Wading in the Velvet Sea

The Flashback

As I’ve said before, the best flashbacks give new insight to characters we thought we knew, and give new insight into actions that earlier made no sense. Take, for instance, the first image we had of Season 3: Juliet, by herself, looking into a mirror, crying. An arresting image, and one that instantly led to, “Why is she sad?” Well, right after, “Who the heck is she?” or “Is that Jack’s wife?” or “Is that Penny” or “Jesus, what’s up with all the lookalike blondes, ABC, give a redhead a chance, HOLLA!” After tonight’s flashback, that answer might finally be solved.

We knew before tonight that Juliet was a fertility expert. What we didn’t know until tonight was just how MUCH of an expert she was. Enough of an expert to knock up a male mouse, and enough of one to impregnate her seemingly infertile sister. Far from the steely woman we’ve seen in her interactions with the Lostaways, the flashback Juliet is one unsure of herself, meek, and emotionally subservient to her ex-husband, a doctor with a penchant for sleeping with his assistants. Enough of an expert to catch the eye of the Hanso Foundation, who have been spying on her long enough to have planted Ethan Rom in her apartment floor long before they ever asked her for an interview or sent a bus to smash the blippin’ hell out of her ex-husband. (A totally telegraphed plot point, but I still squealed, “Ah! There’s the bus! Ze bus, boss, ze bus!” when I saw the CrossTown Murder Special on the horizon.)

After the episode was over, I asked The Girl if she thought Juliet went willingly to “not Portland”, or if she were kidnapped. “Forcibly coerced” was her reply, after a moment’s thought, and that’s a much better way to put it. Weirdly, though, she seems to have left Miami right around September 11, 2001. (Factor in when the plane crashed, work your way back from the date she gave, and voila. Hat tip to Doc Jensen from Entertainment Weekly for first pointing this out in his preview/review.) It might be a red herring, but knowing this show, it will undoubtedly come back as an important plot point. After all, for an organization nominally bent on saving the world from “mutually assured destruction”, to quote Alvar Hanso from “The Lost Experience”, wouldn’t that date seem to indicate that the end was nigh, and that their work was more important than ever?

However, on top of this factoid, and more important I think for the show, is the fact that Juliet knew EXACTLY how many days she’d been on the island. She counts the days the way inmates do. And so, in her numbering of the days, she reveals herself as a prisoner, no different, truly, than those she helped incarcerate. She wants off as much as the Lostaways, to find her sister, to meet her niece or newphew

What needs to be filled in, naturally, is how Juliet progressed from the wide-eyed, fearful woman in the morgue to the privately mournful, publicly strong woman we saw in “A Tale of Two Cities”. In addition, we need to figure out exactly why The Others wanted her fertility expertise. Clearly, there have been hints throughout the show’s lifespan: The Others’ obsession with children, Sun’s pregnancy test (a product of the Widmore Corporation, a partner of The Hanso Foundation, and therefore, privy to Juliet’s work), and the importance of Alex.

Alex and Goliath

I’m telling you, The Others can move silently in the jungle, they can out-strategize the Lostaways, and they can generally stay six steps ahead of everyone, but they can’t keep a damn slingshot away from Alex.

Alex’s role is increasing in the show’s mythology. A key fact hinted at in the last Fall episode, namely that Alex was in fact Ben’s daughter, was confirmed within the story. But I’m holding off judgment for now: after all, all we really know is that it’s assumed by everyone that Ben is her father. (This would explain why she can roll in and out like a battle monkey without The Others really doing much about it. I mean, you wouldn’t yell at your boss’s son if he spent six hours using the shredder, right?)

She’s important not only for her age (she’s the only teen on the island, so near as I can tell), but she’s the link between Rousseau, The Others, and the Lostaways. Unless we learn that Ben was actually on Rousseau’s boat when it landed on the island, one of the two of them are lying about their relationship to Juliet. On one hand, we have a sinister, conniving man whose word cannot be trusted. On the other hand, we have a batshit crazy French lady living in isolation. Fantastic.

Due to Juliet’s presence, and the overall kid obsession that would make Michael Jackson sit up and go, “Hrm, this is a bit creeptastic,” I’m leaning towards Ben having “adopted” Alex after kidnapping her, and that has been hidden from Alex all this time.

But Alex should count her blessings, living on that island: imagine having Ben and Rousseau show up for “Parent/Teacher Night” in grade school. What a nightmare.

Speaking of nightmares…

A Clockwork Dharma

Well, that was just about one of the three most disturbing things they’ve ever pulled off on the show, eh?

Kate, Sawyer, and Alex bust her boyfriend out of Room 23 (oooh, one of the Numbers, really, they’ve never ever done THAT before) and walk into “A Clockwork Orange”, if that brain programming sequence had been scored to an avante guard version of “Stomp”. Some type of “rehabilitation” was going on that involved sensory overload, UV-lit goggles, an IV drip, and a never ending barrage of images and words meant to do…well, I don’t want to know, because it’s mind control and I get the major wiggins from mind control. I did manage to freeze frame the statements from this presentation. In addition to the quote at the outset of the review, they also showed these:

“Everything changes.”

“We are the causes of our own suffering.”

“God loves you as He loved Jacob.”

“Think about your life.”

What I didn’t notice until freezeframing a second time through was that, as the four of them leave the room, the last image on Satan’s Slideshow was none other than Gerald Degroot. This has strong implications that the sensory overload chamber directly relates to the intial work of the Dharma Initiative. Whether the iteration we saw was a replica of initial experiments, an Others “improvement”, or simply a perversion, is hard to ascertain. But that one image ties everything in the room to the Dharma Initiative, and by proxy, further cements The Others and the Initiative as intertwined.

After all, the relationship between the two organizations is widely assumed, but hardly proved inside the show as of yet. The Others use Dharma facilities, seem to have knowledge of the group, but have as of yet not directly stated their connection to the group. We know that The Others (or more accurately, the enigmatic “Jacob”) have far-reaching capabilities (they dig up extensive info on Jack, they find Juliet even though her research is hush-hush), but this only proves that they have ties to a large entity such as Hanso/Widmore, NOT to the Dharma Initiative. “The Hanso Foundation” does NOT mean “The Dharma Initiative”. Just because the Others have access to such resources does not mean they are simply a direct descendent of The Dharmaties.

And yet, funny thing about that access…

Purple Haze

One of the more intriguing lines of the night came from Tom (“Mr. Friendly”), who, when asked by Jack why they didn’t simply take Ben off the island to get the surgery done, replied, “Because, ever since the sky turned purple…” HUGE almost reveal interrupted by a jet of blood from Ben’s back.

Now, this is of course a typical “Lost” narrative device: blueball the minds of the audience, giving the a tease of info, and leaving us to go, “….AND? FINISH THE THOUGHT! I HATE YOU! AND YO’ MOMMA! ‘HEROES’ DOESN’T PULL THIS CRAP!” There are three possible ways to finish this thought that would make sense. Those are,

“Because, ever since the sky turned purple, we’ve been stuck on this island. No way to get in or out, even the way we normally go.”

“Because, ever since the sky turned purple, we’re at risk of detection from the outside world.”

“Because, ever since the sky turned purple, time works differently between here and the real world.”

All could be plausible explanations. Under Theory #1, the electromagnetic anomaly that was The Swan could have provided one and only one passage (325, according to Ben at the end of Season 2). By blowing the Hatch, Desmond effectively cut off the only way out. Under Theory #2, The Others know that people have been looking for them, and that the purple sky might have thrown up a huge, “WE’RE RIGHT HERE” sign up to anyone searching. If they left the “snow globe” of the island, they would be exposed. Under Theory #3, my mind explodes. But the producers have hinted time works differently on the island, and that could be the moment where things went askew.

The biggest problem with all of them, however, lies in the timeline of the show. After all, the purple cloud happened roughly two months AFTER the Lostaways landed on the island. Ben found out a few days before the crash about his tumor. He could have left at any point, through bearing 325, but didn’t. There’s something more to all this.

But in any case, the significance of the purple sky hasn’t been forgotten, either by The Others or by the writers. That event has put a huge chink in the armor of The Others. It’s weakened them. By how much?

Guess we’ll find out in the upcoming weeks.

***

OK, that was a whole lot of ramble. Your turn. Thoughts and theories on last night’s episode? Drop them below.

And don’t forget to sign up for my “Lost” podcast on iTunes for more analysis of this episode, including the ramifications of Kate’s speech on the walkie-talkie on all who overheard her. I think that speech has the effect of a break in billiards, and sent the various players off in new and interesting directions.

But all that later. For now, it’s your turn!