THIS WEEK ON LOST: Happily Ever After

I have to briefly apologize for the oddity of this week’s LOST recap. I’m boarding a bus Wednesday for the New City of York, and I have to pound this out tonight. That’s what she said. I generally write this at the apex of a caffeine rocket, filled up with an energy drink and three or four Diet Mountain Dews. As well, I take screen caps as I go along flipping through the episode to gather my thoughts. So I’m without the episode at hand, I’m tired and generally content, and I feel rather blase.

Like LAX, this is the LOST recap you’ve come to know and love. Just a little different. Next week will be back to the usual.

I dug the fuck out of this week’s episode. I really did. By the end of it, I wasn’t really certain what was going on, but it seems like the veil of LAX is beginning to crumble down around the alternate reality, courtesy of some gorgeous Scottish hands. Shit is getting more and more complicated, and I’m going to get a priapism from all the romantic ideals and science-fiction bonery. I’m sold man, sold man like woah.

I knew shit was poppin’ off when Charles “I’ve Got a Powerful Chin” Widmore stuck Desmond into that hut with all the crazy fucking coils and shit. The whole scene smacked of Dr. Manhattan and Watchmen, and I couldn’t help but think homage as Desmond stood in the middle of the room and began to glow like a motherfucker.

You have to admire such a pack of nerds and their ability to stuff their television show with a zillion references.

We find Desmond in LAX, and we all know that it’s merely a matter of time before he begins to ask himself what the fuck is going on. Note the first shot of Desmond in LAX is courtesy of a reflective surface. If you took a shot of whiskey every time the show uses a mirror or a puddle of water or something equally reflective to transition between the real Island and LAX, you’d be drinking at least once an episode. That drinking game wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever thought of, okay?

Much like on the Island, Desmond spends his time in this episode trying to save Charlie’s drug-addled ass. And once Charlie plunges The Constant’s sexy car into the ocean, it triggers the OMFG Moment you knew was coming but were secretly excited for anyways.

Desmond flashes back to the Island, and then snaps back into LAX, after witnessing the superimposition of Charlie’s hand on the glass underwater with his death on the actual Island. This coincides with Charlie’s earlier commentary on having witnessed the “truth” after nearly dying.

So wait, LAX is a construction? An intentional fabrication? Awesome.

It seems important to note that Charlie’s revelation came at the hands of a near-death experience. Somehow almost crossing the boundary between life and death illuminated the creation of this alternate universe. I don’t think Charlie has any particular or remarkable powers or sense of clarivoyance. However, maybe it has to do with the fact that on the Island, the dude is actually dead?

Eh?

I got nothing.

Desmond’s revelation is centered around his love for Penny, which seems to know no transdimensional bounds. Not surprisingly, this shakes the typical I’m A Successful Guy archetype that Desmond is on LAX to the roots. What, you mean despite being successful, and rich, I’m unhappy? What is this, Up in the Air? It’s typical, but I enjoy it. You can roll your eyes, and I won’t mind it, but it seems tied into the core of who Desmond is on the Island; he totally lives for that Chicks From Flashforward and his child.

So it isn’t as though it’s some random character being bent by the power of unrequited love. Rather, it’s Desmond, whose entire character revolved around the concept until he finally consummated his love for Penny and made me cry in The Constant.

So like, LAX is totally the Matrix, or something. It’s a veil pulled over the eyes of everyone from Oceanic 815.

This splinter in the mind of Desmond leads him into a confrontation with Eloise Hawking at some sort of shitty soiree where Charlie was supposed to rock out with Danny Faraday. Or Danny Widmore, rather. He goes to apologize to Eloise after he fails to get Druggie Hobbit to play this soiree. But as he walks away, he ends insisting on seeing the guest list for the party after hearing the name “Penny” dropped. Eloise hears the commotion and is like, you need to cut the shit, you Scottish prick!

And that’s when I knew. This gray-haired bitch knew something. How exactly is Eloise aware that LAX is a construct? That’s what I’m wanting to know. Was this entire thing a plan with Widmore from the beginning? ‘Cause that dude didn’t seem to know shit when Desmond interacted with him.

The conversation with Eloise is an interesting dialogue on the concept of LAX as a Utopia, if you want to take it that way. She comments to Hume that he has “everything” he wanted, and rattles off a laundry list of generic bullshit like money and success and most importantly the approval of Chucky Widmore. It doesn’t take but a stroke of a moment to pass before it becomes clear that this isn’t what Hume desires most.

That draws into question the idea that I’ve been pandering that LAX is the result and karmic snapback of all the people’s behavior on the Island. Hume doesn’t receive what he deserves on LAX, but rather he was given what someone else thought would be his most desired trait.

So who is pulling the strings here?

As Desmond goes to leave the weird soiree bullshit after his confrontation with that Haggy Hawking Hoe, he’s accosted in his limousine by Faraday. As the two talk, Danny Widdy-moore confirms that other people are feeling the bleed from the regular Island into LAX. After seeing Charlotte walk-by one day, Faraday began freaking and pumping out quantum equations and shit. I can’t really remember what they were, but they had to do with a nuclear blast, and creating pockets to contain energy, and uh, something.

Yeah, I don’t really get the science behind it.

But I do get the connection of true love pulling people through time and space.

Charlie and Claire.

Desmond and Penny.

Faraday and Red Haired Chick.

Faraday comments that he thinks some sort of detonation has already taken place, and that he was responsible for it, and it created this pocket reality. So, did the nuclear blast create LAX? I’m not sure. I recall at the beginning of the season, the writers mentioned that we hadn’t seen what sunk the Island. And I’m guessing that whatever sunk the Island on LAX is also what Widmore is up to, which is also what created LAX. I’m probably really, really, really wrong.

There seems to be some suggestion that when people from the Island get into close proximity to one another, they begin to pull at the fabric of LAX. Which seems pretty awful for the maintenance of this pocket dimension, since they constantly interact with one another.

Faraday gives Desmond the DL on Penny, and then he runs into her, and when he touches her hand, it serves as some sort of conduit to jettison him back into the “real” reality, whatever the fuck that means at this point. Desmond wakes up on the Island, and instantly agrees to help Widmore, though we’re not really sure what he’s asking him to do. One quick cut later, and Desmond is back in LAX, having fallen to the ground.

Oh shizzle, what we already knew, but again, it’s doubly cool whence confirmed, Desmond is the Constant. And that doesn’t just mean through time, but also apparently space.

It seems to me that Widmore wants to build a temporary cage, or construct for Smokey. I’m going to guess that LAX is this brief hiatus or cage. I say brief or temporary, because Eloise remarks that Desmond isn’t ready to know or some shit. As well, Faraday speaks of pockets and the such. So even if this cage was supposed to be permanent, I’m going to go ahead and figure it isn’t going to hold. You know what they say. You can’t hold a Ballin’ Ass Devil down.

And then there’s Desmond.

What the fuck does Widmore want with him? Does Widmore want Desmond to help create this pocket dimension to cage Smokey? I want to speculate on this, but I can’t help focus on Faraday’s statement that a large blast of energy could create this pocket. Was this the nuclear bomb or something else, forthcoming?

Say, for instance, an EMP that Widmore wanted to know Desmond could survive.

Or.

Does Widmore want Desmond to resolve these two dimensions? Is Desmond needed to perform some action, on LAX, with the knowledge or Island-Desmond? Eh! Eh! I’m getting a fucking nosebleed, brotha!

Basically we know that Desmond is the Interdimensional Constant. He needs to survive a zillionth electromagnetic pulse. And he intends on bringing everyone from Oceanic 815 together. We don’t know why or what for.

The idea of LAX as a Utopia is interesting to me, since I’ve spent the good part of the last three months reading about female utopias, like that of Millennium Hall and The Governess. But there seems to be a frequent occurrence in all of the Utopian novels that I’ve read – the narrator never stays. Even in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, nothing gold can stay! LAX seems to echo this literary movement, which is to say you’re always shown a Utopia, and then dragged away from it back to “reality”, which seems to be going on.

It is a flawed Utopia, no doubt. The fact that Desmond has been “told” what he wants most, suggests that it really isn’t that utopic, but the same argument could be made for any utopia postulated. It seems doubly fitting then, that the utopia must crumble, the characters must be sucked back to the real world, and then most try and actualize whatever they found in the ideals of the utopia.

For instance, Jack will be dragged back to the Island, and must try and consider what he learned by interacting with this fictional son. Or uh, transdimensional son.

I really hope they collapse LAX back into the Island, and we have to try and see the ramifications on the characters.