After last week’s stellar episode, this week’s episode was kinda ho-hum. It didn’t really explore things we didn’t already know, but did Juliet a bit more depth, and we also know (better) that despite alleging that he is ‘Good’, Ben is really ‘bad’ and acts like a petulant child.

UPDATE:  I never got back to finishing this recap, so I’ll stuff the unfinished rough draft in the appended section, and just write a few comments that I gleaned from the episode:

This episode really just gave us a refresher on the characters were dealing with.  Helpful for new viewers, but re-tred ground for the old veterans.  We know now that:

• Juliet had an affair with Goodwin (we knew they had a relationship before, but didn’t know that Goodwin was married)
• Ben has an unhealthy attachment with Juliet, though we still don’t know why she kicked him out of her book club.
• Ben is the master manipulator, and Locke is a zen master manipulee.  Srsly, is there anyone that CAN’T take advantage of Colonel Locke?
• The Freightees are still in a grey area, neither black or white.  That Daniel rendered the gas that Goodwin was making inert is a good thing, Ben’s just creepy enough to have let them fail, then point and say, see … they tried to kill us!
• Old man Winthorpe is embroiled in this whole mess, how much he’s pulled strings to get to the island is unknown, and perhaps Penny and her old man are working at odds with each other.

The rest of the recap is below the fold.
But on with the shoooow.

Lets handle flashback separate from island time, as I get tired of flipping back and forth.

Flashback: (and they did a bit of trickery in for the first few minutes were disconcerted about whether we’re flashing back or forward. We get a directorial wink/nod as Juliet explains that she, “doesn’t like being treated like a celebrity,” and as half the audience takes the head fake and runs with it to the ‘Juliet is one of the Oceanic Six!!!’ exit, the other half sits and is rewarded with good old Benjamin Linus bringing his girlfriend flowers. Well except she doesn’t get that she’s a girlfriend, but she really feels the, “I don’t like you,” vibe coming from her assigned therapist, Harper Stanhome.

Good to see ol’ Tom, the murderous, yet friendly, bastard. Creepy Benjamin also pulls out all the stops and gives Jules a first rate bungalow in the center of New Otherton.

Later Jules meets Goodwin for the first time when he’s skulking around her medical stores looking for a band-aid. Jules is a bit distraught over losing her first patient, and after getting a good consult from Goodwin to use Harper as a confidant, Jules lets out that she think Harper is a no-good skank. Goodwin agrees, since it turns out he’s married to her. Jules and Goodwin share a secret, Goodwin won’t tell his wife that Jules thinks she’s a skank, and Jules won’t let anyone know that Goodwin’s been playing with his chemistry set.

Jules is explaining the difficulties of having babies on the island to Ben. Jules is a bit unconfortable being so close to a humanoid reptile, but gets cheery when Goodwin pops in with an extra lunch. Which makes Ben and his 5th grade social skillz mind a bit leery of competition.

In a therapy session, Harper gets a bit forward and tells Jules that she knows Jules is practicing the art of island baby making with Goodwin. Harper wants the relationship to end, because she doesn’t want Goodwin to get hurt. She isn’t talking about a broken heart, she’s talking about Ben, ripping out his heart and feasting on Goodwin’s still beating heart.

Island time, whatever that might be. Daniel and C.S. have slipped the beach party, and went off to go neck in the woods, or whatever those two do. Jack, Sun & Jin, and Jules head out in the rainy jungle to find them and bring them back and force mai-tai’s down their throats. But as the separate Jules hears the whispers of the island and is confronted with her nemesis, Harper. Where she came from? I dunno, ask Walt.

Harper has instructions for Jules from Ben. How she got instructions we aren’t sure. But Ben’s sure that Daniel and C.S. are headed to the Tempest, and they’ll kill everyone if they figure out how to deploy the gas. Huh? Wah? Gas? too many tacos? burritos, Maui onions? Oh, the gas that Goodwin was messing around with. Harper suggests that people point guns and pull triggers. And pursuing that route, the writers fill the rest of the episode with a whole lotta gun pointing, but thankfully a bit short on the whole pulling trigger part.

Jules tells Jack that their heading to the Tempest, while very low on details, Jules tells Jack that Tempest is an electrical station that powers the island, and to please help her. Jack, never one to freak out and yell at people, at least not pretty blondes (brunettes are okay to yell at, so long as their fugitives.), silently agrees.

Faraday and Lewis are perusing a map, at a small stream while collecting water. (Aside: they are always collecting water, and drinking water, perhaps the whole island thing is a dihydrogen monoxide hallucination!) Their map, upon closer inspection has a lot of ‘unknown’ locations, that if I were using it to find where this Tempest station was, I’d be like totally LOST! Dan is having a bit of a confidence problem, wondering if he can actually do something. They run into Kate, or Kate runs into them. Kate tells them that Locke’s troop now as Miles, (um… didn’t they already know that). Lewis tells a spectacularly bad lie about what the two are doing in the middle of the jungle. Kate who knows a bit about lying, gets suspicious, and searches their bag. Kate, also being spectacularly bad at watching her back, ends up getting walloped over the head by Lewis, leaving Daniel to gape helplessly at his companion.

Back to Jack and Jules, and Jack is being a bit passive aggressive in his lack of knowledge is questioning Jules about the woman, Harper. Not too concerned that she appeared and disappeared at will (that kind of thing happens way to often, I blame the H2O. She explains she was her therapist, but they didn’t get along to well, and that Jack’s probably has things in his past he doesn’t want to talk about. Jack, being PA at the moment, because he LURVES Jules, snarks back, “Yeah, I read em all in my file.” Jules, because she can, snarks back, “Believe me Jack, you don’t want to read my file.”

In Locke’s backyard in New Otherton, Claire gets all up in Locke’s grill about the hostage Miles, and thinks she’d be a better person to drag information about the boat, and his mission, than the obviously hostile Locke. And we all wonder how egg-grenades taste, but we don’t get to see Miles this episode, so the green-grenade and ham episode will have to wait. Locke decides to pay Ben a visit. Ben’s finally reading the book Locke gave him last week, but puts it down to feast on Locke’s prepared rabbit, after querying if there were any numbers on the rabbit *Heh!* Which is just the start of Ben’s manipulation of Locke, and Ben starts to commiserate on the trials of leadership, then jabs Locke between the ribs with a mocking, “when they find out you still don’t have a plan.” Ben always has a plan, and Locke finally gets to jab Ben back with a donation to his 3.2 million fund raising effort. Ben parries with a plea to be able to help Locke as they both have a shared interest in keeping the boat people off the island. Locke doesn’t trust Ben, perhaps because Ben shot him in the missing kidney, or his word. So Ben promises to ‘show’ Locke.