4x05, The Constant

I was going to wait till after I rewatched the episode to post. But it really packed such an emotional high that I'm gonna ride it and just let it rip:

*Lost's Holy Trinity of Carlton Cuse (Writer), Damon Lindelof (Co-Writer) and Jack Bender (Director) pulls off another masterpiece. "The Constant" belongs up there with some of the finest of Season 1 and I dare say may even crack my all-time Top 5. What makes it even more spectacular was just how perfectly directed and edited it had to be to work. One shot or out of place cut and the feeling of being "unstuck in time" is lost. I've seen a lot of talk about Emmys coming the way of this episode, but clearly it has to get the one for Best Editing.

*As a piece of writing it was a perfect blend of story and mythology. When I heard the title was "The Constant" I figured there'd be something science related serving as a "constant" in (presumably) Desmond's time traveling. But knowing how Damon and Carlton always try to use science fiction as metaphor I guessed the point of the episode was to state that "The Greatest Constant is LOVE." But how to do that without seeming too cheesey? Well, Carlton and Damon did it. The key was Farraday not stating what sort or strength of emotional attachment there had to be for something to serve as a constant. Left up to Desmond that could only be Penny. But for Farraday it was knowing that all his work and sacrifice was meaningful, represented by Desmond, both in the past and in the future. The Constant is indeed "love" but not just romantic love, but the love we can have for each other as members of one interconnected and interdependent human family.

*"The Constant" also presents what amounts to a Grand Unified Theory of LOST. A lot of these points aren't mine:

-The Sickness: Sort of cast-off into the background and generally forgotten as a red herring, the sickness returns! Is "The Sickness" suffered by Danielle's crew, the one warned about with the quarantine tags on the DHARMA station doors, is it really just the result of going through the Island's snowgloble incorrectly and going crazy from all the time displacement? Was the injection given to Minkowski similar to the one Desmond was giving himself? Did DHARMA mistake people going crazy for a biological disease, thus creating a vaccine that really prevented nothing?

-Are the flashbacks really flashbacks or time displacement that the Losties just aren't experiencing as happening right now? Think about it: the only difference between Desmond's time displacement and a normal flashback was he began to understand what was happening and used it to his advantage. Could there be an episode where, say, Jack realizes this, exposes himself to a heavy dose of radiation or electromagnetism, flashes back and apologizes to his father before he dies? Couldn't any of the Losties then resolve their past issues, in the past simply by getting a jolt?

*Demond's gonna die! And he knew it, too. That look on his face that said he finally unburdened himself: he saved the world and told Penny he loved her. As he said, everything was now "Perfect." What else is there left to do?

*Me'thinks Widmore is looking for the Island and needed Maguns Hanso's notes to get there. In the LOST tie-in novel "Bad Twin" (yes, I'm a sucker and read the thing) Widmore is on the board of the Hanso Foundation. So he obviously knew his colleague Alvar Hanso had this Island all to himself but had no way of finding it for his own nefarious purposes. The Lost Experience online game gave the impression Hanso wanted the Island kept secret so the DHARMA Initiative could conduct their experiments in private. And now we know how Widmore eventually knew where it was.