Season
3, Episodes 15 and 16- “Left Behind” and “One of Us”
Summary:
Kate
is on the run in Iowa and meets Cassidy, recruiting her to help reunite with
her mother. Diane is dismissive. The Others (with Locke) vacate the Barracks
and knock Kate out with gas. She wakes up handcuffed to Juliet, who was also
left behind. On their trek back, the monster appears and scans Juliet before
chasing them and being halted by the sonic fence. They return to the Barracks
to get Jack and Sayid, and the four of them head back to the beach. Hurley
tells Sawyer the camp is voting whether or not to banish him, so he begins a
process of making amends. It ends up being a lie in order to make Sawyer a
better leader.
Flashbacks
reveal Juliet’s arrival on the island. She is unable to save pregnant women
from dying, but is told that Rachel’s cancer has returned and she can be healed
if Juliet fixes the pregnancy issue. Juliet develops a relationship with
Goodwin, and learns that Ben has developed a spinal tumor. After Flight 815
crashes, Ben takes her to Mikhail to dig up info on the crash survivors and to
prove that Rachel is alive and well. Jack’s group returns to camp and Juliet is
immediately ostracized. Claire falls ill and Juliet says she is having a latent
reaction to a medication designed to keep her alive during pregnancy. She is
going through withdrawals and Juliet says if she can get the hidden supply by
the caves, she can save Claire. Jack uses the serum to make her healthy again.
A final flashback reveals it was all a ruse by Ben to have Juliet infiltrate
their camp and solve a crisis in order to gain their trust.
Review:
When “Left Behind” first aired, I was on
spring break vacation, and my family came back to our hotel room right in the
middle of it, so I watched the 2nd half, and then the first half a
few days later when I got home. Very weird to watch a show like that.
Anyway…this is an episode about outcasts, trying to be accepted by their group.
Hurley convinces Sawyer he’s being shunned in order to make him a better
person. This seems to support the eventual conclusion that Hurley is the
island’s protector, as this is sort of a Jacob-ish move. I don’t think this
moment was really Sawyer’s come-to-the-light event; he seemed to have softened
up a little earlier than this, but it does help to put a spotlight on the
transformation, for anyone who didn’t pick up on the more subtle shifts
earlier. This B-plot with Sawyer also helps the Cassidy flashback story. Their
dual missions of aiding other people end up complementing each other nicely
without having them appear in-scene together.
This is among the better Kate episodes
(low bar, I know), partially because the flashback doesn’t retread old ideas,
but also because she isn’t forced into making dumb decisions solely because
it’s her episode, and there’s no forced romantic plot. There’s also a Smokey
attack, which always helps. I debate whether Kate was too naïve to think Juliet
really was left behind, because after all, she did help them escape Hydra
Island. If Juliet told Jack about the Others’ plan at this point, Kate and
Sayid should have been in the loop. Keeping it contained to just Jack is only
because they need to milk the drama for another few episodes, but it makes
little logical sense.
“One of Us” is a better showcase for
Elizabeth Mitchell than “Not in Portland” and we finally get to see the Others
in action before their war with the 815ers. The curtain of mystique on the
Others is slowly being lowered as we really dig into their interest in saving
pregnant women, which in turn makes them seem a little less dangerous. But
there’s still a handful of episodes left in the season, so we can’t have that.
Enter: Juliet and Ben’s plan. It’s convoluted, and requires the suspension of
disbelief that Claire had an implant placed in her when she was kidnapped, to
be used if certain conditions are met; conditions which Ben could not have
predicted however many days ago.
One of the scenes I really like is
Juliet chiding Sawyer and Sayid for being the “moral police”, mistrusting her
despite all the horrible things they’ve done in the past. Because she’s totally
right. Why should she receive further scrutiny when her crimes don’t even
compare to torturing people or conning families or committing murder? And after
making her even more sympathetic by portraying her as a hostage to Ben’s shaky
goals, we move the needle back to the side of deception with the final
flashback. We now know she isn’t at all onboard with this plan, so it drops the
episode a little bit.
Connecting the Dots:
The monster scanned Juliet. While we
never directly see him use that info on her later, there is a chance that
Harper in “The Other Woman” was Smokey. More on that later.
Juliet explicitly states here that she thinks
the pregnancy issue happens at conception, and wants to test it by taking woman
off the island. The body treats the baby as a foreign invader during the second
trimester.
Ben says Jacob will heal Rachel’s cancer
if Juliet stays on the island, and we see Rachel healthy on the video feed
later. Did the cancer really come back or was it forged by Ben in order to
force her to stay? Jacob could certainly have traveled to the mainland to cure
her, and Ben easily could have forged the documents, so neither is more or less
likely than the other.
Claire’s illness is the result of an
implant that was activated, for the purpose of Juliet gaining the group’s
trust. I actually like the fake story better: that it is a latent reaction to a
serum she used while Claire was pregnant. It just seems more natural that way.
How was Ben able to activate this?
Juliet references in incident in Basra
that Sayid was involved in. No other mentions of this occur in the show. Would
be nice flashback material. Apparently Basra was a location of some revolts
against Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War, so maybe that could have paralleled
Sayid revolting against some leadership of the island.
Ranking:
1.
Tricia Tanaka is
Dead (9/10)
2.
The Cost of
Living (8.5/10)
3.
Flashes Before
Your Eyes (8.5/10)
4.
Exposé (8.5/10)
5.
Enter 77 (8/10)
6.
One of Us (8/10)
(A complex Juliet episode that fills in some gaps in the Others’ story and
provides Elizabeth Mitchell with her best material to date.)
7.
The Man from
Tallahassee (8/10)
8.
Par Avion
(7.5/10)
9.
Not in Portland
(7/10)
10. Left Behind (7/10) (Middling Kate story is improved by
a monster appearance and a subtle development for Sawyer.)
11. Further Instructions (7/10)
12. The Glass Ballerina (7/10)
13. Every Man for Himself (6.5/10)
14. A Tale of Two Cities (6.5/10)
15. Stranger in a Strange Land (4.5/10)
16. I Do (4/10)
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