"Lost" Exodus: Part 2 (2005)

User Rating:

9.3/10   

Director:

Jack Bender

Writers:

Jeffrey Lieber (creator) and
J.J. Abrams (creator) ...

TV Series:

"Lost" (2004)

Original Air Date:

25 May 2005 (Season 1, Episode 24)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Fantasy | Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

(Part II of II) The castaways on the raft are surprised at sea by something unexpected. Meanwhile, remaining islanders attempt to blow open the hatch, and a visitor to the encampment might be a threat to Claire's infant son.

Plot Keywords:

Smoke Monster | Mysterious Island | Labrador Retriever | Interracial Relationship | Wet Jeans

US TV Schedule:

Mon. Oct. 20

10:00 PM

SCIFI

Exodus

#1.24

Cast

Naveen Andrews	...	Sayid Jarrah
Emilie de Ravin	...	Claire Littleton
Matthew Fox	...	Jack Shephard
Jorge Garcia	...	Hugo 'Hurley' Reyes
Maggie Grace	...	Shannon Rutherford
Josh Holloway	...	James 'Sawyer' Ford
Malcolm David Kelley	...	Walt Lloyd
Daniel Dae Kim	...	Jin Kwon
Yunjin Kim	...	Sun Kwon
Evangeline Lilly	...	Kate Austen
Dominic Monaghan	...	Charlie Pace
Terry O'Quinn	...	John Locke
Harold Perrineau	...	Michael Dawson
Ian Somerhalder	...	Boone Carlyle
Fredric Lehne	...	Marshal Edward Mars (as Fredric Lane)

Runtime:

85 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Korean

Certification:

UK:15 | Portugal:M/12 | USA:TV-14 | Australia:M | Venezuela:PG-13 (DVD rating)

Filming Locations:

O'ahu, Hawaii, USA

Company:

Bad Robot

Trivia:

The last 2 minutes of this episode contain no spoken dialog whatsoever.

Goofs:

Audio/visual unsynchronized: During Jin's flashback, he meets one of his father-in-law's assistants, and the voice of the European associate speaking in Korean to Jin is dubbed; his mouth moved before the voice came through.

Quotes:

Mr. Artz: And then my third wife, she says - get this - she says, "I didn't sign up for this". Now you tell me, what the hell is that even supposed to mean?
[Hurley doesn't reply]
Mr. Artz: What, am I boring you?
Hurley: Huh?
Mr. Artz: You know what? I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm not cool enough to be part of your merry little band of adventurers.
Hurley: What?
Mr. Artz: I know a clique when I see it. I teach high school, pally! You know, you people think you're the only ones on this island doing anything of value. Well, I've got news for you. There were forty other survivors of this plane crash and we are all people, too.
[...]

Movie Connections:

References Star Wars (1977)

Season 1: Style without meaningful substance – fun but will eventually need to cash all the cheques it has been entertainingly writing

On a trans-Pacific flight from Australia to Los Angeles something happens, they hit turbulence and the next thing anyone knows is that part of the plane is on the beach with only a small number of people from the flight surviving the crash. Assuming control due to his medical knowledge, Dr Jack Shepard treats the injured and tries to organise the survivors to prepare shelter and salvage from the wreckage. As the group comes together and tries to cope with the horror of what they have just lived through it becomes evident that nothing is as simple as it seems. Everyone who survived has a story behind their journey, something very large appears to be lurking just inside the tree line and the island itself has secrets buried deep within.

Lost came to the UK on a massive wave of hype and as a result got viewing figures of about 7 million for the first episode or so – very impressive figures for channel 4. However within a few weeks it started to shed viewers and it was not long before only 50% of those had stuck with it. I can understand why they dropped off because this is a show that will frustrate as many people as it entertains and ironically for the same reasons. Personally the show falls somewhere in the middle – I like the slick delivery and the way that the mystery keeps you coming back but, like the millions that dropped out, I am well aware that really there aren't going to be any substantial answers. I doubt the writers even really know where this is heading but only care that they can keep things moving. And this is the problem; the plot is great as long as you just let yourself get carried along by it and never think anything through properly. Each episode makes very little progress forward, mostly dealing with some issues while filling the rest with backstory of specific characters. Every so often or so something will happen or something will rumble in the jungle to remind us just how mysterious it all is but really it is a lot of huff and puff without substance.

I hope I'll be proved wrong but I doubt it. After series 1 finished in the UK, channel 4 ran a mock "apology" for the last episode because I think they knew how p*ssed off viewers would be. However for me the last episode just did what every other episode leading up to it had done (questions with no answers) and in my opinion anyone expecting answers deserved just what they got. However the mystery aspect of it just about does enough to make it moving and I enjoy it while at the same time wishing it didn't eat up 6 months of my life. The problem will be that sometime it will need to finish and sometime it will need to produce answers and I foresee this being difficult. I can see series 2 continuing with this direction by just adding more characters, more mystery and more questions. I hope it will continue to be engaging because I can forgive how silly and false it all is – well, for a while anyway.

The characters are pretty thin and the "backstory" aspect of each episode doesn't really do much to stop that. So we have tough bad boy, hunky good guy, sexy but mysterious woman, troubled father & son, comedy fat guy etc etc, they could pretty much just give them little banners to carry to sum up their characters. Again though, this more or less works with the writing and why should the people be realistic when nothing else is? Everyone pretty much plays their characters well enough to work on this level. Fox made an appealing lead early on and has cemented his role even as others have become more interesting. Lilly is very good looking and works that angle well even if at times I felt like she was acting more with her body than anything else. O'Quinn enjoys himself tremendously in a very silly character but one that I like a great deal. Perrineau doesn't have the depth of character he had in Oz but he is still good. Holloway plays it straight "bad boy" cliché but he is good at it and has the looks and the muscle to carry it off. Kim(s), Grace, Garcia, Monaghan etc all work just as well but this is really not an actor's series. Instead it belongs to JJ Abrams, who learnt with Alias that if you just keep piling on questions, viewers will be hooked by the new ones and forget that the old ones remain unanswered – he drives this forward with mystery by only adding to it, never answering it.

Overall this is an enjoyable and frustrating affair that is enjoyable for as long as you can ignore the obvious – that this is using mystery and movement to cover up a lack of answers and substance within the narrative and characters. I suppose many of us just like to veg out and this is suitable for that; let the message board users worry about the deeper meaning and the solution to the ultimate mysteries the majority of the rest of us will just enjoy this until we tire of ignoring the massive problems it is storing up for itself.