Review: Lost Season 4, Episode 5: The Constant

This episode centered on Desmond, and it expanded on the convoluted time traveling experience he suffered after the Swan hatch exploded. The producers on Lost appear to have a concrete definition of how time travel works in relation to the show, but they could hardly choose a more confusing way to present it. This episode flips back and forth between the present time on the freighter (which is Christmas Eve 2004) and Desmond's time in the army in 1996. And, in case that's not too much for you to wrap your head around, Daniel Faraday throws out a line suggesting that the perception of time on the island is skewed.

The basic concept of the episode is that people who get too close to the island are caught up in some type of electromagnetic field that causes their consciousness to be hurled back to some prior point in time. This unexpected time travel will continue to happen on and off until it finally overloads a person's brain and kills him. One way to avoid this overload is to have something that is constant, which is always important to you and will always be there. Desmond uses Penelope Widmore and his love for her as the constant which will keep him safe when these time traveling adventures are thrust on him.

The episode opens with Frank piloting the helicopter away from the island. A harrowing ride is suggested when Sayid notices that Frank is navigating only by coordinates scrawled on a piece of paper (apparently 305 degrees rather than 325) and is headed directly into an intense storm. The worst part of that ride, however, is missed when the story follows Desmond on a sudden trip into the past. When Desmond returns to the present, the helicopter has come out of the storm and approaches the freighter.

Many new faces show up when the helicopter lands. Two deck hands named Keamy and Omar take Desmond to the sick bay to be looked at by doctor Ray. Keamy is a fountain of information. He says that he is from Vegas and Omar is from Florida. Then he suggests that even they do not know exactly where they are. He says their last port was in Fiji so at least they know they are somewhere in the Pacific.