The Other Woman

Season four keeps on going strong. The "Juliet episodes" of season three were really among the best of that year, and this one was strong too.

Romantic threads were everywhere, and all of them interesting. There was Juliet's past relationship with Goodwin. There was Ben's interest in Juliet, now played in full. And of course, at the end, the kiss between Juliet and Jack, for those fans who aren't about the Jack-Kate relationship.

Trust was a huge narrative throughline in this episode. Juliet had to deal with the issue of whether to trust Charlotte and Farraday, or the information she'd received from Ben. Meanwhile, in the second story, Ben finally confided information to Locke that appears to have instantaneously won his trust.

This episode was also big in terms of story structure. It finally confirmed the identity of Ben's nemesis -- Penny's father! -- and in doing so, shed more light on the role that man has played in some of Desmond's flashbacks. This episode also established that "flashbacks" aren't completely gone from the Lost structure. Sure, we had the episode with multiple flashbacks of "the Rescuers," but then, they were all new characters. And last week's Desmond episode could be argued as taking place entirely in the present. This week confirmed that we still have stories in the pasts of the existing characters that remain to be told.

My only complaint tonight would be that the possessive tone in the Ben-Juliet relationship didn't quite feel entirely earned to me. I couldn't help but feel that it hadn't been set up as well as it could have been -- couldn't Ben have done something to Jack during all that time Jack was a captive of the Others, had he really wanted to keep Juliet to himself? But then again, we did see Ben using surveillance cameras to spy on Juliet and Jack, so I wouldn't argue this development was completely unearned.

Even that minor quibble is overcome by the big piece of the emotional puzzle this filled in. When we first met Juliet in season three, she was trying to enlist Jack's help to kill Ben. And nothing we'd seen so far quite explained how she'd reached that point. Sure, Ben was keeping her on the Island against her will, but was that enough for her to want him dead? It didn't seem like it. And now we see that indeed it wasn't -- it was Ben sending Goodwin to his death that was the trigger for her change of heart.

So, great stuff! And no reason not to expect more next week!