Or, “See You In Another Life, Brotha!”

Last night Desmond finally properly returned to the world of Lost and I do believe that he not only brought some of his crazy Scottish magic with him, but he also brought the endgame we’ve all been eagerly anticipating/dreading.

And with his return last night, there came not only a new spin on this season’s recurring flash sideways action, but some complicated questions and theories about whether anyone on this show will ever be allowed to live “Happy Ever After.”

Ah, poor Desmond. I’ve said it many a time before, but I truly believe that he lingers somewhere at the living, breathing, constantly raw heart of this show, that he’s immersed in the DNA of Lost like permanent alcohol poisoning. At so many points in his life he’s been not only lost himself, but a constant loser, yet still we love him. He is our sad, wayward Homeric hero and we root for him endlessly, always on the edge of our seat in his continuing quest to return to his Penelope and his Ithaca. And two years ago he found her, only to discover at the end of last season and here in the midpoint of this one that his particular odyssey is not through him.

If this season of Lost, with the continue flash sideways motif going on, has been about, it’s parallels and opposites. Whereas Island Des has always been a coward struggling to find circumstances to make him better, always been a man out of work, a man whose relationships define him more than anything, particularly his love for Penny and the struggle for approval from her father, Charles Widmore. With that family it’s always been a question of worthiness. Widmore never saw Desmond as worthy of his daughter, let alone his fucking Scotch. And though Penny was there, alive and breathing in the flesh in Desmond’s arms so many times, he still went out into the world and struggled to be worthy of her.

Of course there’s parallels to Jack’s love for Kate there. Kate was right there in front of him but Jack was willing to blow up a nuclear bomb to start over again, to be worthy of her (or to get the fuck away from her once and for all). And Desmond wasn’t necessarily as extreme enough as a nuclear weapon, but for him it was about winning a race around the world, besting her father in one of his own challenges. That fails, of course, and somehow Desmond discovers a vastly more important calling in life: Saving the world by pressing a button every 108 minutes for three years.

And then there’s Sideways Desmond! He’s a man defined by his work, both immersed in his materialistic joys and apart from the world that offers them, and he’s beloved by his employer/father figure, Charles Widmore.

You just know that 60 year old MacCutcheon tastes amazing.

And of course Charlie comes into his life again, and he ruins it all again.

from here.

Well, Charlie, and all those crazy electromagnetics.

This is a complicated episode, both in itself and what it means for the future for Lost, and the way it’s evolved from the show’s past and complicated mythology so far. Parallels and opposites: The worst three words that Desmond could ever face in his life, “NOT PENNY’S BOAT,” mean something powerfully different in the Sideways World, a call to something else he should be struggling to find. His odyssey is just beginning and his Penelope is just out there waiting for him. He now needs to seek out what Charlie called, “spectacular, consciousness altering love.”

But then again, Charlie’s a fucking junkie. What the hell does he know?

And so many wonderful returns: Fisher Stevens as George Minkowski, his driver who wants to find him some “companionship,” Jeremy Davies as Daniel Widmore/Faraday, and Finnoula Flanagan as Eloise Widmore/Hawking. Everyone seems to know something more than Desmond, to know that he’s not ready yet for… something, but in some way they’re going to aid him on his quest. Faraday is a musician (one who wants to combine classic music with modern rock) in this Sideways timeline, which was perhaps his heart’s desire even if his dreaming destiny is science, but I loved the philosophical ramblings he shared with Desmond. This is not the world that they were meant to have, he says. Something’s been changed. Like the after of a nuclear weapon going off. Do you want to blow up a nuclear bomb? Desmond asks. I think I already have, Widmore/Faraday replies.

And then Desmond meets the woman of his dreams, the love of his life in another life. Parallels and opposites: This time she’s the one running the tour de stade. She probably has a lot of frustrations to vent (she is, sadly, stuck in Flash Forward at least through this season, after all).

Unrelated, I think this episode highlights a strong difference between Americans and Europeans…

Americans drink and they get drunk. The Eurotrash have really developed and mastered the skill to just keep drinking. Pouring yourself a glass of whiskey is just an extension of your hand, something you just do, like breathing, eating, or genital manipulation. It’s an ability we used to have, but clearly lost. It’s something magical that I think we’ve really lost since the days of the swinging 60s and the era of Mad Men.

It’s nice to have you back, Penny.

Other than that… There’s so much you could say about this episode, about all of it, all over the spectrum. Too much. I typically wouldn’t recommend Jeff Jensen’s Lost ramblings over Entertainment Weekly because they’re usually pretty asinine, but he brings up some good thoughts in his write up about last night’s “Happy Ever After.” Also, I’ll begrudgingly credit him with a good phrasing for the solenoid/toroidal coil chamber room in which Charles Widmore conducts his electromagnetic experiment on Desmond: “Quantum Sweat Lodge.”

from here.

And I tell you, all those years ago, I wish that Hurley hadn’t been reading the Flash/Green Lantern team up comic (the one that teased the audience with the notion of polar bears), but had instead been reading the classic Gardner Fox/Carmine Infantino story, “Flash Of Two Worlds.” It’s the story that pretty much created the DC Comics Multiverse and gave birth to a modern look back at the Golden Age and Silver Age of comics (and has been obsessed over by numerous prominent Scottish comic book writers since). Thought the conversation about the Flash back in “Catch 22″ is a lot funnier to me now. Desmond is a man in two worlds now, he is both Barry Allen and Jay Garrick now. That is, Desmond is the Flash, and things are going to start moving faster now…

…because now the end looms larger still. Things are set in motion, and timetables are being advanced all over the place. Sayid is running around killing people all willy nilly. Desmond’s able to cross his consciousness between two worlds, and seems to have found a mission in both. We’re going somewhere now, but where? Who can say? And who knows in what direction. Up? Down? Forwards or backwards? Or perhaps Sideways.