Exodus, Part 2

WHY AM I WATCHING EXODUS, PART 2?

In which shit continues to be real.

HAAAAAAAAAATCH

PREVIOUSLY, ON LOST

Seriously? Look, I know this show is heavily serialized, but it says "Part 2" right in the title. Take some initiative. Previously on Lost, all this stuff happened. Caught up? Good.

He's just so HAPPY!

THE FLASHBACK(S)

Gonna get the flashbacks out of the way first this week. They're good character pieces, but don't really have much to do with the plot. We start out at the airport, just after Sun spilled tea all over Jin. He goes to clean himself up and there's a white dude in there warshing his hands. I swear I've seen this dude before, but both his Lostpedia page and his IMDB page come up empty. Anyways, first he talks to Jin in English, but once Jin's guard is down he starts talking in Korean. He's just letting Jin know that Mr. Paik is watching him and knows he wants to run. But all he's gotta do is deliver the watch and come home, or else he loses Sun. In the bottom of a river. Because one of them will be wearing cement shoes. And probably tied up. Which seems like overkill. But it's effective. The scene ends with a close up of Jin's scared face as the goon tells him that he will never ever be free. Smash cut to Jin on the raft, hair blowing in the wind, free as a bird.

Next up is Charlie. Ol' Chuck got super high with a groupie last night and is probably going to miss his flight. He's getting ready and his cough friend cough wants one last bump for the road. Sadly they drugged all the drugs last night and now there are no more drugs to have. (Can you tell I just get wicked baked all the time?) She starts hitting him, convinced that he's hiding drugs upon his person. He says he's not and eventually fights her off. But it turns out he had one last drugs left. It's pathetic, but it's supposed to be. And it's a good refresher course for when drug things happen later in the episode.

We move over to Michael and Walt. Mike is trying to bond with his kid, but Walt is busy catching Pokeymans. So Michael finds a payphone to check in with work. But that was just a clever ruse to fool Walt. (One of Lost's major themes is Deception) He's actually calling his mom. He can't take care of Walt. "This wasn't the plan" Then he turns around and sees Walt standing there. Walt acts like he didn't just hear the conversation though and asks for new batteries for his Game Boy Color.Again, there is some great juxtaposition, as we cut to Michael and Walt sleeping together on the boat.

So, originally this episode was just supposed to be an hour, standard length. But then the show was a huge hit and someone at ABC decided that this should be a 90 minute episode (minus commercials). But honestly, there's only 5-10 minutes of this episode that could be cut. But not this scene. It's all filler, but it's also hilarious. Hurley oversleeps. His clock exploded in the middle of the night. (including the hilarious duct tape over the clock brand logo, so they don't have to pay to use it), and a series of bad luck and pratfalls ensue as he tries to make his flight. But what makes it extra hilarious is all the Numbers in the background. These include, but are not limited to: Hurley is staying in room 2342. His car explodes and it coasts from 42 kph to 16 to 15 to 8 to 4. There's a group of soccer playing teens loitering in the airport and their numbers are Numbers. Hurley pays an old dude $1600 for his scooter. It's a real nice, subtle bit of writing and production design.

And now Locke. Poor, pathetic Locke. He's already pissed off that dude told him he couldn't walkabout and he's gotta come home early, a big fat bewheeled failure. And now the airport Lost the special wheelchair they use to get failures onto their planes and he needs to get carried onto the plane like a goddamn bald baby. Can things get any worse for old John Locke? Actually, no. He's pretty happy on the island. There's one last flashback, and this is filler that could have been cut. It's all the passengers boarding the plane. In slow motion. While terrible sappy music plays. It's super self indulgent and unnecessary. And it reminds me that for some reason the Marshall let Kate do her hair and make up before boarding the plane. Kate ruins everything. And climbs trees.

I'm going with a theme for these two episodes.

THE ISLAND

Jungle Squad is in the jungle. Hurley asks the question that's on everyone's mind. "How the fuck did a giant 19th century ship end up in the middle of the jungle?" "Ave you not noticed?" responds Rousseau. "Ze island, she is so fucking weird" Locke, Jack, and Princess Tank Top head into the ship to get the dynamite. Rousseau heads back to her crazy French maison, because she understands that hanging out in The Dark Territory is a bad idea. Hurley and Arzt sit down on a log, and just hang out in The Dark Territory. Arzt is mad he doesn't get to go an any missions. He'd be a good mission. Guy. Hurley just wants the conversation to end.

Jack, Locke, and the other one enter the ship's hold through a hole starboard. As they move aft, they see skellingtons chained up to port. They didn't get caught in the rigging, they were slaves who starved to death after this ship, which was carrying them crash landed. Lovely. They find the dynamite and get ready to bring it out. Jack pees on it, so Locke knows who is in charge. It's Jack. Jack is in charge. They bring the explosive case outside and Arzt starts freaking the fuck out. Nitroglycerine is very unstable. Even more so when it's been sitting around for 200-ish years. Arzt wraps the dynamite in a wet t-shirt and begins to lecture the group on proper explosive handling. Then he explodes. Oh, Arzt, will you ever win? Everyone is freaked the fuck out, especially Hurley. But they have a mission to complete, and so Jack and Locke start loading up the TNT. This is a highly tense and dangerous situation, so Jack makes sure to whip his dick out and prove that it's bigger than Locke's. I don't know if you're aware of this, but Jack has control issues. But he does agree with Locke's suggestion that they need to take twice as much as they need, in case someone gets Arzt'd. They divide the TNT into two backpacks. Jack wants to carry both. More to the point, he doesn't want Kate, the precious flower, to carry one. Kate gets mad, so Locke says they draw straws. Locke and Kate are the "winners" but I bet you can guess what Jack does.

They start the trek to the hatch. The plan is, if they hear any Cloverfields, drop the exploding backpacks and run. Then they start hearing monster noises. Between the trees, they see a mass of black smoke flying around. I'm telling you, this island is fucking weird. Then trees start exploding, the camera shakes, you know the drill. Everyone takes off running. Jack puts his backpack on the ground. Funny that. Kate leads everyone to a tree (of course) but Locke goes back to watch. At  first he is fascinated, but soon he realizes that he's about to be eaten by a pile of smoke and gets very scared. The smoke grabs him and starts pulling him through the jungle. Jack grabs him though, and now both of them are getting dragged through the jungle. Locke is getting pulled into a jungle hole, but Jack has managed to anchor himself and is keeping Locke from getting sucked into the spider hole. He tells Kate to chuck some dynamite down there. She starts to go for her backpack and Jack is all "No, dummy! My backpack! Oh, like you didn't know this was coming." Kate gets mad, but goes and does what Jack says. She explodes the hole and Jack pulls Locke up to safety. Then the smoke comes up out of the hole and gives us our first good look at the monster that has terrorized our castaways. And yeah, it looks like CGI smoke. Kind of anti-climactic, but it is fucking weird.

Down on the beach, Charlie is doing his Nice Guy Creeper act with Claire. Then Rousseau comes out of the jungle saying she needs to talk to Sayid immediately. So Charlie runs off to find him. Then Rousseau gets super creepy and starts asking to hold Claire's baby. Then Claire notices some scratches on those crazy French arms and has an amnesia flashback where she realizes that Rousseau is the one who attacked her all those episodes ago. Then Charlie and Sayid get back just after the nick of time. Claire's been bonked on the head, and Rousseau took the baby (who Claire has just decided to name Aaron. Good timing, Claire.) into the jungle. Sayid uses his keen detective skills to deduce that Rousseau is taking Aaron to The Others and is going to try and trade him for her daughter Alex. Man, there are a lot of names to keep track of on this show.

Chuck and Sayid run off after her. In the jungle, they stop to rest at the plane that Boone crashed. Sayid casually mentions that it's full of enough heroin to knock out an elephant at twenty paces. "Interesting." says Charlie, and when Sayid's back is turned he scoops up all the heroin and shoves it under his hat. Then they find a pile of food with a "Free Bird Seed" sign next to it. Charlie gets fooled by it and a crazy French anvil falls on his head. He's bleeding pretty bad, but doesn't want to stop and let Rousseau get away. So Sayid pours some gun powder on to Charlie's face and lights it on fire. Because second degree burns are better than a cut eyebrow? I don't know. Anyways, they resume the chase.

And while all this is going on, there is some good old fashioned male bonding happening out on the raft. Michael and Jin are learning each other's language. Jin gives Michael the watch that caused the fight way back when. Walt gets to drive. When part of the boat breaks, Sawyer goes and stops it from sinking to the bottom of the sea. Which goes well until Michael finds the gun in Sawyer's shirt. But all in all, it's a nice boat trip. I'm sure they'll get rescued soon.

Charlie and Sayid find Rousseau at the fires which are making the non-sentient smoke. At least I don't think the smoke is alive. I'm not sure though, this island is fucking weird. She thought this is where The Others would be. But they're not, so she returns the baby. She's very confused though, she very clearly heard them say they were going after "the boy".

The boy on the raft spots it first. A blip on the radar. There's a ship nearby. But it's getting farther away. So they shoot off their flare gun. The blip comes closer. They see some lights! They're saved! A small boat pulls up alongside of them, captained by a hillbilly played by character actor M.C. Gainey. You probably know him best from his role as "Roadie" in The Country Bears. He makes it very clear that he doesn't care about them, he just wants Walt. Michael is not on board with this plan. So he gets punched in the face and Sawyer gets shot. The Others take Walt and blow up the raft. So that could have gone better.

Jungle Squad is now Team Hatch, and is setting up the explosives to blow the hatch. Kate wants to talk about the backpack fiasco from before, but Jack wants to talk about how he doesn't trust Locke instead. Deflect much, Shepard? Hurley finishes setting things up, but before Locke can light the fuse, Hurley spies with his li'l eye something that begins with 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. The Numbers are embossed on the hatch. Hurley freaks the fuck out, but Locke lights the fuse anyway. Hurley tries to stamp it out, but it doesn't work. Luckily Jack is able to tackle Hurley before he Arzts all over the place. They get the door open and Jack and Locke stare down the hole as the camera just keeps going farther and farther down. I love this show.

The last known location of Dr. Arzt

THE RANDOM THOUGHTS

• Season one is done you guys! Holy shit! I've got something fun planned for next week, then it's on to season two. And I've got other fun tangents and digressions planned for the coming year. 
• Apparently this episode was supposed to have the first of many threatened Vincent flashbacks. They never got around to it, but I kind of wish they did. That could have been a fun, one off gag. 
• There's allegedly a bird that squawks out "Hurley" but I didn't hear it. 
• Fucking wikia is getting insane with the ads anymore. I can't even read Lostpedia or Memory Alpha on my phone now.
• Yes, I am the type of nerd who goes and reads about how phasers work when he's bored. 
• I wonder if M.C. Gainey is related to M.C. Scat Kat.

I never should have peed on that fire. All it did was make the smoke angry.

FENWAY PARK

• DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO! (variant) 
• You're going to have to go back
• Walt! (4x)
• WAAAAALT!! (3x)
• I didn't keep track of how many times she said it, but I realized I need to add Claire screaming "My baby!" to my catchphrase list.