One Step Behind

"One Of Us" is a pretty good third-season episode of Lost, where Juliet attempts to be accepted by the castaways. The ending has a reveal--that her trek with Jack (her protector), Kate and Sayid across the island was a set-up. She and Ben actually planned the whole thing to insinuate her into their camp. Their big trick is to activate Claire's implant, making her sick, so Juliet can then save the day. (They implanted something in her? Why? They didn't expect her to escape from the medical hatch, did they?)

Even so, I'm not sure if, back then, we believed Juliet was one of the bad guys. From the start she seemed simultaneously hard as nails and vulnerable. (Her flashbacks help garner sympathy for her--we see how she was recruited to the island, and then manipulated, and even forced, to stay. We also hear Ben mention Jacob, and say how he'll cure her sister. Wow.) I might add that Elizabeth Mitchell does a great job of playing mixed emotions, and also differentiating her pre- and post-island persona.

What I was reminded of when watching all this was the one thing that frustrated me about the first three seasons. The castaways were the newbies on the island. Ben and the Others knew so much, and no matter what Jack et al tried, they were also a few steps behind. They tried so hard and had so few victories, at least until the third-season finale (if you want to call that a victory). And Ben seemed to always know so much. Little did we know that he was actually a pathetic character, lying to cover up his weaknesses, and that, in the long run, he was being manipulated as much as anyone else.