1.25 Exodus (2)
Claire: "No one is punishing us. There's no such thing as fate."
The theme of this first hour was fate vs. reason.
This episode's Most Obvious Symbolism was the skeletons of the slaves
in the Black Rock, still in their chains, slaves to fate like the Lostaways.
Locke certainly believes in fate. He's the high priest of the Island,
and deeply invested in the supernatural. Hurley believes he is bad luck.
Sun believes they're all being punished.
The flashbacks were all about being trapped: Jin almost literally the
slave of his poisonous father-in-law; Charlie a prisoner of his addiction;
and Michael fighting his sudden new role as Walt's father. And now,
all three of them are confined on the Island, but they're free of the
past, of their fate. Michael has *chosen* to become Walt's father. Jin
is finally free to make his own decisions. And Charlie can choose not
to pick that heroin off the ground. The Raft itself is a big symbol
of self-determination.
Jack refused to let fate dictate to him. Locke insisted that they draw
straws to see who would carry the dynamite ("We'll let fate decide,")
but Jack chose to carry Kate's pack, anyway. Jack and Locke are polar
opposites, and they may be headed for a showdown; the two of them were
practically bickering like kids. (At one point, Locke said sarcastically
to Jack, "Yes, sir.")
Why the hell isn't Sayid the leader on the Island? As Jack and Locke
butted heads and struggled for dominance, Sayid was the voice of reason.
He was calm and collected; he organized the retreat to the caves, comforted
Shannon, and cooled down Charlie. He figured out why Danielle took the
baby and where she was headed. Maybe the message here is that it's time
for science and religion to take a back seat and let logic and reason
prevail. I wish.
I was actually hoping Arzt would blow up right before he did. Extremely
graphic wish fulfillment. ("He just... exploded... in front of
us.") Hey, that's what happens when a guest star tells the featured
actors what to do. :) Here I was, thinking Arzt was one of the Others,
but I guess he was just an incompetent high school teacher, after all.
Why did he choose a stick that had sweated so much nitro? And if the
nitro was that unstable, why hasn't it blown the Black Rock to pieces
by now?
And was that symbolic, too? After all, "Arzt" is German for
"doctor." Maybe Fate is going to win.
Funny how we've all been taking Danielle's word about the Others. The
clues were all there. Of *course* she was lying, of course she was after
Claire's baby, because she wanted Alex back! But how much of it was
lies? Was her team really "infected," and with what? Did Montand
really lose his arm? Was there a Montand? Are there really "Others"
after all?
The best part of this one was that we finally got a good look at the
Monster. Jack and Kate saw it first; if you look at it frame by frame,
it was a small stream of black smoke that looked just like the smoke
sent up by the Others, but horizontal. And then the Monster arrived,
and it looked like the same black smoke, but a lot bigger. This time,
we could definitely hear machinery. (I guess it really isn't a cheesed-off
giraffe, after all.) What's even weirder, though, was I could swear
I heard that huge bird screeching names. The first sounded like "Hurley."
Did it also screech "Locke"? Am I imagining it?
Part two ended with Locke helpless on his back, seriously rethinking
his previous Monster love. Stay tuned for part three.
Character bits:
-- This episode began with a close-up of baby Aaron's left eye. Have
we ever had an eye without a backstory before?
-- Michael row your boat off shore. Sawyer help to save the rudder.
-- Another piece of Very Obvious Symbolism was Shannon literally weighed
down by grief, in the form of Boone's possessions.
-- Locke said to Jack, "You ever play 'Operation'"? Great
reference, since Locke worked in a toy store when he was younger, and
Jack played Operation for real.
-- Of course, Sawyer had to read the notes in the bottle. (Well, if
he left his "library" on the beach, he had to read something.)
Sawyer now knows that Tracey, who sleeps with Steve, not Scott, has
a husband and two kids in Fresno. And that someone named Hugo is worth
a hundred and sixty million bucks. I bet we hear about some of the secrets
he just read about next season.
-- Jin's flashback was the most disturbing, with Paik's henchman telling
Jin that he was a slave, had always been a slave, and would always be
a slave. I thought that having such an Anglo-looking guy saying such
terrible things in Korean was extra creepy.
-- Walt told Michael that his mother was wrong to keep them apart.
That was lovely. And Michael has turned out to be an outstanding father,
which wouldn't have happened without the plane crash. In a sense, this
is like what happened to Claire. That is, if she gets little Turnip-Head
back.
-- The other women let the men do the dangerous stuff, but not Kate.
Kate is like an honorary guy.
-- According to what I've read, the Bob Marley song Sawyer was singing
was about pirates, freedom and redemption. Fits.
-- Hurley's wish list: TV dinners, TVs, cable, cell phones, clean socks,
soap, and Twinkies.
-- All that fighting over one small lump, and Sayid literally threw
twenty times that amount of heroin at Charlie's feet. I think the Island
put the heroin there, just for Charlie. The big question is, will he
take it? Will he succumb to Fate?
Bits and pieces:
-- The flashbacks started to bleed into each other, with Sayid in Sun
and Jin's flashback, and Locke going by in his wheelchair while Michael
was on the phone.
-- I remember Locke saying he'd looked into the eye of the Island.
The Monster is shaped like a tornado, and a tornado has an eye.
-- Funny how big the Raft looked on the beach, and how small it looks
on the ocean. The hole in the middle of the sail reminded me of the
Oceanic logo. This can't be good.
-- The crew of the Raft noted that the Island is bigger than they thought
it was.
-- I'm glad we didn't see much of Arzt's bits and pieces. ("You
got some... Arzt... on you.")
-- With Arzt dead, that leaves us with 43 survivors. Or 39, if you
subtract the four on the Raft.
-- I could be wrong, but I don't think "Bjorn" is Dutch for
"baby carrier." :)
-- The Black Rock was a slaver enroute to a mining colony from Africa?
Another Africa reference.
-- During the Charlie flashback, the woman he fought was wearing a
teeshirt with a word "poison" on it. Obvious reference to
heroin, I think.
-- Michael mentioned "north by northeast." Of course, "North
by Northwest" is a classic Hitchcock movie about a man being chased
across the country.
-- Arzt going on and on about popularity and cliques in school sounded
to me like extras complaining about not being one of the featured actors.
:)
-- Jenna the airline employee talked to a crew member named Hunter,
who was on the plane. Will we see Hunter later on?
-- Clear Pandora's Box reference: Hurley: "Come on, really. What
do you think's inside?" Locke: "Hope. I think hope's inside."
Not Bob Hope. Unless he went on one too many USO shows.
-- Michael (on the phone): "He's not supposed to be mine. It was
never part of the plan." Huh? That's an odd way to put it.
-- Hurley, looking at the Black Rock: "How exactly does something
like this happen?" Danielle: "Are you on the same island that
I am?"
-- Jack: "You like to play games, John?" Locke: "Absolutely."
-- Locke: "I always get nailed on the funny bone." Is that
a way of saying Locke has no sense of humor? Or that he sees the humor
in everything?
-- Jack: "If anyone hears anything or sees anything..." Hurley:
"Like a security system that eats people?"
More in my review of part three,
Billie
©Billie
Doux