I Am DB

Trust me when I tell you that in my school days, I weren’t no math student (and apparently I weren’t much of an English student either). But one of the few things I did glean from Algebra is that every equation is comprised of parts, such as a constant and a variable. Last season, Lost gave us one of its best-ever episodes, The Constant, in which Desmond mentally traveled between 1996 and 2004 until a phone call to Penny stabilized him. If Lost itself is an equation, last week’s The Variable brought us one step closer to solving it. (Don’t miss next season’s thrilling installment, The Coefficient!) The only reason I’m grateful for the show ending next year is that I won’t have to face more titles inspired by advanced mathematics. Trig and Calculus can suck my long division.

I hate math. But I love Lost.

I BELIEVE THE CHILDREN ARE THE FUTURE
I want to start at the beginning, but in order to do that I need to start at the end: this episode sees the unfortunate death of Daniel Faraday (at least, I assume it does. Maybe he’s gonna make it, but it sure looked like the light went out of his eyes.

But how did it come to this?

There’s a Bob Dylan song called “Gotta Serve Somebody” in which he sings, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody/Well it may be the devil or it may be the Lord/but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” So in trying to understand Daniel’s demise, I wonder: who does Eloise Hawking serve? In a flashback to Faraday’s childhood, Eloise approaches her son with trepidation as he plays the piano (quite skillfully, if I may say so). She seems to be steeling herself for what she has to tell this young boy, which is that his destiny relies on the application of his mind toward mathematics and science. “It’s my job to keep you on your path,” she tells him. The emphasis she puts on the word “job” suggests that her duty as a loving mother is secondary (at least) to serving her master, whoever or whatever that may be. There’s a pall over this encounter that makes me wonder if she knows even then that sending Daniel down this road will result in his death.

CHANG REACTION
Outside The Orchid with Miles, Faraday just waits, checking his notebook, until Dr. Chang arrives. “Right on time,” he says, and follows Chang into The Orchid. How does he know the day’s details down to the exact time Chang will arrive? How is he able to be so precise?

What follows is of course the very first scene of this season, seen from some new angles. Faraday listens to Chang tell a construction foreman that he must stop drilling so as not to release a powerful energy. As Chang is about to leave, Faraday approaches him to make his case.

Faraday: I need you to order the evacuation of every man, woman and child on this island.
Chang: Why would I do that?
Faraday: Because that man is on a stretcher as a consequence of the electromagnetic activity that your drilling unleashed down here.
Chang: Which is now contained.
Faraday: It’s contained down here. But in about six hours, the same thing is gonna happen at the site for The Swan station only the energy there is about 30,000 times more powerful Sir, and the accident is gonna be catastrophic.
Chang: That is utterly absurd. What could possibly qualify you to make that kind of prediction?
Faraday: I’m from the future.

Now I know he’s dealing with a guy who believes time travel is within reach, but Faraday still might have tried easing Chang into the whole “future” thing.” I might have said, “Because where I come from…it’s already happened.” But instead, he skips right ahead to the “f” word. Back above ground and outside the station now, his efforts to convince Chang that he’s serious – even trying to point out that Miles is his son – fail. Miles doesn’t admit the truth when Faraday asks him for backup, and Chang drives off even more pissy than usual. Faraday tells Miles that he’s just trying to make sure Chang does what he’s supposed to do. Which I figure is to follow through with that evacuation order, at least for some of Dharma’s inhabitants.

OXFORD BLUES
In another flashback, we meet Teresa Spencer, previously seen in a comatose state during Desmond’s attempts to track down Faraday’s mother. At that time, we learned that Faraday was, to an unknown degree, responsible for her condition and that he abandoned her and fled to America, though even then we suspected there was more to it than that.

So here she is, Faraday’s research assistant and girlfriend. When he introduces her to Eloise on his graduation day, his mother shows little interest in her. Over a mother-son only lunch, he complains of her rudeness to Teresa and of her apparent inability to be satisfied with him, pointing out that he’s the youngest doctor to ever graduate from Oxford and that he just got a 1.5 million pound grant from an industrialist named Charles Widmore. Eloise registers happy surprise at news of the grant, and another kind of surprise at learning that it comes from Widmore, but she doesn’t let on that she knows him. Instead, she gives Daniel a present – the notebook we’ve seen him so often referencing.

MEMORIES…LIKE THE CORNERS OF MY MIND
Jumping ahead in time, we finally revisit one of our first meetings with Daniel, in which he watches the news report about the discovery of Oceanic 815 in the Indian Ocean. (Continuity Police – I love that they made no effort at all to match his hair with the original footage, where it’s all kinda slicked back. One moment his hair looks like that, and the next it’s flat and down around his face as we usually see it. Seriously? You couldn’t have attended to that detail?) Maybe the crew is suffering from memory problems, just like Daniel himself. You may remember that when Desmond visited him at Oxford, he was running experiments with his rat Eloise and, over time, exposing himself to large quantities of radiation…without wearing any protective headgear. I assume that is what damaged his memory. Oxford Faraday even says to Desmond that Island Faraday must remember them having this conversation in 1996, but Desmond says no, Island Faraday doesn’t remember it.

Daniel is visited by Charles Widmore, whose name he remembers as his benefactor, though they’ve never met. When Widmore makes reference to Daniel having been dismissed from Oxford, Daniel says that what happened to Teresa was an accident, and that he had run tests on himself first. Whatever did happen with her, it now seems likely that Daniel was taken away from her as opposed to abandoning her on his own.

Daniel can’t explain why he’s so upset by the Oceanic discovery, but the newscast prompts Widmore to make his purpose known. He says that the plane wreckage is an elaborate, expensive hoax – which he himself orchestrated – and that the plane actually crashed on an island which has unique scientific properties, as well as the power to heal Daniel’s mind and restore his memory. He wants Daniel to go to this island, which he says will “further your research; show you things you’d never dream of.” Daniel asks why he’s doing this for him.

Widmore: Because you’re a man of tremendous gifts and it would be a shame to see them go to waste.
Faraday: You sound like my mother.
Widmore: That’s because we’re old friends.

I assume Daniel will forget that little nugget due to his memory problems, just as Widmore says he’ll forget the confession about the fake plane wreckage. (Hey! Now it’s official: Widmore staged the 815 wreckage!) I wonder if Widmore makes Daniel this job offer knowing what fate awaits him on the island, or if Eloise alone is burdened with that foreknowledge.

That burden becomes more apparent when she visits Daniel at home in what must be mere days after Widmore was there. She tells him that he should accept Widmore’s offer and go to this island. Daniel asks if that will make her proud. She says it will, but she can barely maintain her smile before her expression collapses into fear, regret and sadness. Even before Daniel’s fate is revealed, we know from her look that something terrible awaits him.

By the way, we now understand last season’s scene where Daniel and Charlotte were on the beach, looking at three face down playing cards, with Daniel trying to guess what they were and coming up short. He was trying to see if his memory was coming back.

GAME OVER
Sawyer convenes a meeting at his house with Juliet, Jack, Kate, Hurley and Jin. The gig is up, he tells them. With Phil the security guard tied up in his closet, their cover is blown and they have precious little time to ditch Dharmaville. Their choices are to commandeer the sub and get off the island, or head into the jungle and start from scratch. Jin won’t leave the island while there’s a chance Sun is on it, and Hurley doesn’t want to go either after all the effort involved in getting back (hmm, we still don’t know why he came or how he knew about the flight). Before the rest can weigh in, Faraday and Miles arrive and the former says he needs to find the Hostiles, one of whom is his mother. “She is the only one on this island who can get us back to where we belong,” he says. Oh yeah, that’s right! I neglected to mention that Faraday’s whole reason for returning to the island was that he saw Jack, Kate and Hurley in the new recruit photo and he needs to know how they got to 1977. Early in the episode, Jack informs him that they arrived via a plane that they were told to board by his mother. And he told Jack that his mother was wrong and they shouldn’t be here.  So…there’s that.

What Faraday says about her being the only one who can get them back where they belong is an important point, as it reinforces that Eloise seems to be a gatekeeper of sorts. Why is it that she would know how to readjust their course on the island? Why is it that she knows how to get to the island? Is she the sole keeper of this information? Later in the episode, in 2007, Eloise will be approached by Widmore, which once again leads me to wonder how he could possibly not know for all these years that she holds the key to getting back to the island.

Come to think of it, how does Faraday even know that his mother is a Hostile? He didn’t know it when they wound up in 1954 and he told her to bury the bomb. Or at least, he certainly didn’t let on that he knew. Did he somehow learn about her while in Ann Arbor? I can’t see how…

Sawyer resists the idea of Faraday going to the Hostiles, so Jack looks to Kate to tell him where they can be found. Jack says whether they go on the sub or go to the beach, they don’t belong here. “I belonged here just fine until you came back, Doc,” Sawyer says.

Jack looks to Kate again. “Kate, you made me promise to never ask what happened to Aaron, or why you came back here. But I know that reason isn’t…it isn’t here. It’s not now.” Kate agrees to take Faraday, with Jack tagging along. Juliet gives them the code for the pylon fence, and the rest remain to pack what they can and flee.

Oh, and before heading out, Faraday spies little Charlotte on a swing-set and goes to tell her that when Dr. Chang asks people to leave the island, she and her mother have to go. Just like she told him he would when she was dying.

This is followed by a shootout with Radzinsky and a few of his men, who come upon Jack, Kate and Faraday taking guns from the motor pool. Our trio manages to escape in a jeep, though Faraday is grazed by a bullet. While treating the wound out near the pylons, Faraday reiterates a lesson we learned from Miles a few episodes ago: “Any one of us can die, Jack.” It’s a loaded moment; the words hang there and the camera lingers on Faraday, then moves to Jack. It’s loaded with the inevitability that one of them might soon prove the statement right. And we know which one did…for now. I’m still left with the faintest feeling though…wouldn’t it be ballsy to kill Jack at the end of this season?

Think about it…he dies, but remains a presence on the island, occupying the same ethereal plane his father is on…and the one Locke is possibly on. Father and son reunited, Man of Science and Man of Faith reunited, all with a common purpose. I don’t think it will happen…but I think it could.

And if it doesn’t, I still think chances are high Jack will die before the end of the show. What’s left for him in the real world? A happily ever after with Kate? I feel like that ship has sailed. Jack’s fate seems tied to the island. And remember Ben’s words (not that you can ever trust them, but still) when they were preparing to return: “Find yourself a suitcase. If there’s anything in this life you want, pack it in there. Because you’re never coming back.” Jack dying soon would even, in a way, honor J.J. Abrams’ original intention, which was to kill Jack off at the beginning the series. His plan was for Jack to be introduced as the apparent leader of the survivors, only to have him die three-quarters of the way through the first episode. But the network rejected this idea, fearing viewers would be alienated. Anyway, most people probably assume that because Jack is the primary hero of the show, he’ll survive at least until near the end, if not all the way through. So for him to die with a whole season left to go…

CAUSE AND EFFECT
Once they’ve crossed over into Hostile territory, Faraday lays out what’s about to happen and why his mission is of such crucial importance. And here comes that trippy time travel, butterfly effect shit that I eat up like sugar.

I love it. This entire chain of events is gonna start happening this afternoon. Awesome.

I know I’m not the only one among you who was thinking that Kate isn’t likin’ that plan so much, knowing that all her problems with the law will start over if the plane lands in L.A. She might argue against Faraday’s plan, and with good reason. But while I’d feel for her plight, my counter-argument would be rather simple: Charlie. Boone. Shannon. Michael. Ana-Lucia. Libby. Eko. Rousseau. Alex. Charlotte…

Speaking of which, the wild idea that floated into my mind briefly after this episode was that Faraday’s plan will kinda work. He’ll change the future, but only to a small degree. The plane will still crash on the island, but events will unfold differently than they did the first time. And that would be the set-up for Season Six. And the big surprise would be that because we re-visit the plane crash, departed cast members Boone, Shannon and Charlie – and perhaps some from the tail section – would return to the show as regulars.

That wouldn’t work, I quickly realized, because Harold “Michael” Perrineau is starring on another show, and Malcolm David “Walt” Kelly has reached the far shores of Pubertyland. That plot development would also free the creators from having to answer a lot of big questions, like why Claire disappeared into the jungle with her Ghost Dad, why some people were in 1977 while others were in 2007, why Locke is walking around again…and so on. Still, I feel like there would be ways of making it work. Can I leave it hanging out there as a radical possibility?

Okay, getting back to business: Faraday wants to detonate Jughead. I assume that’s part of the reason he wants to find his mother – not just because she can help them get back where they belong, but because she knows where the bomb is…since he’s the one who told her to bury it. But I gotta ask – and hey, I’m no physicist – but can someone explain to me how detonating an H-bomb will be any less catastrophic to the island and its inhabitants than an enormous blast of electromagnetic energy?

Also, isn’t it a little bit early for the incident to occur? (For surely that’s what this release of energy from the Swan site constitutes: the “incident” that Chang spoke of in The Swan orientation video, and the incident for which next week’s season finale will be named. Don’t you think?) As I pointed out in the previous write-up, Chang – aka Dr. Marvin Candle – says in the video that The Swan was “originally constructed as a laboratory where scientists could work to understand the unique electromagnetic fluctuations emanating from this sector of the island. Not long after the experiments began, however, there was…an incident.” It clearly sounds like The Swan was up and running with its normal purpose in place before this “incident” ever occurred. So does Faraday have his facts wrong? Or has the show just lapsed into complete inconsistency? Or are there different incidents?

And one other thing – if The Swan’s original purpose was for study, why does Faraday say it won’t be built if he can prevent the release of the energy? Wouldn’t it just be built with maybe a little less concrete? Maybe it would look a little different, but it would still be built, right? Built and used for its original purpose, that being the study of electromagnetic energy, rather than the prevention of releasing electromagnetic energy?

IN THE BALANCE
Let’s briefly interrupt Faraday’s mission impossible to return to life off-island in 2007. Desmond is one tough son of a bitch, cause after the beatdown he gave Ben on the pier, I assumed he was unharmed by Ben’s bullet. I thought it must have grazed him, or been absorbed by a pot roast hidden in his grocery bag. But no, he did take the bullet, and now he’s been rushed into the emergency room. As Penny and little Charlie wait, they are visited by Eloise, who tells Penny that she is Daniel Faraday’s mother. “I came, Penelope, to apologize. Your husband has become a casualty in a conflict that’s bigger than him, bigger than any of us.”

The word “casualty” alarms Penny. “What do you mean, is Des gonna be okay?”

“I don’t know,” Eloise says. “For the first time in a long time, I don’t know what’s going to happen next.” Is that because this is as far as she’s ever been able to see, or is it because the course of events she has always expected has somehow been altered? Maybe some action taken on the island has already changed the future that she’s been used to for so long. I’m not thinking anything as major as what Faraday proposes to do with Jughead…but some alteration that has changed the course of future history.

When the news arrives that Desmond is okay, Eloise slips out. Outside the hospital, Widmore steps from the shadows and asks if Desmond is okay.

Eloise: Your daughter’s in there. Why don’t you go in and say hello?
Widmore: Unfortunately Eloise, my relationship with Penelope is one of the things I had to sacrifice.
Eloise: Sacrifice? Don’t you talk to me about sacrifice, Charles. I had to send my son back to the island, knowing full well that…
Widmore: He’s my son too, Eloise.

Bombshell!!

Or was it? I dunno, was that obvious? Did any of you see it coming? I brought it up as a possibility in my write-up for Whatever Happened, Happened, but it was just speculation after Richard was warned that taking young Ben might upset Ellie and Charles. I asked, “What is this Ellie and Charles business? Is Richard no longer the leaders of The Others, as he appeared to be when we first met Ellie and Young Widmore in the 1950’s? If he is no longer in charge, how did that come to pass? And are Ellie and Widmore sharing power? And more importantly, are Ellie and Widmore gettin’ it on? Are Penny Widmore and Daniel Faraday siblings? Do I have any reason to suspect as much? No? Think that’ll stop me from suspecting it anyway?”

Another minor victory…unless I was the only one who didn’t see this writing on the wall from a mile away.

Eloise slaps Widmore when he refers to Daniel as his son. Why the slap? Was she forced to raise Daniel alone and resents Widmore for it? Was Widmore the one who put Faraday on his path, as a young boy, to the island? Is it because Widmore didn’t have to bear the burden of knowing what would happen to his son? Is Widmore the somebody that Eloise has gotta serve? (Nah, I’m guessing the one she serves goes higher than Widmore.) If Eloise resents Widmore, for whatever reason exactly, does that explain why she helped Ben get back to the island but never helped him?

LOWER THE GUN, STUPID!!
Why Daniel, why do you go marching into the Hostile’s camp and refuse to lower your gun? You’re surrounded by people with rifles, there’s no way you can get what you want in his situation by means of firepower. Richard seems willing to talk to you! All you have to do is lower your gun, and you can have a civil conversation regarding your mother’s whereabouts. You’re smarter than this. You’re so much smarter than this that I wonder if you’re doing it deliberately; if you’re trying to make them kill you; if that’s part of your plan. Except that doesn’t make sense given what you just told Jack and Kate about your intentions. Plus, you seemed genuinely surprised that you were shot – not just surprised that your mother did the shooting, but surprised that you were shot at all. Which brings me back to my original point. Lower your gun!! There’s no reason you can’t lower your gun. There’s no reason you need to die. Why, damn you, why?!!?

Okay, so maybe there is a reason you need to die. Maybe it’s to service the plot. But you don’t know that! You don’t know there’s a plot! You’re a character! So just lower the gun, Stupid!

Okay, so maybe I was affected by Faraday’s death. No, I didn’t cry. But he’s such a great character, and my respect for Jeremy Davies dates back to Saving Private Ryan. Maybe tonight’s episode will shed light on the reason for his death. And hey, maybe there’s a chance he’ll pull through. Maybe Eloise will realize what she’s done and bring him into The Temple to let the healing begin! Of course, if it were that simple, Future Eloise probably wouldn’t be so emotional about encouraging his return to the island. And like I said earlier, it really did look like he breathed his last breath. I guess I’m just clinging to wishful thinking. There’s a chance, but not a great one…

Riddle me this, though: how is it that Eloise is even on the island now, in 1977? Shouldn’t she be on the mainland with Daniel? I don’t know how old he’s supposed to be, but given the flashback we saw to his piano-playing childhood…wouldn’t you figure that had to be sometime around ’77? Also, why don’t Eloise and Richard recognize Daniel from the good ‘ol Jughead days? Maybe I’m overestimating the power of memory – after all, their encounter back then only lasted part of a single day. Maybe they just don’t remember his face. Or maybe they do. Richard did ask if they knew each other, but I read that less as “you look sort of familiar” and more as “should I know who you are?” And Eloise had barely stared into his dying face when the show ended, so maybe she did recognize him and it just took her a minute to place him. Again, tonight’s episode might clear it up.

Fine, I’ll be patient and give them a chance to actually answer questions before I ask them.

LOOSE ENDS/FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-One of the things I keep thinking about – okay, there are obviously many, many, many things this show keeps me thinking about – but one that has been front of mind for weeks is why the Oceanic Six needed to return to the island. They were told by Locke, who was told by both Richard Alpert and Christian Shepherd, that the Flight 815 survivors left behind on the island would die if Jack, Kate, Sayid, Hurley and Sun didn’t come back (or what they may have said is that in order to “save the island,” the O6 needed to come back. But saving the island and saving Sawyer and the others amounts to one and the same, so…)

And indeed, after they left, things were pretty bad, as Sawyer, Juliet, Locke and the rest rocketed hither and thither across the space-time continuum. But consider these facts, which I’ve mentioned before: a) the time warping was caused by Ben turning the wheel, which had nothing to do with the O6’s departure; and b) the time-warping stopped when Locke turned the wheel again and moved it back into place. In fact, Locke keeps saying that Jack and Co. never should have left the island…but if they hadn’t left, then Locke wouldn’t have left to bring them back, and the wheel wouldn’t have been re-set, and the time warping would have continued until they all wound up like Charlotte: nosebled and dead. So from one perspective, the O6 departure actually saved the lives of those left behind.

But I’m getting off track. Point is, the Oceanic Six (well, five actually) finally return to the island to find that, other than it being 1977, everything is copasetic. Everyone has assimilated nicely into the Dharma Initiative, and things are going particularly well for Sawyer and Juliet. Both have made it clear that they didn’t need the others to come back and save them from anything. So what’s the deal? Are all of us – the viewers, the Oceanic Six, Locke – victims of a big manipulation which led us to believe the O6 had to return to the island? Or has the danger facing the island and those left behind simply not yet revealed itself? Could it be The Purge? If Jack and the others didn’t come back then Faraday wouldn’t return, the Swan incident would happen, the plane would crash, the freighter would come, the O6 would be rescued, Sawyer and the others would be killed in The Purge, and who knows what would happen to The Island.

Or maybe something entirely different is in motion. If we’re keeping score: Richard, Christian, Ben, Locke and Eloise all said the Oceanic Six needed to go back to the island. And in this episode, Faraday says they didn’t. Alls I’m asking is: did the Oceanic Six have to come back? If so, why? And if not, why were they (and Locke) led to believe they did?

-Moving on, where the fuck are Rose and Bernard? Seriously, no one has even mentioned them since the time-tripping began. What the hell?

-I’m still wondering if Faraday will be revealed as the “clever fellow” that Eloise talked about (in her off-island Dharma hatch) who figured out that the island was always moving, calculated the equations to figure out where in time it would be at any moment, built a massive pendulum to help make those calculations etc. It’s gotta be him, right? But when? And how does that fit in? And why, I ask again, was Eloise in a Dharma station to begin with?  Could this whole thing be a ruse? The friction between the Hostiles and the Dharma Initiative, the “truce”…is it all just a big lie? Are they all really one big group…perhaps serving whatever lies in the shadow of the statue? Nah, I guess that doesn’t really make sense when you start to think about it. Plenty of mysteries still to be solved as Lost winds down…

-I came across two pretty good interviews with Damon and Carlton recently, if you’re interested. One is from Variety and one is from Lostpedia. They don’t really answer any plot questions or give clues away, but they do have some interesting things to say.

LINE OF THE NIGHT
Welcome to the meeting, Twitchy. Good to see you again. Pound cake’s in the kitchen, help yourself to the punch. – Sawyer

Tonight’s Episode: Follow the Leader

The Variable was Lost’s 100^th episode. Check out this cake that was made for them! Click here for a larger picture, and here for some close-ups.