Didn't like the ep? Tell us why. :biggrin:






This thread is for those that did NOT like the episode. If you liked the ep please visit the "Loved it!!!" thread. If you want to debate the episode (likes and dislikes), then please take your comments to the "Rate The Episode" thread or The "Discuss The Episode" thread. Any off topic posts will be deleted and possibly warned or given infraction points.

It`s a letdown episode compared to the others!

That toally sucked, and told us absolutely nothing.

And now, here I am...for the first time. While I did begin to like this episode, in ways, towards the end, this episode did not do it for. I dunno...the writing seem awkward and forced at times...even the introductory scene of the outer Tempest structure blew. How bout a dramatic angle? I dunno what to rate this one yet. I definitely need to see it again.
100%
Again, Hurley with the "I guess I'm lucky."

My friend watched this with a group of us for the first time tonight. I thought he wouldn't like it because there'd be too much that he needed to know, but instead there was nothing he needed to know; because nothing happened.

I thought the entire point of having a definite endpoint was to avoid episodes like this. Awful backstory, awful plot, and the fact that the entire episode was basically driven by the fact that we didn't know if faraday and chick were good or bad, only to find out that they did a good thing, in which case it made absolutely no sense to keep it a secret and hit Kate.

My second let down of season 4.
I liked Faraday ´cause I always like him... And Ben was good too. But the episode seems so pointless...
Not one of my favs, definetely... :undecide:

I didn't hate it or anything, but I certainly didn't love it.

I don't know, it was just kind of a letdown after all the excitement so far this season. The point of the entire FB was just to let us know that Ben loves Juliet (already inferred that) and that hes really controlling of her, even now. Okay, but really, I never cared if I learned anything else about Juliet and Goodwin.

The only really exciting thing was the revelation about Widmore. And Ben was awesome of course.

I always kinda liked Juliet, but I wasn't loving her in this episode.

My friend watched this with a group of us for the first time tonight. I thought he wouldn't like it because there'd be too much that he needed to know, but instead there was nothing he needed to know; because nothing happened.

I thought the entire point of having a definite endpoint was to avoid episodes like this. Awful backstory, awful plot, and the fact that the entire episode was basically driven by the fact that we didn't know if faraday and chick were good or bad, only to find out that they did a good thing, in which case it made absolutely no sense to keep it a secret and hit Kate.

Exactly. Why not just be like "Hey Kate, whats up, wanna come save everybody on the island with us" ?

I'm tired of Juliet.

Charlotte needs to have the tar beaten out by her by Kate.

Ben needs to die!

This episode just fueled my hate towards certain characters!

No one messes with my favorite character and lives!

I probably would have liked this episode a lot better if Lost as a whole didn't have a horrible reputation for how it treats its female characters - and now even Juliet has been reduced to simply an object to be fought over by men!

It was a decent episode, to be fair, but I'm highly disappointed in TPTB for letting yet another female lead lose her edge and become involved in stupid, unnecessary love polygons.

I probably would have liked this episode a lot better if Lost as a whole didn't have a horrible reputation for how it treats its female characters - and now even Juliet has been reduced to simply an object to be fought over by men!

It was a decent episode, to be fair, but I'm highly disappointed in TPTB for letting yet another female lead lose her edge and become involved in stupid, unnecessary love polygons.

ITA!
I can´t believe we are still watching episodes centered on this freaking quandrangle of doom... :drowsy:

Exactly. Why not just be like "Hey Kate, whats up, wanna come save everybody on the island with us" ?

That is because they did not know whether they can completely trust the Losties with important information like this. All it takes is one mole in the camp to spill the beans and get everyone killed.

There's nothing to spill. There's no reason for any of the survivors to try to prevent them from turning off the gas.

Hate the whole triangle thing but thank God they didn't have Kate come out during the kiss and make one of her horrible scrunchy faces. Kate's been destroyed enough I guess now they're moving on to Juliet to destroy her character.

Still didn't love it though. Hurley and Claire are still way too happy. So now Hurley and Sawyer are best buddies playing horseshoes and that's it? There's no way Hurley should be considering himself lucky anymore after losing his girlfriend and best friend back to back. I hate how everyone is just hanging out in Otherton like they're on vacation now. I'm sick of Ben winning and manipulating Locke. Locke comes off as stupider than ever. I have no interest in Ben being added to make a love pentagon on this show. Make it worse why don't you, as if it wasn't bad enough.

And with all that setup you just knew Juliet would be wrong about Dan and Charlotte. It was obvious, just as obvious as who the mole on the boat is.

I probably would have liked this episode a lot better if Lost as a whole didn't have a horrible reputation for how it treats its female characters - and now even Juliet has been reduced to simply an object to be fought over by men!

It was a decent episode, to be fair, but I'm highly disappointed in TPTB for letting yet another female lead lose her edge and become involved in stupid, unnecessary love polygons.


I know! I couldn't put my finger on why I was starting to like Juliet less in this episode, but I think you've nailed it. I completely, completely agree.

It was hard to get excited about the gas release from the Tempest Station, because we only found out about it in the last part of the episode. And it was so predictable, given how Juliet standing there unsure of how to handle it was just a rehash of Jack with the Swan Station countdown in "Man of Science." Except there, the suspense about Swan Station had built up through the whole episode; here it hit us just in the last 15 minutes.

I think the only new thing of interest was Ben's reveal that it's Widmore's boat. Of course, 99% of us viewers had figured that out already.

More geometric love! Nooooooo! (pokes eye with a stick)

I know! I couldn't put my finger on why I was starting to like Juliet less in this episode, but I think you've nailed it. I completely, completely agree.

Right there with you guys... :drowsy:

Just wanted to add that I'm seriously cracking up at elfdream's "geometric love" comment. LOLOLOL!!!!!

That is awesome, I think I'm going to use that term from now on.

But I agree pace, thankfully at least we didn't have Kate watching the kiss. We don't need any more geometric love angst.

I'm not 100% sure yet, but I'm at least fairly sure that it's the worst episode I've ever seen (and I hate saying that). The writing seemed weak at points, and I don't know that I liked the whole Gas Thing. Again, maybe it was the way it was written...or the way it was shot. This episode just seemed out of place for me. I really don't know what to say.

Christina Kim wrote this. She also wrote Stranger in a Strange Land. Hopefully she won't be writing any more, I'm sorry to say. I hate these kind of episodes.

Very disappointing episode this week. No great revelations. And now it looks like Michael is going to be the man on the boat after all?? Sheesh. That's sad. It's what everyone has been surmising.

I love EM but not his episode. She's fabulous.. so why waste her like this? I know we are seeing Juliet before she became hard as nails.. so it's a bit weird to see her be so "weepy gooey".

But perhaps the writers should visit Lostpedia and view some of the "unanswered questions", there are just a ton and I am sure they could all fit into the last 2.5 seasons. It would make for some great TV. :confused:

D/

So the quadrangle is turning into a pentangle? *sigh*

More geometric love! Nooooooo! (pokes eye with a stick) :biggrin:

No more geometric love, please. :drowsy:

Christina Kim wrote this. She also wrote Stranger in a Strange Land. Hopefully she won't be writing any more, I'm sorry to say. I hate these kind of episodes.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I felt. :(

Of course the episode couldnt compare to last week's, but I still enjoyed it. Can't say that I loved it though.

mehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I typed this huge rant in my LJ, but I'll sum it up here.

1. Kate getting hit in the head, aw. :[
2. Juliet and Jack kissing, noooooooo!
3. Where the hell is Miles!?!! >:0

fin.

I probably would have liked this episode a lot better if Lost as a whole didn't have a horrible reputation for how it treats its female characters - and now even Juliet has been reduced to simply an object to be fought over by men!

It was a decent episode, to be fair, but I'm highly disappointed in TPTB for letting yet another female lead lose her edge and become involved in stupid, unnecessary love polygons.


Yeah, I totally agree as well!!

mehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Mehhhhhhhhhh indeed! :lol:

I'm not 100% sure yet, but I'm at least fairly sure that it's the worst episode I've ever seen (and I hate saying that). The writing seemed weak at points, and I don't know that I liked the whole Gas Thing. Again, maybe it was the way it was written...or the way it was shot. This episode just seemed out of place for me. I really don't know what to say.

This confirms something I said to a friend even before viewing the episode. I'll just say this. Take a look at who wrote this episode. Then have a look at who helped write some of the other stinkers. There's your answer. :mad: I was afraid there might be some disappointing parts, and for me there were.

My second let down of season 4.
I liked Faraday ´cause I always like him... And Ben was good too. But the episode seems so pointless...
Not one of my favs, definetely... :undecide:
impossible not to be let down from last episode but that kinda sucked...

It's tough to say anything bad about the best show on TV, but tonight felt like a filler ep. No offense to Elizabeth, Christina, or Drew, but I have a few issues with this one.

1) After 402, 403, and 405, the bar has been set perhaps unattainably high.

2) Widmore is the big bad only because he wants to turn the Island into Jurassic Park? Kinda feels anticlimactic to me. I guess morally ambiguous pseudo-villains like Ben are more my cup of tea.

3) One word: Jate.

It was hard to get excited about the gas release from the Tempest Station, because we only found out about it in the last part of the episode. And it was so predictable, given how Juliet standing there unsure of how to handle it was just a rehash of Jack with the Swan Station countdown in "Man of Science." Except there, the suspense about Swan Station had built up through the whole episode; here it hit us just in the last 15 minutes.
Exactly, HERE IS A THREAT, A NEW STATION,GAS, oh, wait, no its ok 2 minutes later...ok whatever
100%
Very disappointing episode this week. No great revelations. And now it looks like Michael is going to be the man on the boat after all?? Sheesh. That's sad. It's what everyone has been surmising.I gotta say, IT CANT BE, everyone thinks it him, everyone knows he is coming , IT CANT BE him, that would be terrible...

The threat was a bit rushed. It was like, "OMG, they're here to gas everyone on the island" and Dan is all, "No, I'm not. I'm just shutting it down." Oh, okay then. Nevermind.

Mehhhhhhhhhh indeed! :lol:

I mean, to be fair, I don't feel this is a bad episode. To echo what others said: it just seems unnecessary....

- Claire couldn't care less about Charlie's passing. Nothing new.
- Kate's lot in life is to screw up at every turn. Kate = Fail See above.
- Ben is mad-crazy manipulative and evil. Really?!
- Juliette isn't going to shoot Faraday in cold blood. Duh.
- Jack's basically been rendered a big useless oaf. Yep

So, basically, a lot of stuff we already knew. As for the "reveals"...

- Widmore's the big bad guy. No way!
- Ben knew Goodwin was going to die. I'm having trouble caring.
- Ben has a man on the boat -- and his identity may surprise you! Whoooooa!
- Ben is possessive about Juliette. ...K.

Bah.

Nostalgia is about as much enjoyment I got out of this episode: hey there's Tom, isn't he dead? And there's that guy Ana Lucia killed, what's his name?

I didn't like the way they rewrote Ana Lucia's self-defense murder of Goodwin. Back when she overpowered him, I was cheering for Ana Lucia. It doesn't feel right now to give Ben credit for her kill.

Ben's creepy crush -- a guy like that would surely act more demented toward Juliet than just trying to brush her hand and gaze at her profile. He's not exactly the shy type. That storyline seemed rushed, forced, unreal.

What was Charlotte's logical explanation for knocking Kate out? That seemed unnecessary. Just like the cat fight. Drama for drama's sake.

And I totally agree with pacejunkie's take on the urgency of the gas masks and timer:
The threat was a bit rushed. It was like, "OMG, they're here to gas everyone on the island" and Dan is all, "No, I'm not. I'm just shutting it down." Oh, okay then. Nevermind.

I gotta say, IT CANT BE, everyone thinks it him, everyone knows he is coming , IT CANT BE him, that would be terrible...

I entirely agree... people have been saying that for so long, and the ONLY reason it's "so obvious" is timing. Michael left the show, oh what... he's coming back? and also, Ben has a man on the boat? Well, they must be one and the same! Done!

There's no way Ben would send out bumbling, impulsively panicked Michael out on a spy mission when he has a community of masterfully manipulated subordinates who are actually loyal to whatever cause he's working towards. Michael shot two of his 'friends' and sailed into the sunset with his son, which is all he ever wanted to do - not gain employment under the man who kidnapped his son and hang out on a freighter. The story has not been leading us there, just the casting credits.

Drama for drama's sake.

That's exactly what this whole episode was. Let's add more romance (albeit very unengaging) and give more depth (nope) to Juliet. Jack picks up Kate, Jack kisses and rubs Juliet's face...

It felt like the writers took a week off and just dumped the waste basket on the floor, picked up some scraps and made an episode out of it. It told us nothing, and didn't even really entertain in the process. I miss last week!

ok now i know why this epi sucked. just look at who helped write it and the history of that person and certain epis. it seems that everytime CMK is in the credits there is alot of posts on this thread. just pointing out.

I left the room after ten minutes to make nachos. MamaThor came into the kitchen after twenty minutes and said some things about the show that I can't repeat on the boards.

At the halfway point (approx. 33 minutes past the hour) we got back to the TV room, nachos in hand, to find TeenyThor was reading a magazine and not even watching.

We did tape it and after watching it again have this to say:

THIS WAS THE WORST LOST EPISODE EVER!

The only good parts were with Daniel and Charlotte. The background romance crap was ... not needed, didn't go anywhere, didn't add to the story. Awful plot. Wasted dialog. No Vincent.

We didn't hear who Ben's man on the boat was. (Geez, what a surprise.) And that was a really bad tease and so predictable. So what that we have to wait until next week.

Oh, and the camera on Sawyer's face at the end framing Hurley out of picture was not needed. We saw Ben beaming at getting the best of Locke who is more and more looking like anti-Locke or sissy-Locke.

The interesting part and the only part worth watching was what was inside The Tempest. So many questions about the gas, the devices, no history about the station. That was the best part of the episode.

And the J & J kiss. What's up with that? Kate being the third wheel and acting weak is getting old. Has anyone noticed that when Jack, Juliet and Kate are in a scene together, that Kate becomes the "Girl Rejected"? I felt embarrassed for Kate.

I'll add more later. Worst episode ever. It made me go and get my fireworks stash and let's just say, I spend some quality time with the ThorTwins out on the back poach. We're still looking for KittyThor.

I left the room after ten minutes to make nachos. MamaThor came into the kitchen after twenty minutes and said some things about the show that I can't repeat on the boards.

At the halfway point (approx. 33 minutes past the hour) we got back to the TV room, nachos in hand, to find TeenyThor was reading a magazine and not even watching.


I'll add more later. Worst episode ever. It made me go and get my fireworks stash and let's just say, I spend some quality time with the ThorTwins out on the back poach. We're still looking for KittyThor.


so true. i usually am glued to the tv but after i saw how this epi was going , i started loading songs into my friend's ipod. thats how slow this epi was. wasted hour of the last 40 hours of Lost EVERRRRRRRRRR

i want that hour back. lets just all pretend we never saw this episode . we'll just consider this a mobisode because it had a lot of mobisode scenes.

No Vincent.Actually they showed Vincent on a leash with Sun & Jin when everyone headed out to the woods. :rolleyes:

I hate to say this too, but this was the worst episode of LOST ever and complete waste of our time. I kept hitting rewind on my Tivo because I thought I had missed a point or something somewhat relavent, but no, rewound to find out it was just boring.
Big let down after all the fun we've had so far this season.
PS ok who is the 5th O6? Next week we get the last one but I'm still not clear who number 5 is after all this unless 5 is still Aaron. Too bad this epsiosde counldn't even clear that up for me.

I'm tired of Juliet.

Charlotte needs to have the tar beaten out by her by Kate.

Ben needs to die!



Great post, exactly what the writers would want you to think...I guess that how they manipulate audiences...Ben needs to stay until the end, because there is no show without him...Michael Emerson is one of the best things that ever happened to Television, and the reason I started watching the show...And I know you're gonna take your word back when it is for sure that he is a good guy :cool:

This episode was okay. There have been worse "Eggtown" and better (everything else
this season). I feel Juliet's story was handled a little glibly. There were so many reveals
(Widmore, The Whispers, another station, the man on the boat, the meaning of the
gas masks) and yet it didn't really matter or capture my interest. I thought this episode
was good for its humor content, but overall I would say that I was disappointed. Not
bad, but not good.
100%
I
THIS WAS THE WORST LOST EPISODE EVER!




Not worse than Eggtown, but right up there.

I hated this episode.
Locke is an idiot (we already knew that)
Ben is Psycho (we already knew that)
Juliet was screwing Goodman (we already knew that)
Juliet and Jack kiss=:sick:

I'm not 100% sure yet, but I'm at least fairly sure that it's the worst episode I've ever seen (and I hate saying that). The writing seemed weak at points, and I don't know that I liked the whole Gas Thing. Again, maybe it was the way it was written...or the way it was shot. .

Very smart comment

I realized long ago that writing isnt as important as execution. Most stories have already been told in the world of media---its execution that matters

I dont give 2 craps about learning new facts--as some others do. I care if enjoy the episode..if I want facts I'll read spoilers and reduce Lost to printed text.

This epi totally blew. It was poorly directed. Its his job to make it compelling and it was not

Disclaimer
I have never criticized Lost writing ever.
That said, the story points were also poor. Sorry, Ben loves juilet and will now kill Jack is beyond lame. It was so bad it sounded like ABC fired the real writers and someone who didnt know what was going on wrote that in.:)

Yeah right..all of the sudden, out of the blue...Jack your in grave danger. I forgot to tell you that the other billion times we talked. Just dumb

Then Widmore beating someone up???? What is this Starsky and Hutch? Did anyone else see Widmore do a Piledriver off the ropes? Locke lets Ben go after that championship match? At that point, why didnt Ben just marry Claire and open a hotdog stand? Its just as plausable. Sorry, but how you have the nerve to go on strike after that gem is puzzzzzling. haha

I kid, but you get the deal. What the heck did I just witness?

The threat was a bit rushed. It was like, "OMG, they're here to gas everyone on the island" and Dan is all, "No, I'm not. I'm just shutting it down." Oh, okay then. Nevermind.

:) :cool: :undecide: :biggrin: :lipsseal: :kiss: :hypocrit: :rolleyes: :undecide:
:biggrin: :biggrin: :biggrin: :biggrin:

Thanks..... I just spit out my drink on the monitor...hahahhahahahahahhaa

Execpt for the 2 minutes of Claire's finally showing she's still alive, it was the most useless episode of the whole four seasons.

Forgot the mythology. Forget the character developement...it would take months just to figure out the relationships.

Jack says he's in love with Kate.

Sawyer loves Kate.

Kate goes back and forth between Jack and Sawyer.

Juliet loved Goodwin but he died. Goodwin was married to the bitch Harper.

Ben loves Juliet and made sure Goodwin (who apparently had some kind of attraction toward Anna-Lucia) died because he told her 'you are mine' but what he is actually in love with is Annie and Juliet reminds him of her.

Juliet now loves Jack but can't do anything about it for fear that Ben will "Goodwin" Jack.

Jack kisses Juliet although I have no idea why...because he supposedly loves Kate.

So we have a triangle with the losties and a triangle with the others and the two intersect with one of the losties having a sort of triangle with two of the others (or is that an other having a triangle with another other and a lostie?) and just for fun you can even throw in a couple of dead people.

Its times like that that I'm glad I'm not shipper. How the heck could anyone get invested in any of the above?

I suppose some uber geek shipper somewhere will eventually come up with a spreadsheet or a diagram of it all.

:dizzy: :blink: :insane: :coco:

Forgot the mythology. Forget the character developement...it would take months just to figure out the relationships.

Jack says he's in love with Kate.

Sawyer loves Kate.

Kate goes back and forth between Jack and Sawyer.

Juliet loved Goodwin but he died. Goodwin was married to the vincent Harper.

Ben loves Juliet and made sure Goodwin (who apparently had some kind of attraction toward Anna-Lucia) died because he told her 'you are mine' but what he is actually in love with is Annie and Juliet reminds him of her.

Juliet now loves Jack but can't do anything about it for fear that Ben will "Goodwin" Jack.

Jack kisses Juliet although I have no idea why...because he supposedly loves Kate.

So we have a triangle with the losties and a triangle with the others and the two intersect with one of the losties having a sort of triangle with two of the others (or is that an other having a triangle with another other and a lostie?) and just for fun you can even throw in a couple of dead people.

Its times like that that I'm glad I'm not shipper. How the heck could anyone get invested in any of the above?

I suppose some uber geek shipper somewhere will eventually come up with a spreadsheet or a diagram of it all.

:dizzy: :blink: :insane: :coco:

Thank you for this post! I couldnt say it better myself!
The sad thing is that I´m sure we didnt saw the last of the *insert your favorite geometric shape" of doom yet. Not "by a long shot" :sick:


PS: guys, just vote to give this thread 5 stars if you didnt yet. :rolleyes: ;)

So we have a triangle with the losties and a triangle with the others and the two intersect with one of the losties having a sort of triangle with two of the others (or is that an other having a triangle with another other and a lostie?) and just for fun you can even throw in a couple of dead people.

Its times like that that I'm glad I'm not shipper. How the heck could anyone get invested in any of the above?

LOL! Well said, elfdream. Great summary.

And remember not only did Goodwin bring Ana Lucia into the Others triangle; Ana Lucia went full circle and latched onto the Lostee triangle; having sex with Sawyer, flirting with Jack and causing Kate to make her scrunchy face.

I could never bring myself to care about any of these yo-yo'ing ships. Even Sawyer isn't bothered by Kate dumping him. He knows how it works now. She'll be back for sex after a few days playing Jack-tug-o-war with Juliet.

Any monogamous relationships on Lost will be punished by...DEATH!
See Charlie/Claire, Hurley/Libby, Sayid/Shannon... ...probably Sun/Jin (next episode).
Desmond/Penny = The only CONSTANT love story of Lost.
Meaning they'll be kept apart forever...

And remember not only did Goodwin bring Ana Lucia into the Others triangle; Ana Lucia went full circle and latched onto the Lostee triangle; having sex with Sawyer, flirting with Jack and causing Kate to make her scrunchy face.

Oh man, I completely missed that connection! Wow, just wow.

So, I've been thinking about it a bit more, and what really annoys me is that there are actually things about Juliet's past with the Others that I was actually curious about. For instance, I always assumed she had been through something that caused her to change from the mousy and meek woman she was when she first arrived on the island to the manipulative, confident and strong woman she seemed to be in season 3. And where did she learn the kung-fu skills? (the ones she used on Kate in ..uhh, I forget which episode.) I was thinking maybe the Others put her through some crazy brian-washing and "boot camp" or something like that. But nope, instead we get more love polygons and Juliet simply reverting back to her softer persona...

Someone in the writer's room needs to not be allowed to contribute anymore. This was not LOST. And it's the only episode to ever make me feel thay way. I'm shocked at poorly executed some things were.

Agreed on pretty much everything that has been said in this thread. I was soooo bored. I also didn't like how they put Harper back in scenes we've seen before to make us think she was really there (i.e. Others witnessing the plane crash).

Just awful.

I didn't exactly hate the epi but felt it was a big blaaaaahhhhh. While watching it was kind of okay especially since I wasn't spoiled except for one thing, but thinking back over it this morning, I have few comments. Originally put these in the rate the epi thread and then moved them here because I think they probably belong here instead.

Not sure why, but the episode felt rushed and meandering at the same time. The stuff about Charlotte and Dan... okay... so they're really good guys? That felt a little cheap and I'm not sure I buy into it, there's still another agenda I'm sure. I love Daniel and Charlotte's addition to the cast, just felt like this was the cliff notes version of something.

I like EM, don't especially care for Juliet, found the reveal that Godwin was married and that their relationship was an affair unappealing in the extreme. Ben was creepy in a stuck in adolescence mode and that seemed at odds with his presentation as Mr. Masterful Manipulator.

I'm biased about the shipper stuff no doubt because I'm a Jater (in the interest of full disclosure -- I hate it when people claim they can be 100% objective when they ship)
but the whole Jack/Juliet thing felt forced to me. I get that Jack cares about Juliet and would want to comfort her at the end, but I didn't buy that he'd kiss her on the mouth at that point. I'm not saying that there wouldn't be an attraction either, just that the timing was really weird to me. As much as I dislike the development in their relationship I think it COULD have been made believeable and just wasn't. Wasn't it just a couple of days ago island time that Jack told Kate he loved her, wasn't it a few minutes before he confronted her about staying with Locke? Yeah, lets add more confusion to his romantic life by having him kiss Juliet because she's scared of Ben hurting him... Huh, the triangle stuff just felt really schizophrenic and mechanical. I could almost see a big arrow saying "hey, here's the plot point we wanted to make with the Ana Lucia character... didn't work so we're going to cram it into the story here whether or not it makes a lot of narrative sense... "dadgone it we're going to have a complex geometric romantic subplot --- hang the believeability!"

Thought that Claire was waaaay too calm about Charlie... maybe she wasn't in love with the guy (although I thought that was the way they were headed) but couldn't she even make a passing comment about how even though it was noble of him to sacrifice himself for them all (her) it didn't really resolve anything? How about something other than just reporting the facts, ma'am?

Didn't understand the initial animosity of the therapist towards Juliet, the resentment and anger seemed understandable later when Juliet started having an affair with her HUSBAND, but before? huh? Was that to show that they were star-crossed lovers because poor ole' sleeping on the couch Godwin was justified in sleeping with Juliet since his wittle wiffy was mean to him... so that would make his middle name Romeo, I guess:rolleyes: And hey Juliet, you a) continue to see Godwin, but b) don't tell him his wife knows and c) that she (wife) thinks Ben will try to hurt him.... ? You just have some lame vague conversation asking if he thinks Ben would mind they're involved.

Ah, there is more I could probably add but I'm out of coffee and patience this morning. Maybe I'll come back and complain some more later. Hate to be this negative btw, this is the only show I watch but I'm getting less and less attached because of the triangle junk.

Any monogamous relationships on Lost will be punished by...DEATH!

So is that another mode of staying alive? Will people soon be engaging in fake love triangles and have all kinds of psuedo angst filled dithering moments just for the sake of survival? X and Y and X. Tomorrow its X's turn to tell Y that she loves him and Z hides in the bushes and sees all and pretends to be upset about it. The island is watching!

I forgot about the Ana/Jack/Sawyer/Kate thing.:rolleyes:

Oh..and there was that tiny Locke/Claire/Charlie thing...but I guess it wasn't strong enough to keep Charlie alive. I guess I should have rooted for it when I had the chance.:mad:

Rehashing of the same Others backstory is getting old very quickly. And there were moments I could have swore I was watching a cheap daytime soap opera.

The reveal of Charles Widmore as the man behind the freighter was ho-hum since most people already guessed it, Still the Ben-Locke scenes were good scenes, but unfortunately only a small part of the episode. Leaving us hanging with who is Ben's man's on the boat got me distracted, wishing during the rest of the Juliet story that they would return to the Ben-Locke story to answer that question, even if we already have a pretty good guess on who is Ben's mole on the ship.

Ben's line to Hurley and Sawyer, "See you guys at dinner", was very funny.. It may have saved this episode from being worse than Eggtown. But overall, The Other Woman was a big letdown, coming right after the amazing The Constant episode.

I started watching Lost just recently after my girlfriend and I broke up, just to get away from "love" for a while. Now even Lost has betrayed me. :biggrin:

Lost has become like every girl I ever dated, one big boring tease. :biggrin:

Just a thought: maybe this Ep was a (weak) turning point for the new episodes following? If they had a 8 episode season and now we'll probably get 13 or 14, this could be a just a filler, otherwise there would have been an ongoing finale...

But maybe i just want to sugarcoat this poor episode for myself...

boring filler episode, i would have preferred a freighter falshback which had to be cut because of the strike than this. seriously the only island people that i remotely care about flashback/flashforward for are ben, rousseau, richard and maybe mikkail and tom but they're dead. i'm just glad juliet is not one the oceanic 6.

Here's something that worries me:

With the O6, we are now getting really exciting FF's and completely new information, but only for certain characters. What's going to happen with the rest of the main characters who don't get off the island? Are we going to continue to get boring, redundant FB's that don't tell us anything new or interesting (like this one)? (They were already getting to that point with FB's in season 3, IMO).

I really hope not, but then, how are those characters going to have "centrics?" Should Lost abandon its rigid every-episode-must-have-a-centric mentality?

I posted in the other Loved it thread that I thought it was good, but not great, but that it was all just filler.

Here's what I didn't love.

The Tempest. Huh? How about explaining what the heck was going on? Why the last second like here it is and I'm disarming it so it's all OK. Sorry we bashed you in the head Kate even though we are saving your life. Why did Daniel have to activate the system to disarm it? I thought it was very poorly handled.

The other problem I had were the flashbacks. They sucked HARDCORE. There was absolutely NOTHING new revealed except that Juliet is now a homewrecker. Ben's creepy and manipulative? Oh wow, how new is that one? Juliet and Goodwin had a relationship. Been there, done that. And somehow the implication is that Ben sent Goodwin because he KNEW that the tailies would figure out he was not there and murder him? That made no sense.

I guess I didn't love it. I didn't hate it, not like Eggtown. But this is was a big letdown from The Economist and The Constant.

i'm just glad juliet is not one the oceanic 6.

Although the opening scene played with that expection. I really wasn't sure as Harper (I didn't remember her at this moment and I'm not sure if we saw her that exactly in the scene when the plane went down) started to talk about celebrities and beeing in the middle of attention.

I was so glad when Tom entered...

I would not of disliked this epi as much if there was going to be an entire season. I realize that not every epi can better than the last, but now the season will be compressed and we are loosing alot. I just think that if the TPTB knew that the season was going to be shortend before the writing of this epi, they would have not wrote such a slow mover. This also makes me think we might be in store for a few more let downs.

ONE THING THAT I DID LOVE:
Ben having dinner with Juilette. That was awsome to see ben like that.

Filler. Uneventful. Took a long time to get not very far. Characters' actions didn't make much sense. Disjointed. Too few protagonists, too narrow a scope. Nice to see Goodwin again though, the sly old fox.

There's not much more to contribute beyond what's already been said. This episode was really disappointing and frustrating because we've just had a taste of how GREAT Lost can really be. TOW didn't measure up.

My gripes:

* I hate to crit anyone on their physical appearance but... LAY OFF THE BOTOX, therapist lady. Casting directors, please hire people whose faces can actually move and show emotion. Thank you.

* Not revealing the man on the boat in this episode. I know JJ is a big fan of the "what's in the mystery box?" type of storytelling but the season-long tease is really old. This episode would've been much better with the reveal.

* The love stories, entanglements, affairs - way too soap opera-y. That stuff belongs on Desperate Housewives, not on Lost.

* I'm forgetting why I'm supposed to care about any of the characters and their ultimate fate(s).

The whole Tempest thing felt rushed and John is dancing to Ben's tune again

Every character, every character, came out looking worse after this episode.

The best way I could describe this episode is that it felt like a sweeps week soap opera storyline.

I agree with the introduction of the new station.
I mean, IT'S A NEW STATION!
WITH POISON GAS!
AND COMPUTERS THAT WORK!
IT'S NEW!
All we got a is a quick shot of Juliet pulling a cord, walking in.

One word - boring. It didn't really reveal anything big that we didn't already know or suspect(wow Widmore wants to find the island -- never saw that coming).No suspense whatsoever.

And what is up with using the characters as window dressing. Claire's, Kate's, Hurley's, and Sawyer's scenes felt like - Hey,lets just write them in so people can see their favorite characters.How about giving people a little more than "hey we're still here".

A couple of good things though -- Juliette really shined character wise and the scene that did include Sawyer and Hurley/with Ben was the best and funniest one of the whole night.But overall it was a wash.

* Not revealing the man on the boat in this episode. I know JJ is a big fan of the "what's in the mystery box?" type of storytelling but the season-long tease is really old. This episode would've been much better with the reveal.

* The love stories, entanglements, affairs - way too soap opera-y. That stuff belongs on Desperate Housewives, not on Lost.

With ya', 108.5 percent! If they were not going to reveal who Ben's mole on the ship was, then don't even bring it up. Especially don't bring it up in the middle of the episode, where the viewer then keeps on thinking the answer will come later in the same episode. Waiting for the answer to this question became a distraction, and ultimately a big letdown when who Ben's man on the ship was never revealed.

They took the soap opera element of Lost to new level (or more aptly, low) with this episode. The Juliet backstory made me think I was watching a cheap daytime soap opera at times.

I agree with the introduction of the new station.
I mean, IT'S A NEW STATION!
WITH POISON GAS!
AND COMPUTERS THAT WORK!
IT'S NEW!
All we got a is a quick shot of Juliet pulling a cord, walking in.


Yeah, this is one of the toughest things for me to get my head around: Why would they introduce a station with such a boring and mundane shot sequence? It was like she was just taking the trash out to the garage or something. This structure? No big deal. We see it every day.

I think I'm just gonna pretend this episode never happened. I know it's been said, but it was just way too soap-opera-ish, as if they found some fanfic and then shot it with really bad editing and direction.

Hated the therapist character. What exactly was the point?

None of the commercial breaks was the slightest bit suspenseful.

So Charlotte and Daniel had to first release the gas in order to neutralize it? Huh? And they do want us to hate Charlotte, right? Right?

AND they pretty much completely destroyed one of my favorite characters (Ben) by turning him into a sexual predator, and over Juliet. Yuck, I feel violated.

Might I add, everything that was wrong with this episode was magnified 10-fold by the fact that it came on right after a repeat of last week's episode.

The only thing this episode will be good for is funny screen caps of Ben, sashaying around his kitchen or waving hello to the boys after Locke lets him go.

* I'm forgetting why I'm supposed to care about any of the characters and their ultimate fate(s).

That's just my problem. I no longer do. They've all become pathetic and unlikeable and I don't care if they get off the island or not. The only one I care about at this point is the newbie Daniel.

So, I've been thinking about it a bit more, and what really annoys me is that there are actually things about Juliet's past with the Others that I was actually curious about. For instance, I always assumed she had been through something that caused her to change from the mousy and meek woman she was when she first arrived on the island to the manipulative, confident and strong woman she seemed to be in season 3.

Exactly! Not to mention Juliet's flashbacks have always given us interesting reveals about the Others, too.

All we learned in this one is that they have their own (pathetically incompetent) therapist.

I actually wasn't a big fan of The Constant.....this episode was vaguely soap-opera-ish though. I want to see more of the Others past lives but this was badly written.

At that point, why didnt Ben just marry Claire and open a hotdog stand? Its just as plausable.

Pfffffffffftttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!! :biglaugh:


So we have a triangle with the losties and a triangle with the others and the two intersect with one of the losties having a sort of triangle with two of the others (or is that an other having a triangle with another other and a lostie?) and just for fun you can even throw in a couple of dead people.

Awesome elf. Puts a whole new meaning on sleeping with the enemy doesn't it? Is this how they aim to make the point that everyone on this show is morally ambiguous and there's no fundamental difference between the Losties and the Others? Fine point taken, can we please stop now?


Any monogamous relationships on Lost will be punished by...DEATH!
See Charlie/Claire, Hurley/Libby, Sayid/Shannon... ...probably Sun/Jin (next episode).
Desmond/Penny = The only CONSTANT love story of Lost.
Meaning they'll be kept apart forever...

Interesting Cappy! I knew they have always destroyed the committed and more meaningful relationships on this show but the idea that they are all variables and DesPenny is the constant... See how we have to fanwank to swallow all this? :undecide:

Yes, this one sucked. Constant 10, The Other Woman, 2

The Juliet we were introduced to in "A Tale of two Cities" seemed to be in a completely different emotional place than the one we met tonight which is odd since they were overlapping time frames.

Not one of the better season 4 episodes. I think I have been spoiled by information overload in some of the previous episodes. Very little new information was revealed. And some of what was revealed (it is Widmore's boat) was not really a surprise.

Ben manipulating Locke is starting to get tiresome.

.... I know it's been said, but it was just way too soap-opera-ish, as if they found some fanfic and then shot it with really bad editing and direction.......

The only thing this episode will be good for is funny screen caps of Ben, sashaying around his kitchen or waving hello to the boys after Locke lets him go.

I love your line about it being like a fanfic. Bravo!

Ben "sashaying" around the kitchen was too much. :biggrin: I thought of the panic Felix Unger must have felt if a Pidgeon sister showed up too early. You about covered all the good moments, and Ben sashaying and him and waiving to the boys. "See you guys at dinner" was about all that was good about this episode. Okay, the line about whether the rabbit Locke cooked up was a numbered rabbit was pretty good, too.

But in the end, it's a kind of a shame when just about the only good moments in a Lost episode were the brief comedic ones.

I "didn't love it" this morning even less than after I saw it and that doesn't usually happen to me. I think it was a fill in grade.

I didn't hate the episode, but I certainly didn't love it. My three complaints:

Most writers who retcon do so with the use of a flashback, but here Juliet's motivations are retconned by revising a flashback to include Harper. That is SO George Lucas... How annoying, and it reeks of their not really knowing their major characters as late as early Season 3.

When you really think about it, there was absolutely no reason for Daniel and Charlotte not to include Jack and the Others in their plans. I mean, who's more against Ben than Jack??? This was just a convenient way to stir up drama, and it rang false. This feels like Seasons 2 and 3 all over again, where no one tells anyone else anything for absolutely no reason at all. That's the real sickness, if you ask me...

It is so hard to care for a character that we've not seen much of for almost a year. The last episode where Juliet wasn't sidelined was D.O.C., and it aired on April 27, 2007. Since then she's been more or less just a fixture. Why should I care about her -- I hardly know her!

Agreed on pretty much everything that has been said in this thread. I was soooo bored. I also didn't like how they put Harper back in scenes we've seen before to make us think she was really there (i.e. Others witnessing the plane crash).

Just awful.


It was a George Lucas moment - and not in a good way.

I also didn't like how they put Harper back in scenes we've seen before to make us think she was really there (i.e. Others witnessing the plane crash).


I hear ya'. How many times are we going to see that same old scene, with yet another person shoehorned into the scene????

Rumor:

In S4E8, the Others watch the plane breakup, again. Ben, as usual, gives Goodwin and Ethan their instuctions to infiltrate the survivors of the plane crash. Forrest Gump tells Ben how much he likes chocolates. "Why, so do I." replies Ben.

If PAWs (producers and writers) wanted to introduce the idea that Ben was in love with Juliet, they could have written it differently.

If PAWs wanted to introduce the new station, The Tempest, they could have written it differently.

If PAWs wanted to show how frail Kate is in light of Jack and Juliet's relationship, they could have written it differently.

If PAWs wanted to ... well, I could go on and on.

The entire episode was presented so badly on so many levels. I wonder what PAWs were thinking when they fleshed this one out. It was so out of kilter with the rest of the episodes. It really stuck out as being so different. Different as in bad.

I can only imagine what PAWs are thinking as they read our comments.

P. S. I stand corrected: this episode and Eggtown are in a tie for WORST EPISODE EVER.

I really hope they read this thread and stop writing Lost forever, so we you can all return watching your beloved shows e.g.: ... oh wait. :drowsy:
And it's spelled JULIET. Not Juliette.

I guess the thing that bothers me more than anything else about what transpired lastnight is that it's gotten to the point now where both Locke and Ben, two of the front runners for Ultimate Badass, have done almost nothing for the entire season and it's starting to catch up in the worst way.

John has been my favorite character ever since "Walkabout". He was a strong benevolent force in the first two episodes of S4, and I had envisioned this whole thing with him leading his group back to Othersville, making a strategy and protecting those who would trust him. What I hadn't pictured was John going on some massive power-trip, abandoning all traces of humility, throwing tantrums, keeping hostages and choking chicken all the time. It's like he and Ben together are in the boxing ring, and the crowd is on its feet waiting for the first punch, yet all they do is keep circling. It appears that the freeing of Ben may be leading up to something, but I'm still lost as to what might have motivated it. Locke may have gotten some kind of information, but nothing that he can actually do anything with, unless there is more to it. I sure hope so.

As for Ben, he's always been an interesting villain. The greatest villains are the smart ones, and Ben is all about that, he always has been. But even greater still, he's always been able to approach situations with a kind of stability and (dare I say it?) "maturity". It feels like so much of that was lost lastnight. Here was a smart villain with an agenda, and God only knows (or doesn't know) what his deeper inclinations or motives are, and suddenly now he's like some lovestruck loony. Another hub for what was already a spiderweb that will not soon be disentangled. And I'm pretty sure the idea is that Juliet is going to be Ben's "weakness" and all that jazz, but if that's the case, then are we to assume that the next step in unraveling Ben's master plan is going to be for her to betray him? 'Cause that kinda sorta already happened.

I still love this show more than anything else in the world right now, I just had to decompress a tiny bit :D

Forgot the mythology. Forget the character developement...it would take months just to figure out the relationships.

Jack says he's in love with Kate.

Sawyer loves Kate.

Kate goes back and forth between Jack and Sawyer.

Juliet loved Goodwin but he died. Goodwin was married to the vincent Harper.

Ben loves Juliet and made sure Goodwin (who apparently had some kind of attraction toward Anna-Lucia) died because he told her 'you are mine' but what he is actually in love with is Annie and Juliet reminds him of her.

Juliet now loves Jack but can't do anything about it for fear that Ben will "Goodwin" Jack.

Jack kisses Juliet although I have no idea why...because he supposedly loves Kate.

So we have a triangle with the losties and a triangle with the others and the two intersect with one of the losties having a sort of triangle with two of the others (or is that an other having a triangle with another other and a lostie?) and just for fun you can even throw in a couple of dead people.

Its times like that that I'm glad I'm not shipper. How the heck could anyone get invested in any of the above?

I suppose some uber geek shipper somewhere will eventually come up with a spreadsheet or a diagram of it all.

:dizzy: :blink: :insane: :coco:

I have tears in my eyes :biglaugh: !! Your on a roll today Elfdream!

I have never posted in this thread (at least I don't think I have) but I have to say that was not a great goodepisode and was not up to the LOST writing standards at all. Not even the basic "Who, What, When, Where, How's" of writing were used.

At least have the comic book themed "gas released upon the world countdown" go to 14 seconds or something only to have a secondary countdown launch from inside the same facility to create SOME suspense.

Jack kissing Juliet after telling Kate only a few days ago that he loved her makes me :rant: . I'm so over the triangles, quadrangles. You had me with the physics of the show - the geometry I'm so over. BLEH.

Locke listening to Ben x 3 makes me :wallbash:

Kate turning her back on Charlotte after questioning them (an obvious sign of mistrust!) is something Locke would have done - not Kate!! I miss season 1 Kate! I wonder if the actors/actresses ever read their scripts for the upcoming shoot and say WTF?

I love this show and I'm in it until the very end, but this one really irked me.:undecide:

I really hope they read this thread and stop writing Lost forever, so we you can all return watching your beloved shows e.g.: ... oh wait. :drowsy:
And it's spelled JULIET. Not Juliette.

Noted. Thanks for the update.

Not only was the episode written badly. Even I wrote about it badly. Must be something going around.

Not good; not good at all. I can accept that this may have been a "connector" episode -- one of those where clues are dropped that the audience more or less misses until a big reveal later on (ex: Why doesn't Juliet want Jack to read Ben's file on her? Because she had an affair with a married man? Because she's embarrassed that Ben is obsessed with her? Well, no. She tells him that. Must be something else -- it BETTER be something else.)

Ben showed Locke a very short piece of film of an older man getting out of a car and beating the crap out of some other guy. That's it. On the basis of that, Locke is supposed to believe that it's Charles Widmore, and that Widmore is Ben's sworn enemy because he wants to take over the Island? The idea that Locke would believe anything Ben says, at this point, is ludicrous, especially on the basis of that miniscule piece of film that proved absolutely nothing.

One of Ben's last weapons of mass destruction -- the gas from the Tempest -- MUST be saved!!!! So, the only person he sends is Juliet? No back up plan? If Ben KNOWS EVERYTHING, wouldn't he KNOW that Juliet wouldn't follow through? Gee, maybe the whole Tempest station thing is just another of Ben's ruses. It had better be. . .

Claire comes forward and offers to play Mata Hari with Miles? Gee, that's so in character for Claire. NOT. Perhaps if she'd shown a little grief over Charlie's death; perhaps if she'd suggested it as a way to do something to help the group as Charlie had done, I might (probably not, but I might) have been able to buy it. However, it was like, "Gee, John, I've done all the laundry and I haven't got anything else to do. How's about I interrogate the prisoner?"

Don't even get me started on the kiss between Juliet and Jack. Whether you like Jack or not, he's never shown a tendency towards being fickle. "Two days ago, I told Kate I love her. But oh dear, she loves Sawyer. Ooooh, Juliet's lookin' mighty fine." What is this, junior high?

I certainly don't blame the actors (most of them anyway). Since they're not told from one episode to the next what's true about their characters and what's not, they can't really be acting from of place of knowledge about what their characters really feel and have really experienced, because next week, they might be told it's something entirely different. A lot of the time, the show is written well enough that they can get by with it. However, when the writing is just mediocre, the lack of believable motivation turns the show into very bad soap opera.

Oh, and gee, if we hadn't already figured out who Ben's man on the freighter is by reading the credits, do you think the last shot in the preview of the back of someone's afro might have tipped it?

Not good; not good at all. I can accept that this may have been a "connector" episode -- one of those where clues are dropped that the audience more or less misses until a big reveal later on (ex: Why doesn't Juliet want Jack to read Ben's file on her? Because she had an affair with a married man? Because she's embarrassed that Ben is obsessed with her? Well, no. She tells him that. Must be something else -- it BETTER be something else.)

Ben showed Locke a very short piece of film of an older man getting out of a car and beating the crap out of some other guy. That's it. On the basis of that, Locke is supposed to believe that it's Charles Widmore, and that Widmore is Ben's sworn enemy because he wants to take over the Island? The idea that Locke would believe anything Ben says, at this point, is ludicrous, especially on the basis of that miniscule piece of film that proved absolutely nothing.

One of Ben's last weapons of mass destruction -- the gas from the Tempest -- MUST be saved!!!! So, the only person he sends is Juliet? No back up plan? If Ben KNOWS EVERYTHING, wouldn't he KNOW that Juliet wouldn't follow through? Gee, maybe the whole Tempest station thing is just another of Ben's ruses. It had better be. . .

Claire comes forward and offers to play Mata Hari with Miles? Gee, that's so in character for Claire. NOT. Perhaps if she'd shown a little grief over Charlie's death; perhaps if she'd suggested it as a way to do something to help the group as Charlie had done, I might (probably not, but I might) have been able to buy it. However, it was like, "Gee, John, I've done all the laundry and I haven't got anything else to do. How's about I interrogate the prisoner?"

Don't even get me started on the kiss between Juliet and Jack. Whether you like Jack or not, he's never shown a tendency towards being fickle. "Two days ago, I told Kate I love her. But oh dear, she loves Sawyer. Ooooh, Juliet's lookin' mighty fine." What is this, junior high?

I certainly don't blame the actors (most of them anyway). Since they're not told from one episode to the next what's true about their characters and what's not, they can't really be acting from of place of knowledge about what their characters really feel and have really experienced, because next week, they might be told it's something entirely different. A lot of the time, the show is written well enough that they can get by with it. However, when the writing is just mediocre, the lack of believable motivation turns the show into very bad soap opera.

Oh, and gee, if we hadn't already figured out who Ben's man on the freighter is by reading the credits, do you think the last shot in the preview of the back of someone's afro might have tipped it?

Great post, ITA
squid

Hey guys

Lost is the best writing on TV...ever
and I have seen a lot over the years BUT......your gonna see better writing and execution in this post than in "the Other woman"

We have just seen an episode of the A-Team meets Barnaby Jones

It was as if 3rd graders broke into the writers room and they dug up some guy from the 80's to direct.

You could tell the actors couldnt believe what they were saying. It was almost like a collection of deleted scenes--- in which every take was the worst it could be. Im convinced this was the parallel universe everyone is talking about--a universe in which everyone is a little less talented than in the REAL universe--and when you add it up--Lost looked like a bad episode of Charmed.

How did this make it past the producers? Yeah right...all of the sudden, out of nowhere, Ben wants to eat Jack? That plot line couldnt have been written by anyone who has ever seen Lost.

Then we have Widmore, who apparently now knows Kung Fu, dropping flying elbows off the top rope while he waits for Vince Mcman to tap him out. What the hell? Now he's gonna put up a 6 Flags by Lockes tent? Thats the secret to Lost----that its a freakin Carnival?

Oh Yeah and big revelation. It appears that 815 went down because Goodwin had to pay. Ho-HUM...I have cancer...it more important that Goodwin is a shish kabob

Please...can Desmond go back in time and course correct this nightmare? Dig up Nikki and Paulo and give them an Emmy while your there too----because their episode was flippin Gone with Wind compared to this one.

People..the Lost Team needs to hear about how bad this was so the new episodes dont stink too...

I'm trying to decide between pretending this episode never happened and theorizing that Ben is actually unstuck in time so when he said "you're mine!!" to Juliet that was actually his 14-year-old self talking.

I should've known that the writers wouldn't let me be in "loved it" thread for two consecutive episodes. This episode clearly showed to me that the writers, eventhough there is a date set for the series finale, have still plenty of time for filler stuff.

- Ben's obsessiveness over Juliet and his actions was inconsistent. If Ben is so obsessed with Juliet, why did he use Juliet to manipulate Jack and later send her to the beach? Just to create a reason to kill Jack??? I don't like how Juliet reduced to a love object with the cheesy "You're mine" storyline. Juliet from the beginning has been introduced like love interest for Jack but the stoyline was so artificial and contrived that as a viewer I couldn't care less. Juliet was interesting as an Other but as another vulnerable woman to be used in never-ending multi-angled teenage love storylines, she sucks. She doesn't give any significant information about the Others and just adds more cheesiness to the show.

- I love ME and his portrayal of Ben but I just can't believe how they turned the whole thing to a "Ben Show". Juliet said "He will win" so it seems that it will be all Ben playing games (he's everywhere now. Past, present, future). What would they do if they didn't find such character?? They created an Arvin Sloan in Lost. Such characters are fine but if overused, they may turn into a tool to stall the storyline. (Doesn't Ben do that with 100% support from all other characters??)

- We did see one more FB of a person who lived with the Others for 3 years. Still not much added to the answers. Only bits about love lives of the Others which we could live without.

- I officially hate Kate. She's just everywhere to walk upon. Kate, intersecting with both Daniel-Charlotte and Jack-Juliet teams in a jungle is just too much my taste. I don't like the fact that by being just there she caused Juliet to go to the Tempest alone and make Jack useless within the story as much as herself.

- The losties was divided without a sound reasoning and now each division has its own share of freighters yet no one is asking anything. Claire after so many episodes raised some questions to Locke (well done Claire, better late than never and next year without Aaron you may be a real strong character) while Hurley and Sawyer went on their honeymoon vacation (Hurley, may I just say "remember your little speech in TBOTE on Charlie!!!"). What are they waiting for? Did they really decide to stay on the Island? What happened to Miles? Still waiting the episode he will be needed again with a grenade in his mouth??? If I was a lostie, I would ask hundreds of questions to them. The beach folk is no different. It would be much more rational and interesting if they just killed all the extra characters in one shot and moved on with optimum number of characters together with their BRAINS set to "intelligent" at least "rational" mode. But then the show would end in one season !!! I know, I know!!!

- When exactly did the writers came up with the idea of "the Tempest" station?? We're not done with the old ones!!!! Seriously I want to feel the continuity and see fingerprints of the past seasons on the current events .

Hey guys

"the Other woman"

We have just seen an episode of the A-Team meets Barnaby Jones



:biggrin: :biggrin:
John Burger... I want to add that to my siggy, that comment made my day!

Ummmm........earth to Locke , why are you letting Ben out again ? He did shoot u right ?

Very dissapointing. Claire comes out of hiding for a minute and says more than she has all season, only to be like "no? don't like that idea? okay." and dissapear again. Hurley and Sawyer are shown in the last five minutes playing horseshoes (yes, I understand that the whole point of them being there were to see Ben not imprisoned-hence the "revolution" Ben talked about). Why doesn't Charlotte say "hey Kate, this is whats going on, we're going to go save you all now" instead of knocking her out or "hey Juliet, this gas is going to kill everyone, let's shut it off" instead of wasting time fighting? I would have at least liked an answer to Lockes question to Ben about who his man on the boat iswhich i'm thinking from everything on here is Michael and the preview sorta confirmed it to me with the whole "someone you never thought you'd see again". , or to see what happened between Juliet and the therapist chick. IMO, Sayid's backstory was the best of the season.

Well, that was a bit of a disappointing episode. Although I guess that's the price you pay for one amazing episode. I wish I could think of some good things to say about it... I liked seeing older flashbacks in a new light.... always enjoyable... Ben's lines are good... too...

At best, it was underwhelming. There were a lot of bad bits. The most offensive was introducing Ben's unrequited love in such a left field and clumsy way, especially since that's now supposed to be the reason that Juliet couldn't leave the island. I just don't think that it fits Ben's character to have such a motive. It made him seem like a kind of creepy love rat, I always saw him as smarter than that. The second most offensive was the lack of revelation in the Widmore tape. Ben's explanation of their jeopardy was frustratingly confusing - he wants to exploit it? How? Does he want to build a theme park? And to tease us with who's on the boat like that is a little cheap. The third was the stuff inside 'The Tempest' station (is that what it's called?), which was just clichéd and very unlike Lost. Other bad stuff; Kate falling for the oldest trick in the book, the rubbish soap-opera flashback stuff and Locke looking like a shmuck (I know he is but I hate seeing it). Also, Juliette kind of confuses me, in one scene she'll look amazingly attractive but in others normal and slightly wrinkly.

Oh man, that's a whole lot of negative. It wasn't the worst episode ever, it was just underwhelming and pretty poorly written. 1/5,

Maybe it was the fact that I had a rum and Coke before watching this episode, but I found it difficult to follow. Ben is still a first-rate creep. A total Svengali (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svengali).

Love Triangles (aka The Other Woman) was yet another disaster for this season, confirming the following revelation I’ve had about LOST: the writers of this show are NOT really that good, after all. It’s just that other shows on TV are so terrible, that they seem great by comparison. They spend way too much time on worthless details, like Farady’s last name being the same as some physicist who… (who cares?) and they continually ignore basic structure, believable character development and pacing of the show. They pretend to move plots forward, but don’t. They give us cop-out after cop-out. They constantly introduce new characters at the expense of the core characters, because it’s much easier to fill more episode time by doing that. They constantly have characters do things that are LOL-stupid. This episode was DREADFUL- just not as bad as Eggtown, but dreadful, nonetheless.

Love Triangles

This aspect of the show is so lame, it is simply beyond belief that they continue to go there. How many triangles were touched upon in this episode? 1) Jack/Kate/Sawyer; 2) Jack/Kate/Juliet; 3) Juliet/Goodwin/Goodwin’s Wife; 4) Juliet/Goodwin/Ben, 5) Jack/Juliet/Ben, etc. What’s next, Jack/Claire/Locke; because Jack isn’t aware that Claire is his half-sister? Then you can have Jack kiss Claire, followed by the big reveal when Jack realizes Claire is his sister- then you can have the little pop-up box tell us (the following week) that you are paying homage to Star Wars: Return of the Jedi when Luke finds out Leah is his sister (even though they kissed in Empire Strikes Back). This love triangle stuff belongs on afternoon soaps, for people without brains, not the intelligent core audience of LOST.

Character Stupidity

Another glaring writing weakness is the cop-out of having characters do such stupid things that anyone with half-a-brain in their situation, would simply never do. Kate turns her back to someone she knows is lying and just had a gun pointed at her (Charlotte said the phone wasn’t working but Kate sees the green light on the phone, so Kate knows it is working)- not only does she turn her back, she bends down on a knee. The only thing missing was the sign, reading, “Charlotte, please knock me out with your gun, so Jack can find me later, and we can touch upon a few of the stupid love triangle plots.” Scenes like this are nothing more than the weakness of the writers’ ability to provide real conflict and action, so they create phony conflict. Why wouldn’t Charlotte simply say, we’re on our way to shut-off the toxic gas at a station, because we know Ben is going to use it against us like he did with the original 40 DHARMA people that he killed (she and Farady also could have said this to Jack and Juliet, in the first place)? Just weak writing, plain and simple.

Overall Structure Problems

How many lame structure problems did we witness in this episode. The annoying attempted fake-out of Juliet being one of the Oceanic 6 (she wasn’t on the plane, so how could she be- not to mention, we saw the therapist enter from “outside” of what looked like a motel- she’d be a pretty awful therapist if she couldn’t afford a real office). Claire offering to play good-cop / bad cop with Locke to get answers out of Miles (translation: writers felt Claire needed screen time- and they would be right, about that- as well as other characters). Hurley and Sawyer playing horseshoes (translation: writers felt they both needed screen time, too- could have been worse; they could have been watching Xanadu together, sharing a big bowl of popcorn). Daddy Widmore beating on some “others” dude (as if he would be the one beating the guy). Unnecessary new character (AGAIN): Goodwin’s wife (Harper)- why was she even introduced? She was introduced so the writers could touch on the ridiculously lame triangles already mentioned. If the intent of the writers introducing Harper had been primarily for the toxic gas plot, it would have been much more affective to have Richard (Latin-looking “other”) be the person popping out of the brush to tell Juliet to head to the toxic gas station. Ben knew Goodwin would get killed and Juliet is his- my God, how terrible was that? Jack told Kate that he “loved” her, about 4 days ago (Island time), but now he’s kissing Juliet and saying Ben “knows where to find me.” Truly pathetic.

Note To Writers: Flashbacks Are a WEAKNESS

Any of you who have ever read a book on how to write a screenplay (like any book by Syd Field, etc.) are aware that writers who use flashbacks are showing their weakness and inability to advance a story in present time, using good sources of conflict. I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not a professional writer, but the use of this crutch has gotten to be absurd. I was willing to look the other way on this for the first couple of seasons (it often would drag an episode to halt), as it was necessary to give background stories on the characters (since it opened with them on the beach after the crash), so that we could find out more about all of them- so that we could care about them. To still be using this device in Season 4 is utterly ridiculous. When you have less than 40 episodes left, you should be able to stick to present time and advance the story.

Directing

What is up with all of the soap opera close-ups this season? Maybe this started before this season and I just didn’t notice, but this is really bad. They keep pulling in so tight that not even the person’s entire face is visible on the screen. I remember cornball directors using that technique back in the 1970s all the time, trying to increase the “drama” on shows like All In The Family. Terrible.

Questions Answered

None, really. Daddy Widmore is the one who has the freighter- was anyone surprised by this?

Conclusion

I am now a firm believer that TPTB cannot save this show and that is just sad. This show was supposed to be different than any other show on TV- this is what attracted me (and I’m sure most of the audience) to it. Instead, we have increasingly lame plots that can be seen on any piece of crap show. There have been too many poor episodes over the past few seasons, including some truly dreadful ones (like this one). Either the outline that was constructed when they created this show was flawed (if they really knew how the show was going to end after several seasons- I get the impression, they did not- just said they did), or they are just stuck and don’t know where to go from here- in other words, LOST.

I give this episode a 1- a notch above Eggtown, which I gave a 0.

Directing

What is up with all of the soap opera close-ups this season? Maybe this started before this season and I just didn’t notice, but this is really bad. They keep pulling in so tight that not even the person’s entire face is visible on the screen. I remember cornball directors using that technique back in the 1970s all the time, trying to increase the “drama” on shows like All In The Family. Terrible.



I agree with most of your points. Now that you mention (the one I quoted above), yeah I felt it too. There were too many too close close-ups.

I would even go so far as to say someone should be fired for this episode. **edited**

It sucked. I agree with all the criticisms, but have one more. Who was the costume designer on this episode? I mean, really, the clothes they had Juliet wear were ridiculous. In the present on-island scenes she wears an outfit fit for a pre-teen, and one size too small. Then in her laboratory she wears the de rigueur lab coat with a plunging neckline below it. Yes, just the look that all female scientists aim for. I mean the bikini was okay--she was freaking swimming. But otherwise, what a way to telegraph sex object, sex object, sex object.

This was the kind of episode that I really wanted to like, and kept waiting to like, and just left me frustrated. As I said to someone else, it felt like the writers came up with an idea and tried to find a way to shoehorn it into the canon. To be fair, some aspects of that idea fit within the existing background, but other elements took me a while to reconcile. I'm still not sure it all feels right, and it's been a long time since I've felt that way after an episode of "Lost".

Lost 4.6: "The Other Woman" (http://entil2001.com/series/lost/season4/lost4-6.html)

Overall, this episode appears to be a mass of contradictions, and while it is possible to reconcile the apparent changes in characterization, it's also possible that this is an unfortunate and damaging writing choice. Considering how strong the season has been thus far, this potential misstep is all the more glaring and all the more concerning.

Okay here's my list of confusion

+ Since when can Jack, Sun or Jin track anyone? They just march out like they know what they're doing, but they don't have the necessary experience

+ Jack doesn't ask how that woman disappears in the jungle, sure he looks confused, but you'd think he'd at least ask Juliet how it happened

+ Why haven't Charlotte and Daniel previously explained that they are trying to help? It would have saved a lot of screwing around, their secrecy seems way unnecessary, and more to do with just making them more mysterious than they really are

+ Why would John put up with any of Ben's crap now, after everything? Certainly he wouldn't / shouldn't let him out! Insanity. The first few episodes of the show kind of made us think that John had a clue what he was doing, but it turns out he has absolutely no idea. It started at the end of season 3, when he knifes Naomi, and the audience was presumably meant to think John had some super good info, and had a plan... he's got nothing though, so that action seems completely insane now when you look back, he barely had any info

+ How could Ben know that Goodwin would die? He couldn't tell that 100% surely

+ What is Ben all about? He's gone from mastermind to insane crybaby brat.

+ Why would there be a big POISONOUS GAS BUILDING on the island? What's the point? Have I missed something, or is that the most stupid thing to make?

+ I also echo the confusion about Claire and Hugo, and the general atmosphere, people should be pretty depressed still I think

I agree with all the comments that have been made. Normally, I really like / love Lost but this episode just really didn't feel like a Lost episode at all. It felt like I was watching "The Young and The Restless." I'm just going to pretend that this episode doesn't exist. One more thing maybe they should have focused on the new station instead.

Exactly.

"By the way, there's another station. It can kill everyone on the island"

"But but but..."

"See ya next week"

Exactly.

"By the way, there's another station. It can kill everyone on the island"

"But but but..."

"See ya next week"

Exactly, I really feel cheated that they didn't explore The Tempest instead. I mean if the character development was going to be like this then might as well focus on the new station.

I'm still annoyed with the episode this venting is making me feel somewhat better :undecide:

well i didnt like it that much but perhaps with another viewing it'll get better...but i doubt it. Kinda disappointed seeing as last weeks epi really rocked!

Exactly.

"By the way, there's another station. It can kill everyone on the island"

"But but but..."

"See ya next week"


lol. POISONOUS GAS STATION: BEWARE. lol

Honestly, I'd be happy if someone got fired for this episode. And yes, I've said this before. The writing stunk in several ways. This episode was un-LOST.

Lost is starting to remind me of a show called Torchwood. It is sci-fi, but all the characters go around sleeping with each other. I hate torchwood, and now lost is becoming like torchwood. There are some good parts to lost left, but I have no interest in the various love triangles and they seem to be taking over the show.

Love Triangles (aka The Other Woman) was yet another disaster for this season, confirming the following revelation I’ve had about LOST: the writers of this show are NOT really that good, after all. It’s just that other shows on TV are so terrible, that they seem great by comparison. They spend way too much time on worthless details, like Farady’s last name being the same as some physicist who… (who cares?) and they continually ignore basic structure, believable character development and pacing of the show. They pretend to move plots forward, but don’t. They give us cop-out after cop-out. They constantly introduce new characters at the expense of the core characters, because it’s much easier to fill more episode time by doing that. They constantly have characters do things that are LOL-stupid. This episode was DREADFUL- just not as bad as Eggtown, but dreadful, nonetheless.

Love Triangles

Character Stupidity

Overall Structure Problems

Note To Writers: Flashbacks Are a WEAKNESS


I am now a firm believer that TPTB cannot save this show and that is just sad. .

Hey

While I ripped this episode to shreads(above) as the worst ever--I have to disagree that the writing is weak for the rest of Lost

Im 44, have seen it all, and am very familiar with depth and themes in writing. There have not been too many shows that can compare to Lost

I urge you to watch Live Together, Man of science, Flashes before your eyes, Not in Portland, and the Looking Glass for starters and pay attention to detail. There is hardly a word spoken that doesnt relate directly to the theme. Its as if every single word was carefully debated as to enrich the story line---in relation to the episode AND past and future episodes

Let me give one example that most people dont even notice. In Looking Glass the Losties were trying to get the Sat phone to work all through the episode. In the Flash Foward Jack keeps trying to contact Kate with his "Modern" phone. He even says to Dr Hamil..."my phone is broken" when asked why Jack didnt know the condition of his patient. This went on all episode and most people didnt even realize it. And when the Sat phone finally got through--so did Jack get through to Kate in the FF.

This depth was not mentioned in even one review I saw, was not on Lostpedia till I added it 7 months later. The reason I highlite this theme is because there were so many other themes that everyone missed this one----thats how deep the writing is--that something so overt can be missed

The point is..this would have been obvious if it were the only theme. Most shows dont even have one thread running through it. This is why many love Lost's writing.

There is a saying--and that is when a show or movie is great you notice something new every time you watch it. So true with many Lost episodes. Its a must to watch them at least twice

But to each his own..I certainly understand how mood and personal preference enter into the equation. I also agree many of the flashbacks could be better and the stupity of the characters is annoying.

Last thing is we have to understand execution and its relation to story. Jack cutting Ben in the operating room---so Kate could escape was not the best writing in the world but the execution of the tension was fantastic. As utterly dumb as "the Other woman" was---Jack Bender could have made it bearable or even compelling if he was directing. What the director tells the actors to do and how the words and shots are presented are taken for granted by viewers but this epidode proves what the wrong vision can deliver

I agree with all the comments that have been made. Normally, I really like / love Lost but this episode just really didn't feel like a Lost episode at all. It felt like I was watching "The Young and The Restless." I'm just going to pretend that this episode doesn't exist. One more thing maybe they should have focused on the new station instead.

My sentiments exactly! I was so disappointed with this episode, especially after following such a great episode (The Constant).

If this is what S4 is gonna be like, they might as well just scrap what they've shot and bring on the Zombie Season!

Stupid episode.

I absolutely hated this episode. :( I'm sorry, but it feels like such a big letdown from the past 5 GREAT episodes this season.

Juliet really does nothing for me, her centric episodes in season 3 are somewhat good, yeah, but this? LMAO. I almost fell asleep. :( They should've kept the scenes on Ben / Locke, then 4x06 wouldn't be this forgettable.


Or they should've killed off Charlotte, either by Kate or Juliet, 'cause she's pissing the hell out of me.:thmbdown:



:thmbdown::thmbdown::thmbdown:

Hey

While I ripped this episode to shreads(above) as the worst ever--I have to disagree that the writing is weak for the rest of Lost

Im 44, have seen it all, and am very familiar with depth and themes in writing. There have not been too many shows that can compare to Lost...

I should have made my intent clearer regarding the writing talent, overall. I have told family and friends for years that LOST is one of the best-written shows, ever. I also own all first 3 seasons on DVD- don’t own any other shows or movies. In fact, I often use the Pilot as a benchmark when critiquing theatrical movies- it is better than at least 9 out of 10 movies released for the big screen. But, after an increasing number of poor episodes over the past season or so (especially, Eggtown and this episode), I have come to realize, that the writing is not as good as I once thought it was. The reasons for this are outlined in my original post for this episode (page 11, #108 of this thread, for those who didn’t read it).

Regarding your comments about the detail of the writing and theme, etc., that was one of my points: I think they often pay too much attention to that kind of depth and detail of themes, overlooking the foundations of writing- basic structure, believable character development and pacing of the show. First get the foundation right and then add the depth, etc. Last week, you witnessed excellent pacing and very good overall writing (except for the time travel nonsense). This week, something this awful- AGAIN. All that said, it is still the best show on TV and that just shows you how bad the rest of TV is at this point. I'm just afraid they are on a path that will lead them to be no better than the rest of the shows on TV. When you have 2 of the worst episodes of LOST air within the last 3, that’s a big warning sign IMO that something isn’t right with the writing. As I mentioned in that original post, LOST was supposed to be different than any other show on TV- this is what attracted me (and I’m sure most of the audience) to it. Instead, we have increasingly lame plots that can be seen on any show. I hope they can still fix it- I really do.

More love polygons? The writers are obviously better torturers than Sayid, Locke and the Others put together. I bet that Penelope, like her namesake, has a bunch of suitors in London, just to complicate things nicely when Desmond finally returns.

My favourite girl Juliet is getting into the same messy love polygon trap that ruined my former favourite girl, Kate. And my favourite bad guy Ben is being totally retconned. Why did he almost let Juliet die in The Tale Of Two Cities and Stanger In A Stange Land if he obsessively wants her? A master manipulator who knows how to get to people's feelings could be emotionally immature. But he would know better than to show a woman her dead lover's body and then say "You're mine!" (that was a classic line, though :biggrin:).

I guess all this was done so that we'd think that a) even though Ben is now living freely with Locke's group and Widmore is a bad guy, Ben's still evil, and we don't know which group to root for, and b) Juliet is a damsel in distress, that only Jack can protect, aw aren't they cute, if you ignore the uncomfortable kiss and the fact that Jack loved Kate in TTLG and in the FF of Eggtown.

That said, it wasn't totally bad. Locke actually asked a direct question from Ben (after Claire gave him the idea) and got an answer. I was impressed.

And my favourite bad guy Ben is being totally retconned. Why did he almost let Juliet die in The Tale Of Two Cities and Stanger In A Stange Land if he obsessively wants her?
You beat me by 2 posts.

At least now we know how LOST is going to finish. All the characters are going to get fed up with each other talking and behaving like TV writers trying to keep the ending secret, and kill each other.

Locke: "There's one more thing I need to know. Your man on the boat, I want you to tell me who he is."
Ben: "Why would you want to know that, John?"
Locke: "I wouldn't, but we're trying to make them (he nods into camera) get worked up about it".

Or maybe

Locke: "There's one more thing I need to know. Your man on the boat, I want you to tell me who he is."
Ben: "Alright but you might want to wait until next week sit down ..."

Heck, I don't know why they don't just have characters say the dots. "Alright but you might want to sit down dot dot dot".

Ben: "Alright dot dot dot, but first dot dot dot don't you want to know how Jack got those tattoos? Dot dot dot and what they mean dot dot dot?"
Locke: "Okay. How did Jack get those tattoos dot dot dot and what do they mean?"
Ben: "I'll tell you dot dot dot if you tell me something first dot dot dot"
Locke: "Dot dot dot Okay dot dot dot. What do you want to know?"
Ben: "Dot dot dot. Why were your clothes wet after you blew up the sub?"
Locke: "Dot dot dot. Dot dot dot. Dot dot dot (looks into camera). Dot dot dot."

Harper: "You look just like her dot dot dot"
Juliet: steadfastly refuses to ask, "Like who?"

You can do this all day. The LOST writers do.

I'd reply to this, but you'll have to sit down first

I think they often pay too much attention to that kind of depth and detail of themes, overlooking the foundations of writing- basic structure, believable character development and pacing of the show. First get the foundation right and then add the depth, etc. Last week, you witnessed excellent pacing and very good overall writing (except for the time travel nonsense). This week, something this awful- AGAIN. All that said, it is still the best show on TV and that just shows you how bad the rest of TV is at this point. I'm just afraid they are on a path that will lead them to be no better than the rest of the shows on TV. When you have 2 of the worst episodes of LOST air within the last 3, that’s a big warning sign IMO that something isn’t right with the writing. As I mentioned in that original post, LOST was supposed to be different than any other show on TV- this is what attracted me (and I’m sure most of the audience) to it. Instead, we have increasingly lame plots that can be seen on any show. I hope they can still fix it- I really do.

QFT

I believe much of it comes down to self-indulgence. Too much of it, to be exact.

What bothers me at this point is that I feel like such a sucker. The writers say, "yeah, nothing much happened - but next week you find out who's on the boat!" And I say, "ok then!" and give them fresh linens.

I'm actually happy that they're going to compress this season - maybe this means we won't be getting any more filler after #8.

\
Heck, I don't know why they don't just have characters say the dots. "Alright but you might want to sit down dot dot dot".

Ben: "Alright dot dot dot, but first dot dot dot don't you want to know how Jack got those tattoos? Dot dot dot and what they mean dot dot dot?"
Locke: "Okay. How did Jack get those tattoos dot dot dot and what do they mean?"
Ben: "I'll tell you dot dot dot if you tell me something first dot dot dot"
Locke: "Dot dot dot Okay dot dot dot. What do you want to know?"
Ben: "Dot dot dot. Why were your clothes wet after you blew up the sub?"
Locke: "Dot dot dot. Dot dot dot. Dot dot dot (looks into camera). Dot dot dot."

Possibly one of my favorite posts here. Ever.

It seems to be a pattern lately that the best episodes are followed by stinkers. After the superb The Economist we had the appalling, half-boiled Eggtown, after the excellent The Brig and The Man Behind The Curtain, we had the execrable Greatest Hits. The Man From Tallahassee preceded the notorious Exposé. The action-packed Enter 77 was followed by the wishy-washy Par Avion. Earlier in S3 we had two parallel double bills of excellence and awfulness; the Not in Portland/Flashes Before Your Eyes double-header was followed by Stranger in a Strange Land and Tricia Tanaka is Dead.

More love polygons? The writers are obviously better torturers than Sayid, Locke and the Others put together. I bet that Penelope, like her namesake, has a bunch of suitors in London, just to complicate things nicely when Desmond finally returns.


My sentiments exactly! Here's the big twist... Penny has actually been cheating on Juliet with Kate. *grabs bucket* I'm getting really tired of this turning into a twittering Harlequin tornado of lovestories.

It was a George Lucas moment - and not in a good way.

As if you have to clarify what you mean by a "George Lucas moment" in the post prequel world! :biggrin:

I would even go so far as to say someone should be fired for this episode. Bye-bye, Kim, you're ruining LOST!! (sorry, it had to be you)

I hate to say it, but I agree. Her episodes have been awful and theres really no way around it. Her only saving grace would be if someone else in the writers room just happened to come up with most of the ideas, and it just happened that she was the official writer for the episode.

I hate to complain about episodes, but next to Eggtown, this episode falls into the worst ever category.

Why write Kate out of character? She's suddenly intent on seeing what's in the bag? She turns her back on Charlotte? She gets clocked in the head? Duh. Unrealistic for this fight club chick.

Why exactly did Juliette believe what Harper have to say? She knew what Harper was, she slept with her husband... ummmm... believe her enough to follow the freighties to the station and murder them?

Ben owns Juliette? Bah.

I adore Locke and he's becoming weaker and weaker, but not in a character developing kind of way. More like every episode he becomes a minion of Ben's through manipulation. Ben friggin shot him!!! Now he lets him run free through the compound because he showed him a vague videotape and gave him a file full of "stuff"? Oh yeah. He told him who the mole on the boat was. Does Locke trust this person implicitly?

I thought the final scene was hilarious with Sawyer and Hurley looking astonished at Ben's freedom... uberfunny.

Oh well. There's always next week.

I nearly threw something at the TV screen when they showed Harper in New Otherton, as flight 815 broke up, above. She wasn't there...they could have added her new character in other ways and made it believable.

This is the first epi that I didn't even want to post about in the epi forum...it was cringe-worthy...

UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

^ I felt like I was watching Desperate Housewives.:frown:




Why write Kate out of character? She's suddenly intent on seeing what's in the bag? She turns her back on Charlotte? She gets clocked in the head? Duh. Unrealistic for this fight club chick.


Exactly. Kate's not stupid like that, as someone mentioned before she was a fugitive & never would she have turned her back at someone who pointed a gun at her! :undecide:

Doctor Octangonapus BLAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! :frown:

This ranks among the most forgettable Lost episode ever. Seriously, can they just let Damon and Carlton write the rest of the episodes? Those are never boring.

I nearly threw something at the TV screen when they showed Harper in New Otherton, as flight 815 broke up, above. She wasn't there...they could have added her new character in other ways and made it believable.

This is the first epi that I didn't even want to post about in the epi forum...it was cringe-worthy...

UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm with you totally Tabby. How many more people can they shoe-horn into that scene? Stretching the bounds of credibility imo. I also agree they could have integrated Harper into the story in many other ways.

'The Kiss' was horrible too; really forced, neither of them wanted to be there. No passion, no electricity, NOTHING! Enough with the geometric love already (I love whoever coined that phrase!!)!

It was the longest hour of Lost I've ever experienced, and I hate saying that.

Exactly. Kate's not stupid like that, as someone mentioned before she was a fugitive & never would she have turned her back at someone who pointed a gun at her! :undecide:

It's worse than that, something I noticed on the first run: She asks to check the bag with BOTH standing in front of her. Somehow, she manages to grab the tossed bag and end up turning her back to Charlotte.

It was really like 'Hey, I don't trust you guys, so I'm going to check your belongings. Hold still while I turn around 180 degrees and inspect these, plskthx!'

As someone once said in one of these threads, kids write more logical than this.


'The Kiss' was horrible too; really forced, neither of them wanted to be there. No passion, no electricity, NOTHING!


It made me think of a parody of Top Gun, actually, with the female stating her true feeligns and the guy going all hubba hubba. 'Course, TPTB are pretty good at turning classic film moments into such cringe-worthy copies (remember ekko), it makes you think more of a Monty Python clone than an actual serious copy.

Late to the party, but I totally agree about the ever-widening geometries of doom, rendering every female character a pinball to ricochet among men.

Only good moment: Tom saying that a few sessions with Harper have everyone weeping about their daddies. On this island, you betcha.

Cardie

I nearly threw something at the TV screen when they showed Harper in New Otherton, as flight 815 broke up, above. She wasn't there...they could have added her new character in other ways and made it believable.

I'm with you totally Tabby. How many more people can they shoe-horn into that scene? Stretching the bounds of credibility imo. I also agree they could have integrated Harper into the story in many other ways.

I need to add that I still have hopes that there will be some plot/mystery-related explanation for Harper-in-that-scene...maybe I am much too loyal a LOST fan...
^ I felt like I was watching Desperate Housewives.:frown:

Oh, UGH...I really liked that show for some of its Season 1...

Possibly the worst episode ever. Why?

1. Julliete flashback told us absolutey nothing except her guy had a wife
2. Jack kisses Juliette and Bens's jealousy...i don't want to watch mexican soup opera
3. I 'm bored watching various groups of Losties being separated so they can run through the jungle just to be reunited again

Only good scene was at the end whit Sawyer & Hugo...cos its so funny to see them playing silly games without a care.

I just have to make fun of a few things and this is the only place I can do it.

- When Juliet comes down stairs in the Tempest she passes this big sign that says "Emergency Shut Off Switch". I guess that would have been too easy.

- Faraday typing with big rubber gloves on and never having to hit backspace.

- Charlotte easily knocks out Kate yet when she has a big pipe or something and a huge wind up she only kind of knocks Juliet over. Maybe she hit her with a cardboard tube.

Charlotte easily knocks out Kate yet when she has a big pipe or something and a huge wind up she only kind of knocks Juliet over. Maybe she hit her with a cardboard tube.

Made of the same stuff as that cardboard wall that Locke threw his tray against in Eggtown. :biggrin:

I think the worst thing about these episodes is the sheer repetition. They use the same plot devices over and over, and they've gotten so tired we can see them a mile away.

For instance, in this episode they had not one but two scenes where one person gets hit from behind by someone they don't trust. Did anyone have any doubt during the Juliet scene in The Tempest that Charlotte would suddenly be coming up behind her?

Other highlights of repetition include the "Walking through the jungle, Jack questions a woman who inexplicably refuses to share harmless information, until Jack stops them and insists they share." Of course, in the Juliet version we get the "Don't you trust me? Please trust me!" Kate actually shares her information, but only because she's describing a scene we've already seen and therefore won't spoil any artificially strained drama the writers have planned for later in the episode.

We also get yet another Ben manipulates Locke conversation. The good news is while we have to slap our heads over Locke's stupidity, now that Ben is free maybe we'll be spared future "Locke questions a prisoner and gets nowhere" scenes. Oh wait, there's still Miles... I guess we should look forward to Locke getting nowhere next week as well.

Which is I think the biggest problem with the recent episodes (The Constant excluded, of course). There's no plot momentum. It's become clear that TPTB just don't have enough story to fill the season, so they come up with filler situations which can be resolved over the course of the hour and end at exactly the same place. Lost is no longer a serial; it's like a sitcom, where despite all the life-changing shenanigans that occur during each episode, we know that everything will revert to where we started by the episode's end.
100%
1. Julliete flashback told us absolutey nothing except her guy had a wife.Wow, no kidding! There are two "Missing Pieces" episodes with Juliet and Michael/Walt. The one with Room 23 is a blockbuster. So why are they wasting time showing us scenes we've pretty much already seen, or could at least infer from a single shot of Juliet in bed with Goodwin in "One of Us"?

I am beyond belief as to how TPTB thought this episode was airable.

I am beyond belief as to how TPTB thought this episode was airable.
It might just have been "pre-strike short-timers" disease? By Jove, I think I've got it! :biggrin:

The Darlton epi was better because Darlton are also producers...

Curiosity got the better of me, and to be honest, it wasn't quite as bad as Eggtown. 3/10.

It seems that the writers have a bit of a problem with the amount of episodes left. I understand that they can't give away too many answers, and I've been completely supportive of that. Certainly during Season 1&2, I saw it as a character-driven show, with a backdrop of fantastic mysteries. Unfortunately, episodes like this and Eggtown completely fail at being good character-driven episodes, as everyone seems to act out-of-character for the purposes of stalling-for-time. We also get recycled character interactions like the Kate/Sawyer/Jack/Juliet Quadrangle of Doom, Ben/Locke and the Conversations of Exasperation, Sawyer/Hurley and the Games of.. Frankly Who Cares?

What is particularly baffling about this is that there are at least two great character stories that we are actually emotionally-invested in that haven't been addressed, namely Claire (and to an extent, Hurley) coming to terms with Charlie's death; and the reunion of Alex & Dannielle. If the writers need some 'filler' episodes, these issues could have been addressed and we would have cared.

So the main points in this episode:

1) Juliet was having an affair

This adds very little to the story. We don't know or care about Harper, so there's no real sympathy for her. Adds a bit of background to Juliet & Goodwins relationship, but frankly, I don't think that's something even the hardcore shippers were crying out for more information on.

2) The Others have a therapist

Ok?

3) Ben loves Juliet

Well the dinner scene was kinda funny, but this has already been telegraphed fairly heavily, so no big surprise here.

4) Kate is stupid, but only when it adds to the dramatic tension

As others have pointed out, it's not very believeable that Kate would fall for that old gun-to-back-of-the-neck trick, turning her back on someone she knows is lying AND armed. All this scene did attempt to fool us into thinking Daniel & Charlotte were up to no good. Pointless & lazy.

5) Claire wants to question Miles

Was this scene purely for the purpose of foreshadowing Ben's "Has the revolution begun yet?" question? Why doesn't Locke mention the grenade? How long has Miles had it in his mouth? Hasn't Locke returned for answers? None of this makes any sense!

6) Ben sent Goodwin to his death

It's a pretty clumsy way of executing someone, but whatever, I'll let it go.

7) Widmore is behind the freighter and he wants to 'exploit' the Island

Yeah, didn't see that coming. I mean, apart from the fact that we were initially told that Penelope Widmore was behind the freighter, that Naomi had Desmond & Penny's picture, and then that it was 'Not Penny's Boat', it was fairly likely that it was Daddy Widmore.

But then we had last week's episode showing Daddy Widmore buying the Black Rock journal. This could not have been more telegraphed. It'd be like having an episode with Ben reading "An Idiots Guide to Nanobot Defence Systems" and then revealing the smoke monster to be nanobots in the following episode!

I don't understand why the Ben/Locke stuff in this episode wasn't in Eggtown, it would have made much more sense to reveal Widmore's involvement before we find out about Desmond & Sayid's freighter adventure. We'd have been wondering if the helicopter was missing because Widmore had killed Des & Sayid.. the Widmore auction bit would have been a great "Aha! Ben wasn't lying!" moment.. just would have made a more dramatic story.

Also why do we care about Widmore 'exploiting the Island', especially as Ben references the healing powers. Why shouldn't Widmore set up the Island as some sort of health spa? We don't really know much about Widmore, but we know Ben is a murdering, scheming, possessive sociopath - so why should we, or Locke, take his side? There was a time when we were all aboard with Locke's view of the Island, but TPTB have spent the last dozen episodes setting up Locke as a clueless buffoon, so even die-hard Locke fans like me are getting tired of the Locke-as-Hero/Locke-as-Numpty merry-go-round.

8) There's a Poison-Gas-Genocide-and-also-Power Station

Bit corny, but the best bit of the episode. Shame the pacing was so bad, cos this was actually potentially a great little story.

9) Jack is in danger, cos Ben loves Juliet

Uh-oh, look out Jack! No, wait, we know he gets to at least grow a beard. Seems like the whole point of the Flashbacks in this episode was to set-up that point, but as the FFwds tell us Jack gets off the Island, it's hard to care

10) Ben is free

So Locke took note of what Claire said, and used the carrot, rather than the stick. But doesn't this leave Miles a bit redundant? Why did we have Locke stick a grenade in his mouth to get answers, when two episodes later that situation is completely glossed over, and Ben gives the answers instead. Oh right, because the grenade thing was cool.

:drowsy:

Yes, why was Locke satisfied with knowing the man behind the boat (Widmore)? He never heard of him, why should he care? What will he do with this information? I mean Ben didn't even say if he was part of Dharma. If they did reveal that he was or wasn't part of Dharma, I would have found this scene to be more satisfying. Just telling us it was Widmore is a waste, who didn't know that already? It was a huge hint in the last episode. Aren't there many other things that would be more important to Locke, like who is Jacob?

Yes, why was Locke satisfied with knowing the man behind the boat (Widmore)? He never heard of him, why should he care? What will he do with this information? I mean Ben didn't even say if he was part of Dharma. If they did reveal that he was or wasn't part of Dharma, I would have found this scene to be more satisfying. Just telling us it was Widmore is a waste, who didn't know that already? It was a huge hint in the last episode. Aren't there many other things that would be more important to Locke, like who is Jacob?

Quite. I did read, in another thread, someone saying that it would be a surprise to people who weren't die-hard fans, but I don't think this is the case. I do read this forum, but I've never listened to a single podcast, I've not played any of the (RPG? ARP?) games, I don't often read spoilers, I've never watched an 'enhanced' episode and I don't have any of the DVDs - so I'm fairly close to the 'casual viewer'.

Yeah that was weird, I was thinking the same thing; this information is useless to Locke isn it?

What is particularly baffling about this is that there are at least two great character stories that we are actually emotionally-invested in that haven't been addressed, namely Claire (and to an extent, Hurley) coming to terms with Charlie's death; and the reunion of Alex & Dannielle. If the writers need some 'filler' episodes, these issues could have been addressed and we would have cared.


What an excellent point! From your mouth to the writers' ears . . .

In these threads, viewers frequently vent their frustration about the lack of mourning over Charlie's death, but I'd forgotten about the long-awaited mother-daughter reunion! It was given some great comedy lines (tying up Ben together), but I thought that was just to build the anticipation for the real stuff between Danielle and Alex. We've been concerned about them since S1. I care so much more about both of these stories you mentioned, than about Juliet's romances on the island!

What is particularly baffling about this is that there are at least two great character stories that we are actually emotionally-invested in that haven't been addressed, namely Claire (and to an extent, Hurley) coming to terms with Charlie's death; and the reunion of Alex & Dannielle. If the writers need some 'filler' episodes, these issues could have been addressed and we would have cared.


EXACTLY! The sad thing is that TPTB could easily had attached the Claire-Charlie plot in Eggtown.
I mean, what about Claire and Kate talking about Charlie instead of one of those horrible interactions between Kate and Sawyer in that episode?
Or even in TOW, is it really that important for the plot Juliet and Goodwin drinking wine? TPTB could had replaced that scene with some Claire and Charlie-plot, uhn? But yeah, I think I´m supposed to believe that she is a strong girl and she just moved on... :drowsy:
However, I´m still hopeful about Alex and Dannielle... (a girl can dream, right? :undecide: )

Yeah that was weird, I was thinking the same thing; this information is useless to Locke isn it?

That's what I meant in my earlier post (number 121), where I supposed Ben asking Locke why he wanted to know who Ben's man on the boat was?

It's another in a long list of cheap mysteries in LOST. By "cheap" I mean like the way Game Show hosts try to create tension by teasing the audience ("Is that your final answer? Really? Well... come back after the break..."). Or Reality TV Shows manipulate the audience with, "And the final couple to be eliminated this week are... are..., (crowd shot)..., (anxious contestant shot),... (crowd shot) ..., ...".

IMO, such tricks are a sign that the producer's/writer's central idea just isn't substantial enough to carry the story through the number of instalments they've planned. Hence, they stretched it too thin over most of season 3, and Going-Nowhere episodes like Eggtown and The Other Woman.

Imagine a James Bond film that tried to keep the Villain's plan a secret until the end. What's the point?

Imagine a James Bond film that tried to keep the Villain's plan a secret until the end. What's the point?

Yeah and then imagine that the film was about 140 hours and told in small installments within 6 years irregularly.

I didn't think we'd see an episode as bad as "eggtown" so soon.

I agree with all the people who said this was a filler episode. But there are episodes not so exciting on the mythology/overall plot front but great for the way they make us see the characters, and address their issues and backstories, and help us to understand struggles and feelings, relate to the people on that island and their experiences.
I've loved several "filler" episodes in the past, but I'm here to say that I didn't like this one, the second disaster of the season after Eggtown.
Like in ep. 4x04, many things felt forced or random or hyped for no reason, even the "big stuff" like the info Ben shared with Locke, and the whole "gassing the island" plot.
Once again, the characters' actions were confusing and influenced by the writers' effort to put romance above everything else. But did I learn about Juliet that I didn't know before? Nothing. Her relationship with Goodwin, her frustration over not finding a cure for the pregnant women... already seen and taken into account last season. Juliet's episode was about Ben's feelings for her? Can you say lame?
It totally took me by surprise that Ben's obsession for Juliet had such a strong romantic nature, in my eyes it cheapened his evil mastermind/smart villain figure and some of the scenes I've seen in the past. The part in which he tricked her to have dinner with him was just awful.
And what about giving Jack the whole 'I'm ready to take any risk to be with you' emotional moment with Juliet, and develop that relationship when he was telling Kate he loved her just a few days ago, and he still does in the future? Can't they keep Juliet out of the mess the triangle already is, for her own sake? She has great potential - stop sacrificing female characters, and what for, to give Jack two "choices" like Kate has? *rolleyes*
And as a Sawyer fan, I'm sick and tired of him being used for scenes like the final one. Haven't they run out of games he and Hurley can play? How many times do they want to recycle the same comic relief stuff? Because I've had enough already after the ping-pong tournament in S3.

Yeah that was weird, I was thinking the same thing; this information is useless to Locke isn it?


As TOW is utterly useless to us fans, yes. This gets the Worst Episode Ever in my books.. Its like drinking in an empty glass-- only who would do that?! :rolleyes:

What is particularly baffling about this is that there are at least two great character stories that we are actually emotionally-invested in that haven't been addressed, namely Claire (and to an extent, Hurley) coming to terms with Charlie's death; and the reunion of Alex & Dannielle. If the writers need some 'filler' episodes, these issues could have been addressed and we would have cared.

I agree with this SO strongly. The writers will make petty excuses that they don't have time for mourning scenes, but I think if they made the effort for Claire (or Desmond) to have some sad regretful reflections on Charlie's death they would be applauded for it. Because (as you say) it was something we cared about. After the response to Charlie's death they ought to know that.

I really really wish that they hadn't had Danielle and Alex reunited in the S3 finale. They have completely blown it. The reunion itself was weak and could have been so much more emotional. It deserved an episode all to itself (the long awaited Danielle centric maybe). Instead they crammed it into an episode where Charlie dying and Jacks breakdown were the main things demanding our emotional investment. Now 6 episodes into S4 they have completely neglected to develop this story. I'm thinking maybe the writers just don't have clue how to handle two strong female characters who aren't primarily being used as love interests in their story.

I agree that this episode and Eggtown show that they still have plenty of time for filler, but the filler they are giving us is repeatitive love triangle tripe that isn't actually romantic and inane Sawyer/Hurley comic subplots that aren't even funny.

This thread gets a 5 star rating from me.... :thumbsup:

Yep... this episode was truly appalling... I've seen better episodes of Neighbours... How the hell this episode was allowed on the air baffles me. :rolleyes:

This Epi makes Stranger look like a Shakespearian masterpiece. :)

The trouble with this show IMO is the fact you get about 4/5 decent episodes a season and the rest simply aren't worth watching. :frown:

PS, When is Charlie gonna get his Funeral / Memorial (If he's indeed dead)... I cant Stand Charlie ***mod edit but this is just not right, loose ends need to be tied up. :rolleyes:

PS, When is Charlie gonna get his Funeral / Memorial (If he's indeed dead)... I cant Stand Charlie ***mod edit but this is just not right, loose ends need to be tied up. :rolleyes:

Typical fanboy answer:

"We have to assume that it was done off-camera, we don't need to see everything"

I hate that explanation, and you can bet it's what the explanation would be. However - No, we don't have to assume it was done off-camera, we don't have to assume anything, we have no information at all, they haven't even mentioned a memorial of any kind, and there clearly would/should have been one.

I think that compared to the constant this episode was a letdown. I don't know that I would go so far as to say I hated it- how can you hate an episode of Lost. However, I don't think it really did much to further the story. Ok, the gas is disabled and Goodwin was a married man. Well, he has been dead for a while and Juliet has already seemed to switch sides. We do know that Ben is in "love" with Juliet, but that seems to be the only thing that we really came away with from this episode. The other episodes gave up so much more information. It is too bad this episode was not produced post strike- they might have felt compelled to release more information due to the shortened season. Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention finding out Widmore is behind the freighter. Of course he was. Not much of a surprise- the surprise will be to find out how he even knows about it. Locke letting Ben roam around seems like a big mistake too- did he learn nothing from Ben shooting him?

Jack says he's in love with Kate.

Sawyer loves Kate.

Kate goes back and forth between Jack and Sawyer.

Juliet loved Goodwin but he died. Goodwin was married to the vincent Harper.

Ben loves Juliet and made sure Goodwin (who apparently had some kind of attraction toward Anna-Lucia) died because he told her 'you are mine' but what he is actually in love with is Annie and Juliet reminds him of her.

Juliet now loves Jack but can't do anything about it for fear that Ben will "Goodwin" Jack.

Jack kisses Juliet although I have no idea why...because he supposedly loves Kate.

So we have a triangle with the losties and a triangle with the others and the two intersect with one of the losties having a sort of triangle with two of the others (or is that an other having a triangle with another other and a lostie?) and just for fun you can even throw in a couple of dead people.

Its times like that that I'm glad I'm not shipper. How the heck could anyone get invested in any of the above?

I suppose some uber geek shipper somewhere will eventually come up with a spreadsheet or a diagram of it all.

:dizzy: :blink: :insane: :coco:

I love this! This sums it up perfectly. My God, how much more convoluted can this be? This thread is hilarious. I just thought the epi was bad. My husband and I couldn't pay attention. He and I have said to each other for 4 seasons now, "I wish Lost was on" almost every night it isn't...but Thursday night it was kinda like, "gee...I wish Lost was on tonight". I understand Lost can't always be edge of your seat mesmerizing, but this epsode was just, well, boring, and in my opinion sub par. Where did they get this stuff from? The big reveal was kind of a let down to me. Most people have long suspected that Widmore was behind the efforts to find the island. I just hate the way it was finally revealed. It's like someone has posted previously..they hinted, blaringly, that Charlie was going to die until it was like, well die already for God's sake. When he finally did die it was so predictable I was just sad for the character. I was really hoping then, in true Lost character, they would pull the predicatable rug out from under us and he'd actually live. Anyway, this thread isn't about that, so sorry for going on...
To paraphrase "You'll never believe who is on the boat next week"...um yeah, I think we will.

I'm thinking maybe the writers just don't have clue how to handle two strong female characters who aren't primarily being used as love interests in their story.

Easy! Just have John do Danielle, and have Alex do Sayid. Then they don't have to worry about that anymore, it'll be business as usual. Maybe Alex and Danielle can even stay home and cook meals and do house work also. They'd be much more interesting characters that way. Urgh

I didn't love it because I didn't really learn anything. After seeing the constant it just wasn't a good episode.:biggrin:

I wouldn't say that The Other Woman was an absolutely awful episode (nothing can beat Stranger in a Strange Land), however compared to the last few episodes it was a let down. The most interesting part for me was Harper telling Juliet that "[she looks] just like her". Forshadowing for Annie perhaps? Or maybe I am just hoping that something from this episode will be useful later on.

This episode was crap!

I like Juliet, Love Ben, but I didn't like this episode all that much.

Kate turning her back on someone? Jack's bravado and Juliet's weepy sad-eyed looks? That seriously forced situation with the kiss? The timer going down to one second? Honestly, this was just too much!
I've heard and read a lot about this episode coming on the heels of "The Constant," but that's not the problem. It was just too contrived. These writers, bless them, tried, but it was like they didn't really know the characters well enough. Kate would NOT turn her back on DF and CL when she knows darn well they are lying to her. (She saw the phone with the green power button, remember. Plus, only Sayid can find electronics with sapped power supplies, so they must have been lying!) Jack isn't going to pass up an opportunity to check out a new station.
Anyway, I watched it twice, waiting until Tuesday for the second viewing, and I just wasn't inspired. But I still love LOST, and the performances were, without question, as good as always.

Possibly the worst episode ever. Why?

2. Jack kisses Juliette and Bens's jealousy...i don't want to watch mexican soup opera
What have you got against equatorial broth-based dramas? :mad:

I think it’s interesting how Hurley and Sawyer are just as bored as we are with the show. You know how I know? Because they're playing horse shoes...for fun. That’s not fun. You know how I know? Because it’s horse shoes. This is most definitely a silent nod from the writers, acknowledging the horribly slow pace this season has been so far. And really, what’s the point of keeping Sawyer around after he killed Cooper? He serves no particular purpose.

Well, re watching this episode is a bit of a pain.

Definitely not enjoyable.

Just makes me hate Juliet, Ben, and now Charlotte.

In my opinion this episode was a complete disaster. All this episode did was uncover a scandal involving Juliet and a very much dead Goodwin. It honestly just gave me another reason (added to my list of 100) not to like Juliet. I think the writers could have thought of another creative way to introduce "The Tempest" station.
100%
I also don't understand why Dan and Charlotte didn't just tell Jack their plans to make the gas inert. I am almost positive that Jack would have been more than happy to help them make their "lovely" island more safe for everyone.

Boring episode that somehow tells a parallel past of Juliet on the island. It does not fit what we have seen in "the other woman". On island plot is pretty pointless as well, even more so now after "Something nice back home" has aired.

Hateful, unlikeable episode that will leave a bad taste in your mouth for months to come.