"Hypocrisy in Dharma Land"
"HYPOCRISY IN DHARMA LAND"
Ever since her debut in the Season Three premiere, (3.01) "A Tale of Two Cities", I have been a fan of the ABC "LOST" character, Dr. Juliet Burke. From the get-go, she struck me as a subtle, yet ambiguous character with an intriguing backstory and a wry wit. Thanks to Elizabeth Mitchell's skillful performance, she kept audiences in dark about Juliet's true nature and role with the protagonists' main enemies during that period - the Others. But as much as I enjoyed Juliet as a character, there have been a few moments when my view of her had not been positive. And one of those moments had occurred in the Season Five episode, (5.11) "Whatever Happened, Happened".
This entire moment had originated in the Season Four finale, (4.12-4.14) "There's No Place Like Home". In that episode, former leader of the Others, Benjamin Linus, left the island and teleported to the Sahara Desert some ten months into the future. Ben was able to leave via a donkey wheel, situated beneath a Dharma Initiative structure called the Orchid Station. This wheel harnessed a stream of electromagnetic energy called "the Heart of the Island". Following Ben's departure, the island disappeared to the outside world and Oceanic 815 survivors began moving through time. Several days later, one of the castaways, John Locke, left the island the same way in a bid to recruit those who had managed to leave the island - namely the Oceanic Six (Jack Shephard, Sun Kwon, Jayid Jarrah, Kate Austen and Hugo Reyes) - to return in order to save the lives of those left behind. Following Locke's departure, the surviving castaways stopped skipping through time and ended up in 1974. Some of them ended up joining the Dharma Initiative, an organization that existed on the island to research its properties, including the electromagnetic energy beneath it. Juliet became a member of the DHARMA Motor Pool. James "Sawyer" Ford eventually became Head of Security, while Jin-Soo Kwon and former Kahana freighter passenger Miles Straume joined the Security team. Physicist Dr. Daniel Faraday joined DHARMA as a scientist and spent the next two to three years working out of the organization's Ann Arbor, Michigan headquarters.
Although Locke had failed to convince the Oceanic Six to return, other forces eventually led them and Ben to finally do so via Ajira Flight 316. Unfortunately for Locke, Ben had killed him before he had a chance to commit suicide. Ben and Sun managed to return to the island in the present day after pilot Frank Lapidus made a crash landing on the smaller island, next to the main one. Jack and the rest of the Oceanic Six also returned to the island . . . in 1977, some thirty years in the past and reunited with those castaways who had joined Dharma. Jack, Kate and Hurley joined Dharma with Sawyer and Juliet's help. However, Sayid remained missing, until Jin and Dharma scientist Stuart Radzinsky found him wondering in the jungle. Believing him to be one of the Others, the paranoid Radzinsky ordered Sayid incarcerated. While the Dharma leaders discussed Sayid's guilt or innocence, a twelve-or-thirteen-year-old Ben Linus, whose father was a Dharma janitor, introduced himself to Sayid and later helped the later escape. Ben had hoped Sayid would lead him to the Others. Instead, Sayid shot young Ben and fled into the jungle.
Jin brought Ben's body back to the DHARMA compound, hopeful that Juliet would be able to save the boy. Unfortunately, being a fertility specialist, she lacked the medical skills to operate on Ben. Sawyer and Kate turned to Jack, a spinal surgeon, to save Ben's life. Jack, who had become weary at trying to "fix things" refused to operate, claiming that the island will deal with Ben in its own way. At Juliet's suggestion, Kate and Sawyer took Ben to the Others (known as the "Hostiles" during this time period) for help. An angry Juliet confronted Jack in order to call him out for refusing to save the young Ben. During her rant, the subject turned to why Jack and the other Oceanic Six had returned to the island:
Juliet: It's up to Sawyer and Kate now.
Jack: What?
Juliet: She's trying to save him, and I sent James after her to help because they actually care.
Jack: I came back here because I care, Juliet. I came back here because I was trying to save you.
Juliet: We didn't need saving! We've been fine for three years. You came back here for you... At least do me the courtesy of telling me why.
Jack: I came back because I was supposed to.
I realize that the Oceanic Six had different reasons for returning to the island. Sayid had been forced to return after being arrested by Ilana Verdansky, an agent of island protector Jacob, who was pretending to be a hired gun for one of Sayid and Ben's past victims. Jacob had convinced Hurley to return to island, after the latter had confessed his alleged guilt over leaving behind the other Oceanic Six castaways. Sun, the only one who had remained in the present, had returned to find her husband Jin after learning he had survived the Season Four finale events. After guilt had finally convinced her to hand over Aaron Littleton to his grandmother after nearly three years, Kate had returned to the island to find Aaron's mother and fellow Oceanic castaway, Claire. Like Hurley, Jack suffered from survivor's guilt and felt he needed to return to the island for a specific reason.
Juliet had correctly suspected that none of them had returned to save her, Sawyer and the others left behind. But she and the other Left Behinders had believed the Oceanic Six's return to the island would save their lives from the time skips that were slowly killing them. Juliet, Sawyer and the others had gone out of their way to help Locke reach the Orchid Station in order for him to leave. She had been the one to point out in the beginning of (5.08) "LaFleur" that Locke's departure had stopped the time jumps in 1974 and saved their lives. But Locke never knew that his departure had stopped the time skips. And Juliet must have known this. If Locke had never known, why did Juliet expect the Oceanic Six to know?
She knew. And she knew that the Oceanic Six had no idea how the time jumps had stopped or that those left behind were no longer in danger. Perhaps those three years with the Dharma Initiative had eroded Juliet's memories of her, Sawyer and the others helping Locke reach the Orchid Station so that he could leave the island . . . and the reason why he had left. But I rather doubt it. As I had earlier pointed out; Juliet, Sawyer, Miles, Jin and Dan had all joined the Dharma Initiative due to Sawyer's lies about their presence on the island. They managed to spend the next three years with comfortable jobs, decent shelter and food. Sawyer and Jin used their positions within Dharma's security team to keep a lookout for the Oceanic Six's return. The friendship that Juliet and Sawyer had formed during the time jumps developed into a deep romance during their years with Dharma. And the Oceanic Six's return ended up disrupting their cushy lives.
But once Jack and most of the Oceanic Six had returned to the island in 1977, a good deal started going wrong for Juliet, Sawyer and the other Left Behinders. Actually, Sayid's capture by the Dharma Initiative had initiated the disruption in their lives. In an attempt to erase those months dealing with the Oceanic 815 survivors' difficulties with the Others and the period as Ben's hitman following his wife Nadia's death, Sayid tried to murder the twelve-year-old Ben. This, along with Jack's refusal to save Ben, and Juliet's fears that Sawyer might rekindled his old infatuation with Kate proved to be too much for her. The Oceanic Six's return had disrupted one of the happiest periods in her life and she resented them for it. Her resentment led Juliet to make what I felt was a hypocritical moment on her part. Yes, the Left Behinders had no longer required the Oceanic Six's return to save their lives. But her response to Jack seemed to indicate some belief that they should have known this, as well. Why on earth should they have known, if Locke never had any idea that his departure had ended the time jumps and saved Juliet and the rest left behind?
Do you know what I had found most interesting about this scene between Juliet and Jack? Hardly no one had commented on Juliet's hypocrisy. Many fans and television critics had been so focused on either Jack's refusal to save Ben or the little time travel debate between Hurley and Miles that they seemed blinded from Juliet's hypocritical response and her resentment toward the Oceanic Six's return. Was this blindness on the parts of many the reason why they had been blindsided when Juliet's anger and paranoia regarding Sawyer and Kate had truly exploded in the Season Five finale, (5.16-5.17) "The Incident"? I wonder.