Best. LOST. Episode. Ever.
I'm not just saying that because it was mostly about Desmond and featured a lot of Desmond without his facial hair. Oh, screw it, sure that was part of it. Desmond aside, though, this episode was so good it made me curse the producers and writers for the last season of total mediocrity. If they had this kind of action on tap, why did they waste my time last season with folks staring out at the ocean all the time? Why did they recycle the same footage over and over?
Bitterness aside, I'll give them this: this is the most excited and emotionally involved I've ever been over an episode of television. At one point I actually jumped up off the couch, gasping and swearing. (Plus there was one incident in which I squealed like a teenager and shouted, "Oh my god, he is so fucking hot!")
Okay, no spoilers here. Step into the comments for more discussions, please.
Comments
Okay....
who cried when Desmond finally got to talk to Penny and the I love yous were flying?
*raises hand*
This was a great episode, though I was a little disappointed at first that it wasn't really putting any pieces into my puzzle I am pathetically trying to assemble, but maybe I just need to digest it a little. How is Penny calling that boat? via Desmond's time travel messages? The sci-fi-ness of it is going to make my brain bleed out my nose too.. Time travel. I can barely keep the flash back and the flash forward stuff straight, now I have to actually try to grasp this whole concept? I was thinking, oh, shit. X Files all over again, confusing the bejebus outta me!
I love how Desmond always looks so wild-eyed and crazed, even when he's clean cut.
I hope he wakes up naked in the jungle again. Those were some good times.
Here's my mystery-brain-hurter question: if the 1996 Desmond is jumping back and forth between '96 and '04, where is the consciousness of the '04 Desmond????
Okay, here's what I'm wondering...does any of this crazy ass time travel business play into the various flash-forwards we've already seen? Ouch. Time to reboot brain.
where is the consciousness of the '04 Desmond????
with the 1996 Desmond? Are they just trading off?
and didn't you love how he smiled as he was walking away from Penny's house, even though she rejected him, he already knew he'd helped Future Des?
Poor Fisher Stevens. He used to be cute & with Michelle Pfeiffer. She's still older than he is, still looks better and now he's all pasty and balding and his character's dead.
and where the hell is Michael? or which dewd is the spy? I bet it's the doctor who is Ben's spy. course we haven't seen everyone yet yet.
crikey, see that's what I am a little nervous about, that they will get things so screwy I won't be able to understand what the hell is going on. Because now we have it so Desmond and Daniel (who I think is so weirdly cute, he looks all crazed one second and then like a little boy the next) can change the future...and the past...so now they just have to write some notes or letters to some people...
but the thing that occurred to me was, I wonder if the time travel plays into that other plane they found...remember Daniel was crying and he didn't know why?
oh crikey---here we go...
They are going to change it somehow and it's going to turn out that the plane crashed NW of Australia (as seen in the footage) and they all died. But is that in the future or the past? The island is in a time warp. Naomi, all those people thought they died, but then they weren't surprised they were alive at all, so they know about Daniel's experiment but what does that have to do with finding Ben and why? does it have to do with the pregnant mothers on the island dying? ohhhhhh my brain 'urts!
And yes, I find Daniel strangely adorable, too, in his crazy genius way. Hey, did you notice that moment when Desmond says, "What do you put on your head?" when Daniel puts on his little lead vest to protect him from radiation? Maybe that's why Daniel seems to have some serious cognition and memory problems in '04? He's zapped himself too many times.
As for the alternate scenarios of Oceanic 815 sinking in the ocean v. O815 landing on the island--hasn't Desmond already changed the past, and thereby the future? After all, in his first go round in the army, he didn't go to Oxford and meet Daniel, but now he has...maybe the alive/dead thing is the creation and/or splitting of possible futures.
As for Penny's dad...I dunno. A guy that rich and powerful, he might be able to finagle any number of things. And Desmond was definitely ripe for being manipulated, he was so desperate to win Mr. Whidmore's approval...
I will preface this by saying I have not seen every show in the series. I saw some of season one and most of season 3, almost none of season two.
That was the best single episode of any TV show I can remember. I was literally sitting on the edge of my seat the entire time.
I think that since the end of the series has been determined, they now know exactly where they want the show to go (if not the exact details of how to get there) and it is creating a focus in the writing that was not there previously.
I'm sure it will be resolved for us in the next two years :)
oh yeah, the lead vest scene about covering his head was classic...*dingdingding* we have a winner!
I'm so confused right now though!
I keep wondering if the writers know yet how this is going to end, like if they have the basic plot of where they want it to go and how it ends and are just feeding the skeleton.
And oh, yeah, the Black Rock...penny's father. They're gonna make me go back and watch seasons 2 and one again, aren't they? BASTARDS!
Here's another head-hurter. Of course you can't change the future--it hasn't happened yet, nothing to change. You can only change the past and the present.... Testing: to '96 Desmond, '04 is "the future," but to '04 Desmond it's the present. How's that for philosophical bullshit at nearly midnight? Time for me to go to bed.
oh yeah and what about Daniel's note Desmond is my constant?
oh and you remember him from Rescue Dawn, right? a little skinnier, a little dirtier, still nutso...
yeah, i was wondering about that when they mentioned "side effects" and then immediately forgot about it of course. But his visions weren't always of Charlie dying, he saw Claire get on the helicopter w/Aaron (though he knew Charlie had to die in order for that to happen) and he saw Penelope parachuting to the island though it was Naomi. So maybe his only ACCURATE visions were of Charlie dying....
are you surprised I woke up with a bit of a headache?
1. Remember when we first met Daniel? He was watching the news of Oceanic 815's discovery and started crying uncontrollably and did not know why. I'm guessing that some part of him knew that he should care about this, but that Desmond hadn't actually time-traveled yet so Daniel had no idea who he was. Since Daniel told us you can't change the future, he must have had some kind of gap in his memory regarding this event, and perhaps regarding all of his time travel experiments.
2. We also got some idea of how "time" is structured in the show. Desmond was zoning out for an hour at a time in the past, but only five minutes or so in the present. That variable must be at play on the island as well in some way, since the island is not quite in sync with the present timeline.
3. This episode might also explain why Desmond has flashes of the future in some way.
I'm going to watch it again this weekend and try to pick up some details. I especially want to see the pages of Daniel's notebook again.
Also, if any of you have not see the Orientation video for Orchid Station, go catch it on YouTube. They are visiting the station in next week's episode.
And if you haven't checked out this fan link....it might explain some of the time travel stuff:
http://timelooptheory.com/index.htm
Here's my question for this morning: who else was around when Desmond blew up the hatch and gave himself a massive dose of EM? Who else is at risk of this freaky displacement?
As for the alternate scenarios of Oceanic 815 sinking in the ocean v. O815 landing on the island--hasn't Desmond already changed the past, and thereby the future? After all, in his first go round in the army, he didn't go to Oxford and meet Daniel, but now he has...maybe the alive/dead thing is the creation and/or splitting of possible futures.
when the episode was still near the beginning I wrote down "parallel lives" and I'm wondering if that's why they are so famous. I mean, if a plane went down on a deserted island and it was being looked for for a few months and 6 people survived and were brought back home after that amount of time---and obviously aren't revealing all that actually happened on the island, if anything, really---why are they SO famous? I don't think it's just because they survived a plane crash for a few months, because the public doesn't know what we know. I think it has to do with the original perception that they had all died, like they survived a Bermuda Triangle type freaky thing, which ties in with the time warp issue.
I think the fact that it's such a micro-season this year is forcing them to cut out all the filler crap and get down to brass tacks. I noticed that with this year's Prison Break too, which was about 10 episodes shorter than usual.
If it improves the quality of the writing, I'd be all for short seasons of everything I watch. Fill up the empty spaces with more footage of Chris Hansen busting internet pervs, 'cause that never gets old.
hey! you made [EIG]!!!
(doesn't have such a nice ring)
[this is le sigh]
Penny's dad and the Black Rock! Mad but nice scientist Daniel!
Des and Penny on the phone at the end... sniffle, sob.
One of the finest hours of TV, like, EVAR.
oooh, he's so beautiful.
I didn't hear 1997, that's so weird. I'll have to watch it again to catch that. not to see desmond or anything, just to catch that, haha. I actually remembered to turn on the CVR and press 'record'.
[Entertainment is good]