Lost - Outlaws*

Lost has an uncanny ability to tie characters together through the most extraordinary of circumstances. Jack and Sawyer board a plane and should have no ties whatsoever beyond their situation once said plane crashes on the island they currently find themselves in Outlaws. But Lost reveals in it's own inimitable way just how these could be linked even as there should be no reason for such whatsoever. The show tickles the brain with its use of back story [of history, of the past] and how the characters are shaped and molded, evolving and developing because of their mistakes, trauma, and demons. Not all that we get access to regarding memories and the demons of the mind are necessarily the fault of any particular character focused on. Sawyer, as a child, wasn't responsible for the violent death of his mother. Jack didn't want to inform the medical board on his father's inebriated state in the operating room. Even right before Outlaws, Charlie didn't ask for Ethan to kidnap Claire, murder a member of the plane crash party, or attempt to lynch him.

Now to the uncanny: Sawyer actually met Jack's father. In a bar. In Australia. Sawyer kills an innocent man he believes is responsible for his mother's death. Robert Patrick had the supposed goods that would lead Sawyer right to "Frank". Instead the guy was just someone that owed Patrick money. Inexplicably Jack's father convinced Sawyer to kill an innocent man. How fate can play its dirty little tricks.

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