The Constant SE4 EP5

“If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant.”

The Back story and Island time blend almost seamlessly in this episode—it is impossible to tell one story without the other. An excellent episode with a lot of information regarding the time travel elements of the island and one of the best endings so far this season. As a devoted Trekkie, time travel episodes always fascinated me, so this one was right up my alley. The fact that someone in the future needs to influence events in the past creates the circle paradox that sci-fi geeks like me lap up with a spoon. This episode was kind of like The Terminator movies.

Past
One minute Des is on the helicopter, the next…well, at first it looks like Des is having one of those “time shifting” moments like he did last year. Until Sayid tries to calm him down and Des is all “Who the hell are you?”

Des keeps shifting between the “present” time and 1996 when he was enlisted in the army. He is at Camp Miller with the Scottish regiment in Glasgow. He knows where he is and is familiar with his surroundings in the past but he is confused and disoriented in the present. By the time the helicopter actually lands on the freighter, Des has shifted several times. He’s freaking out so bad on the boat that the crew decides it would be best for him if they put him in the infirmary.

Present
Desmond continues freaking out about being locked up in the infirmary when he discovers he is not alone. “Hey,” the guy says. “It’s happening to you too, isn’t it?” This poor guy is experiencing the same symptoms as Des, flashing back and forth. He’s been doing it a little longer and it shows—the guy is in bad shape and he’s strapped down in the bed. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the man belonging to the disembodied voice of George Minkowski.

Meanwhile, back on the island, Jack and Juliet are freaking out themselves. Why haven’t they heard from their friends? Charlotte plays dumb, claiming she knows nothing more than they know. But what Charlotte doesn’t know is Juliet. Juliet is not buying it and calls Charlotte out on her story: “Your boat was 40 miles off the coast, that would take, what, 20 minutes to get there? They’ve been gone a day and a half. Why aren’t you worried?” Which prompts our poor dizzy Daniel to suggest that they “tell” Jack and Juliet. Charlotte, of course thinks this is a bad idea, so Daniel tells them immediately: “Your perception of how long they’ve been gone is not necessarily how long they’ve actually been gone.

Back on the boat, Sayid thinks it’s fishy that they took off at dusk and landed in the middle of the day. Frank insists he’s trying to help. Sayid trades his gun to Frank for the sat phone. He calls Jack to tell him they have arrived on the boat safely, but that “Something happened to Desmond.” Jack puts the call on speaker and the mad doctor swings into action. He tells Sayid that he needs to talk to Desmond. Sayid rushes down to the infirmary where the evil doctor has just knocked out poor Minkowski. Daniel wants to know if Desmond has recently been in contact with high levels of radiation or electromagnetism. Jack doesn’t think so, but of course we know that Des was exposed to high levels of one or possibly both when the Swan hatch blew.

Past
Back in 1996, Des calls Penny, who wants nothing to do with him. Its getting harder and harder for him to “come back”. Apparently, when his consciousness is in another time, his body in the other time is catatonic.

Present
Sayid and Frank neutralize the doctor and Sayid puts Des on the phone. Daniel asks Des what year he thinks it is and Des says 1996. Daniel then tells him that he must get on a train and go to Queen’s college in Oxford and find him. Des of the past must tell Daniel of the past that he needs to set the device to 2.342 and oscillate at 11 hertz. And since the Faraday of the past will probably not believe him, Des should tell him that he knows about Eloise.

Past
Des’s time shifting is getting progressively worse and he finds himself back in the past, tracing down Faraday. Faraday takes him into the room where he “does things that the college frowns upon.” Faraday dons a protective vest to shield him from the radiation that he exposes himself to hundreds of times a day. Des asks the obvious “What about your head?” Which may explain his memory problems (see below). Faraday sets his “time machine” to the settings Des gave him and aims the ray at Eloise, the rat. Eloise never physically time travels, Faraday explains, it’s her consciousness that goes to the future. After she “returns”, the rat runs the maze with no errors. Faraday whoops: Success! Des is still puzzled: Big deal, the rat ran the maze. “Yes,” Daniel says, “but I just built the maze this morning and I was going to start teaching it to her in an hour.”

While we’re here with Daniel, this may be a good time to revisit another little tidbit of “Confirmed Dead”: the opening scene wherein we first meet Daniel who is sobbing at the news of the discovery of Flight 815. We can perhaps float a theory here that Faraday has experienced some form of time travel and thus is intimately aware of the symptoms of what he calls the “side effects” that Des is experiencing. That Daniel’s memory is completely shot could be another “side effect” or just a result of his over-exposure to electro magnetic waves or radiation—both of which he never bothers to protect his head from whilst running his multiple experiments at Oxford. In any event, I’m guessing that some part of Daniel’s brain is registering a “memory” of the discovery—and we can assume subsequent tragedy—involving the discovery of the survivors of Flight 815 on the island. My guess as to who his faceless caretaker is: Cassie.

Present
Now Sayid and Des are back on the boat locked in the infirmary with Minkowski. Desmond desperately wants to get back to Faraday of the past; Sayid asks him, “Desmond, what are you trying to do?”

“Desmond?” Minkowski asks. “You’re Desmond?” Minkowski explains that he was the communications officer on the ship and he kept receiving calls from Penelope Widmore. Why was he not allowed to take these calls? And did he subsequently take them, since he knew who they were from?

Past
Daniel is running a series of frenzied equations on the chalkboard. Des looks down and sees Eloise is dead. She couldn’t handle the time traveling and her brain short-circuited. “Every equation needs a constant” Daniel tells him, waving at the blackboard that he was furiously scribbling on, “These are all variables. You need a constant. You don’t recognize anything in the future, so you need something that is familiar in both time frames.” Faraday is specific: He must make some kind of contact with his contact in both time frames. We all know before Des even suggests it that his constant will be Penny.

Present
Desmond tells Sayid that he needs to help him call Penny. Minkowski offers to help re-establish the radio room after it had been sabotaged a few days before. The previously locked door has been left open. “Apparently you guys have some help.” Minkowski observes. Who? Ben’s “spy”? Or someone else?

Past
The first mate’s journal from the Black Rock is on the auction block. Bidding furiously for the journal and eventually winning it, is Penny’s vile father, Mr. Widmore. Des asks Widmore how to get in touch with Penny. Widmore speaks to Desmond with nothing but his trademark slimy contempt. “Why do you hate me?” Des asks Widmore. Widmore smirks: He’s not the one who hates Desmond. So smugly sure of Penny’s contempt, he writes down her address for him and leaves the rest room.

Thoughts on the Black Rock
We interrupt your regularly scheduled program for another one of your host’s remarkably perceptive insights into the show. I’ve been tooling around a bit on the find815 game where the Black Rock has a prominent role. In this episode, the first mate’s name is Tovar Hanso—perhaps a relation of the elusive and mysterious Alvar Hanso, or perhaps Hanso himself? Hanso, you may recall, was the shadowy figure who founded the Dharma Initiative.

In any event, find815 takes place on the Christiane L, the salvage ship that finds Flight 815 in “Confirmed Dead”. The stated mission of the Christiane L is to find the slave ship called the Black Rock that disappeared in the late 1800’s carrying a fortune in gold. My previously posited “warring corporations” theory comes into play in “The Constant” as Penny’s vile father has won the journal at the auction in 1996. Is he going to use it to locate the Black Rock? Is the Christiane L his ship and his mission? Who does Ben work for and whom do Miles & Co. work for? Could there be more than one corporation involved? Widmore’s, Paik’s (Sun’s vile father) Hanso’s? Are they all competing for rights to the island? And what about Penny? I believe Penny knows how vile her father is and surreptitiously uses him and his company’s resources to get information on the island (and therefore the whereabouts of Desmond).

Also, now would be a good time to reiterate my Richard-Alpert-(aka Richard Eyeliner) came-to-the-island-via-the-Black-Rock Theory and his seeming agelessness is a result of the “fountain of youth” properties of the island. Because we know that Richard himself has traveled back to the mainland (to recruit Juliet), could Richard possibly be Alvar Hanso?

We now resume our program, already in progress.

Present
While leading them to the radio room, Minkowski is starting to experience nosebleeds. He acknowledges that it’s getting harder to come back. Minkowski tells Sayid and Desmond that this started happening when he and some guy named Brandon tried going to the island because they were bored and Brandon started freaking out. “Where is Brandon now?” Sayid inquires. “In a body bag.”

They enter the radio room where Sayid begins to patch the destroyed communications equipment back together, all the while grumbling about how he doesn’t know what’s going on. There is a calendar on the wall that finally gives us a clue as to when we are: December 24, 2004. “Do you have the number?” Sayid asks Desmond. Devastated, Desmond realizes he doesn’t know the number so he knows what he must do the next time he travels to the past.

Minkowski then passes out and Desmond tries calling him back to the present time. Minkowski is seizing: “Can’t….get…back…” and dies. Minkowski, we hardly knew ye. “What happened to him?” Sayid asks. “The same thing that’s going to happen to me if you don’t get hat communication equipment going.” Des snaps as his own nose begins to bleed.

Past
Des tracks down Penny, desperate to get her phone number. “If you still care anything at all for me, please give me the phone number. Eight years from now I need to call you. If there’s any part of you that still believe in us, please give me the number.” Penny doesn’t want to give Des the number. “How do I know you won’t call me tomorrow?” She asks. “I won’t call you for EIGHT YEARS. December 24, 2004. Christmas Eve.” Des pleads. Penny, disgusted, gives him the phone number: 7946-0893.

Dramatic Conclusion
Back to the present, Des wakes up in perfect time to give the number to Sayid. We wait with baited breath while the phone rings and rings. Will she pick up? Did she believe him eight years ago? We switch back and forth between the dying Des in the present on the phone and the dejected Des in the past leaving Penny’s home as she closes the curtains on him from her window above while the piano music plinks away at our heartstrings. Then—JOY!—Penny picks up the phone. And as soon as she does, we see the worry lines on the Desmond of the past’s face smooth and a small smile play upon his lips—as if he now knows the outcome of his gambit that will happen eight years in the future.

The telephone reunion of Desmond and Penny—the star crossed lovers who have been trying against impossible odds to find each other again--is one of the more emotional moments of the show so far this year. I must admit, I got a little misty. They begin talking almost at once: “I’ve been looking for you for the last three years.” Penny says. “I know about the island. I talked your friend Charlie—that’s how I knew you were still alive.” The phone starts to cut out as Des and Penny promise to stay true to each other:

I’ll find you—I’ll come back—I won’t give up—I promise—I love you Penny. I always have—I love you, too Desmond.

And the phone goes dead.

“I’m sorry,” Sayid says—"The power source went dead." But love apparently does conquer all—or at least cures Desmond’s condition. “Thank you. Sayid.” Desmond lives and he’s not crazy anymore! Yay!

Meanwhile, back on the island, Daniel is flipping through his notebook when he comes across a cryptic message has since forgotten:

“If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant.”

Next Week
A Juliet episode.

By the way, I've given up on the Preston & Steve wrap up. It just seems like Friday is a really bad time for them to have these discussions and I haven't gotten anything meaningful out of it this year. So this is all me people. If I've missed stuff you think is obvious, please email me or post to the blog.