Summary: In flashbacks, Juliet grows close to Goodwin and starts an affair with him. Ben isn't pleased and indirectly gets Goodwin killed by sending him to the tailies. On the island, Daniel and Charlotte disappear into the jungle. Jack and Juliet chase them down and Juliet is ordered to kill them by Harper at Ben's command. Juliet finds them at The Tempest but learns that they are trying to render a dangerous gas inert and doesn't kill them. Locke makes a deal with Ben and learns that Widmore is the owner of the freighter and is looking for the island. Ben is freed from his imprisonment.
The Good: The scenes between Locke and Ben are as good as ever. It's always a delight to see these two match up with each other, and it looks like Locke got the batter of this exchange (unless that's just what Ben wants him to think). It's so fascinating to watch Ben because it's clear that he has a lot more power than he lets on, and is likely already planning to escape. It will be interesting to see what his plan is. The Widmore reveal is exciting and was foreshadowed really nicely in the previous episode. I have a lot of questions about what role he has to play in the story (see: The Unknown). In the flashbacks, Ben was genuinely creepy. I completely understand why somebody with Ben's history would have such a disfigured perception of romance, and his attempts to please Juliet are unsettling. The story builds to an excellent moment where Ben declares "you're mine" to Juliet, illuminating some of his sociopathic tendencies. The Bad: The overarching story being told here about Juliet is really poor and doesn't work at all. The first issue is my own expectations. Juliet was one of the others so she should be a gateway to learning some really interesting things about them. And yet we have learned absolutely nothing from her about the others since she joined the flight 815 survivors. Nobody has even asked her any questions! When you consider that, it is a critical disappointment that this episode only explores her relationship with Ben and retcons a shallow relationship with Goodwin, and that's it. There is nothing else here to learn from her past and that's very disappointing. The retcon stands out sorely because Goodwin's body is found by Jin and Mr. Eko. So Ben learned that he died, and instead of having a funeral service for him like the others did for Colleen, they just left him there? That makes no sense at all! I'm sure Harper would have been pleased with her husband's body being left in the jungle. This plot hole accentuates that this entire story was retconned in. Furthermore, I'm annoyed that the writers decided to revisit Goodwin, a character and story that did not have much left to it, instead of examining the others through Juliet's perspective. It's a very disappointing choice, and it resulted in a storyline that was very sloppily executed. The island story is no better. Daniel and Charlotte take off with murky intentions, but I never lost my trust in them. It was a poor decision to have an episode questioning Charlotte and Daniel's morality immediately after we saw Daniel go out of his way to save Desmond's life. Obviously he has good intentions, so I was never worried about what he was going to do. Additionally, this entire story is filler. It is never set up before that Daniel and Charlotte would want to render the gas at The Tempest inert, so this storyline comes right out of nowhere. The only thing this accomplishes is that it answers the question of where the gas that the others used to kill the Dharma Initiative came from. Creating an entire storyline about that is frustrating. This episode also gives into Lost's worst habit of characters withholding information for no reasons. There's no reason that Daniel and Charlotte couldn't have simply told Jack that they had to go to The Tempest to stop Ben from getting to the gas. They leave in secret purely for the sake of drama. There's also no reason for Juliet to not share with Jack that she was ordered to kill Daniel and Charlotte. Just tell him Juliet! There's absolutely no reason that she keeps it a secret, and it frustrates me to no end. I hate it when TV show's build their storylines off of simple miscommunication. Why on Earth does Juliet blindly accept Ben's orders? She has no reason to trust him! It's done in an effort to parallel Juliet's struggles in the past to her present, but since we have no reason for her to trust Ben in the present, it's hard to believe that she would make the same mistake and trust him again. Furthermore, Ben's plan is truly perplexing. Why would he order Juliet to kill Daniel and Charlotte if he could have any of the others do it instead? Plus, how did Harper manage to find Juliet in the middle of the woods? That's an extraordinary amount of luck. Kate's involvement in this episode is useless. She adds nothing to the story and her scenes are only used to fill time and create fake drama. Speaking of drama, the climax of the episode does a woeful job of it. The conflicts in this episode are really stupid, so to make up for it, the show attempted to put in some action and a countdown timer to make some tension. It did not work. And the timer was the dumbest thing I've ever seen. In what world would you have to risk death to everyone on the island to render the gas inert? That was only there to cheaply create some fake suspense. The Unknown: What are Widmore's goals? Ben says he doesn't know why Widmore is trying to come to the island but I do not believe him. Widmore has a target on Ben, so they definitely know each other. What is Widmore's history with Ben? How does he know about the island? Could he have somehow been connected to the Dharma Initiative? What are his intentions? Best Moment: The Widmore reveal was great for the plot and was a really engaging scene. Character of the Episode: Ben. Conclusion: After an extraordinary episode, "Lost' follows it up with a stinker. This was a really poor episode that failed to tell a compelling story. There were some good parts to it, but the overall episode fell into the worst trappings of "Lost" in an attempt to manufacture drama for a storyline that never should have made it through the writer's room. Score: 47
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
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