LOST: The Other Woman

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.
-Jean Jacques Rousseau

Oh ho ho! Juliette is the other woman! Despite that, I really love her. Don't trust what she is going to do, but love her. So witty - what did she say? , 'it's hard being an Other, Jack.' What a great character and what a really wonderful actress, Elizabeth Mitchell. They got me all befuddled with feelings that Kate can just have Sawyer and let Juliette have Jack! Ben is like Alfred Hitchcock - obsessed with his muse. Also, Hitchcock had an odd interest, which was one of the recurring themes in his movies, in necrophilia which also resembles Ben's little obsession with our poor, sweet, broken Juliette. I presume the 'her' that Juliette looks just like is his old girlfriend Annie and hopefully not his dead mom. Eeew. Very Hitchcockian AND a little Greek! I have a very painful feeling that she might not survive the series - may end up a martyr - because her fate, sadly, is sealed with Ben's. Sigh. Maybe Jim Caviezel can time travel & save her like he did in Frequency.

"What's Ben gonna do?" Hmmm, interesting that his own people didn't realise what he was capable of. Wow Ben, for being such a clever and conniving man, you are sure fairly transparent emotionally and I almost feel bad for you're awkward lack of social skill. I guess this emotion is a weakness that can be manipulated later? I think he is so awkward and confused socially/romantically that if Juliette tried to seduce him and pretended she cared for him he would fall for it - maybe he wouldn't really believe it, but he would let his guard down a little.

I feel like this episode didn't move the story along as fast as some of the others, but I loved that it was more focused on characters. I mean, the show would be intriguing regardless, but without the great character development, if I wasn't so personally concerned for them, I wouldn't be so hooked. I would like to see more flashes between the time of Ben's mass homicide to the time that Juliette arrived.

The whispering voices are back ... It made me realise that I kind of missed the focus on the mystical/paranormal aspects of the island; they have been a little more focused on the 'scientific' aspects of the island and how some of them get off the island. The voices of 'others' past?

Ben wants to be a prisoner and he can communicate with his people somehow. Hmmmm.Is he somehow communicating with his 'man on the boat' (Michael: I feel like they pretty much confirmed that this episode and we'll see him next week it looks like - now I almost hope it isn't him so I can be shocked!) who then communicated to his people at the Temple which we have yet to see? (What if when Ben's group had Walt they got to him more than we thought and HE is the 'man' on the boat? Or maybe Michael is on the boat, and Walt and his abilities are how Ben is communicating to him and to his other people! Ooh, I like it!)

Well, well, well, Mr. Charles Whidmore. I thought that they would have waited a little longer to confirm his part in all this. Not that we can necessarily believe/assume that he really is just out to exploit the island like Ben said. Perhaps Ben really does believe all he wants is to monopolize the island for commercialism. Either way, crazy Locke is a great ally in this situation since he had a tendency to, oh, blow up submarines and throw knives into strangers backs and what have you to protect this island that he doesn't even understand himself.

Daniel: "What if I can't do it?" Do what? Also, Charlotte is pretty feisty for an archaeologist. Although, just because that is what she seemed to be in that flashback it doesn't mean she is. I think she has a spoiled, wealthy family prep school upbringing and was a wild child and broke away from her family to be a treasure hunter/adventurer to make her own name for herself at ANY cost. I feel like if we see a flashback of her she'll be wearing an English riding helmet at some point. That is my professional character analysis.

Wow, nice to see Claire finally speak up to Locke with an actual opinion, even though it was brief.

So Locke really was killing a chicken last week :) What did Ben mean when he asked if it had a number on it? I guess whatever testing they were doing, it is still okay to eat? (Maybe just not safe to eat the eggs) So.... is Miles still just sitting in that shed with a grenade in his mouth?

Favorite creepy moment of the night: Ben and Juliette at Goodwin's body, Ben screams "How can you possibly not understand that you're MINE!" Then, two seconds later, serene faced and indifferent, says, "take as long as you need." Whoa, Michael Emerson, you're kind of awesome.

Anyway, here are some other thoughts:

I really think that Charles (Whidmore) is using the Penny/Desmond relationship to find the island. Even to the extent that he set Desmond up to get there. Think about it - it was on a race to impress Charles (and get permission to marry Penny) that Desmond got wrecked on the island. What an impressive coincidence that happened - with Widmore's future son-in-law. Especially given that - his daughter is Desmond's constant. And that whole bathroom scene in the last episode. (How much can Charles really know?)

I'm thinking about Desmond and Mr. Whitmore. Des was told by the old lady that if he married Penny, "they would all die." Maybe Mr. Whitmore knew that and that is why he denied Des' request to marry Penny. he had access to the future and had to prevent the marriage proposal. And he manipulated Des to the Island so he could someday find it and exploit it.

Ben has a bit of a David complex reminiscent of the Bathsheba incident - sending Goodwin into "battle" so he could have the woman.
How did Daniel and Charlotte know about the gas on the island, where to go to find it, and what to do to disable it? (Again, how much does Charles know, since he is their source on info, I presume)
So we kinda suspected Widmore was in on all this, does he maybe have cancer or some other dreaded disease he needs a cure for?

Ben's man on the boat. . . what if he's playing for both teams? In other words, what if it's someone who has been on the island (and Widmore's people know it) but there is a bit of a triple cross going on? We know from Alias that the creators of Lost are pretty into the whole double, triple, back and forth-cross plot lines. I am going to go way out there and predict that it's not Michael, even though that would be interesting. I think it's someone we really would never expect to see again. . because they died on the island. Like Ana Lucia or Boone or some crazy thing like that.

My money's on Sayid being the man on the boat. Why couldn't it be? Maybe when Ben said he had a man on the boat, he was bluffing....But by now...Sayid and he have already struck a deal that will carry over to life off the island...and Sayid's on the boat...so...makes sense to me
I think it's Locke on the boat--in another time period. I'm still not sure the island and the boat are in the same time period. (Hmm, I don't know about it being Locke, but it could be that the time difference is how they will explain how the Walt actor is so much taller so fast :)
Juliet:Do you like me?_ Yes_ No_ MaybeCheck one (or Goodwin dies).Ben
Did they call the power station the Tempest? As in Shakespeare's "The Tempest," a play about a sorcerer and his daughter stranded for 12 years on – um – an island?

The power station was called the Tempest, but I think the actual Dharma station is the Orchid.

Decided to look up "Stanhope" on Wikipedia and found someone interesting. Charles Stanhope was a scientist who studied electricity. He was also famous for a response to an essay written by Edmund Burke. Sounds like Burke and Stanhope didn't get along. Coincidence….I think not.
hey, that was a neat trick Ben did ... In the safe ... when it was opened, the ONLY THING IN IT WAS THE TAPE ... then, they play the tape, go back to the safe ... and whoa ... a folder appears? What?

I wonder if the reason some people see dead people on the island is because these people are time traveling (ex: Charlie appears to Future Hurley; Mr. Eko saw his brother; etc.).

Several people mentioned the light the doctor used on Des as a trigger for time travel. I wonder if it served a different purpose. Maybe the doctor was trying to gauge Des's ability to track a moving object (in this case the flashlight) with his eyes, which is one way that psychiatrists diagnose schizophrenia. You can determine mental disorders by how eyes track a moving object because it reflects problems in the neural circuitry of the brain. It could be the time travel mixes up the brain circuitry and therefore causes – or at least mimics – schizophrenia. And the symptoms of schizophrenia are problems in perceiving reality, auditory hallucinations, delusions, even catatonic behavior. This lends credence to those who suggested time travel/time-jumping caused the "sickness" Rousseau alluded to. It just made me wonder if this is the information (gauging the damage) the doctor was really after when he shone the light in Des's eyes. (Especially since - I noticed this tonight during the enhanced episode - Des later tried the flashlight on himself and nothing happened.) It's interesting too that schizophrenia means "to split the mind," because this is the very thing time travel does – well, at least it splits the consciousness.

Safe #'s - 36 15 28