It’s hard to notice stuff when your jaw’s lying on the floor, but this episode was really that good. Watching Desmond’s consciousness catapult back and forth across eight years of his life should’ve been confusing… it should’ve been way too crazy to follow, way too far out to make much sense to people. Yet when you think about it, the writers of LOST have been gently herding ("Shepharding"?) us along, building us up, preparing us for this exact moment for over three years now. The event horizon of clouds surrounding the island obscured the sun and all other points of reference, and the helicopter seemingly became one with the electromagnetic storm. Sayid notes that: "We took off at dusk and landed in the middle of the day". Relativity can explain the difference in two measurements of time, if the helicopter somehow traveled a much greater distance, and at a much greater velocity, than it appeared to travel. Charlie's question, "Guys, where are we?" now seems as significant as ever. Looks like 31 minutes is out the window here. When Sayid finally does get the chance to speak with Jack, they’re speaking live but about a day apart (island time). It seems the definitive answer is that time does move slower on the island than in the real world. But is there a day-to-day (relative) difference? In either event, Desmond goes Marty McFly, and that’s the real story. This time we get to see a reverse trip as a very confused past Desmond is launched into his future situation. The "only the consciousness goes" part was extremely clever, but even more revealing. If examined closely and open-minded, this one phenomenon can decode almost every inexplicable part of the show. More on that in a minute. Desmond isn't the only one trapped in a time fart. Daniel himself is skipping around, as foreshadowed by Doc Ray’s exclamation that "Faraday can’t even help himself!" Later on we learn that excessive radiation (or electromagnetism, how convenient) lends to the problem, of which zap-happy Daniel has no shortage. Eventually we see that he’s even got an entry in his own log referring to Desmond as his constant, which means that up until he came to the island he was still searching for that one thing or person (wonder where he got that idea from?) to ground him. He found that thing upon meeting Desmond the morning the chopper took off, and was pretty sure that would be the end of his ‘problem’… but upon playing cards with Charlotte that night he still hadn’t made any progress. Perhaps the act of helping Desmond reach his own constant, Penny, will finally ‘unstick’ Danny once and for all. Also skipping through his lifetime is Mikowski, who’s virtually an expert by the time they find him. I found his "I was just on a Ferris wheel" line interesting, because like everything else in LOST a Ferris wheel goes round and round and always comes full circle. You know who else got a nasty case of the jump-through-life crazies? Rousseau’s entire crew. This could very well be the ‘sickness’ she referred to so early on in season one. Look at how bat-shit nuts Desmond went in the chopper – now imagine Danielle’s entire crew acting like that while she’s trying to "shhh!" them as the smoke monster stalks the jungle and the Others pick off whomever they feel are on Santa’s list. Kinda puts a new spin on that whole scenario.
While we’re at it, let’s think back to Juliet’s arrival by sub. Was it coincidence they knocked her out for the trip through the time barrier? Or by relieving her of her consciousness as she passed through did they save her from any of Daniel’s so called ‘side effects’? As Ethan said, it’s a hell of a ride. But hey, let’s lock a really misshapen piece of the puzzle into place: Hurley’s friend Leonard. Could it be that he time-skipped his way into the mental institution after being stationed a little too close to the island? Imagine him living pieces of his life over and over again, in loops that get geometrically (Daniel’s wording, not mine) smaller. Now picture those loops getting smaller and smaller… until all that’s left is a tiny 10 or 15-second flash of time he has to relive over and over again: the radio transmission. The numbers. 4,8,15,16,23,42… hiccup!... 4,8,15,16,23,42.
Tearing a single page out of Dan’s book we now see mention of three events: A, B, and C. Anyone willing to bet that two of those events pertain to both times Desmond failed to push the button; once at the crash of 815, and once when he turned the fail safe key. The third event we don’t know about or it hasn’t happened yet (the end event?). Perhaps each event triggered an alternate timeline, and is responsible for the ‘rebirth’ of everyone involved (physical and spiritual healing included). This is hinted at multiple times throughout the show with "See you in another life". But now, when we begin to factor the time hiccups into the equation, we’re not only looking at concurrent time lines. We must now also consider time lines where someone’s consciousness (and only their consciousness – that part’s important) is derived from their past or even their future. From the beginning, the producers have hinted that where flight 815 crashed wasn’t nearly as important as when it crashed.
Taking this into consideration, what if the plane crashed before September 22Nd 2004? We’ve seen time differentials of 31 seconds and even a whole day now – who’s to say it couldn’t span a week or more? As we saw with Desmond, the consciousness is transferred but the body stays the same. So what if (and get ready to be totally creeped out here…) what if the plane crashed during a period in time when Christian Shephard was still alive? What if the only place his consciousness had to go was into his current body, tucked neatly away in the coffin that turned up empty on impact? Could this explain why Jack kept seeing him? Could this explain why Jacob looked like him for that brief instant?
"I guess you guys weren't ready for that but your kids are gonna love it."
''Unstuck in time'' - That phrase comes from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, in which Billy Pilgrim finds himself toggling between time periods of his life, including a trip to an alien planet. In the process, Pilgrim nearly loses his mind. Many have conjectured, and will continue to conjecture, that time itself somehow moves differently on the island than in the rest of the world. The Constant should put these theories on hold. The calendar on the Kahana freighter coincides with the amount of time that should have passed since the plane crash. Penelope’s reference to her three years of searching also coincides with the amount of time that should have elapsed since Desmond was lost at sea. The opening scene of this episode represents the first instance in which the camera shows a character's travel to or from the island. Neither Juliet nor Desmond was conscious during their 'intense' journeys to the island. Naomi described that land suddenly appeared 'out of nowhere' as she was searching over the middle of the ocean. Looking back at the Pilot episode, did a similar experience occur in the crash of Oceanic 815, a sudden jump through space, in which time advanced from evening to morning? The idea that Richard Alpert’s apparent lack of aging might be related to his travel on and off the island. Suppose that Richard Alpert has been moving back and forth from the island with great frequency, and each time he traveled at speeds approaching the speed of light. Whenever he made such a journey, days became mere minutes, and eventually decades of time became mere months.
Most episodes of Lost explore the conflicts that speak to the very core issues of the human experience: good and evil, past and present, present and future, science and faith, fate and free will, life and death. Lost suggests that every one of these dichotomies might be a false one, and instead only a matter of perspective. Consider the title of the most recent episode. Daniel Faraday borrows the term ‘constant’ from the language of the mathematics: "All this … this is all variables. It’s a random scale. Every equation needs stability, something known." As Daniel explains this concept to Desmond, he instantly interprets it on his own terms, in the language of love: "This constant … can it be a person?" Only the combined efforts of Daniel’s head and Desmond’s heart (as well as Daniel’s heart and Desmond’s mind) could find salvation from this predicament. The unlucky lab rat Eloise lacked either one of these human characteristics, so she could not survive the journey. Our short-lived newcomer George Minkowski seemed to possess enough mental faculties to understand what was happening to him, but he could not find the emotional grounding necessary to get back to reality. The Constant not only appeals equally to the hearts and minds of its audience, but the story also suggests that those two forces (much like space and time) cannot exist independently from each other.
Too bad this episode didn't air on Valentine's Day like the one where Sayid ... uh, ... kills his girlfriend did, huh? Anyway, finally, we get to the climactic scene where Desmond made the call to Penny in real-time. Was anyone besides me yelling when the phone kept ringing and ringing, "WHY THE HELL ISN'T SHE ANSWERING?!?!" But instead of a morbid ending, we received confirmation that Desmond has been "cured," as he once again recognized Sayid.
SAYID: I'm sorry, the power source went dead, that's all we have.
DESMOND: Thank you, Sayid. It was enough.
SAYID: Are you alright now?
DESMOND: Aye. I'm perfect.
Damn straight, you're perfect, brotha!
You know, we depend on the clocks on our walls. We use them to tell us what time to get up and when to go to work and when to get to the meeting and when to go to bed and when to get up again. We rely on it to keep the continuous loop of our daily lives from unspooling. It's a constant in our lives, a reference point. But how constant is it, really?
"People think of time as a sort of straight line, but when you look at it from a non-linear, non-subjective point of view, it's more of a great big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey... stuff." - Dr. Who
Wibbly wobbly timey wimey...stuff. That sounds like a good description of how Desmond felt in this episode.
TIIII-II-II-IME IS ON MY SIDE, YES IT IS
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