Well, that was one heck of another good and solid episode for ABC's sci-fi drama 'Lost.' Once again, it's time to look into the past of Jack's new love interest, Juliet, and what a look it was.
At the beginning of the episode, Jack, Kate, Sayid and Juliet are still making their way back to the main island. As they make a stop on their way, Kate voices her wonder as to how Jack thought he'd ever leave, and why he was left unharmed. Jack explains that he did what he was told, kept his head down and his mouth shut, so he assumes that helped. Meanwhile, Sayid has sat Juliet down and says he wants to know everything, about why the Others are there, what they do, why they terrorized the castaways and so on. First, he wants to know who she is. Juliet says that if she tells him everything, he'll kill her, but he says he'll kill her if she says nothing.
Juliet's flashbacks are interesting, since half of them take place during episodes we're already very familiar with. It starts out with her and her cancer-ridden but pregnant sister, Rachel, driving to an airfield where the good folks of Mittelos Bioscience will take her to her new home for the next six months. Both Ethan Rom and Richard Alpert are around to see her off, as she tearfully says goodbye to her sister. She's then flown to a fancy lobby, where Ethan takes her vitals and Richard offers her some orange juice laced with tranquilizers. She's wary, but Richard says that if she truly was, she'd have questioned things long ago, and so, she takes the orange juice. She wakes up in the submarine on the island, walks out with Ethan, and meets Ben for the first time.
Meanwhile, back on the main island, Claire begins to have some mysterious symptoms that may make her a bit sick soon. Before anyone can get concerned, Jack, Kate, Sayid and Juliet arrive. Everyone except for Juliet gets a warm welcome; the castaways are very angry to see her there, which is what she expected. Hurley is brought over to watch her, as he reminds her of what they did to Ethan when they found out he was one of them.
In the flashbacks, we see what Juliet was brought to the island to do: figure out what's wrong with women getting pregnant on the island. She loses a patient and is pretty broken up about it. Ben consoles her and she begs to go home, because there is nothing she can do: the women who get pregnant get sick at conception. Ben says she can't go, even though she wants to see her soon-to-be-unpregnant sister. He says she won't give birth, since the cancer will come back, unless Juliet stays, in which case Jacob (whoever he is) will fix her himself. Juliet stays, of course.
Everyone on the island is very wary of Juliet, except Jack. Everyone else, especially Sayid and Sawyer, want to know why she's trustworthy. Jack vouches for her, but soon enough, Claire gets very sick, bleeding profusely. Juliet goes over to Kate and says she needs to talk to Jack, since she can save Claire. Why? The reason Claire is sick is Juliet. Juliet tells Jack and Kate that she was being given some injections to keep her safe, so unlike the other women who were pregnant on the island and died, Claire would not. This is explained in the flashbacks from the first season when Claire was kidnapped by Ethan. After some trepidation, Jack tells Juliet to get the injections, which are buried somewhere on the island. Unfortunately, Sawyer and Sayid have seen this without hearing, and are concerned.
In the flashbacks, we see Juliet who, after three years, has shacked up with Goodwin, another doctor on the island and a visitor on the show in season 2. It's been three years since she was on the island. She gets up and looks at some shocking X-rays and then visits Ben to tell him he has a tumor. He immediately knows he has cancer, which worries Juliet: wasn't her sister, with cancer, supposed to be cured? How could Ben have cancer then? She calls him a liar, which he denies, but she begs him to go home because of this. Ben says no.
Juliet, in the present, is about to get the medicine, when Sawyer and Sayid surround her. They want answers, but she shrewdly gets out of it by throwing their mistakes in their faces. She comes back, injects Claire with the medicine and almost instantly, things get better.
In the flashbacks, we then see a quick montage of scenes from the first episode of the season, from the book club to the plane crashing. Then, Ben asks to talk to Juliet. He takes her to Mikhail's shack, where they see some news footage about the Oceanic flight. Then, something else: Ben talks to Richard, who is in Miami, filming a very much alive and healthy and motherly Rachel. Juliet is thrilled to hear that she's fine. Ben reminds her he's not a liar, but still won't let her go until her work is finished. Lucky for her, there's Claire.
Finally, with Claire all better, everyone's a little nicer to Juliet, who even gets a spot on the island to make herself comfortable, as Jack says happily. As she gets herself all situated, we flash back one more time, to the night before she got handcuffed to Kate. It turns out, as she talked to Ben, that was all planned, and she is pulling a trick on the castaways. She's infiltrating our folk again, and according to Ben, she'll see him in a week.
Very good show tonight. With only a few left, how much more can happen? Tune in next week to find out.
