I'm your "Constant"

Lostaways-

In a word...."Wow"

Now it's unnecessary and redundant for me to come up each week with new ways to describe how much I like this show, so let me just say that this weeks' episode, The Constant, was better than all of the previous episodes of all other shows in television history combined. There's Shakespeare, Rembrandt, and now Damon Lindelof (creator and co-executive producer of LOST).

We begin with a chipper Desmond on the helicopter en route to the freighter our four new Boat People promise they've come from. Said freighter is called Kahana, which according to a Hawaiian Dictionary means "n. Cutting, drawing of a line; turning point." But, as luck would have it, when Frank the pilot followed Faraday's instructions from last week to fly on the set bearing "no matter what happens" (in order to find the boat again) the three were forced to fly through an electromagnetic cloud that apparently had something to do with sending Dez back in time to the year Michael Jordan won the first of his second three-peats in Chicago, 1996.

Other great things about 1996: The Verve Pipe's smash single The Freshmen, the movie Cable Guy, Seinfeld was still on the air, I was in shape, and the Republican candidate beat Bill Clinton to become our 43rd President....is what I would say if the GOP had had any sense about them and hadn't nominated the biggest turkey of a candidate (not named John Kerry...remember that loser?) simply because Senator Dole was the safe play for a timid Party who cared more about the fact that he had "paid his dues" in the Senate for more than three decades than the fact that he was unlikely the best choice or even electable. Sound familiar?

But I digress.

Desmond, we already know, has the capability to travel back in time (see: "Flash Forward" episode from last year when he went back in time and re-lived his mistake in not marrying Penny). We also knew that the guy can hop forward (if only briefly and sporadically) to see Charlie's future and ultimate death. But then there seems to be something else going on in this episode that has accelerated the process. From the time he takes off on the helicopter till the time he lands on the freighter, something changes. When he arrives on the ship, and is put into the sick-bay with the only person creepier than Ben (Minkowski), we learn new information that others have similar time-travel powers as Desmond's. In fact, someone else has already died from its "side effects" (as Faraday describes them to Jack back on the island). We also learn that it is Desmond's consciousness, not his physical body, that travels in time. The common thing that all three of the characters who have time-traveled share is that each has tried to either leave or come to the island in a boat. Desmond on his yacht, and Minkowski and his friend Brandon on the ship's tender (small boat).

Desmond called the island a "bloody snow globe" at the end of season two when he was on his Jack-like bender (before eventually turning the key in the hatch). Perhaps he wasn't just speaking out of his rear when he said this. Maybe there is a literal line or outline around the island that if you physically cross it, you are no longer the same (or in the same time). Taking it even further, perhaps you have to be on a boat, up close and personal, when you cross it for the effects to take hold (which would explain why no one else on the copter seems to have been affected yet, and why the Others use a submarine to go back and forth from the island).

Getting back to 1996 time, Desmond is told (back in 2004) by Faraday to go and find him at Oxford College in England (university where CS Lewis taught for a while) and relay vital information regarding his time-travel experiments with a rat named Eloise. Dez finds out that he will need a "Constant" to avoid having his brain melt and decides upon Penny. He then heads to find Mr Windmore to locate Penny. In what will likely turn out to be a critically important scene, Dez confronts Charles Windmore who is busy buying the personal journal of the Black Rock's first-mate, Tovard Hanso. They talk things over in the Men's room where Windmore appears to be less disgusted with Dez than he usually is and even offers his daughter's address to him.

The last time they met was in Windmore's ofice where he told Dez that he wasn't worth the whiskey in his glass. This time Windmore seems to be much more willing to talk and even help our Scottish friend. I believe that this (among many other clues) points conclusively to Windmore being "in" on everything that is going on with the Boat People (Abbadon, Naomi, Faraday, etc.). Windmore, I believe, will be found out to be the person responsible for directing the ship that found Oceanic 815 to the Sunda Trench (but will have sent them there ostensibly to look for the Black Rock). Basically, Windmore and whoever else he's working with used the cover of looking for the Black Rock to send people out to where they had planted a fake Oceanic 815 wreckage so the world would stop looking for the survivors and the Boat People could secretly use the information that Windmore knew his own daughter was collecting to find Desmond to locate the island without her (and the rest of the world) even knowing about it. I mean, why else would there be a "Bat-phone" line on the boat (according to Minkowski) that was a direct line to Penny?

Moving forward back to the freighter ship in 2004, Dez, Sayid, and Minkowski decide to make a break for the control room and call Penny (his Constant). The door to the sick bay is open and Minkowski says "You must have a friend on the boat." This, could very likely be Michael and/or Walt. He would also then be the one who destroyed the equipment earlier because he is Ben's "man on the boat". But more on that next week.

So Daniel Faraday is as important a character in this episode as Desmond. He sends Dez to Oxford to help him, and at the end of the episode he is looking at his notebook where it says that if anything goes wrong, "Hume will be my constant." It shouldn't be any surprise to you when I say that the sole purpose for the Boat People coming to the island is NOT simply to get Ben. Faraday is a time-traveler too and has something else going on, or you could say, he's there for ulterior motives. I think back to the episode where we were introduced to each of the four helicopter people, and it begins with Faraday watching tv as the news of the Oceanic wreckage is first being broadcasted and he starts to cry. He isnt sure why he is crying. Add that to the fact that when he was testing the rat at Oxford, Desmond asked him what he wore for protection from the radiation over his head and he just kind of snickered. Faraday, we will later see, did the testing on himself after Eloise and is now hoping to use Desmond (someone he knew he would eventually see on the island) as his constant to accomplish whatever this ulterior motive is. (We might find out next week from the looks of the preview that shows Faraday and Charlotte donning Haz-mat suits.)

The end of the episode was nicely done with Dez calling Penny when he said he would on Christmas Eve and the two re-connecting their Odyssey-like love. Penny looked to be wearing a wedding ring (think: Helen Hunt's character in Castaway) and will probably break poor Desmond's heart when we find out she married some loser. But, I'll give her the fact that she's been working hard to find him and kept the same number all that time.

There's been some confusion about the time-line of Dez-Penny events so let me briefly clear things up:

-The earliest meeting of the two is when Desmond bails on his first love (Ruth) at the alter and goes to the monastery where he is promptly fired and introduced to Penny whose father SENT her to pick up wine.
-Desmond breaking up with Penny is the next back story we know of the two
-He then joins the military and we see that part of things played out in this last episode
-The next time the two are together is at the football stadium in LA as he is about to run the steps and meet Jack
-Desmond then leaves on the race and ends up on the island and Penny begins her search. Somehow she knows what to be looking for. Perhaps we will see another time-travel from someone on the island (maybe even Dez again) where Penny is told about what to look for (electromagnetic anomaly's). Because as of right now, we have no idea how else Penny would know to have those chess-playing scientists from the end of seasons two looking for electromagnetic pulses.


Needless to say, I'm looking forward to "The Other Woman" this Thursday. Juliet receives an unwelcome visit from someone from her past and is given orders to track down Charlotte and Faraday in order to stop them from completing their mission -- by any means necessary. Meanwhile, Ben offers Locke an enticing deal

Gosh, what a show! Anyway, that's my attempt to re-cap this week's episode, and here are some thoughts and theories:

-December 26th, 2004 is when the Tsunami hit the Indian Ocean and wreaked such devastating havoc on that part of the world. This will be two days after Desmond called Penny on the boat. It will have a huge impact on the island, the castaways, and the Boat People. Maybe there was another Tsunami earlier in the island's history (which put the Black Rock ship in the jungle and eroded the rest of the four-toed statue Sayid saw at the end of season two)

-Juliet will have a dream like Locke and Eko have had and someone (maybe her dead ex-husband) will tell her to stop Faraday/Charlotte as the preview from next week alludes to.

-Ben had told Michael to follow a bearing of 325 when he let he and Walt go, but Faraday has Frank the Pilot follow a 305 bearing. John 3:5 is the verse Eko had on his stick that told Locke to "look North". Ben gave Michael bum directions hoping that he and Walt would find the boat and then become his "inside man" who he could then blackmail to make Michael sabotage the equipment.

-If Minkowski is right when he said "It's going to happen to all of us", then more people will become time-travelers and Kate's could be Aaron, Jack's could be Kate, etc.


Alright, I'm donzo for now. Post your comments and questions. See you in the Funny Papers.

Love,
Faraday's Ponytail ('96 version)