One of US -- Comments

I wanted to mention something I forgot to add in my post – this week’s episode was written by Carlton and Drew Goddard. Drew was one of the writers on Buffy the Vampire Slayer in its last two seasons, and he ROCKS. Every time I see his name pop up at the beginning of the episode, I know it’s going to be an exciting show, and that there will be a twist coming somewhere in it. Yet knowing that, the twist at the end still caught me off-guard.

I wanted to post some of the comments I got (my original review post can be found immediately below this one). Someone emailed me off-list to say the comments weren’t working for them, so if you find that, feel free to email your comments to me directly and I’ll post them for you here. I apologize for stupid Blogger; I have no control over it. As I said to him, one thing I do when posting is I write it out in Word and then cut and paste it over. There are times when I hit publish and it erases my entire post, so if I didn’t put it somewhere else first, there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth in my world. :) Well… more so than usual.

One correction-- next week's episode is Desmond-centric, not Charlie-centric.

Thanks for letting me know! I saw the ABC “next week on” AFTER I sent out my post, and thought, “Wow… that doesn’t look like a Charlie episode!” I get my info from Lost-media.com, so it looks like someone was wrong over there. :)

i love juliet and don't care that she's a con artist. she'll fit right in at the Lostie camp.

No kidding! Is there anyone there who ISN'T a con artist in some way??

I knew I couldn't trust her, cause Sayid didn't. That's my boy. (There's a seriously disturbing image of Naveen in Grindhouse - my poor heart.)

I was wondering that throughout the episode. I kept thinking, “Hmm… How could Sayid have been SO wrong about Juliet?” Turns out… he isn’t. His instinct and Sawyer’s were the correct ones. Looks like they made a mistake choosing Jack as Leader Boy at this point.

Where the heck are Bernard and Rose? Did Paulo and Nikki eat them?

I was starting to wonder the same thing. Some fans were positing theories over the hiatus that Nikki and Paulo were actually body-snatchers who had changed; others thought in the blast Rose and Bernard somehow became younger (and in Rose’s case, white) and turned into Nikki and Paulo. Weirdness… But it’s definitely a huge inconsistency to just dump them. I hope we get a good explanation.

Why doesn't anyone in the Lostie camp think it strange that Claire is just now supposedly going through withdrawl weeks after her last fix? Especially, I don't know, Jack would be sort of knowledge about things like that what with him being a doctor and all.

Remember in the last season when Charlie, trying to apologize to Claire, brings her the container of vaccine that he found in the hatch? I was assuming they all figured that was holding her over, and now it’s no longer working.

I think Juliet was telling the truth about why they abducted Claire. The implant was either a backup or a secondary plot on master manipulator Ben.

I agree.

Also, I think this episode was titled "One of Us" not "One of Them" which was a season 2 episode.

Oops, my bad!! You’re right.

I think you mean that it could be a benign tumour - Ben assumes it's malignant, i.e. cancer.

D’oh… again, you’re right. As I said last week, my brain shuts off somewhere after 9 p.m., so I do not take responsibility for all of the blatant errors in my post (and man, I actually reread it this time!!) It reminds me of the time Alec Baldwin was host of SNL years and years ago, and they had this HILARIOUS sketch about how he was an actor playing a doctor on a soap opera, and how he’d done some major training, and Baldwin, in his usual deadpan way, is in all of these scenes saying, “Sorry, but you have kanker of the anal canal” (canal was pronounced to rhyme with anal). Then he adds, “We don’t know if it’s bee-nig, or mah-leeg-nont.” So yeah, that would be me as the doctor as well…

you referred in your highlights to the line when ben says "he never has his walkie on"...my favourite part is his next line, when he says "we're coming to the house" then mutters "don't shoot us". congrats on the pregnancy! when are you due?

Me too; I love Ben when we see his funnier side, and we haven’t seen much of it lately. I’m due in mid-September, so there will probably be a burp where I don’t post much here for a bit, but I’ll try to stay updated at least with Lost! :)

This is from the comment that didn’t get posted:

How on earth could you post such a lengthy post unless you saw the episode before it aired on EST?

Ah, good question. See, the island sends me these messages, and… no, just kidding. See, I DO have a link to the island and as the episodes are being filmed, Mikhail is send them to me via… his, um… transmissions… no? OK. I live in Canada.

See, in Canada we have 3 major broadcasters: CTV, Global, and City. The two main ones for US programming are the first two. CTV and Global go head-to-head with all guns blazing trying to pick up new shows. CTV tends to get ABC shows, Global goes for NBC, but occasionally they’ll cross over and get different broadcasters. The crappy thing for Canadians is, often they’re so fierce in their buying (as I read in a recent article) that they’ll buy properties with NO INTENTION OF AIRING THEM just so the other guy doesn’t get them. No, I’m not kidding. For example, CTV bought Veronica Mars just so Global couldn’t get it. Then they discovered there was actually a market for the show, so they began airing it in the summer AFTER it had already finished the season over on UPN. And they ran it out of order, changed the times, skipped weeks (they did the same with Alias and it was impossible to watch that show on CTV). Global bought The Shield, but they air it about six months after it airs on F/X in the U.S. So what’s a Canadian to do? Get satellite: I watch VM on UPN, and while I don’t get F/X, I download the episodes every week (and then buy the box sets, so before you wag a finger at me about downloading, trust me: the networks certainly get their money out of ME).

So what does all of this have to do with Lost? Well, they don’t have to follow ABC’s schedule. If ABC wants to do the stupid-ass thing of booking Lost at 10 so it doesn’t compete with American Idol at 9, good for them. But CTV just runs Lost at 8, BEFORE American Idol (imagine that!) and has managed to keep their ratings up in Canada. So I see Lost a full two hours before Americans do, and I can watch it twice and post my blog before you guys are finished watching.

So yeah, living in the great white north has its advantages. Actually, it has several advantages, but I won’t turn this into a political post. ;)

Dragging Kate into the jungle is hard work. The writers are dreaming if they think a woman alone could do this. But… The reason Juliet is probably doing all of this is for her own selfish reasons: To get off the island to see her sister and nephew. That alone would give anyone the strength to drag good ol’ Kate into the jungle, despite the hardship of it, and trick our friends into trusting her.

I agree about this; as I said in my post last week, I can barely carry a toddler more than a couple of blocks. But the other thing is, have you noticed the superstrength the Others seem to possess? It’s like they’re superhumans of some kind (which might explain the fact they can’t get cancer). Ethan fought with a superstrength that was incredible when he was pummeling Jack. Goodwin had an equal strength fighting Ana Lucia. Ben fought Locke in the hatch armory and was pretty vicious. And when Kate came at Juliet with a pool cue and caught her off guard, Juliet flipped her with some awesome moves. Something is up with these people, and perhaps that could explain how she could drag Kate. I also agree that everything about her is entirely motivated by wanting to see her family.

For "Carrie," in one scene the original cover shows a woman's face half in shadow, similar to Juliet before and after she got on the island. I'm kind of grasping at straws, but there was some trickery in the book for the kids setting up the "trick" to get Carrie crowned prom queen; Carrie was conceived out of wedlock (as was Aaron, Claire's baby); they tied the bucket of pig's blood atop the rafters, similarly to how Juliet was tying up her tarp; Carrie has to bow to her mother's fanatical wishes to prevent punishment in a closet.... Otherwise, I'm "lost" as to the tie in. Awesome
devastation Carrie wreaks on her town, however, getting national AP attention, and everyone knowing her name as she walks down the streets of town, wrecking everything in her path. Will Juliet leave a similar wake?

Good points… I love that they keep coming back to this book. I ended up focusing on Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities” for the first chapter of my book, but I think I’ll have to do a full chapter on Carrie and Stephen King, since there have been tons of King references this season alone.

Finally, just a little sidenote: Did anyone notice at the very end of the episode, the camera zoomed in on the knot that Juliet was making for her tent? I paused the scene and realized if you look closely, she's forming an 8. OOOOH... (I saw a few of the numbers, actually, but didn't list them; there were 8s and a couple of 24s in the episode).

Keep the comments coming!