

Faraday and Charlotte don't know that they're working for Charles Widmore, do they? I bet Miles knows, though.

Kate knows that they know she's a fugitive. Which makes her becoming one of the Oceanic Six even more confusing.

Hurley is as good at horseshoes as he is at table tennis.



The two kids from the tail section, Zack and Emma, were mentioned. I think we knew Emma's name before, but not Zack's.

One of the nice things about Lost flashbacks is we get to see dead characters all the time. When Tom walked in the door, it was like seeing an old friend.

Bits and pieces:

— Very clever opening scene. Harper's reference to Juliet being a celebrity made us think for a moment that Juliet was one of the Six. Which she couldn't be, of course, since she wasn't on the plane. (I'm not going to make that mistake twice.)

— The combination to Ben's safe was 36-15-28. The tape he had of Widmore beating Ben's guy up was taped over the Red Sox vid he showed Jack, so it was recent. The Red Sox never winning the series symbolized fate to Christian Shephard, so did that mean Ben was defying fate? Maybe it was just a fun detail. Attention to detail is what they do best on this show.

— I didn't realize Harper was Andrea Roth at first. The brown hair threw me off.

— Ben: "So. Has the revolution begun yet?" It's only a matter of time, Locke. You idiot.

Another good episode. Three out of four polar bears,

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

4 comments:

  1. Manipulating Locke is turning into Ben's biggest hobby, and wow, does he love doing it. And, wow, is he good at it! I actually enjoy watching him do it and watching Locke fall for it every, single time. But, as we've seen from his flashbacks, Locke tends to miss the big picture.

    I was interested to see that Juliet's relationship with Goodwin was an affair. I hadn't picked up on that in the past. It appears a bit as though Juliet has her own self-esteem issues, only falling for men who are unavailable to her. Edmund was emotionally unavailable, Goodwin was married and Jack? Well, if it ever came down to Juliet v. Kate, I'm not sure Juliet would be the winner. Jack seemed very tender towards Kate when he found her in the jungle...

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  2. I love the way Lost mixes flashbacks and flashforwards in this season as well as emphasizing how, even if a particular flash might be from one character's perspective, there are now many players involved in each:

    4.1 Flashforwards with Jack and Hurley. Oh, and Charlie!

    4.2 Flashbacks with the freighter folk.

    4.3 Flashforwards with Sayid and Ben.

    4.4 Flashforwards with Kate and Jack.

    4.5 Flashes... with Sayid, Desmond, Faraday, and Penny.

    4.6 Flashbacks with Juliet, Ben, and Goodwin. This is really our first "traditional" flashback episode all this season.

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  3. Juliet between Goodwin and Harper,Juliet between Jack and Kate:she's the Other Woman.
    Jack needs to protect Juliet from Ben,as always,he kisses her because he'so frustrated by Kate's hesitation,and tries to move on.
    Kate doesn'tell him she just breaks up with Sawyer,she looks afraid of her future,their future together.
    But she clearly wants to abandon the creepy Island:perhaps she finally wants to give her up,to have a future,to face her mistakes.
    Dan and Charlotte's scene at the Tempest is predictable and confusing.

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  4. in my observations, the other woman (i.e. the adulterous woman having an affair with a married man) ends up with nothing. juliet obviously doesn't end up with jack in the end. jack still has eyes for kate in the future. does juliet get off the island as she so badly wants to? kate does. does juliet even get to live? i wonder.

    best scene of the episode was ben walking around with his clean folded laundry saying "see you at dinner." as if that's all natural and normal while hurley and sawyer pick their jaws up off the floor.

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