Lost: Not In Portland

The producers claim that this season will answer quite a bit of questions about the others and the island. This episode, which aired February 7, 2007, begins to do exactly that while leaving a lot of the more important questions still a mystery.

Lost returned with an action packed episode, something that was really required in this 3rd season. The pace of this episode actually lives up to previous episodes and everything from the name, to the flashbacks, and to most of the scenes in this episode were quite revealing. "Not in Portland" is the title and the reason for this is explained in the flashbacks.

It seems that Juliet was hired by someone working with good ole Ethan off the coast of Portland. Now Portland is a common name, ranging from places in the UK and US,well as islands in the Australia. Australia being the place where Flight 815 took off when it crashed on the island.

A little more is explained about the mysterious Alex and it seems she refers to Ben as her dad. This could either be a makeshift relationship to keep her on that island or a revelation that Ben is in fact Alex's dad and was once with Rousseau.

The flashbacks of Juliet were interesting and it was great to see her recruitment into the Others. It also, to an extent, explains how she is so knowledgeable about medicine when she isn't a doctor or nurse. The revelation that she wanted off the island and Ben was holding her back will be interesting and play out well through this season.

Finally! Kate and Sawyer escape. We should get a lot more beach episodes with the whole gang. This aspect of Lost has been seriously lacking in the past episodes this season. Though based on the preview for next week, it does seem like there is going to be a hiccup in the plan with Kate wanting to turn back.

The brainwashing of Carl will hopefully be answered in the episodes to come and it will be interesting to see if this is in anyway similar to what happened to Walt in the last season.

All in all a very good start to the 16 episodes left of Season 3. Producers did claim that this episode would do a lot of answering and this was definitely a start.