I Am DB

THE POWER OF LOVE
Last week I made an accusation. I said that Lost has made a sport out of tearing couples apart, and proceeded to offer a long list of examples. But perhaps the comment wasn’t entirely fair. For one thing, as reader David Z. pointed out to me, I overlooked one couple that has stayed together through many ups and downs:

One thought on your discussion of Sun & Jin perhaps not being meant to be together – you list nearly all of the “romantic” relationships we’ve seen in the 6 seasons of Lost, all of which in one way or another, to some degree, failed, but neglect to mention the one very obvious instance of love seeming to conquer all – Rose and Bernard. They managed to re-unite despite being separated in the Oceanic crash, and they managed to make a peaceful life for themselves in the jungle back in Dharma times…well, up to the point they were (presumably) nuked in the Incident. No matter – the point still remains that their love was true and they were allowed to enjoy their lives together. While that appears to be the exception rather than the rule, I think it does leave some hope that Sun & Jin will ultimately meet again.

You’re right, of course, David. How could I forget Rose and Bernard? The fact is that while Lost has been cruel to some of its couples (and may be again), it has allowed others to triumph, and all have been handled with great tenderness and poignancy. I may have expressed concern over Desmond and Penny’s future in my write-up of The Package (based largely on the “next week” clip at the episode’s end in which Widmore was heard saying, “I’m going to ask you to make a sacrifice”) but so far their relationship has been one of the emotional high points of the series. The scene in The Constant when they re-connect by phone after years of separation – of him being trapped on the island and her searching for him – is one of Lost’s best moments ever.

My comment may also have been premature, what with love playing such a crucial role in this episode. It seems to be the link between SidewaysLand and the original island timeline, and with a little help from his old friends Charlie and Daniel, Desmond may be the key to exposing that link.

ONE OF A KIND
Desmond wakes up to find Zoe tending to his IV. He thinks he’s still in the hospital, so apparently at the time he was taken by Widmore’s people he was still recovering from the gunshot wound he suffered at Ben’s hands. Seems strange that he would still have been in the hospital – a bit of time has passed since that happened – but then I’ve never been shot, so I can’t really say what recovery times looks like. Nor do I know how long it takes to travel by submarine from Los Angeles to…wherever the hell this island actually is. Widmore assures Desmond that Penny and his son are perfectly safe, and apologizes for taking him away from them and not having time to explain why, though he assumes Desmond wouldn’t have come with him even if he’d been asked nicely. When Widmore says that he brought him back to the island, Desmond’s lip quivers with rage. A moment later he’s bashing Widmore in the head with his IV stand before being restrained by a couple of lackeys. “The island isn’t done with you yet,” Widmore says – the same thing Eloise Hawking said to him at The Lamp Post station last season.

Widmore tells Zoe he wants to run “the test,” which Zoe says isn’t supposed to happen until the next day. But Widmore wants to do it now. With a confused Jin in tow, she heads to a large generator room that is one part of the island’s Hydra Station. Behind the station is some kind of pen – a small wooden shed with huge cables running back into the station itself. Zoe enters the main building and tells Pudgy-Face that Widmore wants to run the test now, throwing them all into a panic. They start flipping switches, dials and levers but something isn’t working properly. Pudgy-Face sends a crew member into the pen to check for possible problems. On each side of the small room is a huge circular coil – or what people who understand science call “solenoids.” As this crew member examines them, another technician back in the station figures out the problem and flips a switch that apparently activates these “solenoids,” unaware that somebody is in the pen. Zoe and Pudgy-Face scream and tell him to turn it off, which he does…but it’s too late. They can only watch on the monitor as their colleague gets caught in some kind of energy burst from the solenoids. When it turns off, they run to check on him. The poor dude is on the ground, charred and smoking like a well done steak fresh off the grill. Despite the accident, Widmore wants to proceed…with Desmond.

What is the sacrifice he wants Desmond to make? I don’t get the sense that it’s a sacrifice of his life, but I’m not sure what else it could be. Also, how does Widmore know about Desmond surviving a “catastrophic electromagnetic event?” Has he finally had a long talk with his old flame Eloise? Last season, they saw each other outside the hospital where Desmond was being treated for his gunshot wound. In that encounter, she too scoffed at him bringing up sacrifice:

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

She slapped him in the face when he said that, and then left. How long had it been since they’d seen each other at that time? I’ve asked more than once in these write-ups how it is that Widmore was never able to find the island again after his exile even though Eloise seemed to know the way back all along. Perhaps at some point after she slapped him and left he finally got her to talk to him. And maybe she’s the one who told him of Desmond’s unprecedented survival and how he could get back to the island. But I’m not sure…there are still some things about Eloise we need to get cleared up on, including her relationship with Widmore. I hope we get those answers in the remaining seven hours of the show. More on Eloise later, of course…

Watching Desmond caught between the solenoids brings two things come to my mind: Egon’s warning to his fellow Ghostbusters about crossing the streams (“Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light”)…

…and the accident that creates Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen.

I think Desmond could rock this look, don’t you?

Oh, and if you actually want to know what a solenoid is, Wikipedia is always here for you.

RIGHT HAND MAN
Next thing we know, Desmond is in SidewaysLand, picking up his luggage at LAX after Flight 815 lands. He briefly interacts with Hurley, and then helps Claire with her luggage and chats with her, offering her a ride when her own doesn’t seem to be there. (If she knew that her cab would be commandeered by a fugitive, she might have taken him up on it.)  He proceeds to find his hired limo driver, who turns out to be George Minkowski, the freighter’s communications officer who died in Desmond’s arms when his brain couldn’t handle the jumps in time it was suffering. If only he’d had a constant…

George drives him to work, which is actually Widmore’s office. Desmond enters and greets “Charles,” who welcomes him warmly and gives him a hug before they get down to business. Widmore explains that his wife is holding a large charity event at which their son – a talented classical musician – is set to perform with the rock band Drive Shaft. Unfortunately a member of the band – who happened to be on Desmond’s flight – was arrested on a drug charge. Widmore is arranging his release, but needs Desmond to babysit him.  Widmore says his wife will “destroy him” if he doesn’t get the kid to this event.

Desmond gladly accepts the task. “You really do have the life, son,” Widmore smiles as he pours them a drink. “No family, no commitments…ahh to be free of attachments.” Desmond notes with surprise that Widmore is pouring from his bottle of 60 year old whiskey. “Nothing’s too good for you,” Widmore says. Of course in the original timeline, when Desmond came to Widmore asking for his blessing to marry Penny, Widmore made a sport of pouring them each a glass from that same bottle only to tell Desmond that he was unworthy of drinking such a fine spirit. Here though, Widmore hands Desmond the glass and toasts to Desmond’s “indispensability” – a characteristic he seems to possess in both timelines.

I wondered after watching this episode if Widmore knew all along that Desmond had an important role to play on the island and if that was why he treated him so badly and tried to keep him away from Penny. What if Desmond does need to die for the sake of the island and Widmore always knew it, and therefore made an act of disliking him because in truth he was trying to spare Penny from losing him? I like that idea, but as with every other possible scenario I come up with, it has holes. For starters, there’s the time last season when Desmond, after learning that Widmore had funded Faraday’s research, burst into Widmore’s office demanding to know where he could find Faraday’s mother. After giving up the address surprisingly quickly, Widmore issued Desmond a warning. “Deliver your message, and then get out of this mess. Don’t put Penny’s life in danger. You’re getting yourself involved in something that goes back many, many years. It has nothing to do with you or my daughter. Wherever you were hiding, go back there.” If that advice was sincere, then Widmore didn’t know at the time what the island had in store for Desmond, nor is it likely he would he have known about Desmond’s close encounters with electromagnetism. Furthermore, if he really was determined to keep Desmond and Penny apart, he would probably not have given Penny’s address to Desmond when he came looking for it in The Constant. And then there’s just the general fact that Widmore doesn’t seem to have had insight into what the future has held for those in the island’s orbit, unlike Eloise, who seems plugged directly in to whole notion of fate and what is “supposed” to happen.

O BROTHA, WHERE ART THOU?
Desmond arrives at the courthouse to pick up his charge, and of course out comes Charlie, who walks right past him and out into the street without a thought of oncoming traffic. Cars screech their brakes to avoid hitting him, but he pays no attention and walks into a bar directly across the street. Desmond follows and joins him for a drink, during which Charlie shares a story that explains his current state of mind.

So…he’s talking about Claire, right? Though he mentions Kate at the beginning of the story, his description of a blonde woman that he knows and is “with” must be Claire, mustn’t it? In this moment he’s describing, he made some sort of connection with the original reality, yes? And while he doesn’t understand it and can’t make literal sense of it, he knows that it means something.

Desmond politely mocks him, but Charlie can’t be deterred. “I’ve seen something real. I’ve seen the truth,” he says. Later, as Desmond is driving him along the marina en route to a hotel, Charlie offers to show Desmond what he was talking about…

I love seeing Dominc Monaghan back on the show, and the moment Charlie and Desmond share underwater goes into my Lost hall of fame. The way Charlie comes to and looks at Desmond almost as if he’s been faking it or as if he’s not affected by being underwater, then slips back into unconsciousness as if nothing happened. Awesome.

At the hospital, Desmond is told that he needs an MRI to ensure no brain trauma. He’s anxious to find Charlie, but the doctor insists he be examined. The MRI technician asks if he has any metal on him or in his body – a question which Widmore’s men asked him while they were strapping him into chair. Desmond slides into the machine and as the scan begins and he stares into the light above him, another barrage of images hits him – Charlie with his handy message again, but also images of him and Penny. Desmond hits the panic button and tells the tech that he has to find the man he came in with. At the admittance desk, he can’t get the info on Charlie’s whereabouts, but then he sees Jack walk by and recognizes him from the flight. Jack remembers him too, and Desmond explains his dilemma. As Jack questions the coincidence of someone from their flight being in the hospital, Charlie comes running down hall in a hospital gown and runs past them. Jack tries to stop him, but the camera doesn’t linger on him to show whether or not he registers that the fleeing man is the same guy he saved on the plane. Desmond chases Charlie and finally corners him.

D: Why’re you running?
C: Cause no one here can help me. Let me go.
D: Why’d you try and kill me?
C: I wasn’t trying to kill you. I was trying to show you something.
D: You wanna show me something, show me your hand.
C: What?
D: Your hands. Show me your bloody hands now!
C: You saw something didn’t you? In the water. What was it? What are you looking for, mate?
D: Who’s Penny?
C: I don’t know. Ahh…you felt it, didn’t you?
D: I didn’t feel anything.
C: Then why are you accosting a man in a dressing gown?
D: Alright, c’mon we’re leaving.
C: Whoa. You think I’m gonna go play a rock concert after this? This doesn’t matter. None of this matters. All that matters is that we felt it. You wanna try and stop me? Good luck.
D: Wait, where you goin’?
C: If I were you, I’d stop worrying about me and start looking for Penny.

So do you think Charlie has regained some awareness of his life on the island, or does he only think he’s experienced some kind of life-altering phenomenon that he’s trying to recapture? What I’m getting at is, does he think that by driving Desmond close to death Desmond might experience a general sensation similar to what Charlie himself did on the plane, or is it more precise than that? Is he specifically trying to make Desmond aware of the island timeline? His behavior underwater – when he suddenly seems to regain complete clarity and puts his hand up against the glass – seems pretty damn specific. Maybe Charlie knows what he’s doing, or maybe he’s being guided – even manipulated – by some cosmic force greater than himself.

WEIRD SCIENCE
When Desmond calls Widmore to say that Charlie escaped, Widmore is displeased and tells him that if he sees it as no big deal, he can go tell Mrs. Widmore about it personally. So George drives him to the charity event, where Mrs. Widmore – aka Eloise Hawking – is working with caterers and event planners. Desmond approaches her, and when she first sees him there is a flicker of alarmed recognition – a sort of, “Wait, WTF are you doing here?” expression. You could argue it’s just the brief surprise of seeing a well dressed man with a fresh gash on his forehead, but given what comes I don’t think that’s it at all.

Ha! “…a certain unpredictability comes with the territory.” Know what else has a degree of unpredictability? The space-time continuum. So…okay. Eloise appears to have full knowledge of both the island timeline and the sideways timeline. How is that? She seems surprised to see Desmond there at all, and then tries to get rid of him as quickly as possible. But the moment he shows an inkling of awareness of the original timeline, she becomes agitated and tries to deter him from his line of questioning. What is she worried about? Why is she trying to preserve the integrity of SidewaysLand? And why isn’t he ready to see the list? When will he be ready? What does he need to do in order to be ready?

I also think it’s important to say here (I touched on it earlier, but I want to be clear) that while Eloise seems to know about both timelines, I do not think that Charles does. When he locks Desmond in the pen on the island, all he’s trying to do – I believe – is see if Desmond can withstand the electromagnetic exposure. But I don’t think he has any idea of what Desmond’s previous contact with such energy did to him. I don’t think he’s expecting his little experiment to send Desmond’s consciousness traveling across space and time, and unlike Eloise, I don’t think SidewaysWidmore is aware of the other timeline. Anybody think otherwise?

Bewildered and frustrated by his encounter with Eloise, Desmond returns to the limo and pours himself a drink. A moment later, there’s a knock on the window.

THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE
Desmond goes to the same stadium where we once saw him running as he trained for his solo race around the world (and where he first met Jack) and there he finds Penny, doing some running of her own. As she finishes, he approaches her with the glow of a lovestruck teenager. He introduces himself, shakes her hand…and at that moment wakes up on the floor of the pen, back on the island. Widmore, Zoe and Pudgy-Face run inside, where the latter two seem freaked out that he’s fine. Widmore smiles. Desmond looks up at him and asks how long he was out. Just a few seconds, Widmore tells him.

W: I’m really sorry we had to do this to you, Desmond. But as I told you, your talent is vital to our mission. So if you just let me explain…
D:  It’s alright. I understand.
W: What?
D:  I said I understand. You told me you brought me here to the island to do something very important.
W: Yeah.
D:  When do we start?

Widmore smiles again, pleased that maybe this will be easier than he thought. But will it? Do you think that whatever Widmore has planned for Desmond – whatever sacrifice he wants Desmond to make – is the same thing Desmond wants to do now that he has established a connection between his island self and his sideways self? Hang on, we’ll come back to that in a moment.

Zoe, accompanied by the lackeys, is leading Desmond to…I don’t know where…when she asks what happened to him – why 20 minutes ago he was hitting Widmore with an IV stand and is now “Mr. Cooperative.” When Desmond tells her a lot can happen in 20 minutes, she suggests that the device fried his brain. Desmond, all smiles and optimism says, “Did it?”

“Whatever,” Zoe says. “It doesn’t change that we’re gonna…”

Just then Sayid jumps out of the bushes, snaps the lackeys’ necks and tells Zoe to run. She doesn’t need to hear it twice. “Desmond, I don’t have time to explain,” Sayid says, “but these people are extremely dangerous. We need to go now.” Desmond agrees (“Of course. Lead the way.”), as if that’s exactly what he wants. Is it what he wants, or is he just rolling with it? It goes back to the question from a moment ago, about whether his plan is the same as Widmore’s. He very much seems to have a plan now, but we don’t know what it is and if it involves following Widmore’s agenda or his own. Either way, he appears completely cooperative. He looks like a post-hypnosis Peter in Office Space.

Back at the stadium in Los Angeles, he wakes up with Penny leaning over him and saying that he passed out when she shook his hand. “I must have quite an effect on you,” she laughs. He asks if she’ll have a cup of coffee with him. Maybe she just likes handsome, vulnerable men or maybe she too feels a connection that she can’t explain, but she agrees to meet him in an hour, after she freshens up.

Desmond returns to the limo, where despite his newly retrieved memories he shows no sign of recognizing Minkowski from the freighter. He asks George to take him to the coffee shop Penny indicated, and asks him for one other thing as well: a copy of the Flight 815 manifest. “Just the names of the passengers.” Minkowski says he can get it but is as to why Desmond wants it. “I just need to show them something,” Desmond says.

LOOSE ENDS/FOOD FOR THOUGHT
-What was Zoe going to say? It doesn’t change that we’re gonna…what?

-This episode leaves little doubt that the original, “island” timeline and the sideways timeline are going to converge, and as I’ve said before, I expect that Juliet’s random dying words about meeting for coffee and going dutch will come back into play. Also, I’m sure that one of you said to me (during an actual, in-person conversation) earlier in the season that Desmond would be the connection between the two timelines. So if that was you, good call.

-Just to help me keep this straight (and I think others may find it helpful too, since it’s come up in conversations during the last week), here is the extremely condensed history of Desmond’s “uniqueness” as I can trace it from memory:

• Locke stopped pushing the button just as Desmond realized that his failure to push the button once before caused the crash of Flight 815. Locke then destroyed the computer, so Desmond crawled below the floor and turned a failsafe key.

• As a result of his exposure to the electromagnetism, he started seeing things before they happened (Locke giving a speech, Charlie’s death, etc.). Related to that, his mind also started time-traveling, so that he was re-living days in London with Penny but seeing flashes that his past-self didn’t realize were from the future (going to Widmore’s office to ask for Penny’s hand, hearing Widmore say that his foundation is sponsoring a solo race around the world and suddenly being hit with images of his boat crashing on the island).

• He leaves the island on the chopper, and when Frank accidentally veers off Faraday’s bearing, Desmond no longer knows where he is or recognizes anything about his present day (2004) circumstances. His 1996 consciousness seems to have taken over his mind, and though his consciousness travels between ’96 and ’04, his mind doesn’t recognize anything about ’04 even when he’s physically there. With Faraday’s help in both years, he is able to establish communication with Penny in ’04, thereby restoring his present-day awareness.

• His mind continues to carry the capability to experience time-shifts, as when Faraday knocks on the hatch door while Desmond is still alone inside and tells him to go to Oxford and find his mother – which results in Desmond waking up in 2007 and having a “memory” of that encounter.

-Last season’s The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham featured the long-awaited return (and sadly premature dispatching) of Matthew Abaddon. As he chauffeured Locke from one member of the Oceanic Six to the next (and to Walt…ahem…WALT), he explained to Locke that his purpose was to get people where they need to go. “That’s what I do for Mr. Widmore,” he said. I found it interesting – if probably irrelevant – that Desmond seems to fill that role in SidewaysLand. The assignment he’s given to look after Charlie fits the bill, but I’m also thinking about his statement at the end – that he needs to show something to the Oceanic 815 passengers. Now there is the question of whether that has anything to do with Widmore, but even if it doesn’t Desmond still seems to be playing an Abaddon-like role. I sure hope he doesn’t end up meeting a similar fate.

-Now that Desmond has seen what it was Charlie was trying to show him, do you think we’ll see Charlie again? Will Desmond enlist him in whatever he’s trying to do with the passengers on the plane? What about Faraday? Have we seen the last of him? The fact that Desmond bridges so many planes in space-time makes it fitting that this episode would bring back so many old favorites: Charlie, Faraday, Eloise, Penny and Minkowski. Cool to see them all again.

-Reader Lorelei D. turned me onto something this weekend that is too neat and bizarre not to share. The Lost website on ABC.com is posting weekly recaps of each episode that are hosted by what appears to be a Muppet version of Dr. Chang. The series is called Lost Untangled, and I’ve seen it a couple times during past seasons, done with action figures and comic book panels. We’re not sure if this season’s editions are official Jim Henson Company-produced material or not, but it sure looks like it. And if you know me, you know I love me some Muppets. I’ve only watched the recap of the last two episodes so far, but I’ll tell you: this thing is goofy even by Muppet standards, and Muppet Chang seems to be on the world’s largest caffeine dose ever. There is some seriously random humor in this, but I have to share it so you can see for yourself if you’re so inclined. Wokka wokka wokka and Namaste.

-Dear Lost,

Please give Frank Lapidus more to do. He’s way too good a character to waste, and he’s been sitting on the sidelines all season long.

Sincerely,
DB
Supergeek Fan

LINE OF THE NIGHT
Desmond: Is there any alcohol in this car?
Minkowski: Oh yeah.

Tonight’s Episode: Everybody Loves Hugo