The fallout of episode 6, Abandoned, happens here, as a grieving Sayid, moments after Shannon dies in his arms, moves to kill Ana Lucia.  He is intercepted by Mr. Eko, who just wants to prevent any further death.  Ana Lucia ends up with Sayid’s gun and forces Libby to tie Sayid to a tree.  Ana Lucia can be seen confused and uncertain about what she has to do.

The Ana Lucia-centric episode flashes back to Ana Lucia’s time on the LAPD, after returning from being shot four times.  In the flashback, Ana Lucia tries to return to her job normally, but she is continuing to have an internal struggle over what happened to her.  Ana Lucia came into conflict with her police captain, who also happened to be her mother, Teresa Cortez.  The Captain worried about Ana Lucia and was not sure she was ready to go back out on patrol.

When Ana’s assailant was captured and confessed, everyone was happy, except Ana Lucia.  Despite the confession, Ana Lucia claimed that this guy, named Jason McCormack, was not the guy who shot her, which led to his release.

However, it was him and Ana Lucia followed him to a bar, stalked him, and confronted him in the back ally.  She told Jason that she had been pregnant and then shot him three times in the chest before moving closer and shooting him three more times in the head.

Ana Lucia admitting she was pregnant was meant to help connect her with the audience, but it did not work very well as Ana Lucia was still out there shooting people.  She did not seem to be too good of a cop.

Finally, the rest of her people decided they had had enough.  Mr. Eko had already taken Sawyer to find the doctor, and now Bernard and Libby wanted to leave as well.  With Sayid’s blessing, Jin led them back to their beach camp.

My favorite moment of this episode was easily the reunion of Bernard and Rose, who although we had never seen together, was very emotional and loving.  We had loved the character of Rose in her unwavering belief that her husband was alive and her no nonsense approach to life and to see her so happy at Bernard’s return is wonderful.

The Jin and Sun reunion was nice as well, but you always remembered that Jin had been such a jerk to her for much of season one that, at this point, their reunion was tempered by that.  Subsequent reunions for this pair are much more relevant.

Jack got a look at the connection between Kate and Sawyer and you could almost see that he had that “I missed my chance” look when it came to Kate.  Sawyer was in bad shape and Kate sat at his bedside in the Hatch.

The dialogue between Ana Lucia and Sayid was dynamite as she told him most of the story about her shooting.  She claimed to feel dead already.  When she cut him loose, Ana Lucia believed that Sayid would kill her in retaliation for the death of Shannon, but Sayid said that since they were both already dead inside, why waste time killing her.

Sayid carried Shannon’s body back to the camp where he came across Jack and Mr. Eko who were on the way back to help.  When Jack was interrogating Eko, he showed that hot tempered attitude that made me question jack’s leadership skills.  Locke was there too and considerably more calm, which only seemed to infuriate Jack more.  Perhaps Shannon’s death played on Jack’s guilt at being unable to save everyone and that is why he was so angry.  He was angry at himself, not so much at Mr. Eko.  When he heard that it was Ana Lucia who had shot Shannon, Jack’s attitude changed, softened.  He remembered the meeting with her at the bar prior to the plane’s departure.

I do think the writers were setting up Ana Lucia as someone for Jack when they realized that Kate and Sawyer had become such a huge thing, but Ana Lucia and Jack were never going to mesh as their characters’ personalities did not go well together.

Another strong episode as season two started off on fire.

“The Other 48 Days” is the first all-Island flashback, as it focuses on the Tailies and the main situations they faced over the previous 48 days since the crash of Oceanic 815.

The Others immediately started coming for these survivors, attacking them the first night.  They took 3 people from the group and would have had more, if Mr. Eko had not killed two of them with a rock.

These actions did not sit well with Eko as he spent the next 40 days in a self-imposed silence, carving up his “Jesus Stick” as Charlie would eventually call it.

The Others returned again and grabbed even more survivors, including the children (one of which had been saved by Ana Lucia).

We knew from a previous episode that Goodwin would end up dead with a wooden staff in his chest and here we find out why.  Goodwin was sent to infiltrate the survivors and he came across Bernard in an airplane seat stuck in the tree. Ana Lucia talks Bernard through this, saving his life.

Goodwin continued to send intel to the Others, but Ana Lucia believed that it was actually Nathan who was the spy.  Ana Lucia knocked Nathan out and threw him into the pit she had dug.  She kept him in there for four days trying to get him to tell her where the kids were being held.  Of course, he did not know since he was innocent.

Before Ana Lucia could use the army knife she had found to cut off one of Nathan’s fingers, Goodwin let him free.  But, Goodwin broke Nathan’s neck with the hope that they would not be looking at himself as the spy.

Ana Lucia figured out Goodwin’s plans and confronted them after the group found a Dharma radio.  Ana Lucia and Goodwin fought and she killed him with her walking stick.

Later, Bernard was revealed to be the voice that Boone heard on the radio on the Nigerian plane just before it fell from the tree, crushing Boone with it.

The episode ended with a montage of scenes from previous viewed episodes, leading them back to the place where Ana Lucia shoots and kills Shannon thinking she was an Other.

This was the first episode of LOST that did not have Jack or Hurley in it.

Several Others were killed with this group way before Ethan showed up with the other group of survivors.

Be careful if you have sex on the Island. You are tempting fate.

That is something shown in this episode as Shannon Rutherford was shot and killed in a misunderstanding with Ana Lucia.

I had never like Shannon much in the first season, but this Shannon-centric episode, along with her developing relationship with Sayid, had really started making this character more likable.  Then…

BANG

Ana Lucia did not know who Shannon was and she was already on the edge because the Others had just taken Cindy (the stewardess), and Shannon was chasing after the vision of Walt that she had seen (Smoke Monster?).  Unfortunately, I do not think that the character of Ana Lucia ever got over the shooting of Shannon in the eyes of the audience.  It seemed like they were setting Michelle Rodriguez, who played Ana Lucia, for a relationship with Jack, but the whole Shannon thing, along with her initial attitude seemed to derail her.

Back on Shannon for a minute, the flashbacks involving Shannon were really sad.  Her father’s death really caused her life to spiral away.  She had earned a prestigious internship in New York at a dance school, but she could not afford to go.  Sabrina, her step-mother Sabrina, is one of the worst characters on the show.  She treated Shannon so poorly that you connect more to Shannon than when she seemed like nothing more than a spoiled brat.   Sabrina is such a vile woman that was so cruel to Shannon that you really want to see her get hers, but she never does.

There are several other minor things that happen here that are important…

• Sawyer has passed out.  His fever is getting worse and he has to be carried by Michael and Jin after they make him a stretcher.
• John has some nice scenes with Claire and she expresses some questions about how close Charlie has gotten to her and Aaron.
• John figured out that Charlie had one of the Virgin Mary statues filled with Heroin.
• In flashback, Boone came to Shannon’s father’s funeral and his first words were “Death sucks, doesn’t it?”
• Ana Lucia tells an abridged version of the first 48 days for the Tailies, who were tormented by the Others.  More next episode on this.
• Sayid tells Shannon that he loves her, mere moments before she is shot and killed.

This Jin and Sun-centric episode “…and Found” is honestly not a bad episode. There just is not that much to it.

After a hot start to season 2, this one kind of ground to a slow.

Ana Lucia and the Tailies decided that they were heading across the Island to where Michael, Jin and Sawyer’s group were found, but before they could take off, Michael ran off in search of the Others and Walt.

Jin and Mr. Eko went after him as the rest of them started heading back to the Losties camp.  Sawyer’s wound continue to get worse.

Meanwhile, Sun had realized that she had lost her wedding ring.  She frantically searched around for it.  This did lead to a nice scene with Sun and Locke.  It was one of those examples of Locke being like the wise man of the Island.  He came across Sun tearing up her garden in frustration and he calmed her down.  Locke told Sun a story about how he used to be frustrated and angry all the time, but that he was not lost any more.  She asked how he did that and John responded, “The same way everyone finds something that is lost: I stopped looking.”

Later, Sun found her wedding ring when she took Kate to show her the bottle with the messages that had washed up on shore from the raft.

The Sun-Jin flashback showed us their first meeting, and how Sun’s parents were initially trying to get her married off to the son of a hotel magnet.

The flashbacks here were fairly dull and did not do much to advance the story.

The biggest scene was when Jin and Eko hid in the jungle as a group of Others- in bare feet and seen only from the knee down, walked by in single file, the last one dragging a teddy bear along.

The other mystery shown here was when Jin stumbled across the dead body of a man named Goodwin.  Eko told Jin that he was one of the Others.  We do not know how he come to have a long stick rammed in his chest.

Hurley flashback episodes were always fun because Hurley was one of the most beloved characters on the show.  Interestingly enough, that very idea is played with during “Everybody Hates Hugo.”

Hugo “Hurley” Reyes had been given the job of taken inventory and rationing out the food found inside the Hatch, and it was a job that Hurley did not relish.

Many flashbacks are meant to mirror things that are happening on the Island, but honestly, few have had such a connection as this one did.  The off-Island scenes dealt with the hours after Hurley discovered that he had won the lottery, but before he claimed the money.  Hurley was worried that the lottery win would change things in his life, but not necessarily for the better.

I wonder if Hurley had “made his own luck” by believing in the curse when he saw how his friend Johnny turned on him when he discovered that Hurley had the winning lotto ticket.

Hurley quit his job, asked out the girl he had been crushing on, and had a day of fun because he knew that change was going to happen.

On the Island, Hurley worried over the responsibility and was scared that, just like Johnny who turned on him, the rest of the Island would hate him when he had to say no to requests for food.  Charlie, who had asked for peanut butter, was an example that seemed to support Hurley’s assumption.

It was such a concern for Hurley that he retrieved a stick of dynamite and was preparing to blow the food pantry up.  Thankfully, Rose came along to prevent Hurley from doing anything rash.  Hurley planned a big party to feed everyone at the same time so there would be no arguments.

Meanwhile, Jin, Sawyer and Michael are in the pit trying to figure out what they were going to do.  The lid was opened and a rope tossed down.  first Jin and then Michael, but they left Sawyer in the hole, to which Sawyer, in reference to Ana Lucia, said “Bitch.”

Jin and Michael convinced them that they were on the plane too and let Sawyer out.  We meet Mr. Eko (though not by name), Ana Lucia and Libby.  They take Jin, Michael and Sawyer to another Hatch where the rest of their people resided, including Rose’s husband Bernard.

The scene where Bernard asked Michael about Rose was very sweet and Bernard was very relieved by the news that his wife was fine.

As I said earlier, Hurley-centric episodes never fail, and “Everybody Hates Hugo” is just another example of a great one.

This one was great.

Episode 3 dropped a ton of mythology on us about the Dharma Initiative, and we meet Mr. Eko and his “Jesus Stick”- or at least, Sawyer met the Jesus Stick up close and personal.

There was so much going on in this episode that each scene fell perfectly in time with the last one.  In a Locke-centric flashback, we see John struggling to get through life dealing with the anger and confusion that comes when your father cons you into donating your kidney to him and then dumps you like yesterday’s garbage.  While John was dealing with that, he met Helen.

Back in Walkabout, John first mentions the name of Helen (although that is not the same Helen as we get here).  Played by the wonderful Katie Segal, Helen and John become a couple, but he just could not give up his obsession with his father.  John would go out in the night to sit in his car outside Cooper’s house.  One night, Cooper came and got in the car with John to remind us what a cold-hearted bastard Anthony Cooper was.  His dismissal of John was such a cruel scene that you cannot help but feel for him, a man who only wants to understand why his father would have done that to him.

The flashbacks end in a positive place as Helen forces John to choose between her and the obsession with his father.  Although this has a happy ending, we know where John ends up in the flashbacks, crippled and talking to a sex phone service to a woman he calls Helen.

Back in the Hatch, Kate, who has escaped her prison, gets the drop on Desmond.  During the scuffle, Desmond accidentally fires his gun and shoots the computer, causing Desmond to freak out.  “We’re all gonna die” he said.  Kate goes to get Sayid to fix the computer.  Jack seems very agitated and then Desmond appears to recognize Jack, to Locke’s surprise. Desmond then tells his story of being stranded on his race around the world in his boat, being grabbed by Kelvin and brought to the Swan station to push a button.  “Just saving the world” Desmond said, Kelvin’s words, not his.  Then, Desmond directs Jack and Locke to the bookcase where an orientation film is hidden behind the novel, Turn of the Screw.

The film is an orientation film used by a group called the Dharma Initiative to explain what the Swan Station’s purpose is.  It features a man who calls himself Dr. Marvin Candle, but we know as Dr. Pierre Chang.  He gives background on the Dharma Initiative.

John wants to watch it again.

I am not sure the reasoning behind Jack being so angry this entire episode.  He just seems so out of control, which, though Jack has been shown to be hot-tempered, this felt like a whole new level.  This, of course, continued to set up the conflict between Jack and Locke.

Sayid is brought in (with Hugo) to fix the computer as the timer continues to countdown.  Desmond takes off, leaving the Swan.  Jack departs too, which leaves John in a conundrum on what to do next.

Sayid is able to fix the computer and they enter the code into the computer which, to Hurley’s shock, is the numbers, 4 8 15 16 23 42.

This would be enough for most episodes, but we also get to see Sawyer, Jin and Michael, who had been subdued by the “Others”, tossed into a pit in the ground.  As they try to figure out what to do, a girl is dropped into the pit as well.  It is Ana Lucia, whom we met in the finale of season one.  She was on the plane, too.

When Sawyer pulls out the gun, prepared to shoot “Shaft” the next time he opened the cage, Ana Lucia disarmed Sawyer and called to be let out.  It was obvious that they dumped Ana Lucia in the pit to get information.  As she is being pulled out, Mr. Eko said “Who are they?”

Everything worked together in this episode so well, keeping tension with each second clicking off the timer.  In what could have been nothing but a big exposition dump, the show really found some creative ways to give information and still be remarkably entertaining.

I really found Jack unlikable here and I was glad that this was not the first impression I had of Jack because I would have hated him.  He was very close-minded and judgemental during these Swan scenes and even at the end, where he wound up pushing the button, Jack was on edge.

Desmond would not be seen again until the finale of season two.

“See you in another life, yeah?”

In episode two, “Adrift”, we learn what happened to Sawyer, Michael and Jin after the Others arrived and took Walt, destroying the raft in the process.

We also saw the events that led up to the ending where last episode “man of Science, Man of Faith” ended, with Desmond holding a gun on Locke as Jack recognizes him.

The story of Locke and Kate in the Hatch is told in a different POV and reveals new information about the Swan.  It is a very interesting story telling technique that allows the creators of LOST to tell the story in other ways than a simple narrative way.  I do remember being a little unsettled when the whole Hatch story ended in episode two exactly where it ended in episode one.  It was something that LOST would do on many different occasions.

On the pieces of the raft that remain, Sawyer and Michael struggle to survive while attempting to find someone to blame.  Sadly, they started by blaming each other. Michael blamed Sawyer for making him fire the flare gun and Sawyer blamed Michael because he knew this was the Others and he correctly inferred that the “child” that they were after was Walt.

The scene where Sawyer pulled the bullet from his shoulder with his bare hands was one of the most bad ass things in the history of LOST as was Sawyer’s snide remark about wanting a band-aid.

Bullet wounds and a falling apart raft was not the only trouble Sawyer and Michael faced.  There was a shark swimming around them, probably attracted by the blood from Sawyer’s bullet wound.  As you can see, the shark actually has a Dharma mark on its tail.  We see this Dharma symbol several times this episode, including in the Hatch, and on the products that Kate found in the storage room.

John manipulated Desmond to tie up Kate instead of him, and then he slipped Kate a knife.  John must have believed that she would have a better chance of escaping than he did.  Meanwhile, John tried to talk to Desmond, giving him answers to his questions and trying to keep him calm.

Then we hear the sound of beeping that takes over the Swan and Desmond forces John to type in the numbers, 4 8 15 16 23 42, into an old fashioned computer.  Once that happens, a timer on the wall resets to 108.00.

When Jack arrived, Desmond hears him, and sets up the stand-off that we see at the end of episode number one.

As this is going on, Sawyer and Michael have drifted back to the Island, and, a they come up on shore, they find, miracle beyond miracle, Jin running to meet them.  The problem?  Jin’s arms are tied and he is yelling about “Others”.  A group of mysterious people are following Jin.

We know they are not Others, as Jin mistakes them for, but that they are Tailees, survivors from the tail section of Oceanic 815.

Season two begins in a comfy home of someone we do not know going through a morning routine of exercise, eating, showering and playing “Make Your Own Kind of Music” by Mama Cass on the record player.  Then, without warning, there is an explosion.

The same explosion that blew open the Hatch at the end of season one.

So someone had been living inside the Hatch this entire time.

His name was Desmond Hume, and he will become one of the greatest characters in LOST.

We see in flashbacks that Desmond and Jack had a meeting years before as both men were running the stairs of a stadium.  Desmond was training for a race around the world and Jack was just trying to sort things out in his mind.  This was the time referenced in season one where Jack “fixes” Sarah, who had broken her back in a car wreck (which was how Shannon’s father died).  Jack was emotionally invested in Sarah’s recovery and he did not believe that there was any hope in the surgery.  He believed that he failed and that Sarah would never walk again, let alone dance at her wedding.  As he talked to Desmond about it, Desmond asked him if he did not believe in miracles?  And of course, Sarah recovered feeling in her legs and did indeed dance at her wedding— to Jack as we saw in season one.

One thought I had while watching Jack get all emotional over Sarah having feeling in her legs is “how can Jack expect to be a doctor if he is this crazed over every patient?”  His stress level would have to be sky high.

Locke and Kate climb down to the Swan station but gets caught by Desmond and he is holding Locke at gun point when Jack arrives.  Jack takes this moment to condescend to Locke about his “fate” and makes some smart remarks.  However, when Jack sees who is holding the gun on Locke, he recognizes him as the man at the stadium.  Looks like Jack might have to swallow some of that fate talk as it is at the very least a HUGE coincidence.

Greta episode to start the season, but it does not go and show us what has happened to the people on the raft.  Shannon does see a drenched Walt in the jungle as she was looking for Vincent.  Is it a psychic connection? It can’t really be Walt since he was abducted by the Others.

Season one of LOST is in the books on my great re-watch.  It makes me remember how much I loved this show by watching these wonderful episodes filled with some of the greatest characters in TV history.  Let’s look at the first season.

Best Episode:  “Pilot”.  The first two episodes together make one of the greatest pilot episodes ever.  The first fifteen minutes should hook you, and if it doesn’t, I don’t know what you want.  Runner-Up:  “Walkabout”

Best Flashback.  “Walkabout” Admittedly, some of the flashbacks are not as strong as others, but the John Locke flashbacks are consistently excellent.  And nothing was better than the “Don’t tell me what i can’t do” reveal with the wheelchair.  Runner-Up:  “Numbers”

Best Performance: Terry O’Quinn “Deus Ex Machina”.  Very little can compare to the moment when John Locke realized that his father had conned him out of his kidney and then had nothing more to do with him.  O’Quinn was one of the best actors on the Island. Runner-Up:  Josh Holloway, “Outlaws”

Biggest Jerk:  Jin.  This was a tough category because there were a lot of people who could have been considered.  However, Jin was such a jerk for most of the year that he takes this.  Runner-Up:  Sawyer

Best Death:  Boone, “Do No Harm“.  It has to be this one.  The Boone death brought tears to my eyes during the re-watch and that was an amazing emotional moment.  It was also a main actor who was killed, which was not common at the time.  Runner-Up:  Leslie Arzt.

Biggest Surprise:  Locke is paraplegic.  “Walkabout”.  Tell the truth, you had no idea this was what was going to happen.  The shock still works today as John Locke has the use of his legs back on the Island.  Runner-Up:  Leslie Arzt blows up.

Funniest Moment:  Arzt blows Up.  Exodus, Part 1.  Yeah, this is a death, but, man, I laughed so hard at this.  It is also a perfect example of irony.  Runner-Up:  Golf

Best Moment:  The Others kidnap Walt, “Exodus Part 2“.  The whole season was building toward this moment, where the Others came for the boy, leaving his father Michael yelling Walt in the water.  Runner-Up:  Boone dies/Aaron is born.

Most Character Development:  Sun.  At first, she was a put on wife. As the year moved along, she became her own woman, a strong survivor and someone who could help anyone.  Runner-Up:  John Locke

Most tense moment:  Charlie is hanged in the tree.  Oh boy, I thought Charlie was gone.  Thanks to Jack and his need to save everyone, Charlie makes it through season one.  Runner-Up:  Sayid tortures Sawyer.

Season Two and the Tail section survivors are next!

Season one of LOST came to an end with “Exodus, Part 2”, a wonderful conclusion to a season of mystery and suspense. Exodus Part 2 only laid groundwork for even more surprises in season two.

From the moment Arzt blew himself up during his lecture on the safe way to handle dynamite to the tortured screams of Michael as the Others took Walt away on their boat as the raft burned, “Exodus, Part 2” delivered drama and great character moments throughout.

When Leslie Arzt blew himself up with that dynamite, it was one of the funniest moments in the show.  Clearly, it was not as funny for Jack, Kate, Hurley and Locke since they saw one of the survivors blow up right in front of them.  However, the irony of the fact that Arzt only came along to help them safely carry the dynamite and he wound up exploding is tremendous.  Also, Hurley’s line to Jack, “You’ve got some Arzt on you”- GOLD!

Rousseau was busy as she not only led the group to the Black Rock, but also got back to the other survivors in time to kidnap poor little Aaron right from the arms of his mother.  Turnip Head finally gets his name from Claire, though there is no indication of where the name came from. Rousseau wanted to trade Aaron for Alex, but when the Others did not show, she sadly gave the baby back to Charlie.  I found Charlie’s angry rant toward Rousseau to be unnecessary and cruel.  Rousseau has been alone a long time with the memories of her own stolen child.  Charlie did not show any empathy on the moment, which might foreshadow how much of a jerk Charlie is going to be in season 2.

We got our first look at the Island’s monster, as the Black Smoke was shown going through the jungle.  Kate and Jack saw it at first, and they had a hard time believing what they saw.  Then, the Black Smoke grabbed Locke by the ankle and tried to pull him down into a hole.  Jack and Kate prevented that from happening despite Locke’s claim to let hm go.  Kate had used one of the dynamite sticks to make the Black Smoke let Locke go.  One would wonder how effective the dynamite would be on the Black Smoke.

The raft has immediate troubles when they hit a log and the rudder breaks off.  Fortunately, Sawyer is able to jump into the water and catch up to it before it sank and Michael and Jin could get a rope to it.

Yet, that would be a minor problem when compared to the arrival of the Others.  Michael finds a blip on Sayid’s radar, but he is anxious about using their one flare.  As the blip was leaving, Michael is finally convinced into using the flare, which brings them back to the raft.  The boat’s captain played it up as if he did not know anything about these four and let them get their hopes up.  Then, he said, “Only the thing is, we’re gonna have to take the boy.” After grabbing Walt, the Others torched the raft, shot Sawyer, and left Michael in the water yelling “Walt” which would become an iconic moment of the series.

We have come to the first part of the first season finale entitled “Exodus Part .”  Now, the first part was a regular episode and the Part 2 was a double length episode that, in some parts of the world, was split into Part 2 & 3.  I will be watching it as one episode.

Exodus, Part 1 was a great return to storytelling that felt on pause for the past couple of episodes.

The flashbacks featured several of the cast members arriving for their ill-fated Oceanic Flight.  We see Michael and Walt at one of the low points of their relationships, Sun and Jin together waiting for the flight, Shannon turning in Sayid as an Arab that just left his bag unattended just to show off to Boone and Jack met Ana Lucia at the bar.  Ana Lucia is from the tail section of the plane and we will learn more about her in the second season.  We see Kate being tormented by Marshal Mars.  We see Sawyer being deported for headbutting an Australia official in a bar fight.

The Raft is launched successfully, sending Michael, Walt, Jin and Sawyer off on their adventure.  There is joy among the survivors because they hope that this will get them rescued.

But there is fear as well as Danielle had arrived with the ominous news that the Others were coming.  Danielle tells a story about when the Others came for Alex, her own daughter years ago.  She claimed that there would be black smoke in the distance.  Soon, the smoke was seen by the survivors as well.

Three things you can do… run, hide or die- Danielle said about the Others.

The idea of opening the Hatch and hiding everyone inside was floated around and Locke came up with an idea of using explosives to blow the Hatch open.  Danielle said that the dynamite was found at the Black Rock in the Dark Territory.  Jack, Locke, Kate, Hurley, Arzt and Danielle went to retrieve the dynamite. On the way, they nearly run into the monster, what Danielle calls a “security system.”  Turns out the Black Rock was a slave ship that was somehow stranded in the jungle.

There were several excellent character moments within the episode as well.

• Sawyer told Jack about his meeting with Christian in a bar in Australia and how Christian had wished that he told Jack how much he loved him.  This was a wonderful scene and it helped to show Sawyer in a much more positive light.
• Jin and Sun reunited just before Jin left on the raft.  Jin admitted that he was on the raft because he thought he was on this Island because he was being punished.
• There was a humorous relationship between Arzt and Hurley.  Hurley could not pronounce Arzt’s name properly.
• Walt took his dog Vincent to Shannon and said that she could keep him while he was gone.  Walt told her that Vincent helped him through the death of his mother and she could tell Vincent about Boone, if she’d like.
• As everyone was wishing the raftees well, Sawyer looked for Kate, hoping that she would be there to see him off. She was not.

“Born to Run” was the second consecutive LOST episode that felt like a filler, just in place to pass the time along until the big events of the season finale could get underway.  This one focused on Kate.

I am not fond of the way the character of Kate is played here.  She seemed to be inconsistent throughout the first season.  She is either shown as a manipulative, selfish con woman or she is a brave and strong leader.  I suppose the answer is that she is both, falling in-between the two, but the show tries to change it up with whatever it needs Kate to be.

This episode deals with flashbacks to show Kate accidentally getting her childhood friend/love Tom killed as she was trying to escape from the police.  Tom was a doctor and he had set up Kate with an opportunity to see her mother, who was dying from cancer.  Kate’s mother’s reaction was not what we expected because as soon as she realized that it was “Kathryn” visiting her, she started to cry out for help.

Tom was the original owner of the toy plane that Kate had gotten out of the Halliburton case.  I also have to take exception with what Kate had told Jack.  She said that the plane was from the person that she killed.  However, the death of Tom came during her attempted escape.  While she may be inadvertently responsible for Tom’s death, to say that she “killed” him is a bit of an exaggeration.

The episode saw the debut of high school science teacher Dr. Arzt, who claimed that they were starting on the cusp of monsoon season and that they needed to get that raft they were building launched as soon as possible.  It turns out that Arzt was full of baloney as it was revealed in the LOST: Missing Pieces episode “Tropical Depression” that Arzt was lying about the monsoon season.  Arzt, of course, has a explosive fate ahead of him in the season finale.

After several strong episodes, “The Greater Good” felt like a placeholder episode that was filling in time between the arches of the season.

John Locke returned from the jungle with Boone blood all over his shirt, only to have Jack attack him and call him out as a liar. Jack, who was physically struggling from his attempted blood transfusion and lack of sleep, was not thinking straight, but Sayid certainly was.

The episode had several good dialogue scenes between Locke and Sayid, which would have been the highlights of the episode.

Maggie Grace, who is the actress playing Shannon, gave a strong performance as a grieving sister looking for revenge on the man she blamed for the death of her brother.  While the death is an accident, an argument could be made that because Locke lied about the manner of the death, Jack was not able to sufficiently aid Boone.  It is also very possible that there was simply nothing that could have been done to save Boone and blaming Locke for Boone’s accidental death is unfair.

Either way, after Shannon steals one of the guns from the Halliburton case, she goes to shoot Locke.  Sayid prevents her from killing him, causing the bullet to glance off the side of Locke’s head.  Jack did not go to look at the injured Locke, just turning away from him instead.

In a more light-hearted part of “The Greater Good,” Charlie discovers that “Turnip-Head,” which is the nickname he gave to Claire’s baby (who will be named Aaron), loves the sound of Sawyer’s voice and Charlie forces Sawyer to read to the baby to keep him from crying.  This was after a funny scene where Hurley tried to get the baby to stop crying by singing “I Feel Good” by James Brown.

The flashback took Sayid to Australia where the CIA wanted him to infiltrate his old college roommate’s terrorist cell and find some missing C4.  This is one of my least favorite flashbacks for the season because it really made Sayid look like a horrible person.

“The Greater Good” was a filler episode that will lead into a considerably stronger end to the first season as Sayid will convince Locke to finally come clean about the Hatch.

Oh boy…

This was a tough one.  I had not been connected to Boone that much, but that did not mean that his untimely death did not come with an emotional wallop, because it was very effective.

The show did a smart thing for those who may not have been as connected to Boone.  Instead of it being a Boone flashback episode, they made it about Jack.  They showed you how the dying of Boone was affecting our favorite doctor and really playing on his desire to be able to save everyone so if you were not a fan of Boone, you could still feel the pain in Jack.

The show also balanced out he death, which fits into the theme of duality on the Island by having Claire’s baby born into the world at the same time as Boone was leaving it.

Boone’s death really amped up the rivalry between Jack and Locke, even though John was not seen in this episode.  Jack sees the death as a murder, since John did not tell him that Boone had fallen inside a plane and was crushed.  John had told him that he fell off a cliff.

This was the first death of a major character (sorry Scott) on the Island and it really drove home the idea that the survivors were not safe.  I remember watching the episode for the first time in shock.  I always assumed that there would be some way to save Boone since he was one of the main cast.  This was before the Walking Dead and Game of Thrones when audiences expect cast members’ deaths.  I remember being horrified that Jack was preparing to cut off Boone’s leg, not expecting the show to go that far.  It was both a blessing and a curse when they did not, because it meant that Boone was going to die.

This was the first appearance of Jack’s wife Sarah.  We saw their wedding and the lead up to the wedding.  We learned that Jack had saved Sarah by operating on the broken back she received in an auto accident.  The show implied that Jack was more in love with the saving of Sarah than with Sarah herself.  Jack and Sarah were very sweet together and the thoughts about what would happen to break them apart was tough as well.

According to the web site Lostpedia, this episode’s title, Deus Ex Machina  “refers to a theatrical device which originated in ancient Greek theatre. This device consisted of a physical crane that lowered a character down onto the stage, the character representing a god. This god would help the characters with a sudden twist in plot. This term would come to mean any device within a plot that provided a sudden change, or solution, in plot” and that “Deus Ex Machina literally translates into “God from the machine” in Latin.”

In this John Locke specific episode, there are plenty of references to God in the Machine that you could look at literally, or you could look at the “sudden change” in plot that the phrase refers to as well.

Anthony Cooper is introduced and refers to himself as God when Locke told him that his mother had told him that he was immaculately conceived.  Cooper was later hooked up to a dialysis machine.  Cooper, John Locke’s father, is one of the most cruel and selfish characters introduced on LOST.  He returns to torment poor John (among others) across the entire run of LOST.  He is one of the worst of the worse when referencing the “Daddy issues” theme covered by the show.  Imagine, your own father conning you into giving up your kidney and then just casting you aside as if you mean nothing to him.

Of course, this allowed Terry O’Quinn some brilliant material to act out.  His scene breaking down in his car after trying to confront Cooper was heart breaking.

Of course, Locke was having a crisis of faith in the Island as well, stemming from his inability to find a way to open the Hatch.  Because of the doubt, the Island showed him a way.  Locke had a dream of an airplane that crashed on the Island.  He also had a dream of a bloody Boone talking about a nanny who accidentally broke her neck while working for Boone’s family.

Locke uses that dream to hook Boone into helping him.  Locke’s legs were also having trouble, as the paralysis seemed to be coming back.  Locke conveniently forgets to tell Boone about him being covered in blood in the dream as well.

That plane contains several crates of heroin stashed inside Virgin Mary statues.  We know there are connections to Mr. Eko with this plane from Nigeria that will be revealed in season 2.

Prior to the plane’s fall from the tree, Boone is on the radio on the plane and makes contact with someone.  Boone said that he was one of the survivors of Oceanic 815.  As the plane began falling, the response from the voice on the radio was “We’re survivors of Flight 815.”

When the plane falls from the trees with Boone inside, this certainly is a deus ex machina, changing the direction of the story.  This is the inciting incident that ignites the real rivalry/feud/war between Locke and Jack that will run for most of the series.

We also get the great scene at the end where Locke is really losing his mind, pounding on the Hatch, and a light comes on from within, shining up into the darkness.  This was so unexpected and surprising that it was a great way to end such a tragic episode.

“Deus Ex Machina” starts several storylines that will drive the remainder of the season and move into next season as well.