The Other Woman

Unfortunately, last night's Lost wasn't quite as captivating as the image above. After last season, I've come to expect a lot from a Juliet flashback. The Other Woman wasn't bad, and wasn't even the weakest of the season (the premiere was, in my humble opinion). There were some great, revealing scenes (all of them Ben-centered), but there were also some weaker ones.

Harper Stanhope-you-never-appear-in-another-episodeThe worst part of the story last night. I don't even blame the actress...I think she did the best she could with the dialogue she was given:

"I'm an old friend of Juliet's. I just told her where the people you're looking for are headed. Maybe you and your gun can go, too."

WOW. Did ABC pull a writer from Grey's to increase the Exposition Factor this week? Not to mention the unnecessary "twist" of making Goodwin a married man. Couldn't this episode have been just as effective had the flashbacks only dealt with Ben's jealousy of Goodwin, instead of wasting our time with Harper? Yes! And that re-telling of the 815 crash with Harper added into the background was a sloppy retcon if I've ever seen one.

Beef aside, I think the writers made it pretty clear that the Harper we saw in the jungle was not the corporeal Harper, but yet another manifestation of the Black Smoke Monster Cloud Dinosaur Shapeshifting Mist. Why? Well, we heard the Whispers before and after Harper appeared, which often accompany the Black Smoke, she disappeared without a sound, and there's no WAY Ben could have communicated instructions from the closet he was in to his remaining Others in their makeshift camp elsewhere on the Island. Like Ben said himself, if the Others still cared about Ben, they would've stormed the Barracks already.

The question then becomes, why does the eerily sentient Black Smoke want Daniel and Charlotte killed? To protect its host, the Island?

Ben's "Other" SideWe knew that Ben was a brilliant, Machiavellian manipulator, but this episode was our first glimpse at Ben's other side: the emotionally stunted, childish side. I was stunned by his possessiveness, his warped notions of love and intimacy, and his incredibly selfish modus operandi. We saw firsthand the impact that Ben's life has made on his character. His isolated, powerless childhood has made him desperate for power as an adult. He's succeeded in getting almost everything he wants. He overcame his oppressors by murdering his father and the Dharma Initiative, and through his special communion with the Island has risen to a leadership position among the Others.

Last night's episode showed that neither his powers of psychology nor his Island-related abilities can change another person's heart. He tried eliminating his romantic rival, Goodwin, but Juliet saw right through it. I was reminded of the story of King David, who sent Bathsheba's husband to the front lines of a war just to get him killed, and make her his own wife. David fared a little better than Ben.

Check out this new interview with Michael Emerson and Elizabeth Mitchell for more insight into Ben's childish behavior:

The Tempest
I must say I was little let down by this Dharma station. Is it really a power station? What are all the vats of toxic chemicals for, then? How cheesy was Dan's last-second save on the computer? How clever were these Dharma scientists who named their stations with so many literary allusions to Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll? Is that logo supposed to be a wave? A sideways yin-yang?

I suppose the station explained exactly how the Purge was carried out, but in the context of the episode, the Tempest felt like a thinly-veiled plot device, a textbook MacGuffin, that existed solely to set up a conflict between Juliet and the Freighters, and then put a twist on it ("We're helping you, we just forgot to mention it when we stole away from your camp in the middle of the night and then knocked out Kate for asking questions.") I'll never complain about seeing Kate get knocked out, though.
Also, I thought it was interesting that Dan and Charlotte had a little map of the Island that showed them where the Tempest was. It would make sense, if their employer knows about the Purge, for him to tell him to make that gas inert ASAP. (Rest assured, I've already looked at a hi-res image of the map and can't make anything out other than a Tempest logo).

The Wolf Unmasked?
In the words of Ben, "this is the man that's been trying to find the Island." I loved this entire scene, because it reinforced my Light vs. Dark, Protect vs. Exploit theory of Lost. In fact, Ben explicitly said, "Chares Widmore wants to exploit this Island, and he'll do everything in his power to possess it."

Does this mean that Widmore is Sayid's target, the Economist? We know that the Widmore Corporation has ties to Hanso and Dharma. Perhaps the Exploiters lost the ability to reach the Island after the Purge. Ben took every measure he could to hide it. Now Widmore is doing everything he can to find the Island again and exploit it. Is that why he wanted Desmond to wind up marooned there? Did believe in the power of love so much, that he knew Penny would be more successful in locating her partner than Widmore would be trying to locate his profit-machine?

Stray Observations

Is Locke really dumb enough to let Ben walk around the Barracks unwatched? Who knows what kind of resources he's got hidden there? We've already seen a secret room and a secret safe in his house!

Hurley's luck with horseshoes was a total shout-out to his increased power on the Island. Along with Jacob taking an interest in him in the season premiere, this scene showed his ability to subconsciously use the Island's electromagnetic field to guide that metallic horseshoe to its mark, similar to the way Walt guided Locke's knife in season one. I'm sticking to my guns on the manifestation of will theory until Lost inevitably proves me wrong.

Elizabeth Mitchell + Swimsuit = Good Television

I'm pretty sure that when Harper said, "You look just like her," she was referring to Juliet's resemblance to Ben's mother, who was ironically played by Michael Emerson's wife.

Next Week
The previews for next week's episode kinda gave a lot away, but in case you missed them, I won't re-spoil anything. Two of Lost's best writers, Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz are credited for episode seven, Ji Yeon. Lost's editor, Steven Semel, actually directed this episode. You've actually seen him before, in a cameo in the season three priemiere as "Adam", the snobby book critic that Juliet mocked.

At this point, the previews have made it so obvious that Michael is Ben's man on the boat, that I'm starting to worry that we've all been grossly misled, and that it'll actually be someone else! But no, it's Michael. I think we're all pretty set on that.