Thursday, November 15, 2007

Archive Post: S3E07 - "Not in Portland"

Character: Juliet

LOST's Anatomy? It appears ABC thought it would be cool to expand an already-existing “Grey’s Anatomy” reference. Dr. Jack Shephard of “LOST” and Dr. Derrick Shephard of “Grey’s” already co-exist. Now, Dr. Preston Burke (of “Grey’s”) will also be sharing last names with Dr. Juliet Burke (of “LOST”). Come on, ABC. Be creative. Why not use one of the other millions of last names out there?

Shocking Moment: Was it just me, or was it not the coolest thing ever when Kate and Sawyer were trying to escape and Sawyer slammed Pickett’s head into the food button 3 times in order to electrocute him? I was loudly cheering him on for that one!

Mommy Rachel: Juliet’s sister, Rachel, appears to be a cancer patient. Juliet has been paying her visits to secretly inject her with experimental fertility drugs in an attempt to help her get pregnant. In traditional LOST fashion, though, they never really explain the details of Juliet’s plan. She can’t simply be assisting her sister in getting pregnant, so is she impregnating her sister (without sperm, maybe)? There was mention of Juliet being able to successfully impregnate a male fieldmouse. So, maybe her sister is really a dude? Haha

The Slingshot Kid: While Kate and Sawyer were running away, one of the ‘others’ gets hit with a rock. Pan over, and it’s Alex with a slingshot. She leads Kate and Sawyer into a pit that she dug where they can hide out. But the important question here is… how many other holes are there? And, is this where the infamous whispers are coming from? Could these pits be scattered across both islands?

Fire the anesthesiologist! With a huge hole in his back, still lying on the operating table, Ben comes to. He demands to talk to Juliet. He tells Jack that he’s been able to hear Jack for several minutes. And when Juliet walks in, he asks to speak with her privately. Jack offers him 3 minutes, which ironically is the amount of time given to Michael to visit with Walt when he was captured last season.

Tom + Jack = awkward situation: As Juliet and Ben speak in the operating room, Jack and Tom watch from the observation room. Tom looks over at Jack and says, “I’m Tom, by the way.” Now, I don’t mean to judge people, but it seems that some people could be right in their theories that Tom is a gay character. Am I the only one that thought Tom might be flirting with Jack? And when Juliet and Ben finish talking, Juliet comes in to tell Jack to finish helping Ben… and she will go help save Sawyer and Kate.

Mittelos Bioscience: Mr. Alpert, the founder of Mittelos Bioscience gives Juliet a presentation about his organization, and asks that she join them in Portaland. He shows her ultrasound photos that appear to be from a woman in her 70’s. Juliet quickly learns that the woman is actually 26. She is very intrigued, but declines because her ex-husband, who runs the hospital, wouldn’t let her go. She jokes that she’d be able to go, only if he was hit by a bus. **COUGH**foreshadowing**COUGH**

You should also note that “Mittelos” is an anagram for “LOST TIME”, and is also a play on the name “Mittlewerk”, one of the founders of the Hanso Foundation.

Who’s Your Daddy? Alex pretends to have captured Kate and Sawyer in an attempt to get access to a building where she believes Karl (her boyfriend) is being held. She tells the guard that her dad told her to take them there. So, he radios for Ben. So does that mean that Ben is her dad? Or is Ben pretending to be her dad? Because up till now, we’ve been led to believe that Rousseau is her mom. There are a million questions to ask, but I think the most important one is… Can we trust Rousseau? I don’t think that many of the things she has told us are true. She mentions that her team was sick and that they all had to be killed, but I’m thinking that she might just be crazy.

Karl’s Personal Movie Theatre: Alex, Sawyer, and Kate all break into that building and find Karl in room 23, taking part in what can only be an intense brainwashing session. Loud music and images flashing on a huge movie screen, with special brainwashing glasses, even Sawyer got caught in a trance. So is this the room that the others kept Walt in? Remember when Ms. Klugh threatened Walt at the end of last season and said, “You don’t want to go back into the room, do you?” Maybe Walt was un-brainwashable.

Don’t play in the street! After Juliet’s sister told her that she was pregnant, Juliet went to tell her ex-husband, who thought that Juliet’s research was “unethical”. He was talking to her about publishing her data, and before he could continue the article, SLAM! He was hit by a bus! WHAT?! That can NOT be just a coincidence. Obviously, the Mittelos guy staged that whole thing. But, was he driving the bus? Or did he use brainwashing techniques to get the bus driver to do it? Or is he like Sylar…. Oops, wrong show.

Purple Sky: While Jack is finishing up on Ben, he talks to Tom and asks why they didn’t just take Ben to a facility off the island (since they’re apparently able to). Tom begins to explain, “Because, when the sky turned purple—“ and suddenly Jack accidentally slits an artery and the conversation is quickly interrupted. Note to Jack: When you are about to get answers, STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING. Sheesh… we could’ve gotten a whole lot of information there, but NO…. Jack had to fix Ben first. Dammit! Looks like we’ll have to wait 2 more seasons before we find out now.

The Reunion of Mr. & Mrs. Pickett: Sawyer and Kate loaded Karl into Alex’s boat, and Danny comes up from behind, aiming a gun at Sawyer. And just as he is about to shoot, Juliet calls him from behind, and fires 2 shots right into his chest. And the most hated of all others is dead. They all go running into the boat, but Juliet stops Alex and says that she needs to stay. And that is the only way that her dad will let Karl live. But Ben doesn’t seem like he would kill Karl. So, maybe he isn’t her dad. Maybe Jacob is Alex’s dad. Again, I wonder, where the hell is Rousseau? She could definitely help clear up this whole thing.

Blood-squirtin’ and story-tellin’: As Jack tries to repair Ben’s sliced artery, Kate radios in and tells him that they are safe. He asks that she tell him the story that he told her when they first met, and she does. It’s a great scene, because it is mirroring almost exactly what is going on with sewing up Ben’s artery. Just as Kate says “you fixed her”, the heart monitor beeping returns to a regular pace. Before signing off of the walkie-talkie, Jack tells Kate that she is never to return to the 2nd island to help rescue Jack. And her and Sawyer sail off into the distance, heading for the mainland with Karl in the front of their boat. Now, assuming that Karl isn’t TOO brainwashed, it’d be interesting to see how he interacts with the rest of the Losties. Maybe he can finally give them some of the answers they’ve been waiting for. Or maybe, just as he’s about to, someone else will slit an artery and we won’t get answers, yet again.

Ethan’s tissues: Juliet is crying at the morgue after she is shown her ex-husband’s body. Ethan approaches and offers her some tissues. Mr. Alpert comes up and introduces Ethan as one of his colleagues. Juliet quickly makes the connection that her husband was hit by a bus, which is what she told Mr. Alpert needed to happen. He downplays it and re-offers her the job in Portland. He tells her that it will only take 6 months, and if she doesn’t like it, she can come back, just in time for her sister to give birth. He then confesses that they’re not exactly based in Portland. Island, anyone?

The Big Reveal: Juliet comes into the observation room, where Jack sits, overlooking Ben. He asks Juliet what Ben said that made her want to let him live. She confesses the following: “I’ve been on this island for 3 years, 2 months, and 28 days. He said that if I let him live, and I helped you, that he would finally let me go home.” HOLY CRAP! SHE IS A PRISONER TOO! This makes so much sense. Go back and watch the first 6 episodes (I don’t have to because I’ve got them all memorized), but you’ll see all these little things that hint at this. For example…

After Juliet got Jack to break down and be honest with her, she left the room and Ben congratulated her, “Good work, Juliet” in a very teacher-student way. So, this means that he instructed her to go in and get Jack to gain her trust.

He also told Jack that Juliet was purposely sent in because she looked like Sarah. So, imagine that Ben has a whole pool of people that are being held captive, and he researches Jack, finds out what Sarah looks like, reaches into his group of prisoners and picks out Juliet, the closest look-alike.

Juliet wanted Jack to make sure that Ben died on the table. This is because he wouldn’t let her go home.

Next Week: We are 6 days away from the next Desmond Flashback. I’m really crossing my fingers to find out exactly what happened to him, and how he can see the future. My bet is that he has always been able to see the future. “How can this be?” you might be asking. Well, remember, before this season, we had only seen Desmond for a couple days. It is likely that there are a whole lot of things that we don’t know about him. Maybe we’ll get more insight into his relationship with Penny.

More Online Stuff? It appears that the LOST Experience from last summer is not over. There is a new web site called http://www.mittelosbioscience.org/, which is currently inactive. It was active immediately following the episode, but is currently not working (overload, probably). Anyway, when you go in there, you could log in with username “jburke” and password “rachel”. There, you could read a message to Juliet from her sister, that links to a video clip of her daughter. A mysterious man interrupts the video though. Check out the video for yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWj6YyaRb6I

Being that I work in advertising, I have to give kudos to the creators of LOST and all of its advertising glory. They really have changed the game.

Until next week!

-drew.

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