I love the fact that LOST is a complex show with characters having ambiguous motives. But The Other Woman is a study in one of the risks — a story collapsing under its own ambiguity.
It was during my last rewatch of TOW that I finally sat down and figured out just what the hell was going on. Even as a devoted LOST fan this episode always struck me as bizarre, uninspired, and needlessly complex. To those of you who understood it on first watch, congratulations, you're smarter than I am!
Let's step through the main points:
Faraday and Charlotte ("the science team") disappear into the jungle, Jack and Juliet pursue them. Juliet's therapist, Harper, issues a warning that the science team is headed to the Tempest to activate deadly gas.
Problem #1: whispers and heavy rain precede Harper's appearance out of nowhere, then she speaks in a very strange (almost robotic) manner. This convinced many LOST fans that she was an apparition or the Smoke Monster. Though they didn't write the episode, Damon and Carlton emphatically stated in a podcast that she was in fact Harper.
Problem #2: Harper claims that Ben sent her to "warn" Juliet. Assuming that's even true it raises the question of how Ben told her anything if he was held captive.
Quick recap: we now have a person we can't trust (Harper) claiming she was sent by another person we can't trust (Ben) to tell Juliet to kill a team that we can't trust (the science team), a team dispatched by a man we can't trust (Charles Widmore).
Our fears about the science team's motives are purposely stoked when Faraday says to Charlotte, "What if I can't do it?" At this point I guess we're supposed to believe Faraday just might do something unimaginably evil, even though we just watched him be a hero in the previous episode (The Constant).
Long story short, Juliet arrives at the Tempest and confronts the science team. As it turns out, Faraday was trying to render the gas inert. Cue the confusion. So a supposedly evil man, Charles Widmore, sent a science team to render gas inert and save everyone? That doesn't sound right... does it?
It helps to know the full series arc, but now it's much easier for me to fill in the gaps. The Tempest was always a Plan B for Ben, knowing that if there was ever an existential threat to the island he could trigger the gas (presumably the same gas used in the DHARMA purge).
Charles Widmore knew this, so in his ongoing chess game with Ben his first goal was to take the Tempest piece off the board. Ben must have anticipated this move (could've been long before his captivity) and established a protocol with Harper — kill anyone who ever tries to render the Tempest inert.
It's not a bad storyline when all the gaps are filled in. The problem is the execution of this episode is terrible and there were too many unknowns in the equation (and not enough constants — you like that, Faraday fans?).
The flashbacks were more or less soap opera fare, an exploration of Juliet's affair with Harper's husband, good 'ole Goodwin. It wouldn't be so bad if TOW hadn't established the notion that Ben had an extracurricular interest in Juliet — an interest that was neither discussed nor explored ever again.
I have to tell you, as much as I've come to love Elizabeth Mitchell it almost felt like she was sleepwalking through some of her scenes in TOW. I say "some" because other scenes were quite good, notably her reaction to Goodwin's corpse near the end of the episode.
But the scene where she shared wine with Goodwin? Bizarre. The scene where she kisses Jack? Even more bizarre, almost no expression on either of their faces (that might have been the point, I'm not sure).
I have absolutely no evidence to support this, but I almost got the sense that Mitchell knew this script was a bit of a dud and thus wasn't clear on how certain pieces should be played. I don't blame her if that's the case.
To be perfectly honest Michael Emerson is the only one that really seemed to be on his game. He was a bit creepier than usual this time around, with subtle expressions indicating he knew exactly what was going on between Juliet and Goodwin. Is there anything more creepy than this bit of dialogue to Juliet (which Emerson delivered perfectly):
BEN: "Why?" You're asking me "why?" After everything I did to get you here, after everything I've done to keep you here, how can you possibly not understand... that you're MINE!
Sheesh, Ben. Don't put that on your match.com profile.
It's a shame Brett Cullen (Goodwin) had to be featured so prominently in this episode, as I really don't think he's that great of an actor. He's not terrible but he certainly pales in comparison to so many others we've seen.
Speaking of terrible, if Andrea Roth (Harper) was in fact Harper and not a ghost or MiB or some other paranormal force, then yes, she is indeed terrible. You know it's bad when someone's acting is so wooden that you assume she's not human.
The design of the Tempest wasn't all that bad when you consider it was a remodeled gun battery (exterior) and dairy factory (interior). Certainly nowhere near as mysterious or atmospheric as other DHARMA stations but it served its purpose.
The fight scene between Juliet and Charlotte was about average. It's a little silly to think all of that action could've taken place without affecting Faraday in any way, but I digress. The worst part of the fight is that you can clearly see the face of Juliet's body double on at least one occasion.
Other than that I suppose the directing was fine in this dialogue-heavy episode. A couple of shots seemed like questionable decisions, such as watching Ben awkwardly walk his way back up a hill near Goodwin, but nothing too drastic.
Any time I've kicked off a rewatch I've eagerly anticipated watching roughly 93% of the episodes. This is one of the few that's not on the list. However, I will be fair and say that after I filled in the Ben/Widmore strategy myself it became far more tolerable.
I suppose there's significance in the fact that the Tempest was deactivated, even though it seemed like a contrived threat with a maximum scope of one episode.
Oh, there's plenty of atmosphere in The Other Woman — just not the kind Goddard and Kim were hoping for. Even after connecting the dots and having a better understanding of the episode, it's still poorly executed and bizarre all the way through.
So many things just seemed forced — up to and including the acting, dialogue, and conflict. Just a random example: at one point Juliet says to Jack, "Trust me, Jack, you don't want to see my file." What? Why? We've seen enough Juliet flashbacks to know that she's not a Kate or a Sawyer or even a Sayid. So what's this dark past she's alluding to? There isn't one. It's just forced, bizarre dialogue and one of many examples.
