Lost 4.04: The Constant (Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'...)

So now that I've cleaned out my shorts and stopped geek-snorting long enough to be able to type this week's recap, let's do a little something different. Instead of taking you step-by-step through the episode, I'd like to touch on each of the major (and minor) plot points and reveals that were exposed this week. I think we'd all agree that there were a LOT of them, and I think I'd be doing the brilliance of 'The Constant' a disservice simply by rattling off a minute-by-minute description of what literally happened onscreen from beginning to end. This episode was one to be dissected, analyzed, and, most importantly, appreciated for being what I feel was truly one of the finest hours in the history of the entire show. 'The Constant' was a shining example of Lost working on all cylinders, and man, I really have to admit that my head is still spinning. The freighter! Minkowski! Desmond's trip to Oxford! That Sweeney Todd-esque phone call between Des and Penny! The diary from the Black Rock being sold to Charles Widmore! The mysterious bidder on the phone who almost stole it away from him! It's a damn good thing I watched the show this week by myself, because if there was anyone else in the room with me at the time, they would've screamed themselves hoarse from telling me to stop screaming myself hoarse. Did I mention I liked it? Thought so. Let's get Lost after the jump...

JUMPER 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO - Alright, so first things first - it seems our friend Desmond is now not only jumping from the present to the past, (much like everyone does in their flashbacks, but with an extra added level of reality thrown in - remember when he woke up from the hatch explosion on the floor of his and Penny's flat with FULL "memory" of what happened in the future?) he's now able to go from past to present, i.e. from his military past to the island present/future. Only problem is, when he gets back to the future, (sorry) he can't remember who anyone is or what he's doing there! Poor Des. Anyway, let's take a look at what this means. First, why is this happening? Well, if it's not obvious by now, here it is - Des first attained these abilities from being at Ground Zero of the Swan implosion. If you remember, the Swan was the Dharma Initiative's station for monitoring the Island's high levels of electromagnetism, and when Des 'blew the dam' by turning the failsafe key at the end of Season 2, all of that electromagnetism escaped, instilling Des with the ability to time-leap as he does.

My question is this - were ALL of the Losties affected by that great purple light that engulfed the Island at the time of the implosion? If so, what will the effects be? All of the Losties were exposed to the time-unsticking purple light. Whether they were at Ground Zero or out at the Pala Ferry dock, they all got a nice big taste of it whether they wanted to or not. Now, to measure what that might mean, let's jump forward a bit - what of our friend Eloise, the ill-fated lab rat that the 1996 version of Daniel Faraday blasted with a fair amount of another source of a very similar purple light in his laboratory? As a result, she also gained this mysterious ability to become 'unstuck in time', (I hope Vonnegut's getting royalties from this episode, writers) and proved it to us by running effortlessly through a maze in Daniel's laboratory that she hadn't learned yet. The poor thing died as a result of not having the mental capacity to handle all this time-disparity stuff in her tiny little brain, I suppose, but after all - she's only a rat. However, according to Daniel and the theory of the Constant, humans won't be so lucky when they contract what she's got. They'll die of something much more dire - pure metaphor. Heh. Sure, Daniel explained it in a much more scientific way, but what I think Damon and Carlton (the writers of this rat maze of an episode) were trying to get at with this Constant business was really explained the end of the episode. I think they meant to define 'The Constant' as love. To Faraday, it was 'something to tether ones self to in both the past and present', but for Des, I think it was something else, and I think his telephone conversation with Penny on Christmas Eve showed that in spades. Forget about yourself, attach to someone else for the good of you both, and the power of doing so will truly set you free. Put that on a Hallmark card and make me rich, please. Thank you.

Consider this, as well - seeming that nearly all of our castaways have appeared in each other's pasts at some point, does that mean that they are essentially all one another's 'constants', much like Penny is to Desmond and Desmond is to Faraday? Whoops. Did I say that last part out loud? We'll get to that in a bit. Ah, what the hell - we'll get to it next.

DESMOND AND DANIEL, SITTIN' IN A TREE - How cool was the meet-cute moment at Oxford University between Faraday and Des? I expected Daniel to silly-run into his lab when he heard that Des was from the future, dismissing him with a bug-eyed stare and a cry of 'GOODNIGHT, FUTURE BOY!' I suppose Jane Wyman is the First Lady, too, right Des? I love scenes like these that take place in prestigious universities, but dammit, I wanted more. I wanted to see Indiana Jones sneaking out his office window to meet up with Marcus and Sallah for another adventure. I wanted Young Sherlock Holmes to swish past, en route to finding the next clue left for him in a campus-wide scavenger hunt set up by Young Dean Moriarty. Now THAT would've been cool.

Anyway, Faraday plays an interesting role in Desmond's predicament, because like Penny, he's the other constant here - he is present in both Desmond's past and future. Problem is, Desmond doesn't know him from Adam, and therefore, he can't be Desmond's true Constant - the one that he can emotionally and psychologically bind himself to in order to keep himself from floating recklessly through time. As we learned at the end of the episode, though, Faraday has assigned Desmond as his Constant, his anchor to stop himself from ending up like Minkowski and dying of a brain aneurysm. Why would he do that, though? Who does Desmond become to Faraday, and what makes their relationship that strong? Why does it seem to be so one-sided? After all, Faraday can't be Desmond's Constant, but Desmond can be Faraday's? WTF? When he saw what was written in his book at the end of the episode, 'If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my Constant', I'm not sure Faraday even remembered writing it, or why he even wrote it all. What could it mean?

QUANTUM LEAP - On a lighter note, could 'The Constant' have been the first example of a Leap Year-themed episode of a television show ever? It aired the day before Leap Year 2008, took place in two other Leap Years (2004 and 1996), and dealt with the dangers of uncontrollably leaping through time, much like we all do every 4 years. Hey, look - there's a 4 wrapped up in all of this, too! Awesome. First we got Dharmalars for the Easter episode, and now this. I can't WAIT to see what they come up with for Father's Day.

ALL THE BEST TIME-TRAVELERS HAVE DADDY ISSUES - Okay, so if all that weren't enough, what of Penny's dad Charles Widmore showing up to bid on the last remaining artifact (yeah, right) from the Black Rock, the beached slave ship on Mystery Island? Who the hell do think that was on the phone at the last minute, trying to outbid Mr. Widmore on that book? Ben? Nah, couldn't have been him. Hell, I'll bet anyone a Dharmalar that he was the one selling it! I mean, come on - you don't think the only thing Ben wants to save the island for is its peaceful utopian nature, do you? That place is a gold mine, and I'm sure Ben's been either selling it off wholesale or exploiting its powers for his personal gain for quite a while now. Remember when Miles told Ben that he knew who he was and what he could do? I think the reason Miles asked him for so much money is simple - because he knew he had it. What Miles plans to do with that money is another story, but Ben's not stupid. Far from it. He's stumbled on to his own little Wonderland here, so why shouldn't he exploit it a little to ensure its future and pad his wallet while he's at it? 

Getting back to Charles Widmore for a second, let's examine why he might've wanted that book so badly. Does he think it contains information on what the island is, or more importantly, WHERE it is? Has Ben had previous contact with him, and for whatever reason, subsequently cut him off? On second thought, that theory might not hold much water. As we learned on the freighter from the ill-fated Minkowski, (please bring him back, writers! The world needs more Fisher Stevens) Penny's had an open line to that freighter for who knows how long. Subsequently, her father probably does, too. Granted, no one was answering that line when it rang, but that hardly matters in this context. My money's on the theory that the freighter is owned and operated by Widmore himself, and that HE'S the one bankrolling the expedition to find the island again and wrangle up Ben. Remember Matthew Abbadon, the creepy-looking guy that hired Naomi to watch over the Fantastic Four and their landing mission on the island? I'll make another bet of another Dharmalar that he's in Charles' pocket, too. Speaking of that book, let's recall who it was originally written by. The first mate of the Black Rock, right? Who wants to bet me a third Dharmalar that that first mate's name turns out to be Richard Alpert?

The endgame has begun, folks. Please return your seatbacks to their locked and upright positions.

BEHOLD... THE SICKNESS - Okay, this is one of mine, (or at least it was when I thunked it up around 3AM Friday morning) but we all remember 'The Sickness' that infected the entirety of Rousseau's crew when she first came to the island 16 years ago, right? The one that made her kill them all herself? Well, what if this weird time-disparity disease that killed Minkowski and nearly offed Desmond is that very same illness? Let's act it out - Rousseau and her crew come to the island, venture to the Black Rock in 'The Dark Territory' as she explained back in Season One, and then perhaps make an attempt to get off the island without returning at the same nautical heading they came in on? According to Faraday, people who attempt to escape the island without heeding such details are the ones who contract this odd affliction. Who knows what state the Swan station was in at that time, so they might have been subject to large amounts of electromagnetism, too. If this is true, it's ironic that Desmond wound up contracting it, being that he spent his first three years on the island vaccinating himself every nine days down in the 'safe' quarantine of the Swan.

COME SAIL AWAY - What of that creepy freighter, eh? Who do you think the captain is? Who sabotaged the radio room? Michael? Who's paying for this shindig in the first place? Is it Widmore as I suspect, or someone else? Most importantly, where the hell is Zoe Bell? Did she take over for Minkowski when he started Scott Bakula-ing all over the space-time continuum? Will she be hanging off the hood of any speeding cars any time soon? Let's hope so.

RANDOM THOUGHTS -

Could this time-leaping be the method that the Oceanic Six end up using to get off the island?

Remember Room 23, the room in the Hydra Station that Carl was being brainwashed in? Well, hidden in the sound collage that he was being forced to listen to were the words 'Only fools are enslaved by time and space'. Could that secret message have something to do with the time disparity that exists between the island and the rest of the world?

According to the calendar on the wall of the freighter, when Sayid, Desmond, and Frank arrive there, it's Christmas Eve, Day 94 of the Losties' adventures. However, on the island, it's actually Day 96. Remember the rocket that ended up arriving on the island 31 minutes later than expected? I think that means my theory of the time disparity being relative may be correct. It comes down to the speed of the helicopter versus the speed of the rocket. The rocket's high speed meant that it only suffered a 31-minute loss, but the helicopter's relatively low speed set it and its passengers back two days. This was confirmed by Faraday's claim to Jack that although it seems it took almost two days for the helicopter to arrive there, it, um, actually didn't.

I really want to know the bigger picture on Daniel Faraday here. Just how deep is he in this whole time-leaping thing, and how much does he not know about his own past? Remember the playing card memory test he was doing with Charlotte last week? How about when he started crying when he saw the footage of the newly-discovered Oceanic 815 on the ocean floor? Why didn't he know why he was crying? Was his 'Desmond is your constant' note to himself in his journal always there, or did it only start to exist once Desmond leapt back in time to meet with him?

Will I ever shut up? Actually, yes, I will. I've got a brand spanking new copy of the Lost video game 'Via Domus' sitting right here next to me, and it's just ITCHING to be played. I'll send a rocket out when I feel like resurfacing again. Maybe.

Until next time, or maybe the time before that.

Namaste,

-littlebigmouth.