This episode of Lost seemed to be a gentle ride to help us get over the mind-blowing episode last week. It delivered more information about Juliet’s past without no trickery or terribly shocking reveals. This is a simple episode in the classic lost style. Events happen on the island with an associated flashback.
The current story starts with Jack discovering that Dan and Charlotte have disappeared into the jungle. Jack becomes frustrated when he learns that Jin saw them leave and Jin pointedly explains that he was not suspicious because Jack assured everyone that the two were their friends. So Jack takes Juliet and the Kwons out into the jungle to find out what Dan and Charlotte are up to. Right on cue, it starts raining the moment they head out.
After the obligatory splitting up, Juliet finds herself alone in a clearing with whispers all around her. Her reaction suggests that this isn’t a phenomenon she’s used to. Then she is suddenly not alone. Another woman named Harper Stanhope is there and she has orders from Ben. When Juliet asks how Ben can be giving orders while he is Locke’s prisoner, the other woman echoes what Miles said two weeks ago: that Ben is exactly where he wants to be.
Harper says that Dan and Charlotte are headed to the island’s power station, a place called the Tempest. If they are allowed to reach there, they will release a deadly gas that will kill everyone on the island. This is one gassing that Ben doesn’t want to happen. Jack shows up in the middle of this exchange and draws his gun on Harper. The whispers start up again and Harper disappears while Jack is looking around to see where they are coming from.
In the flashback portion of the story, we learn that Harper Stanhope was the Others’ therapist and was helping Juliet to adjust to life on the island. Juliet doesn’t like Harper much and ends up having an affair with her estranged husband, Goodwin. Harper seems unconcerned about the affair, except that it might cause problems with Ben, who has a special attraction to Juliet. Harper says the attraction is unsurprising, since Juliet looks “just like her” without specifying who “her” is. It seems that besides providing help with the baby problem, Juliet is a replacement for Ben’s childhood sweetheart Annie, or perhaps his mother.
In an ominous moment, Juliet relays to Goodwin her fear of Ben’s reprisal if he finds out about them. Goodwin laughs it off, asking what Ben would do if he would find out. Cut to the scene of Flight 815 breaking up and Ben sending Ethan and Goodwin off to check on the survivors. The clear message: Ben knew that neither of them would be coming back.
Although this episode is centered on Juliet, it also develops a very different Benjamin Linus than we’ve seen before. Ben is shown to be socially awkward-at least where Juliet is concerned-and even emotionally immature. In one scene he is giddy with delight when he tricks Juliet into a dinner alone with him. Later, he childishly declares, over Goodwin’s corpse, that Juliet is his and she had better get used to it. As if this behavior was not enough to make Ben seem less the cold and calculated monster we’ve known, he spends the whole episode walking with a strange limp. It is probably due to the cancer that is growing in his back in the past, but it makes him appear almost clownish.
Back in the present, Locke still struggles in his role as leader. Claire tries to get access to Miles, hoping to be able to use a soft touch to accomplish what threats and intimidation have not done, but Locke shoots the idea down cold.
Locke later delivers a meal to Ben. Continuing the changes in Ben, he is shown to be reading the copy of Validis that Locke left him, despite his earlier statement that reading it again would be pointless. Locke manages to assert himself for a moment by revealing that he knows what Ben and Miles talked about, but immediately falls into the trap of making a deal to grant Ben freedom in exchange for information. When Locke asks how he could expect Ben not to simply slip away if allowed outside, Ben says that if his people wanted him back, they’d have already stormed the village to get him.
Ben leads Locke to a hidden safe containing a videotape and file about Charles Widmore, the man who sent the freighter. (This is indeed Penny Widmore’s father.) The video shows Widmore kicking a man in a blindfold, who Ben says is one of his agents who got caught. Ben suggests that Widmore wants to make the island into some kind of curiosity or tourist attraction. Locke agrees to grant Ben his freedom for this and one more piece of information: the name of his man on the boat. Ben agrees and tells Locke that he will want to sit down before hearing the name. The scene ends before we find out who it is.
In the jungle, Kate stumbles upon Dan and Charlotte on her way back from Locke’s camp. Charlotte ends up knocking her cold with the butt of her gun. Jack and Juliet find her some time later. When Jack stops to take check on Kate and offer her some tender comfort, Juliet fades away into the jungle.
Juliet makes it to the Tempest while Dan, dressed in a biohazard suit, works furiously at the controls. She confronts him, and he claims to be trying to prevent the gas leak rather than cause it. Charlotte appears and attacks Juliet. Dan turns back to his losing battle at the controls. At the very last moment, presumably seconds away from everyone on the island dying in a cloud of noxious gas, the system reports that Dan was successful in stabilizing the containment system.
When Jack and Kate show up, Juliet tells Jack that the new arrivals want to start a war with Ben that they can’t win. After that war is over, she says, Ben will come looking for her. Jack then shows his continuing romantic indecision by taking Juliet into his arms for a long kiss, and says that if Ben wants to take Juliet away from him, he knows where to find him.
There are a few details to take note of in this episode:
– Juliet was in charge of the kids after they were picked up from the tail section camp, and she didn’t approve of keeping the kids.
– Ben’s video of Widmore was taped over the Red Sox game he showed Jack, suggesting that someone was able to leave the island and return in the time that has elapsed since Jack was imprisoned.
– Juliet says that the pregnancy problem is due to the women’s bodies attacking the fetus as if it was a sickness or a foreign object.
– The combination to Ben’s safe is 36-15-28, which includes digits found in the magic numbers, but only one of the numbers themselves.
The best line of the episode: Ben casually calling out, “See you guys at dinner,” as he strolls past Sawyer and Hurley on the way to his new house.
