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[LOST COLUMN] GETTING 'LOST' WITH NIKKI STAFFORD
Lost: 4.06 'The Other Woman'
"What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun! And she is MINE, all MINE."
By Nikki Stafford
Posted 3/7/2008
[EDITOR�s NOTE: Saying that guest columnist Nikki Stafford is a �Lost� fanatic is a gross understatement. But, more importantly, she�s a �Lost� guru that has teamed with Wizard Universe to bring her expertise to a weekly recap of �Lost,� pointing out key moments and raising questions about TV�s most-talked about mystery.]
Previously on Lost...
Last week�s episode was a doozy; my initial post on it alone garnered over 100 comments on my blog. The physics fans were out in full force, and discussions of time travel dominated. The biggest question involved Faraday, easily my new favorite character. He�s written in his journal that Desmond would be his constant if anything went wrong. Des visited him in the past and gave him his coordinates for time traveling consciousness, so how often has Daniel time traveled since then? He has memory problems, are they a �side effect� of his travels? When we first see him, he�s in a home of some sort, with a female caretaker, watching the news of the Oceanic going down. He�s crying, and when she asks him why, he says he doesn�t know. Could he have a residual memory of the future Oceanic survivors that is in his subconscious in 2004? Has he traveled beyond that year? That episode definitely ranks among my faves.
Episode Recap:
I enjoyed this week�s episode, though it wasn�t nearly as good as the one last week. �The Other Woman� featured a flashback (it was rather nice to see one of those again, though I loved how they set it up to look like a flashforward) of Juliet. Faraday and Charlotte head off to the Tempest station (one we haven�t yet seen) and Juliet is visited by one of the missing Others, telling her to follow them and kill them. Through Juliet�s flashback and the present-day events on the island, Ben comes off as more nefarious than before, and we finally see the link between Desmond�s backstory and the people on the island. Overall, an interesting episode, but because the backstory was so close to the one we�d seen in �One of Us,� I didn�t come away knowing much more about Juliet than the fact she was having a secret affair with Goodwin, and that Ben is crazy for her. (�Crazy� being the operative word.)
Highlights:
� TOM!! My favorite Other is back, if only for a brief moment.
� Jack: �You people had therapists?� Juliet: �It�s very stressful being an Other, Jack.�
� Ben asking if the rabbit had a number on it. Ha!
� Hurley beating Sawyer at horseshoes. �Son of a b----!�
Biggest �GASP!� Moments:
� That�s not a flashforward we�re watching, it�s a flashback.
� Harper appearing in the jungle. Gah!
� Ben sending Goodwin to the tail section of the island was actually meant to be a death sentence for him.
� Charles Widmore is the guy who owns the freighter!!
� Ben: �You�re MINE!!�
Hurley�s Numbers:
The combination on the lock behind Ben�s picture is 36-15-28. One of Hurley�s numbers is 15, and 36 minus 28 is 8. On the computer where Daniel is typing, it keeps repeating the same warning: �CROSS FEED ASS/16 OVERPRESSURE ALERT!�
Did You Notice?:
� The writers drew a parallel between Juliet saying to Ben that she�ll only be on the island for six months and doesn�t need such an elaborate house, and Sun saying they�re about to be rescued and asking why Juliet is building such a strong shelter.
� The psychiatrist�s name is Harper Stanhope. I think her name is foreshadowing the Orchid Station that I talked about in last week�s column (the station whose orientation video was shown at Comic-Con and appears to involve teleportation). The Stanhopea is a genus of the orchid family, and appears to be an upside-down orchid. The flower blooms for such a brief period (three days at the most) that it has developed a way to spread its pollen to avoid extinction. The flowers usually die on the second day, which is interesting�on the island, the pregnant women die in their second trimesters.
� The new station is called the Tempest, no doubt after Shakespeare�s play (my favorite one, incidentally). The play is about a magician, Prospero, who is alone in an island with his daughter, Miranda, a result of his brother putting them there. They were saved by an island spirit named Ariel, who is a servant to a witch, whose son is the deformed island native, Caliban. When a storm created by Prospero causes a shipwreck, the island gains new inhabitants, mainly Alonso and his son Ferdinand. Prospero sees a possible mate for his daughter in Ferdinand, but makes him his servant so he can earn her hand.
Meanwhile, Alonso thinks his son is dead, and Prospero keeps the truth from him until the end, while Caliban conspires with the other shipwreck survivors to bring down the magician. The play is full of magic, mystery, and daddy issues . . . in other words, the perfect Shakespearean counterpart to �Lost.� Could Ben be a more Machiavellian Prospero? Or is he Caliban?
� Goodwin mentions that a woman named Henrietta died that morning. She has the female version of the name Ben uses as his alias, Henry.
� Claire tells Locke that she might be a less intimidating person to talk to the freighter folk� perhaps foreshadowing why Aaron will be left motherless.
� The material in the flashbacks happens concurrently with many of the same events in �One of Us,� but it fills in some of the gaps for us. Juliet comes to Ben�s house in a rage in that episode days before the plane crash because she�s just found out he has a tumor, and she�s begging him to let her leave the island. Now it�s clearer that not only did she want to see her sister, but she was becoming increasingly worried that something could happen to Goodwin, and she was being stalked by Ben. Then he shows her proof that her sister is alive and well and has a son, and Juliet is eternally grateful. Here we see her going to his house for a dinner party (for two) shortly afterwards, and she�s kind to him.
� Ben and Juliet talk about Zack and Emma�these are the two children who were in the tail section and Ana Lucia vowed to protect them, but they were taken in the beginning; we saw them again last season standing outside Jack�s cage with Cindy, the stewardess.
� Yet another Red Sox reference. If this really is the same tape that he showed Jack, it means the video was recorded in the last month, since he showed Jack that tape a month before the events here.
� The symbol for the Tempest station is strange, and not as obvious as the others. I�m assuming we�re supposed to look in the white part and see a wave(?). If you look at the black sections instead, it looks like a sperm with a giant apostrophe over it (ooh� did I just become the perfect test subject for some Rorschach psychiatrists?)
� The title of this episode seemed to apply not only to Juliet being the other woman in the relationship between Harper and Goodwin, but Jack and Kate.
� Locke used to be one of my favorite characters, but now he�s a tool.
So Many Questions...
� Where has Harper been all this time? Will we see any of the remaining Others who vacated Otherville when Juliet was left behind?
� Juliet asks Harper how Ben could possibly know what Faraday and Charlotte are up to if he�s being held prisoner, and Harper says, �Ben is exactly where he wants to be.� What does this mean? Is it possible that Ben has figured out how to astrally project himself in some way similar to Walt? Or has he also figured out how to move his consciousness around like Desmond did in the previous episode? Could he have time traveled and created more than one of himself? (Yes, I�ve been thinking far too much about last week�s episode, and watched that Orchid video one too many times.)
� Now that we know the freighter folk were sent by Widmore, does that mean the map that Faraday is holding could have been from the Black Rock journal that we saw Widmore buy in the previous episode? It looked old-fashioned (actually, it kind of looked like a map of Middle Earth) and there were plenty of �unknown� sections marked on it. On the south end of the island there�s a distinct spot circled, which could be the survivors� camp, and in the middle there�s something sketched out, which may be the Black Rock itself. The only words I could make out on it were the arrow at the top, pointing to the mountains, marked, �Possible Path Through Northern Mountains.�
� Daniel looks surprised when Kate tells him Locke has Miles, but he was right there when Sayid took off with Miles and traded him for Charlotte, and Frank said he never liked Miles anyway. Did Daniel forget this happened?
� In the flashback where Juliet is showing Ben the microscope, she says the white blood cells are dropping in women who have conceived on the island, ��which makes me wonder�� and then she doesn�t finish her sentence. What was her theory?
� Is Ben telling the complete truth about Widmore? Ben is as sneaky as it gets, especially when it comes to Locke.
� So� the revelation of the man on the boat is something that would make Locke need to sit down. Who the frak is it?? (I repeat: Michael.)
� If Charlotte and Daniel were really trying to save everyone on the island, why not just tell people that, rather than act like they�re going to do them all in and get them all in a tizzy?
� Why is Ben so obsessed with Juliet? When she asks why he would let Goodwin walk into the lion�s den, he replies like some sort of stalker, telling her in an impassioned way, �Why? You�re asking me why? After everything I did to get you here, after everything I did to keep you here, how could you possibly not understand? That you�re MINE.� What is up with that? He makes it sound like he was hunting her down for reasons other than her being a fertility doctor. I thought the Zack and Emma thing was a little curious being thrown in here� was it there because of Ben�s response, that they�re children, and children forget? Could Juliet have forgotten something from when she was a child? Is it possible that she�s the Annie we saw Ben fall in love with as a child?
� Or, could Juliet remind him of his mother, and when he said children forget, he was being sarcastic, because he�s never forgotten her, and she�s the biggest loss of his life? This could tie in to the fact that all of the mothers on the island end up dead and their children are never born. Could there be a connection? Is Ben actually behind that, too?
Next week:
It�s a race to get Sun off the island, and the preview says we�ll see the last of the Oceanic Six, and a face we never thought we�d see again. If the �last� of the Oceanic Six is one person, then it would seem Aaron Iis being counted as one of them, which is ridiculous, since he wasn�t one of the Oceanic passengers on the manifest when the plane went down.
Nikki Stafford has published companion guides to �Xena,� �Buffy the Vampire Slayer,� �Angel,� �Alias,� and �Lost� through ECW Press. Her new book is Finding Lost�Season Three: The Unofficial Guide. Check her blog, �
Nik At Nite,� for more on your (and her) favorite shows.
