![]() ![]() ![]() Once they pick up the dynamite, Jack, Locke, and Kate have a brief scuffle over who will carry it. After all, as Hurley says upon finding a ship in the middle of the jungle, “How does something like that happen?” In “Exodus,” of course, the Black Rock is the sight of Arzt’s famous death scene. By now, the audience probably takes the Black Rock for granted, as the place characters go when they need some dynamite, but it was a pretty eerie discovery when it first appeared. Of course, even the Smoke Monster wasn’t really the Smoke Monster until “Exodus.” Although the Monster was introduced 20 minutes into the pilot, it was only in “Exodus” that it became clear that all the Monster was a giant pillar of smoke.Īlso introduced in “Exodus” is the Black Rock, which actually is not a rock, but a slave ship. Why exactly are they going to hide everyone in a confined, unfamiliar space that may or may not be able to hold 40+ people? How is this the best strategy? * This part of the plot never really made sense to me. This kind of simpatico relationship between Locke and the Smoke Monster is pretty eerie and disturbing in light of what we now know. Later, of course, the Smoke Monster tries to drag Locke down a hole, and Locke asks Jack to let him go. First, we witness Locke’s serene reaction to the Smoke Monster’s noise when everyone else runs and hides, he just calmly listens to it head in the other direction. The main plot of the finale, though, is Jack and Locke’s quest for dynamite to blow open the hatch, so that the survivors can use it to hide from the Others.* This part of the episode takes us on a veritable tour of the Island, both of its terrain and of its mythology. * Did I get a little choked up seeing Jin and Sun in the early stages of their Island romance just a few weeks after the two of them met such a tragic demise? I’m not answering that. Part One also gets a fitting climax, with the launch of the raft, set against a nice Michael Giacchino score and some stunning shots of the ocean that only reminded me how much the show’s budget has shrunk ( compare the end of Part One, for example, to the CGI-job that opened Season Six). Nevertheless, Part One has some very touching goodbye scenes, like Jin and Sun’s separation,* and Sawyer’s revelation to Jack that he had heard Jack’s dad at a bar, confessing his love for his son. If there is a structural flaw with the finale, it is perhaps that Part One feels more like a prologue than a separate episode-the first hour mainly moves the pieces into place for the final two. Meanwhile, Michael and Jin are rushing through the final stages of constructing their boat, in order to launch before monsoon season. The episode opens with Danielle Rousseau showing up on the beach to tell the survivors that “the Others are coming” for Claire’s baby (who at this point is still unnamed). All the pieces fit together naturally, and in a story with as many things going on as Lost has, that is quite a feat. The episode is divided into three separate plots that are segregated enough to give each a fair amount of focus each one, yet related enough to have them connect and conclude simultaneously. Every character gets something to do-and it’s almost always something important and character-appropriate. ![]() “Exodus” functions almost like a feat of impressive engineering-the plot is structured so well that it almost doesn’t matter what the actual story is. “Exodus,” the three-hour finale to the first season, was probably the first episode that made me see that there was something uniquely appealing about Lost. There were moments of high suspense and taut action, but there were also stretches in which the show seemed to be spinning its wheels, and I found the flashback stories almost unbearably trite and boring at times. But there is one reason why I am still confident that the Lost series finale will be memorable for the right reasons: This show knows how to do finales, and “Exodus” was the first example of that.Īs I’ve said before, I didn’t watch Season One as it aired, and even as I was catching up on DVD, I wasn’t totally sold on the series. There are many reasons to be skeptical heading into next Sunday’s Lost finale: the massive expectations, the unevenness of Season Six’s quality, the limited number of successful television finales compared to the vast array of “disappointments,” etc. ![]()
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