"Random Thoughts on S6.11"

OK, damn the migraine, full speed ahead. Because this episode ran all-stops-out too and blew me away, with my favorite elements in it, i.e. Desmond (and Penneh), Faraday, Mrs. H, and weird science. The Flash Sideways in this ep made more sense to me than any of the other FSs, and makes me a little more accepting of the concept. Desmond's FS scenes (or should we say his old-style mental time tripping?) created some connective tissue between the 815-time and the FS that make us believe that the weaving of the two time-threads has begun, with a little help from Dan the Piano Man.

I was surprised to realize that Des had been pulled straight from the hospital scene from last season onto the sub! TPTB still haven't told us yet why you have to be drugged to take the subway ride, and I'm wondering now if they ever will. And it would be nice if there was the opportunity for Widmore to wax poetic about how it feels to be back on the island again, but episodes and time are whizzing by, so no place for that either.

TPTB go all out as usual to give us some realistic DI science equipment and apparatus to play science with and it's much appreciated, I love lab gauges, gizmos and heavy equipment. Some events that occurred seemed kind of cheesy, like the typical lab doofus who trips the switch without following the check-list or seeing if everyone else is 'go' on the procedure, which produces the proverbial hapless worker turned into the crispy-critter. But that's not to say that there aren't any dummies like that in a real lab, in my lab someone once actually shook a bottle of nitric acid and glycerin and...well, he almost became Doc Arzt, so it does happen.

I also doubt if a rickety shack could withstand the heat that was apparently emitted from a giant red-hot electromagnetic coil like this, and it bothers me a bit on the realism scale that it's not in some kind of insulated chamber but what the heck, let's just pretend that the Professor made the giant coil out of coconuts and get on with the story. We are to believe that Des can take the heat as well in all his specialness, unlike the human roasted marshmallow before him.

We get another juicy artistic morsel in Widmore's office, and I do hope that they sell prints of this one too eventually like the others, I would really like to have one.

I half expected, if Des took Minkowksi up on his offer, that Kate or one of the other Lost ladies would be an escort babe and I'm glad that didn't happen. There's no more time for skin-games now anyway, let's cut to the meat of the answers and the story. So what was the point of wasting valuable seconds making Minkowski look like a pimpish jerk? To show that Des is far too busy to insert a little down-time into his life as Charlie warned him? I dunno, what do you think?

Did you hear it? It really was the shark music. X-D It felt like Charlie's revelations and explanations were a little rushed and too perfect of a fit, or maybe I'm just being too critical. But it seems like it might take a guy like Charlie a while to figure that out, unlike Dan for instance who is a super genius and can think abstractly. Though I suppose that a near-death experience could be impetus enough to enlighten Charlie's shallow bloody rock god conscience.

This little piggie....hhheheheh. Wait, did I say no more skin? And press a button to stop the magnetism? Oh really?

Will Des and Charlie team up to get the others together and convince them? Which leads me to another question...did the Losties "have to go back" before just to make a big mistake and change events, only so they'd have to go back again and undo the changes that they went back for the first time? It's beginning to look as though the Losties are going to be caught in an eternal loop of going back and messing it up, and going back and fixing it up, and going back and messing it up...like Mrs.Hawking's previous ouroboros pin.

I wonder if Eloise's new binary star pin stands for two the universes. Or maybe she's just a member of the Madeleine Albright giant funky pin club. At any rate, she's got me as confused as she has Desmond. She knows everything (almost) and she still cares about her garden party, where as Charlie (newly christened to the universal laws of chaos and love) sees it all as vanity, like King Solomon. And she's still telling Desmond what to do, why? Seriously, Eloise has a lot of explaining to do.

Obviously Dan's been doing as much existential cogitating as Charlie has, and also has some advice for Desmond. It's great to have Jeremy Davies back, and we finally get to see some more of Dan's logbook, which I'll try to do some investigating on for my Lost Science blog over the weekend.

Do we really have enough time left in the season to watch Desmond go through all the machinations and hoops that Jack had to go through before, to get everyone from the FS to act like lemmings and jump back over into the good old days? It makes me think that maybe some of this part of the story should have begun at the end of last season. I sure hope that we have enough time left, unless TPTB plan an epilogue feature film.

Oh those impish Powers That Be of Lost, leaving us with Desmond in his wormhole happy-place following Sayid off into the jungle to meet up with MIB. Has Desmond seen where Sayid is taking him, and to whom, in a time-jump? Why did Sayid let Zoe go? And is the whole point of the Lost universe just about love, like our religions and romantic philosophers try to tell us? The Bible says that we could have many great talents and gifts, "but the most important of these is love," and if we don't have that one, all the rest are wasted.