Thursday, April 12, 2007

"One of Us"

It's that time of the year...LOST is gearing up for the season finale in a few weeks and started setting it up with last night's great and revealing episode. Can you feel the tension building?

STOP READING NOW TO AVOID SPOILERS!!!!!

It was very cool to see another Juliet flashback even if I despise her character. With the flashback continuing her story where we last left it, I was expecting more of the same attempts to paint her as a victim of the Others. The reality we ended up seeing in the end is that although she may be a victim, she is still a willing participant in the terrible and things the Others are doing. Not liking her character to begin with, it wasn't hard to totally hate her in the final minutes of the episode. Are there any honest people on this island?

It was nice to finally get some of the Others' perspective between the time Flight 815 crashed and now. Was Ethan acting alone or was Juliet with him administering the drugs to Claire? Was Juliet present when Claire was being held in the Medical Station? I wish we got a better answer to these questions, but from Ben and Juliet's "con"-versation at the end of the episode, it is clear that Ben had knowledge of what Ethan was doing to Claire. What is the endgame though? Do they know that Sun is pregnant? Is she the target that Juliet was sent to acquire? Or are the Others finally coming to take Aaron? I think it is the former, but one never really can tell where LOST is going.

One of the biggest, yet most subtle reveals of this episode is the fact that the real world knows that Flight 815 disappeared. The scene with Mikhail in the Flame Station watching all of the news channels covering the story of the missing flight was very cool. The way that Ben approached the Flame and made his presence known really made me wonder if Mikhail wasn't telling the truth about his back story when he met Sayid. He might have really been a survivor of the Dharma Initiative who made a deal with Ben. He seems to have been the intelligence gatherer of the operation. I wonder what his sources are that reveal such private and personal information about the Losties. Perhaps it's the Smoke Monster.

We learned that no one on the island has ever had cancer, yet Ben ended up with a tumor. He claimed that Jacob cured Juliet's sister's cancer when it returned, but when has Ben ever told the whole truth. I'm guessing Juliet's sister's cancer never really did come back. But didn't Ben look scared when he admitted that he didn't know why or how he could have gotten a tumor? If that was a con, he's really good! The producers have hinted that Rose and Bernard will be back later in the season and it got me thinking that perhaps their story will be about Ben's attempts to learn how Rose's cancer was healed by the island. Whatever their story, I think that what I've taken away from recent revelations is that the Island itself has turned on Ben and he doesn't know why. Will he find the answer in Locke or Rose? Only time will tell.

Jack is back on the beach, but I'm not sure that he will fall right back into the leader role. I'll be expecting Sawyer and Sayid to be fighting Jack's authority until they can get get some answers out of Juliet or until she is dead, whichever comes first. Kate seemed pretty happy to be back with Sawyer. She just needs to get over Jack and realize that Sawyer cares about her. She'll soon learn that Jack is too busy harboring a spy to have time for Kate's indecisiveness.

Next Week (and the rest of the season it seems) on LOST:

3 comments:

Luke Sonnier said...

I think the fact that Ben got cancer has something to do with what Locke said to him a few weeks ago: the Others are cheating. They live in houses with electricity and they eat chicken from the refrigerator. They don't appreciate the island properly, and so like you said, the island is turning on them.

My impression was that Ethan was acting alone when he was administering the drugs to Claire. We saw him sshh-ing Claire in the flashes while Juliet related the story to Jack. I also think that Juliet was present in the Staff Station (the medical hatch) when Claire was abducted. She said that she was the one who had made her sick.

What I wonder is, did Ben know there was a pregnant woman on the plane? The way he said "maybe there was one on that plane" to Juliet when they were in the Flame Station made it seem like he knew that there would be a pregnant woman on the plane. Could it be that Ben knew the plane was going to crash, or that he was responsible for it, and none of the Others knew? Could all of this be a grand manipulation by Ben to some crazy end?

I'm surprised to hear that you hate Juliet. I really like the character. To an extent she has been a victim of the Others, but she is certainly not without her share of sin either. For instance, I bet whatever scheme she is a part of by infiltrating the beach is some attempt by her to get Ben to let her go home.

Wes Raine said...

Just to clarify, the reason I say I hate Juliet is the same as the reason that I have been so frustrated with the Others in general. They always try to shame the Losties about being bad people but I have not seen them do much on the island that is good. True, Juliet is motivated by her desire to get off the island, but she can't do whatever Ben tells her and still pass judgment on the off-island actions of Sayid and Sawyer. I just don't think that the Others are "good people" and until I get evidence to the contrary, I will continue to be unsympathetic to Juliet's or any of their plights.

Jillie Bean (AKA Bubba's Sis) said...

I haven't yet decided how I feel about Juliet. What I found interesting is that Jack apparently knew that she handcuffed herself to Kate and then lied to her (because they talked about it). So how much is Jack in on all this? Does he know Juliet wasn't really abandoned by The Others? Does he know where Locke really is? I am suspicious of Jack as much as I am of Juliet.