Lost: Season 3, Episode 7 Review: Not In Portland
Not In Portland
Original Airdate: February 7, 2007
Writers: Carlton Cuse and Jeff Pinkner
Director: Stephen Williams
The original plan for Lost’s schedule this season consisted of a six episode mini-arc to whet the appetite of fans and tease them with sixteen episodes running from February straight through the end of May. This was to make it so fans wouldn’t have to wait for seven months for new episodes while dealing with complaints of inconsistent scheduling. Unfortunately, this plan backfired, and fans criticized the initial six episodes rather harshly. Instead of building up buzz during the three month break, some critics were content to stew in their negative reviews, calling prematurely that “Lost” has j***** t** s**** and that it should be put out of its misery. Therefore, the return of “Lost”, particularly these first few episodes, had to be really good or they could risk testing the patience of fickle viewers teetering towards watching something else.
Luckily, this episode gave us a few insights into The Others, focusing on one of the mini-season’s best additions, Other Juliet. Elizabeth Mitchell, another great addition to the cast, gets to flex her acting muscles, playing Juliet at a time when she was timid and insecure and now as the acting leader of The Others in Ben’s incapacitation. Before the island, Juliet let other people like her ex-husband walk all over her (until a bus ran all over him). Despite doing brilliant work in fertility, impregnating both a male rat and her sick sister, she underwrites her achievements like that the rat didn’t carry to term. It’s likely that she saw her ex-husband, the always welcome Zeljko Ivanek, as someone to control her potential and to limit her confidence, like hiring a sexy new doctor in the lab where they work.
The only encouraging presence in Juliet’s life pre-island is her sister, Rachel (the third female “Deadwood” alum Robin Weigert, now where’s Molly Parker?) While she is Juliet’s guinea pig, it works. Juliet gives her sister hope for her condition, which she had thought would prevent her from her life long dream of motherhood. It is a validation of her solo work, and that push manages to get Juliet to stand up for herself when Edmund tries to steal some of her glory.
If you’re ever going to be hit by a bus, get hit on network TV, because you’ll just get a few minor scratches at worst instead of being splattered all over the pavement. Seriously though, there is reason to suspect that Mittelos had something to do with the bus crash that killed Edmund, even if they don’t make a clear implication that they did. Assuming they really wanted Juliet, their “thorough research” must’ve found that Edmund would pressure her out of it.
They certainly must’ve known that Juliet initially would be easy to manipulate, but wanted to be the ones manipulating her. Things like Ethan in the general proximity of Rachel in the prologue and Ethan and Richard just happening to show up in the coroner’s office to get Juliet to work for them show that they really want her talent for some reason.
However, Juliet is now cool and confident, willing to do anything to leave the island forever and get back in touch with her sister. This is a major departure from the “This is our island” drum The Others have been beating. Some are technically prisoners on this island, and Ben holds the key to freedom. So it would make sense that they bond with the castaways, many of whom want to get off the island.
There are a lot of big pieces of The Other puzzle introduced in this episode. For one, The Others aren’t just the native people, and they can access main land (at least, according to Tom, until the discharge went off). Of course, they have to trick us before that reveal, showing us someplace we believe is the island (Juliet on the beach, seeing Ethan, etc.) when it turns out it is not, a reversal of the last two season premieres. While Ben has said that he has always lived on the island, where did everyone else come from? All we know from this episode is that Juliet was hired because her fertility expertise could help the 26-year-old woman with a decaying uterus.
Another is Mittelos (Lost time) Bioscience. The fact that they have contacts with the outside world adds a lot to The Others mythology. Is Mittelos the reason why Dharma drops are still performed years later? Was Mittelos some rival research group that fought against Dharma? If they were genuinely native to the island, how could they form a shell corporation?
Juliet arrived on the island around the same time Desmond did. While there may be nothing to it, she also arrived six days before 9/11. It’s unlikely that they would incorporate 9/11 into the storyline out of good taste, like they would have the tsunami, which is about three weeks away on the timeline, occur because of something on the island.
One nice side note from this episode is that it develops Tom into The Others’ version of Hurley, down to his uneasiness seeing blood. They could easily have switched roles without missing a beat. Tom serves as comic relief to the dramatic tension, but serious enough to avoid being silly and to serve as the spokesman. Introducing himself while he and Jack watch Juliet and Ben is one of the highlights from this episode.
Alex gets some more moments to shine as she helps Kate & Sawyer escape from Danny and his men. If anyone was going to help them at great personal risk besides Juliet, it was going to be her. Knowing that Ben has adopted her as his daughter (she may not know the truth), that gives her a lot of freedom to dig holes and weave baskets.
Of course, Alex saving the day was convenient, so she had to have an ulterior method. Unlike last episode, where Alex screamed that The Others killed her boyfriend, this episode upgrades Karl’s condition to “alive”, to steal an old Simpsons joke. He is being held in Room 23 elsewhere at the Hydra Station, which seems to be far bigger than any other station we’ve seen so far. Not much is said as to what Karl did to warrant imprisonment in the bizarre brainwashing room, nor how Alex found out Karl was a live in the first place. Could Room 23 be the room that Klugh threatened to place Walt in last season?
The Room 23 scene was intriguing. Karl’s force feeding of the video recalls “A Clockwork Orange” among other things. It must be cool to be a person who gets to make one of these; the crazier, the better. One Eater Egg worth noting is that techno beat and screeching played backwards says “Only fools are enslaved by time and space”. That, the Mittelos anagram and Aldo’s book “A Brief History of Time”, point towards some kind of fascination with the space-time continuum among The Others.
Who made the Room 23 video? There are clips of Gerald DeGroot and Alvar Hanso, two Dharma members, but there is a reference to Jacob, the possible leader of The Others. Also, why is Karl in there? What purpose does this treatment fulfill? Is the video meant to “Otherize” people or brainwash him to do something else? Perhaps sending Karl over with Kate and Sawyer is part of some larger plan. Whatever lure the video had, it captured Sawyer’s attention long enough for Kate to call him out on it.
Considering the only thing they did to make Pickett sympathetic was give him a wife and make him a widow shortly after, the beat downs he receives are long overdue. You can’t help but cheer when Sawyer slams Pickett’s head against the food button until the electric charge surges through.
Then we have Juliet killing him before he can kill Sawyer and Kate. Knowing how much she wants to get off the island, it fits that Juliet would be willing to kill to do it. It also shows how far she has come regarding achieving her goals. They must’ve not meant for it to be read as “Juliet needed to kill her husband to reach her potential” since she killed someone to achieve her goals in the present. In both scenarios, she needed someone out of the way to do what she needed and, assuming The Others orchestrated the bus crash, The Others took the dark side of that interpretation with Edmund. Killing Pickett shows how much The Others’ culture has affected her.
It was a little much to have the “Count to 5” story be the one piece that helps Jack push through the complication in Ben’s surgery, but it does create some drama in the dynamic between Kate & Sawyer. Although they had made love the night before, Kate still has feelings for Jack. Plus, they got to reuse the “Life and Death” theme, which is always great.
This episode was a great reveal into The Others, showing us a bit about how they bring people into their society. Elizabeth Mitchell proves herself to be another asset in the superb ensemble, as one of the best elements of the mini-season gets a big character push, which sets up some of the events that will play out the rest of the season.
Overall Score: 8/10
Luckily, this episode gave us a few insights into The Others, focusing on one of the mini-season’s best additions, Other Juliet. Elizabeth Mitchell, another great addition to the cast, gets to flex her acting muscles, playing Juliet at a time when she was timid and insecure and now as the acting leader of The Others in Ben’s incapacitation. Before the island, Juliet let other people like her ex-husband walk all over her (until a bus ran all over him). Despite doing brilliant work in fertility, impregnating both a male rat and her sick sister, she underwrites her achievements like that the rat didn’t carry to term. It’s likely that she saw her ex-husband, the always welcome Zeljko Ivanek, as someone to control her potential and to limit her confidence, like hiring a sexy new doctor in the lab where they work.
The only encouraging presence in Juliet’s life pre-island is her sister, Rachel (the third female “Deadwood” alum Robin Weigert, now where’s Molly Parker?) While she is Juliet’s guinea pig, it works. Juliet gives her sister hope for her condition, which she had thought would prevent her from her life long dream of motherhood. It is a validation of her solo work, and that push manages to get Juliet to stand up for herself when Edmund tries to steal some of her glory.
If you’re ever going to be hit by a bus, get hit on network TV, because you’ll just get a few minor scratches at worst instead of being splattered all over the pavement. Seriously though, there is reason to suspect that Mittelos had something to do with the bus crash that killed Edmund, even if they don’t make a clear implication that they did. Assuming they really wanted Juliet, their “thorough research” must’ve found that Edmund would pressure her out of it.
They certainly must’ve known that Juliet initially would be easy to manipulate, but wanted to be the ones manipulating her. Things like Ethan in the general proximity of Rachel in the prologue and Ethan and Richard just happening to show up in the coroner’s office to get Juliet to work for them show that they really want her talent for some reason.
However, Juliet is now cool and confident, willing to do anything to leave the island forever and get back in touch with her sister. This is a major departure from the “This is our island” drum The Others have been beating. Some are technically prisoners on this island, and Ben holds the key to freedom. So it would make sense that they bond with the castaways, many of whom want to get off the island.
There are a lot of big pieces of The Other puzzle introduced in this episode. For one, The Others aren’t just the native people, and they can access main land (at least, according to Tom, until the discharge went off). Of course, they have to trick us before that reveal, showing us someplace we believe is the island (Juliet on the beach, seeing Ethan, etc.) when it turns out it is not, a reversal of the last two season premieres. While Ben has said that he has always lived on the island, where did everyone else come from? All we know from this episode is that Juliet was hired because her fertility expertise could help the 26-year-old woman with a decaying uterus.
Another is Mittelos (Lost time) Bioscience. The fact that they have contacts with the outside world adds a lot to The Others mythology. Is Mittelos the reason why Dharma drops are still performed years later? Was Mittelos some rival research group that fought against Dharma? If they were genuinely native to the island, how could they form a shell corporation?
Juliet arrived on the island around the same time Desmond did. While there may be nothing to it, she also arrived six days before 9/11. It’s unlikely that they would incorporate 9/11 into the storyline out of good taste, like they would have the tsunami, which is about three weeks away on the timeline, occur because of something on the island.
One nice side note from this episode is that it develops Tom into The Others’ version of Hurley, down to his uneasiness seeing blood. They could easily have switched roles without missing a beat. Tom serves as comic relief to the dramatic tension, but serious enough to avoid being silly and to serve as the spokesman. Introducing himself while he and Jack watch Juliet and Ben is one of the highlights from this episode.
Alex gets some more moments to shine as she helps Kate & Sawyer escape from Danny and his men. If anyone was going to help them at great personal risk besides Juliet, it was going to be her. Knowing that Ben has adopted her as his daughter (she may not know the truth), that gives her a lot of freedom to dig holes and weave baskets.
Of course, Alex saving the day was convenient, so she had to have an ulterior method. Unlike last episode, where Alex screamed that The Others killed her boyfriend, this episode upgrades Karl’s condition to “alive”, to steal an old Simpsons joke. He is being held in Room 23 elsewhere at the Hydra Station, which seems to be far bigger than any other station we’ve seen so far. Not much is said as to what Karl did to warrant imprisonment in the bizarre brainwashing room, nor how Alex found out Karl was a live in the first place. Could Room 23 be the room that Klugh threatened to place Walt in last season?
The Room 23 scene was intriguing. Karl’s force feeding of the video recalls “A Clockwork Orange” among other things. It must be cool to be a person who gets to make one of these; the crazier, the better. One Eater Egg worth noting is that techno beat and screeching played backwards says “Only fools are enslaved by time and space”. That, the Mittelos anagram and Aldo’s book “A Brief History of Time”, point towards some kind of fascination with the space-time continuum among The Others.
Who made the Room 23 video? There are clips of Gerald DeGroot and Alvar Hanso, two Dharma members, but there is a reference to Jacob, the possible leader of The Others. Also, why is Karl in there? What purpose does this treatment fulfill? Is the video meant to “Otherize” people or brainwash him to do something else? Perhaps sending Karl over with Kate and Sawyer is part of some larger plan. Whatever lure the video had, it captured Sawyer’s attention long enough for Kate to call him out on it.
Considering the only thing they did to make Pickett sympathetic was give him a wife and make him a widow shortly after, the beat downs he receives are long overdue. You can’t help but cheer when Sawyer slams Pickett’s head against the food button until the electric charge surges through.
Then we have Juliet killing him before he can kill Sawyer and Kate. Knowing how much she wants to get off the island, it fits that Juliet would be willing to kill to do it. It also shows how far she has come regarding achieving her goals. They must’ve not meant for it to be read as “Juliet needed to kill her husband to reach her potential” since she killed someone to achieve her goals in the present. In both scenarios, she needed someone out of the way to do what she needed and, assuming The Others orchestrated the bus crash, The Others took the dark side of that interpretation with Edmund. Killing Pickett shows how much The Others’ culture has affected her.
It was a little much to have the “Count to 5” story be the one piece that helps Jack push through the complication in Ben’s surgery, but it does create some drama in the dynamic between Kate & Sawyer. Although they had made love the night before, Kate still has feelings for Jack. Plus, they got to reuse the “Life and Death” theme, which is always great.
This episode was a great reveal into The Others, showing us a bit about how they bring people into their society. Elizabeth Mitchell proves herself to be another asset in the superb ensemble, as one of the best elements of the mini-season gets a big character push, which sets up some of the events that will play out the rest of the season.
Overall Score: 8/10
posted by Matt @ 11:23 PM
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