Sunday "Lost" blogging: "The Other Woman"
This week's "Lost" episode, "The Other Woman," followed the familiar pattern of raising more questions (about 100) than it answered (about 2).
Juliet's former therapist, Harper, appeared to Juliet amid the Whispers and a rain storm to deliver a warning (allegedly from Ben): the freighter people Charlotte and Daniel were supposedly on their way to a DHARMA station called The Tempest with the intent of releasing a cloud of poison gas, which would kill everybody on the island. Whether Harper was real or an apparition is unclear, but it is clear that she was lying to Juliet.
Obediently, Juliet and Jack took off after them.
Once the inevitable confrontation happened, it became clear that Charlotte and Daniel were actually trying to disable the gas rather than release it.
So, a whole pile of questions arose in my "Lost"-obsessed brain:
1) It seems that Charlotte and Daniel intended to disable this poison gas thingy from the very beginning (after all, their luggage contained gas masks). So why did they wait all this time to start the mission? Why didn't they head out for The Tempest when they first landed on the island? And why didn't they enlist the help of Jack or some of the other Losties?
2) Why would Juliet believe Harper (or the apparition of Harper)? They didn't have an exactly cordial relationship, since Juliet was sleeping with Harper's husband and everything.
3) Who set the poison gas to release itself? It makes no sense that Ben was the culprit (even though he'd used it before), since he was imprisoned by Locke in Ben's own basement. Did the Others set the release? If so, did they do it on Jacob's orders, or someone else's? Back at the end of season three, Ben did say that if the freighter people made it to the island, "every living person on this island will die."
4) Why would a gigantic poison gas facility be located in the station that also provides the island with electrical power? That just seems crazily dangerous to me.
5) Are Jin and Sun still wandering through the jungle, trying to find Charlotte and Daniel?
On to the Locke/Ben dynamic, which just gets weirder with every passing day:
1) If Locke and his band of followers at the Barracks really were running low on chickens, why did Locke cook the last two eggs and kill the last chicken (rather than try to raise some more)? Does he think that he and his band are about to die anyway, so raising more chickens would be pointless?
2) Why did Locke believe Ben when he said the videotape and file were all Ben knew about Charles Widmore? If that's all he knew about the man, what prompted Ben to start following Widmore in the first place?
3) Why would Locke be stupid enough to release Ben from captivity -- again?
4) Locke obviously believes Ben when he says the freighter people are the bad guys. So why isn't Locke trying to get Ben to enlist the Others and fight them, instead of just hiding out and playing house in the Barracks? That seems totally contrary to Locke's character. It's almost as if Locke is waiting at the Barracks for Death to come knocking at the door.
So many questions -- but at least Jack didn't cry in this episode.