“One of Us” focuses on the story of Juliette and how she came to the island. Juliette, left behind by the Others, is taken along by Jack against Sayid’s objections. When they are alone, Sayid asks Juliette who “you people” are and why they make lists, kidnap children, and terrorize people, as well as who she is individually. Juliette tells Sayid that if she told him who she was and what she knows, he would kill her.
In flashbacks we see Juliette air her concerns – such as that no one in the medical community has heard of Mittelos Bioscience. Richard Alpert tells her that she took a sterile woman whose reproductive system had been ravaged by chemotherapy and made her pregnant – creating life where it wasn’t supposed to be. He describes that as a gift. She drinks orange juice with tranquilizer in it, and when she wakes up she is in the submarine which has arrived at the island. Later, not managing to save the lives of pregnant women, Juliette wants to go home. Ben tells her that her sister has cancer but that Jacob will cure her if Juliette stays and continues to help them with their problem. But later it turns out that Ben has a tumor, and so Juliette accuses Ben of lying to her. The next day the plane crashed on the island. Ben showed Juliette a live feed of her sister, whose cancer went into complete remission and who now has hair, in Arcadia Park with her son Julian. Ben still refuses to let her go home since she hasn’t finished her work there. Juliette says it is impssible, as the mothers keep dying. Ben says they will find more mothers – perhaps there is one on that plane.
In the present day, Claire becomes sick. We learn that Claire had been exhibiting symptoms consistent with what happened to women who become pregnant on the island, and so Ethan had been giving her a serum, and now Claire was going into withdrawal. It is interesting that Juliette used the phrase “I can fix this” to convince Jack to agree to her going to get the serum to inject Claire with it. She also says that Ethan kidnapping Claire was never part of the plan, but was him “improvising” after they discovered that he had not been on the flight. Juliette goes to get the medicine, but Sayid and Sawyer confront her. She uses what she knows about their pasts to get them to let her go, saying they should stop pretending they are righteous, and pointing out the irony of them serving as the group’s “moral police.”
The episode ends with Juliette and Ben going over their plan for Juliette to infiltrate the survivors’ camp. They mention activating Claire’s implant, and so the story Juliette told them was at least not entirely true. They create the crisis with Claire in order to gain Juliette acceptance among them. Ben then leaves, telling Juliette he will see her in a week.
The episode does a good job of both problematizing any assumption that the survivors of the crash are “the good guys,” while also doing the same for the Others. Ironically, Ben tells Juliette he is not a liar earlier in the episode, whereas we know that he specializes in just that. As for Juliette, she was doing what she felt she needed to in order to survive and hopefully escape from her situation. In that regard Sayid and Sawyer were good points of comparison.
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