Sunday, April 11, 2010

LOST (Episode 6.11) Happily Ever After Recap & Analysis

This Episode is packed with 42% more Flash Sideways


Loved this episode, only when Daniel started talking about how he thinks he may have used a nuclear bomb in some other life did my opinion decrease any. Which is not because of the direction of the plot, I had leaned most of the season that the flash sideways are a creation, an alternate universe because of whatever they did that changed the course of time. This is seemingly confirmed since now Daniel has knowledge of his “other self” as does Desmond and Charlie. I was more put off by the way he just laid it out there, because well it was kind a crazy.

Desmond wakes up from his sedated sleep of the past three days to find out he is back on the island and his son and Penny are safe but not with him, oh yeah and here is his good buddy Widmore that needs a favor. And if that isn’t enough to make him want to beat someone with an IV stand, the island isn’t through with him yet.

It has been ZERO days since our last accident


Widmore’s science crew is powering up the magic shed and they accidently fry one of their own. One of the crew goes to check the solenoids and some dimwitted goon decides to throw the breaker without doing a safety check. This at least saved the bunny and angry phone calls from PETA (what was up with that rabbit, looked like it had a new leg growing out of its chest) Regardless of this accident, they figured to check it out on Desmond to see if he really is the only man in the world known to survive a catastrophic electromagnetic event, because doing it once isn’t enough for Widmore, no not by a long shot.

Widmore tells Des that after they fry him which won’t hurt, much, he is going to be asked to make a sacrifice.



No whoosh sound noting it not so much as a flashback, forward or sideways, in the same way Desmond’s flashes happened in The Constant. After some floating through the clouds, we are taken to baggage claim and Des is looking for where to pick up his bags when he encounters Hurly and Claire, though they do not seem to know each other. Continuing the mirror motif, we get a glimpse of Des’s reflection.


“You’re the Top You’re the Coliseum, You’re the Top You’re the Louve Museum”


Desmond walks into Widmore’s office and they greet each other was such enthusiasm I almost expect them to break out in a song and dance number.

I found myself being the LOST Psychic this episode calling Desmond’s sharing of Widmore’s very expensive scotch,(that Des was previously not fit to drink) Because he is sooooo indispensable and nothing is too good for him. My oh my is this over the top. Probably this flash sideways is the most extreme with its difference compared to all the others so far. No in this reality Widmore and Des are like peas and carrots.

Desmond’s first task is to pick up Charlie Pace from the LA lockup and bring him to Widmore’s wife’s benefit where Drive Shaft will be performing with Daniel Faraday…um excuse me…Daniel Widmore, the musician, not physicist.


And the Creepiest Character in the Flash sideways award goes to Charlie Pace


Charlie has gotten very creepy, maybe because he is dead in the other reality, but to me this guy was not our Charlie. He tells Desmond about his near death experience on the plane and how he saw his true love (Claire) and then some sodding idiot was standing over him who had the audacity to save his life, sheesh, what kind of town is this where people save each other’s lives.

Charlie decides to take Desmond on a magical mystery trip off the pier into the very same marina Des is shot at three years and another reality in the future. As soon as the car was submerged I immediately shouted..NOT PENNY's BOAT! And sure enough, psychic moment number two happens when Des is trying to get Charlie’s door open and Charlie wakes up and puts his hand on the door, just as he did in Through the Looking Glass, except with this very doll like creepy smile. Des has a flash of Not Penny’s boat and with it, some familiarity, and a memory?

They make it to the hospital, and when Des gets his MRI he receives more flashes of his times with Penny and the birth of his son Charlie.

Show me your hands and step away from that manifest

Eloise looked like she was going to soil herself when she turned to see Desmond at the party. They had never met at this point and she takes the news of Charlie going MIA very well. When she over head Desmond wanting to know about Penny though she gets involved and says someone has influenced his way of thinking, it’s a violation and Des wasn’t ready to know anything, whatever it is he is looking for he should just stop. Well thanks person I just met, think I will go back to following these amazingly real and weird things that just happened to me.



“No it wasn’t a dream, it was a place and you and you and you were there”


We have seen Minkowski, Jack, Charlie, Charles, Eloise and Daniel this episode and finally Penny. Daniel lets us know he is a musician, he has the hots for a red head (Charlotte) and he may have blown up a nuke at some point…well not in this life. Desmond seems to handle this information extraordinary well, perhaps since part of him knows all about these type of things.

Daniel’s feelings about Jughead confirms that he is aware of it, and the producers have always confirmed these sideways are to show what would happen if the plane landed safely in LA but to pay attention to any differences. With Dan’s knowledge of the nuke, and Des’s knowledge of Penny and Charlie it eliminated the idea these sideways flashes are a “what if scenario”, where this was the same exact flight. Case and point this episode with Desmond being on the plane.

Besides Dan’s omission about how he set off a nuke in some other life, my only other disappointment in the episode was Desmond's creepy interest in getting the manifest from the flight, I guess because him and Charlie were on the flight together and had this vague knowledge of another life could be why, but Daniel wasn’t on the flight, why assume the other passengers would be affected by this? And then when I thought about it some more, I wondered if perhaps Desmond in the car was fully aware of himself from his island life, a piece of him left behind when he awoke from his fainting in front of Penny.


In Dan’s words Desmond is “miraculously special”, not just because he can survive a cataclysmic electromagnetic event, but because he is conscious of both his consciousnesses. When he woke up from OZ with Widmore standing over him it seemed he retained what he just learned of himself from the flash sideways. He was holding his hand out as if Penny was still holding it when he fainted. And like The Constant, when he was flashing to the time he was in the army he was not aware of his island self at all, even though he was just on the helicopter, it was if he switched bodies. Because when we would regain consciousness on the freighter he would know what he knew from when he just was in the 90’s, only with his contact with Penny did it all come together for him. And I think that is what happened at the end of the episode.

The rules don’t apply to Des because he is has the ability like Eloise I imagine, to be the consciousness of both time lines equally, as both halves, so he cancels himself out in a way.

See ya in another life Brother


This episode confirms the sideways is connected and possibly created by the main time line and I get the impression that the show is heading in the direction where we will find the sideways has created the main time line. Forming a perfect chicken or egg scenario, a complete circle with no beginning and no end. This is also much like the compass paradox where Richard gave the compass to Locke so he could give it back to Richard so Richard could give it back to Locke, to give it to Richard and so on, and so on. But as I have always said, it doesn’t matter which came first, either way chickens make eggs and eggs make chickens.

I was thinking this was the proof that the sideways is an alternate time line due to Jughead exploding and possibly sinking the island or at least being a catalyst that will sink the island sometime during 1977-1988 this is why when the plane flies overhead in this altered reality the island is at the bottom of the ocean. Thus debunking some of my own theories, but then I looked at the whole timeline stretched out, I noticed something.

Think of time as one long line that does not end in what we consider the present, we think of tomorrow as something that hasn’t happened yet because it hasn’t happened to us, but what if it has already?

I do think Jughead is part of the reason there are these 2 scenarios, but I am thinking that it going off isn’t what sunk the island, maybe it not going off did.

Questions Answered
• Desmond was on the plane and is not married to Penny in the Flash Sideways, but is working for Widmore

• Desmond has special electromagnetism powers and that is what is special about him

• Faraday is alive in the Flash Sideways and is a musician not a physicist

• Eloise and Widmore are married in the Flash Sideways

• The Flash Sideways Characters that were on the island have a connection to themselves



New Questions
• What is the sacrifice Des will be asked to make?

• How will Des’s powers help keep the MIB on the island? Or how will they destroy the MIB?

• Is the sunken island the result of the bomb going off, or not going off?



 
 

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