Lost - Exodus**

"Exodus" covers some character back story for the principles of the cast, tying plenty into the current island narrative. My favorite is obviously Sawyer’s own back story and how he puts aside his pride to give Jack some comforting news to ease the current situation offering potential terrors. So previously we were privy to a scene involving Sawyer and Jack’s father. Jack’s father expressed how he wished he could just call up his boy and tell him how proud he is of him. Sawyer (flashback in a police office in Australia has a cop looking into his file to reveal his real name: James Ford!) is cutting bamboo for a mast for the raft-boat when Jack gives him a gun to carry along for protection, defense, and safety. Jack is holding back the intense emotions and this is one of those rare moments where Sawyer just does the right thing. “Exodus Part 1” is a really good episode for Sawyer in that it humanizes him. He’s not a monster, and we needed to see that. Jin-Soo had also been visualized as a male-chauvinist pig only later realized to be someone who actually does care for Sun-Hwa. Jin reveals in “Exodus Part 1” that he is going on the raft-boat to save Sun not simply to be free from her. Their embrace is all the more impactful because of the distance that was between them neither truly wanted. In the airport before boarding the Oceanic, an American couple with plenty of opinions about Jin and Sun passes off an unnecessary comment about “Memoirs of a Geisha”. Much like we were led to believe, at the onset, perception isn’t always reality. The father-son dynamic of Michael and Walt was certainly tense at first. In a hotel room Walt acts out with pumping the volume on the Telly with “Power Rangers” and fleeing into the hall with the dog, as Michael, properly angered and abruptly awaken from sleep, drags him back. But on the island, Walt has realized that there is so much more to his dad: that raft-boat was borne from his brains and will to get off the island. The boat’s construction and completion is a class example of ingenuity and hard work. Something quite admirable, indeed, is seeing that boat moving into the water as Sawyer pulls open its sail. Jack meeting a woman who didn’t survive the plane (Michelle Rodriguez in a guest appearance) at a bar as she seems quite confidant of a future better than what led them to the Oceanic offers a sense of tragedy and fate. The marshal dangling the errors of Kate’s ways in front of her as she prepares to board the flight, purposely mocking her illegalities by taunting her with the little airplane: fate weaved a not so favorable outcome for him. And Shannon's diva attitude is revealed in a flashback when she's in the airport, as Sayid lies his bag at her feet requesting her just to keep an eye out for it until he returns. It is a chance meeting that has its irony, particularly when Shannon tells a security guard that an "Arab left a bag at my feet" in the airport, with Boone just exasperated at her impulsive disregard. Boone tells her that she'd miss him when he wasn't there, and indeed she took him for granted. That irony has its lasting pain and Shannon is lost because of it.