On ‘Lost,’ the Others know it all

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Driving dad to drink
Knowing the best ways to treat Sawyer and Kate is information that could be obtained by observation posts, or any other secret monitoring of how the castaways have reacted to their stint on the Island. But clearly the Island isn't as cut off from the rest of the world as once thought, because the Others also have ways of getting information from the outside world.

That was made apparent during Jack's dialogue with Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell), a new face among The Others who enjoys psychoanalyzing new arrivals when she's not burning muffins or haranguing book club members who don't show Stephen King enough love. Jack gets the flashback this week, so viewers get to see his borderline deranged attempts to figure out the name of the man his wife Sarah was leaving him for.

The scenes looked like something out of a Lifetime movie where the crazy ex-husband won't leave the protagonist alone and bad things wind up happening. Perhaps Jack watched a lot of those films back in the States, because his suspicions turned towards his father, and the theory that Dad and the wife were having secret trysts in hotels.

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Of course, when he followed his father on one of his excursions, he wound up barging in on an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. But he still wouldn't let go, attacking dear old Dad, getting himself a trip to jail and driving his father back to drink.

File it under Dr. Jack
That's not something Juliet could be expected to know ... except that she probably does. While Jack sat in his holding tank and sulked, she busted out a thick dossier of everything relating to Dr. Jack Shephard — including his father's autopsy. And, she indicates, she also has information about his wife.

How does someone on such a remote place get that kind of data? Have broadband Internet connections really traveled that far?

However it gets there, the information is convincing enough that Jack flashes right back to the scene where his wife bails him out of jail and says goodbye. When Jack makes one final attempt to find out the name of the new man in Sarah's life, she turns to him tearfully and says "It doesn't matter who he is, it matters who you're not." To Jack, that's not the point — he needs to find out who he lost to.

That's information Juliet presumably has. But when she asks what he'd like to know about his ex, all he can finally muster is the maudlin "Is she happy?"

Earlier in their conversation/interrogation, Juliet tells Jack that on the Island, "It doesn't matter who you were, it matters who you are." Who the Others are, and what they're doing there, appears to be a central point in the third season's storyline.

Based on the premiere, they're disturbingly normal-looking but mysteriously driven. What drives them, and why they're on The Island, is yet another "Lost" mystery.

Craig Berman is a writer in Washington, D.C.

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