Thursday 15 January 2009

Lost Series 4 Episode 6 - The Other Woman

Juliet gets more back-story in the 6th episode of series 4 of Lost – ‘The Other Woman’, although a lot of the plot seems vaguely familiar.

The story centres on Juliet’s arrival on the Island and delves into her ‘affair’ with fellow ‘Other’ Goodwin, who was killed by Ana Lucia in series 2. The title of ‘The Other Woman’ could refer to Juliet herself, as Goodwin was married to her on-Island therapist, Harper.

Juliet also has to deal with Ben, who seems very interested in her. Her fears become even more so when she realises that it was he who sent Goodwin to infiltrate the tail-section survivors (in series 2) on purpose - to keep them away from each other. An un-compassionate Ben shows Juliet the rotting corpse of Goodwin, presumably to reinforce his authority.

Back into the present storyline and Juliet is suspicious of Charlotte and Dan, when they take off from the camp. Things get more serious when a returning Kate is attack from behind by Charlotte. The pair have also taken the gas masks, which they arrived on the Island with.

However, we learn that they are turning off a ‘poison gas factory’ that could have been activated at any time and could have killed people on the Island, just as Ben did during ‘the purge’ (a flashback in series 3). But still, the pair are being mysterious and Jack and the others still don’t trust them.

Meanwhile at the barracks, Ben pleads with Locke to set him free. In exchange he tells Locke that Charles Widmore owns the freighter and wants to take over the Island. Locke seems to be giving in but wants to know who Ben’s spy is on board the freighter and before he gets his own house at the barracks, Ben tells Locke who his spy is….

It was a rather slow episode that had a ‘filler episode’ feel to it. Although I don’t personally believe filler episode exist, that’s what it feels like! The flashbacks were too similar to Juliet’s past flashbacks and offered her hardly any character development. In fact we learned more about Ben than her! I also felt that Harper was severely underused and was surprised how easily she gave up her husband to Juliet.

However, the episodes redeeming feature was it’s scenes on the present-day Island. I felt that casting of all the people from the helicopter has been a masterstroke, I really enjoy the performances of Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies), in particular.

6/10

Next Time: Will Ben wind up Sawyer and Hurley by nicking their underwear off the washing line? So exciting isn’t it?

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