Fittingly, then, that her episode is entitled “The Other Woman” – a title that highlights Juliet’s function in the group dynamic. The tension on screen every time Jack, the island’s most unlikely pimp, pays Juliet more attention than he pays Kate is brilliantly palpable, and makes Sawyer’s harsh words to Kate about her tendancy to bed-hop ring particularly true. But what of the Others? One turns up in this episode to warn Juliet that Daniel and Charlotte are heading to the power station where they intend to gas the entire island. Oh no! It’s a ridiculously weak plot, culminating in an even weaker catfight and even Kate falls prey to the most blatantly telegraphed pistol-whip in history. A strong episode, this is not, though somehow, by drip-feeding new information it’s easy to look past the obvious flaws in favour of what we’re being shown. For instance – there’s a failsafe on the island’s power station that can be used to vent enough poison gas to kill everyone on the island – something that Ben has already done once. Secondly, the Others are still watching our guys, and they’re doing their best to set them against each other. Third, the rescue boat belongs to none other than Charles “Penny’s Father” Widmore. And finally, Ben is nursing very disturbing and possessive obsession with Juliet that spells nothing but bad things for Jack, who ends this episode by playing a round of tonsil hockey with her – after all, Ben ensured that the last guy who tried that ended up a bloated corpse. In truth, though, Ben is subtly engineering the very revolt he’s warned Locke is coming. With his seeds of doubt now planted in Locke’s mind, he’s free to manipulate him so that he truly becomes the ineffectual leader that Ben’s suggesting he’ll be seen as. Genius, on several levels. These scenes alone more than makes up for the relative weakness of the rest of the episode – including the big tease of just who Ben’s man on the rescue boat might be. Locke knows – can the audience revelation be far behind? It’s apparently a biggie (a big revelation, I mean, not Biggie Smalls) but I’m fresh out of ideas as to who it might be. Could it be that this is how Michael will be making his eventual return to the cast? As ever, the answers of Lost are bound to leave me with fresh questions. Just the way I like it.
title: “Lost Season 4 Episode 6 Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-08-25” author: “Eugene Fields”
Moving swiftly on, last week’s episode of Lost – “The Other Woman” – focused on Juliet, former Other and fertility doctor. And I guess it’s true what they say – once an Other, always an Other. (I think that’s what “they” say, at least.) Once it had turned out that Daniel and Charlotte had scurried away from the beach camp and into the night, Jack and Juliet went searching for them in one direction, and Sun and Jin in the other so they could set up next week’s Sun-and-Jin-centric episode. Once in the jungle, Juliet heard a barrage of whispers – the whispers – before confronted by a familiar face: a woman by the name of Harper who appeared, seemingly on Ben’s behalf, to give Juliet her mission before literally vanishing into thin night with the whispers. The mission at hand? Killing Daniel and Charlotte, who had headed to a new Dharma station called The Tempest.
In a red-herring opening, we were led to believe that Juliet was one of the Oceanic Six – not possible, you may think, seeing how she wasn’t on 815 – before dead ol’ Tom poked his head into Juliet and Harper’s session (not sure about the moustache M.C. Gainey, but it was great to see you again). We learnt that Ben had been putting the moves on Juliet from the moment she arrived on the island, a side of Ben I don’t think we’ve seen before. Ben-with-a-crush is basically the usual creepy Ben but with a dollop of almost puppyish enthusiasm on top – just watch how he acts around the doctor with a dopey grin on his face and more than the slightest hint of desperation in his actions.
What interested me is that despite the issue of Juliet wanting to go home from last season’s flashbacks (she called Ben a liar, remember?), Ben’s infatuation with her never quite stopped. With the crash of 815, he found a way to take him out of the picture and with quick thinking, deployed him to the tail section and sent him to life as an Ana-Lucia Kebab. The cad. In the final flashback scene, he finally lost his nerve and threw a temper tantrum towards Juliet, chillingly telling her “You’re mine” before remembering his place and offering her time to mourn over Goodwin’s corpse. Creepy. At least Juliet got a smooch out of Jack at the end of the episode to make up for all the, y’know, emotional torture.
Something more interesting: could the whispers be controlled by Ben? In previous recaps, I claimed that Jacob must have the ability to give powers to those he deems worthy – Hurley’s apparent ghost encounter with Charlie, Locke’s seeming indestructibility – and what he gave Ben was the voice of the island. Could this be what Harper meant by “he’s exactly where he wants to be”? Is Ben raising hell from within his tiny cell?
Talking of the tiny cell (more of a tiny utility room), Ben finally spilt the beans on who sent the freighter – Charles Widmore. Ding, I knew it! What does this mean for Desmond, who is on the freighter as we speak? Is Widmore going to try and stop him from ever seeing Penny again? Will he even kill him? Gulp. Whatever the context of Widmore’s involvement in the freighter’s plan, it was enough to get Ben back into a normal bed. What happens now that Ben is, seemingly one of the camp? The look on Sawyer’s face come the episode’s end was priceless – a sign that things are about to go from bad to worse.
Til’ next week, I’m Lost.
