I am missing something or you are missing something.
Ethan was one of those who recruited Juliet. Ethan is one of the Others. The Others are (apparently) not Dharma, but something else. Hence, Juliet was recruited, (apparently,) not by Dharma, but by someone else.
Mikhail is one of the Others. He is not and never was a member of the Dharma Initiative. He stated this at the end of the episode. So there is nothing strange about his close relationship with Ms Klugh.
How do we know Juliet was recruited by Dharma? Was Ethan ex-Dharma? Honestly, we don’t know that anyone currently on the island was ever a Dharma and Mikhail’s story (if any of it can be believed) seems to imply that he was recruited by the Others.
:smack: Must hit refresh on occasion.
Hm, there seem to be more than one who are not clear about it. (I mean to include the possibility that I am one of those people.)
Here is how it seems to me at present:
There are at least two groups of people who predate the Losties on the Island: The Dharma Initiative, and the Others/Hostiles. (Where the CFL fits in I don’t know. Her group may be a third predating group, or may be related to the Others/Hostiles.)
There are apparenlty no longer any Dharma Initiative people on the island. There was apparently a sort of war between them and the Others/Hostiles, and the Others/Hostiles won, exterminating the Dharma Initiative.
The Others/Hostiles now use the Dharma Initiative’s stuff for themselves.
Juliet was recruited by the Others/Hostiles.
Mikhail is an Other/Hostile, and was only pretending to be in the Dharma Initiative.
Ms Klugh is an Other/Hostile, and was working with Mikhail at the Flame station.
It remains an open possibility, IMO, that the same people are behind both the Dharma Initiative and the Others/Hostiles. But the two groups probably are not aware of this fact, or if they once were aware of it, have not thought of it as an important or salient fact for some reason.
Also, it may be that Juliet was in fact recruited by the Dharma Initiative and later kidnapped by the Others/Hostiles, but this is not something the show has intended to lead us to believe.
-Kris
I know that I assumed (and I bet others made the same assumption) that the people using the Dharma facilities were associated with the Dharma initiative. If we believe Mikhail, this is not necessarily true.
And I think we all assumed that Mittelos was a front for Dharma when they recruited Juliet. This also may not be true – Mittelos could = Others. Or (my theory) is that Juliet did join up with Dharma, to pursue their research in fertility, but has been kidnapped by Others. This is borne out by Ben’s promise to let her go if she cooperated with his surgery.
(This Others vs Dharma war, if it really exists, is starting to bring back unpleasant memories of the X-Files Mythology, with the Greys and the Alien Bounty Hunter, et al…)
Speaking of surgery…two episodes in a row without Jack. And it’s no coincidence that I think they’re my two favorite episodes in quite a while. Jack’s beginning to get on my nerves.
Another thing getting on my nerves…the violence. I’m really sick of seeing people get punched in the face. This show didn’t use to be like that.
I agree that Locke acted completely out of character.
Sayid and Kate thought that there was another (presumably armed) person hiding underground, so they open the trap door and just climb down into the Pit with their flashlights like it’s any other day at the office? Hell, why not just paint a target on their bodies in flourescent paint while they’re at it? (I kept waiting for the rat-a-tat-a-tat but maybe I watch too much “24.”)
Surprise, surprise, another African American written out of the show. Are the hostiles part of some Aryan nation, or what?
Am I the only one who saw the cow and thought “ribeye.”? Seriously. And why the hell didn’t they take the horse? They’d already walked for two days; a horse might come in handy. I hope they at least set the horse and cow free before leaving, so they didn’t starve to death. Geesh.
Where’d they get the gasoline for the Scooby Van?
er. . . they . . . did . . . sort of
boom
OK, I should rephrase my thinking: Mikhail, Juliet, Ben, Ethan, Tom and Bea Klugh are all members of the same group. Either they are Dharma (and they’re making up the “war” thing entirely) or they’re not (in which case, Mikhail was lying about being on the opposite side of the war), but they are not separate.
As far as we know, the only people on the island who purported to be part of Dharma but do not show a link to the Walt-napping Others are Desmond and Kelvin, and (I guess) Radinsky and Roger.
Desmond, so far at least. He lacks an alibi for a big section of time though.
Kelvin said he was Dharma, but he could have been an other too.
Radzinsky we have to rely on too unreliable narrators–Desmond and Kelvin. Kelvin could have lied about Radzinsky and Desmond could have lied about Kelvin.
Roger’s only tie to Dharma is the suit and the bus. We’ve seen the suits fit the others nicely, and that the others took Dharma property after the purge (if there was one).
It was nice to finally see someone stand up to Sawyer about his “stuff”. I really don’t get why they let him him steal from them and then claim it was “his”. I would have confronted him in a group early on, and got back all the “stuff”.
My eyes are buggy after a long day at work, so I’m not sure if anyone else has posted this theory yet but…
The way I see it is that the DI was started in the 70’s (as far as I can tell from the videos - especially from the Lost Experience). They set up the island, with all the hatches, and took a bunch of people there - scientists, volunteers, etc - to live and work in their experiment. I suspect DI also set up the village (the houses where we saw the book club meeting and such) where the Others now supposedly live. That is where the DI workers lived when not working in the hatches.
Something went down and some of the DI people - possibly the workers themselves but I am guessing un-willing volunteers who came as children, family members of the workers, etc - decided they didn’t want to do these experiments anymore. They didn’t like how Dharma was running things. I’m guessing some of the mind experiments may have gone bad, too. People were scared of the “Tree Crushing Monster.” All sorts of stuff that could have turned people away. There was, in effect, a mutiny.
Like any good mutiny, there has to be a leader and some hierarchy. Ben - who I suspect came to the island, unwillingly, as a child - became the leader of the new splinter group. They became known to DI as “The Hostiles.”
The Hostiles used kidnapping to further their cause. I’d imagine they gave people like Ethan an ultimatum - come join us or die. This mutiny went on while there was still communication with Hanso/DI, hence the “hostiles” information on Locke’s chessgame video.
So now Ben’s running the show. 'Cept he’s gone through a lifetime of weird DI experiments, so he’s a little nutty himself. He starts setting up his own experiments (Daryl (Alex’s boyfriend…that his name?) in the room with the images, the human cages, the surgery center, etc.
The Patch Guy…seems like he’s an original DI worker who was stronger than Ethan when it came to resisting the Hostiles, so they did indeed let him hang out in his own place but since Ben is pretty much World Leader here on the island he still has to live by their rules. Ben can control how much of a connection anyone has with the DI. So Mikail is trapped there reluctantly. He doesn’t care if he lives or dies now because if he makes it to Ben he’ll probably get killed anyway.
Why was Miss Klugh there too? She could be a go-between between the Hostiles and Mikail. She could be guarding him. She could have been in charge of that hatch. She could be a reluctant DI disstenter like Ethan and Mikail.
So to wrap up this rambling…
The DI produced the Others, and the Hostiles = the Others. There’s just no one left who is faithful to the original Dharma Initiative. Ben is the new Alvar Hanso.
That’d erase half a season’s worth of drama, what with bets, kisses, sexual favors, and fighting. Plus (giving credit to the shows creators that they probably don’t deserve) that confrontation fits nicely with a probable future conversation with the others about who gets the Dharma stuff and whose island it really is.
But yeah, it seemed pretty far-fetched that they didn’t just drag him out of his tent and take everything in there on day 2 or 3. I mean, they tortured him for one item–why stop there?
Re Sawyer losing the bet:
Given the near-real-time nature of the show, where a single episode can represent a period of time as short as a couple of hours, how many episodes will Sawyer’s one-week “no nicknames” agreement actually last?
Practically speaking, a week could cover most of the rest of the season, couldn’t it?
Or it could be 20 people all experiencing the same three minutes from differing perspectives.
Anybody see the preview on the website?
Looks like we get to find out a tiny bit more about the list, Ben, and who brought Mikhail to the island–and it wasn’t Ben.
The one question a wheelchair user will hear ten times a day: “What happened?” :rolleyes:
I thought it was cool that a show finally had a (formerly) disabled character where the details of his disability didn’t really matter. But they’ll probably cave in to the screams of WHY WHY WHY and give Locke a Very Special Episode. I bet whatever put him a chair ruined his sex life. He probably almost commited suicide. Then we get to hear everyone say what a moving episode it was. Oh I know, maybe the Dharma people orchestrated a hit and run! Dat’s da ticket!
'Cuz y’know, it’s impossible to have a disabled character who doesn’t have a REASON for being there. Ahem. Sorry. Sore spot for me. I ranted about the same things on a Heroes forum when they made a big deal out of Nathan’s wife being disabled. But everyone rolled their eyes at me.
Maybe Locke’s father reappears, full of apologies and contrition, and then reveals that he desperately needs a donation of “the bottom half of my spine.” Locke, who has never met a mistake he wouldn’t cheerfully repeat, forgives him, and… 
I like the idea of the Others/Hostiles resulting from a schism with the DI. It could fit in nicely with Ben saying they are the “Good Ones” == good in contrast to the DI who were likely doing some very nasty experiments.
Something else that might tie in somehow – CFL’s story about her cohort going mad/getting a disease and her having to kill them.
Suppose the war between Others and DI wasn’t just guns and such. They were doing some bio research, yes? All it would take is for one future Hostile with access to some nasty bug that causes some fatal disease (with included psychological effects that seem like madness) to innoculate all the “Good Guys” and then dump a vial or two into the water supply.
Goodbye DI.
It would also explain why there seems to be relatively little damage to various stations other than what you’d expect from time passing with little maintenance.
Just a thought.
The funny thing is that Sawyer’s whole attitude is basically - finders keepers, there’s no respect for property outside of what one can find and hide, etc. So why does he have such a sense of entitlement to his own stuff? People raided his stuff and took it, exactly as he did before.
I mean, practically, I guess it doesn’t hurt to ask to get it back, and people don’t often see their own hypocrisy, but I thought it was funny.
On the other hand, Sawyer was pretty much the only one who didn’t have his head buried in his ass in regards to “We might be here more than a day or two so I’m going to start scavenging instead of just sunning myself”.
He found it because he looked for it while everyone else was busy jerking off and wasting all their time…
-Joe
Did he take stuff from people who he knew were still alive?
Did he ever find out something he had taken actually belonged to someone still alive? Did he give it back or not?
I’m actually asking. I don’t remember.
-FrL-