Lost Rewatch On VHS: Flashes Before Your Eyes

 

This episode is agreed upon as the one unquestioned masterpiece of Season 3 with the exception of the season finale. I don’t hold with that idea it’s the only great episode of the series – I have one that I hold in higher regard that this one, as you’ll see – but there’s no denying that it was one of the great episodes in the show’s history, and one that to this day we can’t truly determine what exactly happened.

The episode, as we all know, is Desmond centric. Hurley is suspicious of Desmond because he believes that he has superpowers. It’s becoming increasingly hard to deny that something very strange is going on with our Scottish friend when in the teaser of the episode, he leaves the group and runs nearly a mile to the beach to rescue a drowning Claire.

(On a side note, this is another example of Locke’s difference when it comes to leadership. In the opening minutes, he sends for Charlie and Hurley to tell them that Eko is dead and that the ‘island killed him.’ When Charlie asks what he means, Locke says: ‘You know what it means, and because Charlie and Hurley have seen the monster they don’t argue. Locke essentially lets them in to the secret – something that Jack never would have done in a similar situation – and tells them to use their discretion because he knows the rest of the camp will be looking to them as to how to go forward. Locke clearly has a better idea of the psychology of the camp than Jack ever did.)

The rest of the episode is trying to find out what Desmond knows and how it happened. It is a tribute to the writers that we’re still not sure how exactly, but we don’t care mostly because we – like Desmond himself – is trying to figure out what’s happening from the moment he turns the failsafe key.

What we know for sure is that Desmond is clearly remembering when he and Penny were together. We know that Desmond and Penny have just moved in, Desmond is desperate to earn her father’s approval for their marriage, Desmond does not get it and not long after that, this causes Desmond to end his relationship with Penny. That is clearly canon. What else is going on is clearly a subject of debate and it depends on what you think to happened to Desmond. Even now, the writers have never been clear on that.

There were two prevailing theories at the time. The first was that when he turned the failsafe key, the electromagnetic pulse somehow propelled Desmond back in time to this same period but he had certain memories of what had happened to him on the island. The second theory was that, thinking he was about to die, Desmond’s life flashed before his eyes, stopped at a certain point and he started to play it out, but with the idea that he could change thing. In hindsight, both theories were sort of correct – and neither would explain the biggest problem.

What we see in this episode will be at the center of every story that will have to do Desmond: his love for Penny, his determination to win her father’s approval, and his conceptions of honor that continue to drive him. In ‘Live Together, Die Alone’  Desmond had joined the military (no doubt for the same reasons that drove so many to join the Foreign Legion the previous century) ended up in military prison (we will never learn why) and was dishonorably discharged. Charles Widmore was waiting outside, and we see that he had done everything in his power to make sure that Penny had never received any of Desmond’s letters. Desmond was determined ‘to get his honor back’ and decided to win Widmore’s race around the world. (It is still a subject of debate among Lost fans whether Widmore himself arranged this merely for Desmond to end up on the island and therefore permanently away from Penny.) But even on the island, Penny found a way of reaching out to Desmond and that helped give him the courage to make the ultimate sacrifice (or so we thought at the time.)

When the flashback begins Desmond is back in his flat around the time he and Penny have first moved in together. Desmond wants to try and win her father’s approval so he decides to get a job at one of his companies. He keeps experiencing moments of what he thinks is déjà vu but is no doubt trying to prepare himself for his meeting with Charles.

At this point, it’s not clear if the writers yet had a long term plan for Charles Widmore beyond being the obstacle between Desmond and Penny. Based on the one scene we get; it would have been more than enough if that were the case. The scene in the office is one of the hallmarks in series lore. Desmond sits across from Widmore, looking very small and Widmore treats him with the same detachment he would with any job applicant – but not what you’d expect for his daughter’s boyfriend. Finally Desmond works up the courage to ask for Widmore’s permission to marry Penny. Widmore gets to his feet and asks Desmond if he knows anything about whiskey. (Consider how often we’ve seen Desmond drunk to this point, it’s kind of funny he says not really.) Widmore talks up McCutcheon, a great man who created this brilliant whiskey. (We’ve already seen Charlie offer it to Desmond, and his hysterical reaction clearly now makes sense.) He pours a single glass and says: “This swallow is more than you could make it in a month. And to share it with you would be a disgrace to the great man who made it. Because you Hume will never be a great man.”

Now we know that this isn’t the eighteenth century and that there’s nothing stopping Penny and Desmond from eloping. But in Desmond, the  concept of honor is clearly entrenched.

The next scene I don’t know whether or not is real. We’ve already seen that the survivors have had links before they ended up on the plane and we already know that Desmond has links to more than a few of them. It just doesn’t seem quite accurate that Desmond would have come across Charlie at this particular moment in time. I think some part of Desmond’s subconscious is trying to tell him he’s been here before and Charlie is the most direct projection of it. (Considering what we learn at the end of the episode, there is another reason.) Desmond then goes to the pub with a physicist friend of his, trying to figure out if time travel is real. The friend understandably thinks he’s crazy until Desmond seems to remember this night. When his memories turn out to be faulty, Desmond decides that he is not thinking clearly and goes home to Penny. He has decided that they will have a night out and he intends to propose to her.

The next two scenes were jarring at the time and even once we knew who the woman is and what her link to everything else on the island is, it’s still not clear how she ended up here. Since its pretty clear that in the original timeline this woman wasn’t at the ring shop and since it’s just as clear that she is real, the question is how did she get here and how did she know every bit of Desmond’s life? This woman (at this point the show just calls her Miss Hawking, so we’ll keep that in) clearly know what Desmond will do. She clearly knows what will happen to the man in the red shoes. And by now we know she has an agenda to making sure that Desmond stays directly on his path. There is even a possibility as to how she knew what was going to happen the first time out. But in either case, it kind of makes neither version of events make sense. This clearly did not happen the first time around and if it is his life flashing before his eyes, it wouldn’t explain her presence. So how did she get here?

At this point in the series run, we were inclined to dismiss it as the same way Desmond did: this woman was some part of Desmond’s subconscious trying to play to his own doubts. It’s hard to ignore that fact given Hawking’s choice of words. She tells Desmond if he doesn’t go to the island, every single one of us is dead (which will turn out to be true, actually, though we don’t learn why for a very long time). She tells him that this is his path and we know that Desmond believes in destiny. And she tells him that pushing the button is the only ‘truly great thing you’ll ever do’. Considering what Widmore said he’d never be one, maybe he wants it to play to this.

At the time of the third season of Lost, Fionnula Flanagan was filming the second season of Brotherhood so there was no reason to believe that this was just a lone shot. Similarly Alan Dale was at the time a regular on Ugly Betty, so we had no reason to think this was a larger role either. And for all we know maybe this was even the truth at the time: Dale would not reappear on Lost until Season 4 and even then we were still unaware of just how deep Widmore’s connection to the island was.

What we know in retrospect is that Hawking had her own agenda, one far deeper than keeping Desmond and Penny apart. We won’t know the full scope of it for another two seasons – and even then, it still doesn’t give a full explanation as to her presence here.

Whatever the reason Desmond still does what he ends up doing. Maybe because he chooses to; maybe because he’s supposed to. And even though the viewer knows in the end it will all work out, it doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking to see Penny walk away in tears and Desmond throw his ring in the Thames.

Then Desmond ends up at the pub and realizes he was off by one night on his prediction. This may be the clearest indication that he actually did travel back in time in some form. But maybe the fact that when he tries to change things by warning the bartender about Jimmy Lennon and he takes the blow to the head instead is in fact the sign of course-correcting Hawking was talking about. We shall find out much later on she was not being honest with Desmond on that (and that, in fact, she was making sure that fate had take a path in life) but the result is the same. Desmond wakes up in the jungle, back on the island, and runs to the hatch (which is what Locke saw him doing at the start of Further Instructions). Seeing Desmond break down cements the power of Henry Ian Cusick’s work in this episode as we see a man utterly determined to hope that there is a way to get off this bloody rock.

Then we are back in the present and Desmond confides what happened to him (without you know, telling him anything) but then he tells him that he keeps having flashes of the future. The problem is, the future he is seeing is Charlie’s – and Desmond is certain that no matter what he tries to do, Charlie doesn’t have much of one.

The writers had been honest when they told journals that they would be using the flashback structure in a way they never had before and never would again. In the former case, they were telling the truth. When it came to Desmond, they were not being honest. Desmond would be at the center of four more episodes after Flashes Before Your Eyes and none of them would fit the conventions of the traditional Lost episode (or at least how the writers would define them with each season they occurred). We’re still not sure how Desmond managed to basically survive ground zero of an electromagnetic explosion and walk away unhurt (and well, unclothed) but we’re still not yet sure whether that means anything special. Locke walked away unhurt as well. What seems more critical right now is his love for Penny. The last photo the two took together has managed to survive a trip around the world, nearly being soaked in the ocean and the destruction of the hatch. That would seem to be a clear sign that the love that Des and Penny have can survive anything and we already know that Penny hasn’t given up on Desmond either. There have always been immense obstacles stopping their love and right now Desmond thinks that photo is the last link he has to the woman he ran away from.

As we’ll see in Season 3, Desmond’s love for Penny will seem to lead the survivors to their ultimate salvation. But considering what we eventually learn, the question might be: who was sending those flashes in the first place?

VHS Notes: Ads running through this episode include promos for one of the most significant blockbusters of 2007: 300. The Academy awards were still a few weeks off, so when we saw ads for the DVD release of The Departed, they only mentioned that it had received five Academy Award nominations. Mark Wahlberg would be the only recipient of a nomination to go home empty handed Oscar night.