4.05 - The Constant

Title’s significance: Time-traveling consciousnesses need a constant – something or someone present in both timelines – in order to unscramble their brains.

Recap: (I apologize in advance if the recap is difficult to follow; the episode might be challenging without seeing it.) This episode focuses on the fate of the freighter-bound Sayid, Frank, and Desmond. While traveling to the freighter, Desmond flashes back – physically – to hi time in the military; when his consciousness returns to the helicopter, he doesn’t remember anything about the island. Meanwhile, Daniel tells Jack that there’s some sort of time distortion around the island, and Desmond finds himself bouncing between 2004 and 1996. Desmond meets Minkowski in the freighter’s sick bay and learns that they’re suffering the same affliction. In 1996, Desmond tries to contact Penny before jumping back to the freighter, at which point Daniel tells Desmond to contact him in 1996. He does and uses the information Future Faraday gave him to convince Past Daniel that his story about time travel is true; it turns out that Daniel’s been working on the time travel of human consciousness. In 2004, Minkowski reveals that Penny’s been trying to contact the freighter but that the freighter crew is forbidden from speaking with her. In 1996, Daniel warns Desmond that he’ll die if he doesn’t find a constant – something accessible in both timelines – so Desmond chooses Penny, but her phone number’s been disconnected. Desmond seeks out Widmore, who gives Desmond Penny’s address. In 2004, Sayid works to fix the freighter’s broken radio equipment, but Desmond’s thrown back to 1996 to get Penny’s phone number. He gets the number just in time to make the call in 2004, in which Penny professes her love and promises to find Desmond. Back on the beach, Daniel reveals to the audience that Desmond was *his* constant.

Thoughts: I think this is an episode that could have been really bad and really confusing if it hadn’t been written by my favorites, Damon and Carlton. As it was, the episode was surprisingly easy to follow and extremely entertaining, definitely one of the best of Season Four and perhaps one of the best of the series thus far.

Favorite moment: It's so tough to pick a favorite moment in this episode, mostly since this episode was just full of one memorable moment after another.

Characters introduced (in order):

• MARTIN KEAMY, militant member of the freighter crew
• OMAR, Keamy’s partner
• RAY, the doctor on the freighter

What we learned:

• Transportation on and off the island involves some kind of temporal displacement.
• Daniel was a physics professor at Oxford.
• Daniel’s fritziness is related to his experiments with radiation, and Desmond is his constant.
• A constant “fixes” the scrambled brains of time-traveling consciousnesses.
• Widmore purchased a journal from The Black Rock at auction.
• Temporal dislocation killed Eloise the rat and Minkowski.
• Penny is Desmond’s constant.
• Penny knows about the island.

Questions:

• Why does the island only displace some people and not others?
• Who’s Eloise?
• Why can’t the freighter communicate with Penelope? Who told them not to?
• Who sabotaged the radio equipment on the freighter?

Things that are going to be important in Season Six:

• Desmond yells repeatedly, “I’m not supposed to be here!” But the very nature of the island and the interlinked destinies of those who come to it suggest otherwise. In fact, Mrs. Hawking even says that the island isn’t done with Desmond, so we need some closure on this plotline ay-sap.
• Constants? Anyone?