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"The Other Woman" is the seventy-fifth episode of the serial drama television series Lost, and the sixth episode of the show's fourth season. It aired on March 6, 2008 on the American Broadcasting Company in the United States and on CTV in Canada. The episode was written by co-executive producer Drew Goddard and executive story editor Christina M. Kim, and was directed by Eric Laneuville. "The Other Woman" was watched by fifteen million Americans and received mixed reviews, with critics from the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, and BuddyTV deeming it the worst episode of the season.

The narrative begins on December 24, 2004, ninety-four days after the crash of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815. Recent arrivals Daniel Faraday (played by Jeremy Davies) and Charlotte Lewis (Rebecca Mader) leave the survivors' camp without notice for the Dharma Initiative electrical station called the Tempest. In flashbacks that depict events on the island, Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell) discovers that Ben Linus (Michael Emerson) is in love with her.

Plot

Juliet's life on the island is depicted in flashbacks. A week after she arrives in mid-September 2001, she begins to receive therapy from Harper Stanhope (Andrea Roth). Their first discussion is cut short when Ben presents her with a new home in the Barracks. Juliet later has an affair with Harper's husband, Goodwin (Brett Cullen). When Harper finds out, she warns Juliet that Ben will deliver consequences for Goodwin because he has a crush on Juliet. In October 2004, Ben invites Juliet over for what he initially describes as a dinner party, but intends to be a private date. Goodwin is eventually murdered by one of the tail section survivors after his infiltration of their group is discovered. Ben leads Juliet to Goodwin's impaled corpse, where she accuses him of wanting Goodwin to die, prompting Ben to unveil his true feelings of love for her.

Daniel and Charlotte sneak off during the night to find the Tempest, but are followed by Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) and Juliet. Juliet is approached by Harper, who tells Juliet that Daniel and Charlotte are planning to kill everyone on the island by deploying a lethal gas and that Ben is ordering Juliet to kill Daniel and Charlotte. On the morning of December 25, 2004, Kate comes across Daniel and Charlotte in the jungle on her way back from the Barracks and Charlotte knocks her unconscious. After Jack and Juliet find her, Juliet leaves for the Tempest alone as Jack remains behind to care for Kate. Inside the station, Juliet finds Daniel in a hazmat suit typing frantically at a computer terminal and asks him to stop. After a standoff, Daniel and Charlotte convince Juliet that they are not trying to kill anyone; they are trying to save the islanders by neutralizing the poisonous gas in case Ben decides to use it again. Jack and Kate arrive at the Tempest and Charlotte takes Kate into the station while Jack and Juliet remain outside. Juliet explains to Jack that the freighter crew came to the island to wage war against Ben and she expects Ben to win. She fears for Jack because Ben thinks she belongs to him, but Jack shows no worry and kisses her.

In the Barracks, a detained Ben bargains with John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) for his freedom. Ben reveals that the offshore freighter called the Kahana is owned by Charles Widmore (Alan Dale)—the father of Desmond Hume's (Henry Ian Cusick) girlfriend, Penny (Sonya Walger)—and that Widmore intends to exploit the island. After handing Locke a file containing information concerning Widmore, Ben agrees to tell Locke who his spy on the freighter is. Locke frees Ben from captivity; however, Ben continues to reside in the Barracks.

Production

When asked about what she learned about her character through "The Other Woman", Elizabeth Mitchell said that Juliet's "mistakes are morally questionable, if not morally wrong. But you do see that behind this is a human being who is struggling to live and have a life that makes sense to her." Mitchell did not think that Juliet was too surprised that Ben has romantic feelings for her, but "it was horrifying under the circumstances" because she had just found out that Goodwin had died. Michael Emerson thought that Ben was childish when he shouted "you're mine!" to Juliet in that scene and Mitchell compared it to "a twelve-year-old boy throwing a temper tantrum over … his first love". Mitchell said that "it was emotionally draining shooting this episode" because she was intimidated by Emerson and Matthew Fox's acting skills. Before the episode was broadcast, Elizabeth Mitchell said "keep in mind, it is a little bit of a slowdown, but there's some good stuff in there with Ben. He will completely creep you out." Rebecca Mader said that she was "so excited" for the episode to air because she thinks that it is "even better" than the previous episode, which is widely regarded as one of the best episodes of the series. At one point in the episode, Mader's character Charlotte knocks Kate unconscious with the barrel of her gun, which Mader thought was hilarious and described as "the pinnacle of career."

Andrea Roth makes her first appearance as Harper Stanhope in "The Other Woman". During casting in early October, Harper was described as "a tough, no-nonsense and beautiful overly controlling and obsessive." The character was also noted as a recurring role; however, Harper did not appear later in the season. The writers later stated that she will eventually reappear. A jungle scene with Mitchell, Fox and Roth was filmed until 4:00 a.m. on October 27, 2007 with industrial sprinklers and Mitchell referred to this as her "most intense experience on the show". In this scene, Harper's appearance and disappearance were sudden and fans speculated that she was actually an apparition or manifestation of the island's black smoke monster, but this was refuted by Lost's writers.

The Tempest, which was named after William Shakespeare's 1610 play of the same name, is apparently alluded to on an unseen layer of the Dharma Swan station's blast door map of the second season. The writers wanted to explain some of the island's history in the fourth season and decided that "The Other Woman" would reveal where the gas that Ben used to kill the Dharma Initiative came from and that Dharma had stations set up for protection against hostile forces and groups on the island, such as the Others. They also enjoyed having Goodwin on the show and wanted to bring him back. "The Other Woman" had commenced filming by October 11, 2007 and was completed on October 30.

"The Other Woman" continues Jack and Juliet's relationship and features the pair's second kiss. Juliet was conceived by the writers as the next possible love interest for Jack after the death of the second season character Ana Lucia Cortez (Michelle Rodriguez). Fans had generally hated Ana Lucia so the writers did not pursue the first planned romantic story arc. Mitchell guesses that her character was created because "they needed a bridge between Ben and everyone else, and they needed someone to come in and be a little salt in the oyster of Jack and Kate." She has felt that Juliet did genuinely fall in love with Jack, not knowing whether "her attraction to Jack or her willingness to do anything to get off the island" is more important to her. Juliet forms something of a "love rectangle" with James "Sawyer" Ford (Josh Holloway), Jack and Kate. Mitchell "feel like a very grown-up relationship. They seem to really respect and like each other", whereas Sawyer and Kate are like "rambunctious teenagers". The couple was nicknamed "Jacket" and has gained an Internet fandom.

Reception

"The Other Woman" was watched live or recorded and watched within six hours of broadcast by 13.008 million viewers in the United States, ranking seventh for the week in viewers and achieving a 5.4/13 in the key adults aged eighteen to forty-nine demographic. The episode was watched by a total of 14.933 million American viewers, including those who watched within seven days of broadcast; this number went toward the season's average. 1.439 million Canadians watched it, making Lost the eighth highest rated show of the week. In the United Kingdome, 1.1 million people viewed the episode. The episode brought in 691,000 viewers in Australia and was in the top ten key adults ages twenty-five to fifty-four and eighteen to forty-nine demographics for the night, placing it as the twenty-second most watched show of the night.

A common claim by critics of Entertainment Weekly, IGN, SyFy Portal, AOL's TV Squad and BuddyTV was that the episode was more heavily focused on Ben, instead of Juliet, which was not the writers' intention. Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly praised Emerson's acting and stated that "in the end, this was really a story about Ben and the lengths he will go to protect himself and the Island from his enemies." SyFy Portal's Dan Compora said that "The more I hate Ben, the more I realize that Michael Emerson is just a very fine actor doing his job." Oscar Dahl of BuddyTV called Emerson an acting "god" and said that "The Other Woman" was "ostensibly a Juliet episode, Ben's presence made a far bigger impression on me".

Patrick Day of the Los Angeles Times called "The Other Woman" "the weakest episode of the new season so far", but pointed out that "even this so-so episode of Lost stood far above anything else being shown on network TV this season". He noted that the "most heartbreaking scene" was Claire Littleton's (Emilie de Ravin) appearance because it reminded him of how little the character had done to advance the season's plot. The Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan said that "The Other Woman" "seemed somewhat pallid and predictable … several elements … felt like they'd been recycled from previous seasons and story arcs." Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that "I really liked this episode, but I liked it less than the … it seems that someone took their foot off the gas just a fraction and the reduction in speed was notable. The Star-Ledger's Alan Sepinwall considered the episode to be the second weakest episode of the fourth season after "Eggtown", criticizing the flashbacks as being redundant and the Tempest storyline due to a lack of explanation for the station's original purpose.

Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly described "The Other Woman" as "the first truly subpar episode of the season" with a "story was kinda all over the place" that "felt forced". Jensen was not fond of Juliet's love life or Andrea Roth's guest performance because Jensen felt that "she came off as too arch and unreal." In contrast, TV Guide's Bruce Fretts praised Roth's "suitably creepy" appearance. Ben Rawson-Jones of Digital Spy said that "the episode came together nicely in the end, with an expected twist and a snog, although for a great part it bordered on tedium. Juliet is a character who simply isn't interesting enough to fully sustain one's attention over a flashback. She's been so peripheral and irrelevant over this season, and it felt like a token gesture to foreground her at last. There was a nice pay off though, with a long awaited smooch between her and Jack." BuddyTV's John Kubicek dubbed "The Other Woman" "the worst episode of Lost season four so far" because it "followed the soap opera that is the romantic entanglements of the major players, which is not the reason most people love Lost." Daniel of TMZ graded the episode as a "C+"; however, he wrote that "the Ben/Locke scenes were great and Juliet in a bikini did not disappoint."

Verne Gay of Newsday gave "The Other Woman" a much more positive review, referring to the episode as "yet another brilliant outing by TV's best drama keeps getting better". Time's James Poniewozik wrote "having gotten rid of the deadweight flashbacks, manages to give us one that actually fills us in on a story we want to know more about: what happened to Juliet with the Others. In retrospect, the flashback didn't really reveal much stunning about Juliet and Ben … but what … we didn't know … painted a few more coats of creepy on old Ben." Nikki Stafford of Wizard "enjoyed" the "interesting" episode, although "not nearly as much" as the previous episode. She rejoiced at the return of her "favorite Other" Tom (M.C. Gainey) and wrote that "Locke used to be one of favorite characters, but now he's a tool". E!'s Kristin Dos Santos thought that the fight scene between Juliet and Charlotte in the Tempest was "awesome" and suggested that Alan Dale receive a "lifetime achievement award for his parade of marvelously malicious patriarchs".

Chris Carabott of IGN gave the episode a score of eight out of ten, describing it as "a good episode of Lost that has all the action, suspense and excitement that this show consistently delivers". Carabott wrote that "seeing how twisted 'relationship' really is was fascinating". SyFy Portal's Dan Compora wrote that "this week's episode contributed to what is shaping up to be a pretty solid fourth season. … Fine acting carried the episode despite a few potholes in the plot." Compora also enjoyed the title and the "nice cat fight" in the Tempest between Juliet and Charlotte. Erin Martell of TV Squad was "not impressed with Jack and Juliet's chemistry" and found their kiss "unconvincing". Martell commended Michael Emerson's acting, Ben's one-liners and his "too funny for words" casual greeting to Hurley Reyes (Jorge Garcia) and Sawyer at the end of the episode after he is released from captivity. The Huffington Post's Jay Glatfelter thought that "this was another great episode could have lived up to last week's episode, but there was still a lot of solid character development."

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