Episode Report Card Daniel: B | 0 USERS: N/A YOU GRADE IT Not In Portland
By Daniel | Season 3 | Episode 7 | Aired on February 6, 2007
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close. Talk about a terrible surgical assistant; despite the fact that Ben's undergoing tricky surgery (made even more complicated by the fact Jack's pulling a whole diva routine and refusing to operate until his friends are safe), Juliet's daydreaming about injecting her sister (who hasâ¦I want to say cancer?) in some sort of beach clinic/holistic healing place on Miami Beach, where Ethan Rom is some kind of intern/member/creepy guy wandering around for ambience. Kate and Sawyer kick some ass on Danny and the other Others so they can hightail it out of there, and you know what? IT'S ABOUT TIME. Six episodes of watching the A-Team being beaten down was enough for me. Then Juliet, back to reality in the operating room, grows a pair and calls Jack's bluff: she doesn't think he'll let Ben die.See, Kate doesn't know that Jack doesn't know that Juliet knows that Jack doesn't know that they're not on the original island anymore, or that Monica and Chandler are doing it. So duh, Jack amends the demand to telling Kate and Sawyer where they can get a frickin' BOAT, but Danny and his posse have by this time caught up with K&S on the beach, and they fire off many bullets, but nobody gets hit -- until Alex Oakley the slingshot wizard shows up in time to spitwad the Others into submission and squirrel Kate and Sawyer into a little underground hidey-hole. Jack spills the beans to Zeke about Juliet asking him to kill Ben (which she denies), and Zeke's unsure what to make of this. And then Ben starts to wake up. He asks for a little alone time with Juliet, after which she asks Jack to finish the surgery, and she'll help his friends escape. Alex is already trying to do that, but she wants them to help her rescue her boyfriend first, like some kind of Lost Quest video game where you have to complete a side mission before you can get the key or the boat or whatever.
Back in Miami, Dr. Juliet (Burke, we learn) is using her sister as a guinea pig for experimental treatment, for which she's pilfering the injections from the lab where she works. Too bad her ex-husband, who happens to run the lab (when he's not busy boning sexy potential research assistants, or being a bureaucratic dick on many other shows), finds out, and he blackmails her into giving him a piece of whatever benefits her genius reaps. So when a dashing rep from a privately funded lab just outside of Portland tries to recruit her because she can get male mice pregnant, she (rather inappropriately) says the only way her ex-husband will let her go is if he gets hit by a bus. Turns out her sisterly injections are to see if she can get pregnant, which she does. She tells her ex-husband, whoâ¦gets hit by a bus. I understand the driver will be written out of the show soon, but the official word is it's because he's pursuing other projects.
Kate and Sawyer and Alex rescue Carl fromâ¦well, from A Clockwork Orange, actually. Contrary to Ben's orders, Danny tries to stop them, so he's shot down by Juliet. More gunfire is more better! Less Kate blubbering into a walkie-talkie as he makes her promise not to come back for him would also be better, but what are you gonna do? Oh, and Ben is Alex's father.
So what did Ben say to Juliet so she'd let Jack (who, despite a slight bobble, successfully removes the tumour) fix him? Interspersed with flashbacks to the Portland recruiter (and his colleague, ETHAN ROM) knowing way too much about Juliet's situation and admitting that this Portland lab is not in Portland, we find out Juliet's a prisoner on the island, has been for the last three years and change. And Ben has said he'll let her go. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
After one-quarter of a year on hiatus, Lost kicks off with what looks like the opening to an old Duran Duran video. There's a woman sitting on a beach, with the light rapidly draining out of the western sky. What's that you're holding in your hands as you sit on the sand, possibly saving a prayer 'til the morning after? It's some sort of leather case. It looks like the kind of case that heroin addicts -- at least, the kind who have their shit together enough to keep their needles nice and tidily organized -- keep their works in. So maybe these flashbacks will show us how Juliet's former life crossed paths with Charlie? A solemn bass note plunked on an unseen piano turns out to be Juliet's Theme. Dum. Dum. It's strangely compelling, but given that I have a seven-month-old daughter, any music that isn't "The Wheels on the Bus" seems fresh and exotic to me. Juliet stares at the leather case, and out at the gentle waves breaking on the shore. She looks perplexed. Hard to believe, I know. She gets up, gathers her jacket, and leaves.
She's now in a dim hallway. What light there is comes from a row of flickering fluorescent lights on the ceiling. It looks like a hospital in a slasher movie. You know: it's the sequel, which begins right after the last one ended, and the hero from the previous movie is recovering in one of these low-security, low-light places, like the hospital can't afford to change half the burnt-out light bulbs, and still no one believes her story despite the huge body count, and then the murderer comes in and kills her before the opening credits? This is that hospital. Adding to the creepiness, as Juliet sashays down the corridor, is Ethan Rom coming out one of the hallway doors, ready with a shit-eating smile on his considerably heavier cheeks. Juliet, cold and icy even in her flashbacks, barely acknowledges him as she continues on her way.
The room she enters has a record player, the LP spinning away with the needle long since finished playing any music. Juliet shuts it off and sits by a sleeping woman, head wrapped up in -- well, I don't know what they're called, but when a television program shows you one, you're supposed to know this woman has been through chemo.
Juliet blinks back tears and unzips the leather case, which contains syringes and vials of a clear yellowish fluid. The sound of Juliet blinking back tears wakes the sleeping woman, just in time for Juliet to gently chide her for falling asleep with candles burning. The woman flicks on a light, and Juliet says they don't have to keep doing this.