Time Travel’s In My Blood

The last two weeks have illustrated, as well as anyone could have hoped for, the dichotomy of Lost and the reason why the show’s ardent fans as well as its detractors have both really got valid points. On the one hand we have “Flashes Before Your Eyes”, an episode focussing on the mysterious Desmond that further explores his ability to seemingly forsee future events. It’s starts off in a business as usual style, Hurley and Charlie have determined that they want to understand a little bit more about Desmond after the Scot saved the life of Claire. Desmond’s tale begins at the moment he turned the key in the hatch at the end of the last series after which he awoke back in his flat with Penelope. However, atypically from the usual Lost flashbacks, Desmond seems to have memories of his time on the island and realises that he may have an opportunity to change his fate. Suddenly, as well as Lost theorists changing all their perceptions of what is going on, we, as viewers, start to enter philosphical debates about predetermination and fate. If you believe the time-travel theory, Desmond then gets pulled back to the island to continue his troubled existence there. Wow, my head hurts.
The following week it’s another installment in Jack’s story and in “Stranger In a Strange Land” we join him with the Others over on “Alcatraz” and flashback to a holiday of his in Phuket. There were a couple of points of interest in terms of the ongoing mythology with some of the survivors (the children and the stewardess) who had been missing for ages who turned up to observe Jack in his cage and we found out the origins of half of Jack’s tattoos. All in all though this episode could have been watermarked with the word “filler” and I’m not sure whether that’s because almost nothing was going to be able to stand up to the previous episode’s quality or whether it was only an okay installment.

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Tags: Charlie, Claire, Desmond, Flashes-Before-Your-Eyes, Hurley, Jack, Lost, Penelope, Stranger-In-A-Strange-Land