The Constant, Back to the Future, and Slaughterhouse-5

Thursday night's "The Constant" was a terrific episode - probably one of the twenty best episodes of Lost ever, and certainly one of the best early-season episodes. Lost has always had trouble kicking off its seasons - the second season began with that interminable length of time before the Tailies finally made their way to the beach, while the third season kicked off with the viewer-alienating "Captured by the Others" stint.

This season, there's been no such trouble. A decent season premiere which played like a wrap-up to last season has been followed by four episodes of top-notch storytelling: The freighter folks arrive! Ben has a man on their boat!! Sayid is working for Ben in the future!!! KATE IS RAISING AARON!!!!

There's a lot to digest, and I'm loving it.

Since "The Constant" was a Desmond episode, that meant we were in for more trippy time travel. I understand last season's "Flashes Before Your Eyes" was a little too weird for some (or, at least, for my sister), but I'm a longtime sci-fi geek, the Back to the Future box set sits proudly on my shelf, and I ate it up. But while "Flashes Before Your Eyes" consisted of just one trip into the past (triggered by Desmond turning the fail-safe key on the hatch), "The Constant" was a series of very literal flashbacks as Desmond himself was ricocheted between 1996 and 2004.

The explanation, courtesy of resident mad scientist Dan Faraday: the helicopter passed through whatever weird blip in space-time surrounds the island, and Desmond - already unbalanced thanks to the electromagnetic hatch implosion that caused him to see flashes of the future - became "unstuck in time". That's a direct reference to the Kurt Vonnegut's classic Slaughterhouse-5, which is one of my all-time favorite books.

In Slaughterhouse-5, protagonist Billy Pilgrim is also unstuck in time, and keeps leaping to random parts of his life - most notably his time as a soldier in World War II, and when he was abducted by aliens and kept for a few years inside a "zoo" on their home planet.

...And as I wrote that, I realized that, alarmingly, there's even more of a parallel than I had thought: the two time periods that Desmond jumps to are 1996, when he's a soldier in the military, and 2004, when he's on a freighter near an island that has served as a ground for zoological experiments. (And hey, let's never rule out an extraterrestrial presence, either.)

Wow, now I love this episode even more.

Turns out in the Lost universe, there's a price to be paid for being unstuck: let it happen for too long, and your brain gets too disoriented and gives out on you. That's what happened to Minkowski, the freighter's communications guy (we've heard his voice over the radio a number of times). Faraday to the rescue: he tells Desmond over the radio that the next time he jumps back to 1996, he should seek him out - at Oxford, where Faraday was then a physics teacher.

That's just cool - the kind of pulp sci-fi storytelling that Lost is great at. It's also a nod, although not necessarily deliberately, to Back to the Future - when Desmond met up with Faraday in 1996, I felt like I was watching a Bizarro World version of Marty McFly and Doc Brown. (Just picture Desmond scratching his neck, saying, "So Doc, you're telling me...my mom...has got the hots for me?")

But back to the serious situation at hand: 1996 Faraday saves the day, telling Desmond that if you can come up with a "constant" from both time periods, his brain will recognize it and re-align itself to the present. We think of it the same time Desmond does: Penny.

But how to get Penny on the phone from the freighter? No problem - just sneak into the communications bay with dying Minkowski's help, get Sayid to fix the equipment, and have Desmond travel back to 1996 one more time to get Penny's phone number. Yeah, it was a real high-wire act by the writers to put all these pieces into play, but they did it beautifully, without making it feel rushed at all.

The climax is the terrifically-written Lost we've come to known and love: on December 24th, 1996, Desmond finds Penny and promises her that no matter what happens, he'll call her in exactly eight years. In 2004, he's stranded on an island and hasn't talked to Penny in years - but makes good on his promise. They only have thirty seconds to talk before the battery gives out, but instead of using it as a suspenseful way of cutting Penny off right before she says something really interesting, they go the emotional route: their emotions are perfectly in sync. She tells him she knows about the island and promises him that she'll find him. He tells her he loves her. It was a beautifully written scene.

Is it okay to be tearing up right now? 'Cause, like, I'm not or anything, but if I was, it would understandable, right?

TAGS: Daniel Faraday, Desmond, Henry Ian Cusick, Penny, Season4
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