"One Of Us"

DECEMBER 3, 2010

FOCUS: JULIET
EPISODE: 3.16
AIRED: APRIL 11, 2007

In a rare case of an episode being about Claire when it’s not her flashback, “One Of Us” finds Jack and the rest returning to camp (thus retiring Kate’s “I OWE him that!” clip in the ‘previously’ once and for all, I think) just as Claire gets sick, and only Juliet can help. Hilariously, poor Emilie de Ravin spends most of the episode asleep, so she still doesn’t really DO anything. No, this is pretty much 100% Juliet’s show, with lots of her background filled in and a few clues about her current plans.

It’s also the rare case of a flashback being a direct “sequel” to the one before it. At the end of her last episode (“Not In Portland”), she was being swayed into joining up with Richard, and this one starts with her about to check in for her first day. Some folks, Jack and Kate for example, their flashbacks jump around all over the place and you really have to pay attention and do some brain work to figure out their overall place in the timeline, so it’s nice to have strong continuity for once.

And it’s really flashback heavy; it seems like the present day stuff barely makes up half the episode. As a result, some stuff seems glossed over – I would have liked more time spent with folks discussing what to do with Juliet (especially the unseen chain of events that led to them having Hurley, of all people, keep an eye on her), and Claire’s illness seems to have little effect on Charlie. Usually he gets all worked up and annoying whenever Claire is in any danger, but he’s basically just sort of puzzled by it for the most part.

For fans of Juliet and Sawyer’s relationship, there’s another great “from the beginning” moment here, when him and Sayid follow her out to where the medicine has been stashed. After confronting her about her and her people being murderers (speaking of which, when is the episode where someone points out that the survivors have killed more Others than the other way around? Or did I miss that line in one I already watched?), she pulls rank and asks Sayid about his days as a torturer (well known), but then turns to Sawyer and reveals that she knows about the guy he killed in Sydney. Now, I’m not sure how the hell they know that (if it happened the day before he got on the plane, how would they have gathered that intelligence? Who would have had known?), but it’s such an awesome, defiant moment for Juliet. I hate to use gamer speak, but there’s nothing better that applies: she totally pwns him.

Since I don’t have much else to say about this episode, I guess I’ll talk about this, which is something that never really occurred to me until I was rewatching this season in particular with all the answers (well, all the ones we got) in mind: why the hell didn’t Ben and the other Others just welcome the survivors and tell them who they were right from the start? Why terrorize them, when they ultimately really didn’t want to cause them any harm? Like, “Hey, you guys OK? Sorry you crashed on our home. So listen, we’ve got a fully functional town just over the hill here, so we can treat the injured. By the way, do you have any pregnant women in your number? We’re trying to solve a medical mystery and we could use one. Want some chicken?” It’s really one of those things that makes you wonder how much of the show they really did have planned out. I really suspect more than ever that when they said they knew how the show would end, they meant they specifically knew it would end with Jack laying down in the jungle, dying, and closing his eyes. Not like, that Locke would be a smoke monster or that Ben and Hurley would team up to watch the island together.

Anyway, tomorrow’s a Desmond episode. Not one of his best, but any Desmond episode is better than average.

Where are we?