'Lost': Flashes Before Your Eyes

I've been waiting literally weeks to get to this episode in the We Have to Go Back series. And in case you're wondering, yes, I have been rewatching all of them, and I have been doing so in order. I haven't skipped around, even if my curiosity wants to get the best of me. Trust me, I'd rather be watching this than "Fire+Water" any day, but I set up the rules, and I abide by them. Because if I don't, fellow Lost fan, who will? Let's get into some Des-centric goodness now that the hour is right. Ms. Hawking would say it's what I'm destined to do now.

Flashes Before Your Eyes

4) In Short

"I think I'm losin' my mind this time, this time, I'm losing my mind...brutha."

8) On the Island

Desmond walks to the beach, looking for something. Meanwhile, Charlie is ransacking Sawyer's tent for clothes, supplies, etc. Desmond asks them both to come into the jungle with him. There, Sayid and Locke inform the pair about Eko's demise. Locke wants their help in keeping things calm when Locke breaks the news to the group. For his part, Desmond is distracted, and suddenly bolts for the beach.

There, he swims out and saves Claire from drowning. Charlie tries to go after her once he figures out who it is, but Desmond's already back with her on the beach. Desmond administers CPR, and she eventually spits up some water and starts to cough. Desmond essentially refuses to let Charlie so much as touch her. "How did he know?" asks Charlie. "That dude sees the future," replies Hugo. Damn skippy he does, Hugo.

Later, Des stares at the photo of himself and Penny. Claire sees it, and asks her name. She's still shaken up, wondering why the undertow came up so suddenly on her on this particular day. She thanks Des, and attends to Aaron.

Charlie's skeptical about Des's precognitive powers, but wants to know how Des could have known about Claire all the same. He goes to Sawyer's tent and grabs a bottle of liquor to lubricate Des' mouth. But not just any liquor: MacCutcheon whiskey. Des laughs at the brand, and agrees to have a drink with the pair. He drinks deeply from the bottle.

That night, the trio is...well, they're happy, teeny boppers. They're very, very "happy". And singing. Charlie gets down to brass tacks: how did Des know Claire was drowning? Des says he could hear her crying for help; the two don't believe him. Charlie presses on, asking him about the incident with the lightning rod. Rather than answer, Des stands and leaves. Charlie gets angry, calling him a coward. Wrong word, dude. Des attacks Charlie, telling him he doesn't want to know how Des knew about Claire.

We then flash back to the moment Des turned the failsafe key...and then things get mighty interesting. How interesting? Read the next section and come back here, if ya like.

A while later in the episode, Des wakes up, naked, in the jungle. It's right after the implosion, and in the wreckage, he finds the picture of himself in Penny. He begs to go back one more time, that he can do it right this time.

We then see a montage of all the times he's saved Claire, and return to the moment when Des attacked Charlie. Hurley pulls him off, and Des cries, saying, "You can't change it no matter what you try to do. You just can't change it." Charlie takes Des and props him up against a tree. He tells Charlie that when he turns the key, his life flashed before his eyes. But once he woke up, the flashes continued. And the flashes don't show Claire dying; they show Charlie dying. Over and over again, each instance of saving Claire has been in fact an instance of saving Charlie. "I'm sorry, because...no matter what I try to do, you're gonna die, Charlie."

15) Off the Island

Desmond wakes up on the floor of his apartment, having fallen off a ladder while painting the apartment he and Penny share. However, and this is key: even though this is a flashback technically, the mind inside Desmond is the one from the Island, though extremely confused. So, it's a flashback in one sense, and continuation of story in another. Got that? Strap in, kids: this is about to get interesting.

Sarah McClachlan's "Building a Mystery" plays as Des dresses for work. I'd go off on how McClachlan's work tanked once she found love, but that's for another time entirely. Penny helps him with his tie, and we learn he's off to see Charles Widmore. She says even if the interview goes badly, it's not the end of the world. Des gets confused, and then hears what sounds like the computer from the hatch. It's not the hatch, however: just the microwave saying his tea is ready.

Desmond arrives at Widmore's building, where a delivery man has a package from Room 815. Inside Widmore's office, Desmond stares anxiously at a really, really, really interesting painting. So interesting I'll deal with it in the next section. Widmore is less than thrilled with Des' resume, and tells him as much in no uncertain terms. They also discuss Widmore's impending race around the world. After Widmore offers him an unglamorous job, Des reveals that he's really there to ask for his permission for Penny's hand in marriage.

Widmore shows him a bottle of whiskey: MacCutcheon whiskey. He tells Desmond the history of the whiskey, and tells him one swallow of it is worth more than Des could make in a month. He refuses to give Des one, claiming he'll never be a great man. And if he's not worthy of his whiskey, he's certainly not worthy of his daughter. That went well.

Outside, Desmond throws his tie down, but soon hears a familiar voice: Charlie's. Mr. Pace is singing Oasis' "Wonderwall," and Des wants to know how come he seems so familiar. Des' mind flashes back to the island briefly, and tries to refresh Charlie's memory. Only, for Charlie, it's not a memory, in that it hasn't happened yet. Des starts to freak out, and slowly starts to remember the events of this day the first time it happened to him, including the impending rainstorm that he predicts. Hot damn this is a sweet episode.

Desmond runs to find his friend Donovan, a physicist. He wants to pick Donovan's brain about time travel. At a nearby bar, Donovan's hears Des' entire saga on the Island. Over the speakers, he hears Mama Cass' "Make Your Own Kind of Music," the first song we heard in Season 2's incredible season opener. He thinks he can predict the outcome of the soccer game on the TV, but to his surprise, the outcome doesn't match his memory. Donovan's advice: stop messing about and marry Penny, attributing Des' delusion to pre-proposal jitters.

That night, Des tells Penny he didn't get the job. She wants to know what Charles had to say: he covers for him, saying they mutually agreed it didn't make sense. Oddly enough, she wants to celebrate, on the occasion that she loves him. He stands there, stunned: why does she love him, he asks. "Because you're a good man, and those are hard to come by," she replies. I love this couple.

The following day, Des goes ring shopping. A kindly old woman greets him, and notes that he's a first-time buyer. Noting he doesn't have much money, she picks out a ring for him. He looks at it, and agrees to take it. This somehow surprises her, and demands it back. Why is she so angry? Let's have her tell you.

"This is wrong. You don't buy the ring. You have second thoughts; you walk right out that door. So, come on, let's have it...I know your name as well as I know that you that don't ask Penny to marry you. In fact, you break her heart. Well, breaking her heart is, of course, what drives you in a few short years from now to enter that sailing race -- to prove her father wrong -- which brings you to the island where you spend the next 3 years of your life entering numbers into the computer until you are forced to turn that failsafe key. And if you don't do those things, Desmond David Hume, every single one of us is dead. So give me that sodding ring."

Allllrighty then. Pick your brain matter off the floor and let's continue, shall we Zap2It readers?

Des wants to know who she is; she wants to know if he likes chestnuts. She goes outside, buys some chestnuts, and points out a man wearing red shoes. Des theorizes that this woman is simply his subconscious, convincing him to not marry Penny. She insists that he's not, and at that moment, the scaffolding behind them collapses, killing the man in the red shoes.

Angry that she didn't stop an event she knew would happen, Des confronts her. However, she merely tells him that the universe has a way of "course correcting," with his death inevitable even if she'd stopped this one incident. She said that death was his path, just as pushing the button is Des' path. He doesn't want to be fate's boytoy: he wants to marry Penny. She tells him that pushing the button will be the only great thing he ever does.

Desmond passes by a military poster on the way to meet Penny. They walk past a photographer who asks to take their picture. The photographer pulls down a series of vistas, landing on the one seen in the iconographic photo of the duo. He stares at the photo, suddenly heartbroken. He tells Penny he has to end their relationship. It's a brutal scene in which Des tries to protect Penny from harm but all it causes pain and hurt on both sides. "We're not supposed to be together," says Desmond, giving into his future destiny. He then throws his ring into the Thames.

That night, Des returns to the same bar from earlier. He orders a cheap beer and celebrates the second time he's made the biggest mistake of his life. Right then, Mama Cass comes on the stereo again, and this time, the soccer match goes the way he remembers. At that moment, the final part of his memory comes true, as a local thug comes in to shakedown the bartender. Des tells the bartender to duck, and gets a face full of cricket bat for this trouble.

16) The Mythology

Between the introduction of Mittelos Biosciences and this episode, Lost boldly proclaimed that time travel was on the docket. And while there's nothing that goes wrong faster than introducing time travel into the mix (I'm looking at you, Heroes), there's nothing that energized the show more in my eyes than the notion of certain special individuals standing outside the normal flow of time and commenting on or altering the actions in some way.

Now, Lost still has two seasons in which to massively screw this all up, but so far, they've been very deft in the way they've handled time travel to date. In the case of this episode (and the later, even more brilliant episode "The Constant"), time travel happens more mentally than physically. Desmond doesn't go the way of time-traveling bunnies. Moreover, they've dodged the paradoxes inherent in time travel quite well. Lastly, in introducing both time travel and the knowledge of past, present, and future events, Lost places the events on the Island as the epicenter of a struggle that transcends those individuals and that particular place.

As for that painting in Widmore's office: it's initially shown backwards, so my old theory about "OMG the Namaste backwards is a representation of how time's all wonky" is out the door, but it does say "Namaste" all the same, and does feature polar bears, Buddhas, and mountains in a fashion that not only evokes the iconography of the Island but the painting style of the mural in the Hatch. Guess it just reminds him of home.

Lostpedia also notes that another painting in Widmore's office is significant. It's painted by Tom. No, not Mr. Friendly, but Claire's baby daddy. Hrm...so he has an interest in the Island...and Claire. Or is it Aaron? Discuss your theories below!

23) The Moment

Ms. Hawking's monologue is the coolest of the cool.

42) In Retrospect

Is Widmore's treatment of Desmond analogous to Christian's treatment of Jack? It's worth looking at both men preparing others for the important work ahead on the Island.

108) In Summary

Not just a great Desmond-centric ep, but an insanely original and clever script to boot. Makes sense that Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard wrote it, as they are two of the show's strongest writers. It's both intuitively easy to understand what's going on, and fiendishly difficult to describe. It's kinda like me dancing that way: everyone who sees it knows they're looking at pure genius, but when it comes time to describe it to others, mere words fail.

Leave your thoughts about this episode below!

Ryan also posts every 108 minutes over at Boob Tube Dude, then peruses Zap2It's Guide to Lost Facebook group. He also encourages you to leave questions for the producers and cast of Lost here.