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.

4 8 15 16 23 42

Hugo “Hurley” Reyes is one of my favorite characters on LOST so it was way overdue to have a flashback episode featuring him.  However, little did I expect that Hurley’s flashback would forever be so ingrained on LOST mythology because the episode introduced the numbers.

4 8 15 16 23 42 repeated several times on Rousseau’s notes surprised Hurley.  Those numbers were the same numbers that he used to win the lottery.  And they seem to have placed a curse on him and everyone around him.

Hurley picked up these numbers during his time in a mental institution from a Connect 4 player named Leonard.  Leonard worked with a guy in the military named Sam Loomis and they picked up a transmission repeating those numbers.  We find out that the transmission was coming from the Island and it is also what attracted Rousseau’s boat to the Island.

The numbers are one of the most enduring mysteries of LOST and I believe that they are the one thing that is not sufficiently answered.  I believe that they never really had a good answer for the numbers so once they started using them, they could not stop.  The riddle of the numbers is like a MacGuffin, always being chased- especially by Hurley.

The interaction between Hurley and Rousseau during this episode is one of the best moments of the show, and should be considered one of the best in the first season.  Even crazy Rousseau is put at ease with Hurley’s friendly and kind nature.  Hurley gives Rousseau a big hug as well when she agrees that the numbers are cursed.  Hurley was so happy to find someone who believed him.

The episode does a tremendous job of creating a ominous and sinister tone surrounding those numbers as we discover the terrible things that happened to Loomis after he used them and the fact that Leonard wound up in the mental institution repeating the numbers to himself.  Hurley has lots of things happen as well.  His Grandpa Tito died.  His mother breaks her ankle.  The new house Hurley bought his mother catches on fire.  Lightning strikes the preacher at his Grandpa’s funeral etc.  It is enough to make anyone wonder.

And Hurley was fresh out of the institution himself.  While we do not know why he wound up there (yet), we learn he was there.  Hurley is also fairly sensitive to anyone calling him crazy.

There have been a lot of theories about what the numbers meant over the years,but I am not sure that anything specific has ever been explained.  It might just be one of those LOST mysteries that will never be fully revealed.

Typically Sun and Jin’s flashback episodes were my least favorite of the series, mainly having to do with the need for captions at the bottom of the screen.  However, “In Translation” was a definite exception.

This episode recounted the events from “House of the Rising Sun” but from the perspective of Jin.  It showed how Jin got involved in Sun’s father’s business and how it dragged the kind-hearted man into the world of organized crime.  You understood and connected more with Jin here than you did in the previous viewing here.  The storytelling of seeing first how Sun saw these moments to be balanced how Jin saw them is a fascinating technique.

We also get the big reveal to the remainder of the survivors of Sun being able to speak English.  The raft that Michael had been working on ending up on fire and he blamed Jin.  To be fair, Jin’s hands were burned and he was acting as if he were guilty.  When Sun exclaimed for Michael to stop attacking Jin, the whole group came to a sudden halt.  Hurley dropped a funny line with “Didn’t see that coming.”

Locke came into the situation and blamed the Others for burning the raft, but he already knew who had done it.  John asked Walt later over a game of backgammon why he burned the raft.  Walt said that he liked it on the Island and he was tired of moving.

The romance of Jin and Sun goes through many ups and downs on the Island and it is one of the main story points.  They are certainly at a low point here as Jin leaves Sun alone and goes to help Michael to start rebuilding the raft.

Sun, on the other hand, feels free enough now to go to the beach in a bikini, something that Jin had reacted to negatively earlier in the episode.  Jin has always had a problem with Sun showing too much body, going as far as having her button the top button.  Sun’s freedom here is an important step to the eventual reunion between husband and wife.

The Shannon-Sayid love story started here, picking up on parts from previous episodes and, taking advice from Locke in his “wise man of the Island” act, Shannon decided that everyone gets a new life on this Island and that she would not be concerned with Boone’s thoughts.  It appeared that Boone’s revelations in “Hearts & Minds” was short lived.  Maybe John needs to tie him up in the jungle again.

This one was really good.

We dive into the past with Sawyer, aka James Ford, and what brought him to Sydney.  He had been pointed in this direction in his effort to find the man who conned his mother and father out of their money and led to his father’s murder-suicide of James’ mother.

The episode started off with a frightening scene of little James being told to hide beneath the bed by his mother as we hear pounding on the door.  Just the thought of what that little boy had to listen to and live through really humanizes the redneck asshole that Sawyer becomes.

Then, he was sent to Australia by an old accomplice, Hibbs (played by the one and only Robert Patrick).  Hibbs told Sawyer that he had found the man whom had stolen his childhood and sent an angry and vengeful Sawyer on his path.

Sawyer found the man working at a shrimp shop, but he does not kill him at first.  Sawyer winds up in a bar where he encounters Christian Shepherd, Jack’s father.  The two of them talk over drinks and Christian uses the phrase “that’s why the Red Sox will never win the series.”  Christian convinces Sawyer to stop drowning his sorrows in alcohol and to go take care of the business.

So Sawyer does.  He goes and shoots Frank (played by Jeff Perry, who would go on to be Cyrus Bean in Scandal) only to find out that Frank never went by Sawyer and that Frank owed Hibbs money.  Hibbs sent Sawyer after this guy expecting that Sawyer would kill him, which he does, but not for the reasons he thought.

Meanwhile, on the Island, Sawyer is being harassed by a boar that seems to be targeting Sawyer’s things.  Sawyer takes off after the boar, looking for revenge.  Kate tags along, hoping to get the gun back from him.

While in the jungle, Sawyer hears the whispers and they sound as if they are saying, “It’ll come back around” which was the last thing that Frank said to Sawyer before he died.

The whole Sawyer vs. the Boar Island adventure was remarkably entertaining and gave us insights into Sawyer, Kate and even Locke.  Locke showed up midway through with a sweet story about his step-mom and how she believed her dead daughter was reincarnated into a Golden Retriever.

Kate and Sawyer had played a drinking game of “I Never” which started fun and really became personal as they continued.  It was revealed in the game that both of them had killed a man, further connecting these two outsiders.

Sawyer’s story is one of the more tragic ones on LOST and the things that happened to James Ford really shaped who he would become.  But among all of the tragedy, you can see the good man inside of Sawyer and you can relate to everything he does.

To me, this episode of LOST was a tale of two parts. The Island material was tense and taut and full of excitement while the flashback felt like a waste of time and a distraction.

Ethan returned, cornering Charlie in the jungle and demanding that Charlie return Claire to him.  Ethan stated that if he did not return Claire, that Ethan would kill somebody in their camp each and ever night that she was not brought back to him.

This clearly caused tension among the group, with the survivors setting up a perimeter with guards posted to keep watch.  However, that did not keep Ethan out as he was able to enter their camp on the beach via the water and kill Scott (not Steve).

Meanwhile, flashbacks looked at Charlie, between gigs as Drive Shaft, trying to find a girl he could steal from to fund the heroin addiction.  However, Charlie fell for a girl named Lucy, and tried to make it work by getting a real job.  As I said, not as compelling as the Island adventure.

Jack broke out the guns from the Marshal’s case and he, Sayid, Kate, Sawyer and John set up a plan to capture Ethan.  They needed bait… and that would be Claire.

‘And the trap works, with Jack being able to subdue Ethan in a fight while the others surrounded them.  Unfortunately, before Ethan could answer any questions, Charlie, who had picked up Jack’s loose gun, shot Ethan multiple times in the chest in retribution for what he had done to Claire (and Charlie being hanged from a tree).

I enjoyed most of this episode, but there were a couple of things that did not go over well.

1. Claire has amnesia.  This is a tired old plot point to keep where Claire was taken secret for a longer period of time.  It is very cliche and seems like a lazy way to do what they wanted.
2. Ethan’s death itself was just a way to keep viewers from knowing information.  I didn’t hate it, but it could be frustrating to some.
3. The flashbacks were meant to show where Charlie’s feelings of being unable to protect someone came from, but it felt way too forced.  The flashbacks were a waste of time.
4. Again, the focus is on the drug problem in the flashbacks and was played for more humor than anything else.
5. Nothing is really done or mentioned about Charlie’s straight up murder of Ethan, who was subdued and captured.

Poor Scott, RIP.

Let’s talk about Walt.

“Special” refers to the young son of Michael (one of the bigger jerks on the series) named Walt.  “Special” is actually quite a good episode as we focus on the father/son relationship and the tragic background of Michael and how he is prevented from being in his son’s life.

However, much like “Raised By Another,” this feels incomplete after seeing the whole seasons because there is a story that is set up involving Walt that never gets to be fully played out.

The reason was the actor who played Walt, Malcolm David Kelley, was written off the show in the early part of season two because of the fact that the actor was nearing puberty and would begin growing at a rate that would not work for the show.  The show was not progressing as quickly in story time as it was in real time and Walt shouldn’t be growing as much as he would be.

Because of this, the psychic powers that Walt displays in this episode and some of the future ones (especially involving the Others) was underdeveloped, and, unfortunately, feels that way.

Damon Lindelof, LOST writer and executive producer, on the DVD of season one said “We sort of have ideas. ‘Gee, Walt’s reading a comic book about polar bears, and a polar bear shows up.’ Or, ‘Walt is reading a book about birds, and a bird flies into the window.’ I know what I mean by it, but I think when the audience starts getting disconnected is when you tell them what to think, which is: Walt is psychic.”

The episode did involve an intense scene involving a polar bear (special effects notwithstanding) trying to get to Walt with Michael and John Locke desperately trying to save him.  Michael also becomes the first character to be struck by a vehicle (in flashback).  There were many other examples of characters being struck by a vehicle (mostly a bus) as the show moved on.

Another standout point was the return of Claire from the world of the Others.  She arrives back right at the end, being discovered by John and Boone.

Much of Michael’s behavior can be explained by the flashback in this episode.  He had such a jealousy over Walt and Locke’s relationship because how Walt was taken away from him a a child and is raised by Brian, Susan’s new husband.  I’m sure that was a tough thing to deal with, losing your son’s love and the place in his life to another and Michael is afraid of that happening again.  Especially since Walt does not seem to be interested in anything Michael has to say.

Still, Michael is anything but patient with Walt and certainly shows his hot temper.

The raft is mentioned for the first time here as well.

I wish we could have explored the abilities of Walt in more detail as he is shown as someone that Brian was scared of and later the Others wanted no part of Walt.  Walt’s story is not sufficiently handled, though there is not much you could do.

Boone and Shannon pulled the old “Greg and Marcia Brady” in LOST episode 13 of the first season.

In one of the creepier (and not in a good way) episodes, we discover some tidbits about Shannon and Boone. For one, the are actually STEP- brother and sister. They are not related by blood, but that does not make the fact that they spend the night prior to boarding Oceanic Flight 815 having sex with each other any less weird.

Boone, who had been helping Locke excavate the Hatch, wanted to tell Shannon what they were doing and, because of that, Locke tied him up and drugged him so Boone would go on a vision quest allowing him to learn how to grow and continue to survive on the Island.

The vision quest led to Boone imagining that he had seen Shannon killed by the Monster.

When this first aired, I had sussed out the fact that this was an illusion to Boone and I was right about how Locke drugged Boone with the paste he put on the head injury.  When Shannon was killed in the episode, I knew that it wasn’t real.  Ironically, at the time, I remember thinking how TV shows did not kill off main characters and that Shannon was a main character.  Of course, Boone dies just a few episodes later.

This episode does make us wonder about the motives of John Locke.  He looks to be a darker force than we had seen him before.  When Charlie says that the one person he would put his faith in to save us all was John Locke, that was meant to be a statement that the audience found contradictory.  There is more effective character development in this episode fro John Locke than for Boone.

There were some things that we saw in “Hearts and Minds” that would become staples of LOST movie forward.

•  This was the first time when our main survivors are shown to have crossed paths prior to the Island as Sawyer is shown being arrested in Sydney while Boone is reporting Shannon’s boyfriend to the police.  Many characters are shown to cross paths outside the airport/airplane as the seasons progress.

• Kate became the second person to discover the truth of Sun being able to speak English.  Sun is also shown in her garden, which becomes more important as the series goes on.

• Sayid discovers the magnetic anomaly that messes up the compass.  Sayid dismissed it as a broken compass, but we know this is a major piece of the story moving ahead.

• The Sayid – Shannon relationship started to pick up as well.

There was a hilarious scene between Hurley and Jin where Hurley is trying to catch some fish, but steps on a sea urchin.  Hurley panicking and begging Jin to pee on his foot as he points to Jin’s crotch area as Jin is desperately confused is one of the funniest things we have had on the show up until this point.

This was one of the season’s weakest episodes so far and it shows that Boone and Shannon were not as beloved as many of the other survivors on the Island.  Neither of these characters would last for too much longer.

The twelfth episode of LOST focused on Kate and her attempt to retrieve a briefcase that She and Sawyer discovered while swimming in a pond.

The story was a bit of an excuse to look closer at the character of Kate, as most of the episode is dedicated to her.

Kate is quite the contradiction among the survivors because we know that she was the fugitive that was being escorted back to the US by Marshal Edward Mars.  Mars constantly warned Jack and us, the audience, how dangerous Kate was, yet we had no idea why Kate was being so dauntingly pursued by him.

Then, Kate is shown on the Island as an extremely likable, competent and friendly person.  She hit it off immediately with Jack and she is regularly shown as one of the top heroes on the show.  We got a definite switch in what we have seen with Kate during this episode as the liar and sneak came out strong in an attempt to get this briefcase back from Sawyer.  This is the first time on the Island where we see the type of person Kate could really be.

In the flashback, we see how Kate was involved in a bank robbery with a group of men, calling herself “Maggie.”  The robbery, for Kate, was all just a way to get into a safety deposit box that was in the bank.  Kate shows off some real bad ass skills and some coldness when things came down to what she wanted.

Yet, she was still contradictory because she refused to allow the other bank robbers to do anything to hurt the bank manager, going as far as shooting them to keep the bank manager safe.

Back on the Island, Jack has started to get wise to Kate’s lies and her deceptions.  Kate had told Jack that the key to the case was in Mars’ wallet, so they had to dig up the body and find it.  However, the key was not in the wallet.  Jack saw through Kate’s attempt at sleight of hand, and caught her with the key.

In the end, getting the case back from Sawyer (where Jack pulled some darkness of his own in what was most likely a bluff), they opened it up and there was a toy airplane inside (along with guns and ammo).  The airplane is what Kate wanted and, when pressed by Jack, Kate admitted that it belonged to the man that she loved and killed.  She broke down in tears after this, but Jack was not comforting her at all.  Jack most likely was still not sure what, if anything, she said was true and what was a lie.

Trying to make sense of the Kate that we know compared to what is being told to us is fascinating, and Evangeline Lily does a remarkable job of playing the character.  She is effervescent and gorgeous while still showing off how bad ass she can be.

By the way, Sawyer trying to break into the Halliburton case was very funny.  I loved the little scene of Michael and Hurley laughing at Sawyer’s attempt to pick the lock.  Again, it was little moments like this that really solidified this as a great show.

Other things that happened besides the Kate specific stuff included Sayid asking Shannon to translate from French some of the writing on the maps that Danielle had written.  This still played into Shannon’s overall feelings of being worthless, something that Boone is continuing to tell her.  Obviously, these comments are hitting home on Shannon even though I do not think that Boone realizes how much they hurt her.  Eventually, Shannon went back to Sayid and told him that she recognized what was written as a song “La Mer” from an animated movie she watched while in France.

The other bit included a very sweet interaction between Charlie, still suffering from nearly dying last episode by hanging, and Rose, who called Charlie out on his depression.  Charlie’s pain and frustration over being unable to protect Clair really is emotionally powerful in the little screen time it is given.  I felt myself tearing up a couple of times as Charlie recounted his pain.

This Jack-centric episode ended with one of the most intense moments from the show yet.  I remember watching the episode for the first time and really thinking that Charlie was dead.

Jack, Locke, Kate and Boone take off after Ethan, who had taken Charlie and Claire captive, dragging them through the jungle.  Jack’s obsessive desire to be a hero was compounded by his guilt over the fact that he did not believe Claire when she claimed that she had been attacked at the caves.  Jack was going to find Charlie and Claire and no one was going to stop him.

This is just one more example of Jack and his hotheadedness.  Doing this rewatch, I think it is apparent that Jack’s own behavior is what really drove Kate into the arms of Sawyer.

We also discovered that Jack had turned in his father Christian for operating under the influence of alcohol during a surgery where the patient died.  This was what Jack had done to his father that his mother alluded to in the previous Jack-centric episode which sent Christian running off to Australia.

The other major event that happened at the end of the show was Locke and Boone’s accidentally finding the Hatch which becomes John’s own obsession for the remainder of the season.

The scene with Charlie hanging from the tree is one of the most dramatic and tense scenes from the first season.  From when Kate and Jack cut him down to when Jack was pounding on his chest, the scene was very well done.  It was very emotional and, as I said it, I could not believe what I was seeing.  You can feel the anguish from Jack and Kate as they raged and cried over the fallen Charlie.

And when Jack paused and the camera zoomed out, it really felt like Charlie was dead.  Jack’s resuming of CPR was very feral.  Then, when Charlie came around, the joy in their faces were perfect.

I felt for Charlie, who had to face the fact that Ethan took Claire and Charlie failed to protect her as he said he would do.

This episode, along with the previous one, started to dive into the mysteries and the mythology of the Island, and this one focused on Claire.

Watching this with the knowledge of what was to come, this feels like a storyline that was dropped or changed by the people in charge and, if I were to say there was one character who was shorted in LOST, Claire would be the one.

We see Claire’s flashbacks to when she discovered she was pregnant.  She was not thrilled but her boyfriend Thomas convinced her to give it a try.  However, that little weasel only made it about three months before he took off.  I do not think he ever returned to the show in anyone else’s flashback either.  Thomas was quite the loser.

Claire and a friend had gone to a psychic named Richard Malkin who seemed to have a terrible reaction to Claire’s future.  He refused to continue the reading.  After Thomas left, Claire went back and asked him to finish the reading.  He had said he reacted poorly the last time because he saw something “blurry.”

This time, Malkin insisted that Claire be the one who raised the baby.  He said there would be “great danger” if anyone else raised the child.  Claire was freaked out by him, but he would not stop. He would call Claire in the middle of the night to try to convince her not to put the baby up for adoption.

When Claire discovered that she could not give up the baby, she went back to Malkin looking for help.  He told her that he had set up a nice couple in LA that could raise the child without any dangers, but Claire had to go tomorrow.  He got her a seat on Oceanic 815.  After hearing the story, Charlie wondered if Malkin knew the plane was going to crash and if he did this so Claire would have to raise the baby.

The problem is… later on in the series, we return to Malkin during a Mr. Eko flashback and he admits to being a fraud.  So, if was not a real psychic, what was all of this Claire stuff?

I personally believe that the show made a change in the plans for the baby (who would be named Aaron).  Maybe there was some contractual issues, because Claire would disappear for quite a time during the show’s run.  Her development does not feel as if that was what the writers had originally intended.  And truthfully, Aaron does become more important of a character in LOST than Claire was, but not with the strange, impending danger foretold by the psychic.

This episode also showed us the first “Other” on the Island.  Ethan Rom, who popped up an episode ago, was revealed to not have been on the plane (thanks to Hurley and his Census).  Ethan had “attacked” Claire in her sleep and tried to do something with the baby, but Jack believed that Claire had dreamed this.

The very end of the episode featured Ethan standing in the jungle in font of Claire and Charlie in one of the creepiest moments of season one.  The Others storyline was brilliantly woven into the series to provide a human challenge/danger for the survivors to deal with.  It was revealed wonderfully by Sayid, who returned to the camp after his interactions with Danielle, saying “We are not alone.”