Two important things about this week and they're both about time.
First, since I was so slack in getting the recap done for last week's episode, I'm gonna burn this one out just as quick as I can.
Second, if you thought that having Desmond become unstuck in time was a novel idea, well, you're exactly right. It's an idea that comes directly from a novel.
Two words. Slaughterhouse Five.
Lots to cover and not much time...or lots of time...
Best kiss ever.
The episode starts with Desmond looking at the crumpled picture that he and Penny had taken way back when. Frank is using a cheat sheet that Faraday drew for him to help him navigate back to their boat. Sayid, watching Frank consult the sheet and then fly directly into a thunderhead, is less than impressed with the Lapidus Flying for Dummies approach.
A little turbulence and Desmond is...elsewhere.
He finds himself in an army barracks, waking to the sound of his an angry sergeant (I assume sergeant. I don't know much about military designations, but I've seen Stripes enough times to figure that only sergeants are that perpetually pissed off) waking the men for morning calisthenics. When Desmond is slow to haul his enlisted ass out of bed, he earns the wrath of the Sarge. Sarge wants to know why Hume is so slow to come to his mark. Desmond tries to explain that he was having a dream that he had trouble waking from.
A few military cliches later and Des is in the yard doing crunches when he suddenly finds himself back in the helicopter. Only this time, unlike a "regular" flashback or even Hume's previous time jumping, he has no memory of Sayid, Frank, the chopper or where he is or how he got there.
Enter the Slaughterhouse Five angle. I write a 5,000 word essay on Lost every week, but it would be easy to write double that on Slaughterhouse Five alone.
I'll try to restrain myself.
Back when Desmond first did his little time hopping routine, a lot of people thought he was not so much time travelling as he was "unstuck" in time. This "unstuck" concept is the main plot device in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse Five. Normally, this would be a sidenote, but I think it's a weird enough parallel that I'll devote a little recap space to it.
From Wikipedia:
"Slaughterhouse-Five spans the life of a man who has "come unstuck in time." It is the story of Billy Pilgrim experiencing different time periods of his life, most notably his experience in World War II and his relationship with his family. The book is a series of seemingly random happenings that, in combination, present the thematic elements of the novel in an unraveling order."
Slaughterhouse Five is one of those must read classics that I have only recently gotten around to reading. In fact, I read it only a few months ago. As I read it, I couldn't help thinking of Desmond and his time jumps. If a real person "came unstuck in time" it would be exceptionally disorienting. Vonnegut conveys this quite well in the novel and I remember thinking that Desmond seemed almost too comfortable with the concept when he first started jumping. The freaking out in the helicopter Desmond fits my idea of how a reasonably normal person might react in that situation.
Vonnegut uses Pilgrim's experiences as a soldier and a time traveller to roll out various commentaries on the human condition, most notably the futility of war, the futility of anti-war sentiments, the concept of free will and the inevitability of death. Every time a death happens in the novel, the narrator comments "So it goes," to remind us that there is not a damned thing anyone can do to stop death. The time travel that Pilgrim experiences is the result of his interaction with a race of aliens who are able to perceive time in a way that we cannot. To them, time is a physically available dimension, just like up/down, side to side and back and forth are to us. The aliens have no concept of now and then, before and after. To them, it's all the same. If you think that sounds confusing, it is. Think of it like this: To the aliens in question, moving back and forth through time is no different or stranger than you and I moving from home to office. Pilgrim gets used to it over time, as Desmond seems to.
Timeless
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Comments (29)
YESSSS...
Excellent and ever-so-helpful recap.
Goodness, I felt I was unstuck the whole show.
Thanks for the hard work!
1 of 29 | Posted by lirpa | Posted on March 3, 2008 5:05 AM
I thought Eloise was going to be a computer, like ENIAC or something.
2 of 29 | Posted by srah | Posted on March 3, 2008 6:02 AM
Thanks lirpa!
I just noticed that when I sent Flipit the pictures, I sent him the wrong "settings" picture. I created one that showed the change from one shot to the next in the way the boat was drawn. I've sent him the corrected version (I actually had to recreate it...I must have been really out of it when I sent pix) and hopefully it'll be up soon.
GB
3 of 29 | Posted by Greybishop | Posted on March 3, 2008 7:59 AM
Thanks Flipit!
4 of 29 | Posted by Greybishop | Posted on March 3, 2008 10:08 AM
no prob tiger. great work as usual :)
5 of 29 | Posted by flipit | Posted on March 3, 2008 11:27 AM
Thanks for the suggestion of reading Slaughterhouse Five, tiger.
6 of 29 | Posted by Clair | Posted on March 3, 2008 1:35 PM
This is my favorite episode of the season so far. Thanks for the great recap Flipit!
Did anyone else notice that Former Faraday told Desmond that you can't change the future when that was exactly what Des was trying to do all through season 3?
7 of 29 | Posted by FreewayShark | Posted on March 3, 2008 5:10 PM
Ok - Sayid didn't notice the year on the calendar. I'm sure I could go back and look this up myself - but, what year did Oceanic 815 crash?
This was a terrific episode. The fact that Desmond and Penny are at the center of this story - and, we didn't even meet Desmond until season 2 shows how great the writing and acting is on this show.
8 of 29 | Posted by dbmsb | Posted on March 4, 2008 5:21 AM
It was 2004, which is the year 815 crashed.
Actually, given all the wierd time stuff, I was actually half expecting it to be a different year in the "real" world.
Plus all the "I'll call you December 24, 2004" stuff pretty much rules out any other year...
9 of 29 | Posted by Greybishop | Posted on March 4, 2008 6:59 AM
Love the pendulum explanation. I'm a huge Vonnegut fan and got a kick out of this episode. The screen-caps, as always, were hilarious! Thanks for your hard work.
10 of 29 | Posted by drmalcolm | Posted on March 4, 2008 7:24 AM
By the way, if you want to read more by Vonnegut, "Galapagos" is the way to go. Ship-wrecked survivors on an island...
11 of 29 | Posted by drmalcolm | Posted on March 4, 2008 7:29 AM
drmalcolm -
Thanks! I'll keep an eye out for Galapagos. I own a used bookstore and I can tell you that Vonnegut is one of those authors that I don't see in a lot. Those that have his stuff tend to hang onto it, I guess.
And as usual, the lion's (or is that the tiger's?)share of the screen cap credit belongs to Flipit! I'm just fiddly detail guy...
12 of 29 | Posted by Greybishop | Posted on March 4, 2008 7:42 AM
Great post, GB.
I'm a long-time LOST viewer, first time poster.
Found this episode one of the better ones. The whole time sequence thing actually made sense to me
(not sure if that's a good thing). Thanks for bringing up Slaughterhouse 5 . . . read it many years ago
and agree that it sheds some interesting "light" on the island. Also worth reading & noting: "A Wrinkle In Time"
by Madeleine L'Engle (1962). About an adventure by some children attempting to find their
missing father by means of a "tesseract" . . . which is defined as similar to "folding" fabric of time and space.
More to it of course, but a good read.
Anecdote break: While living on Oahu the past couple of years, I was able to attend the pre-screening of the first
episode of Season 3 "on the beach". When I boo'ed Michael Emerson as he walked by, he yelled back "hey - we're the good
guys!". Makes you think. Also inadvertently yelled "Evangeline, I want to marry you" at Ms. Lilly . . . but that's
another story . . .
Keep up the great work!!
13 of 29 | Posted by sockmonkey | Posted on March 4, 2008 9:13 AM
Thanks sockmonkey!
Had I been there, you're sentiments about Ms. Lilly would have been in stereo!
14 of 29 | Posted by Greybishop | Posted on March 4, 2008 9:23 AM
Believe it or not, when I first saw Minkowski I thought it was LOCKE. It looked like a very greasy version of "Former Locke" back when he had some hair. Coupled with Faraday's insinuation about people exposed to radiation, it made sense since Locke was the only other living islander to have been in the hatch when it went kablooey. So I thought maybe somehow Locke had appeared "somewhere" from the past and they'd confined him on the ship. Honestly, I was a little disappointed when I realized it wasn't him.
15 of 29 | Posted by fffearlesss | Posted on March 4, 2008 10:04 AM
Believe it or not, when I first saw Minkowski I thought it was LOCKE. It looked like a very greasy version of "Former Locke" back when he had some hair. Coupled with Faraday's insinuation about people exposed to radiation, it made sense since Locke was the only other living islander to have been in the hatch when it went kablooey. So I thought maybe somehow Locke had appeared "somewhere" from the past and they'd confined him on the ship. Honestly, I was a little disappointed when I realized it wasn't him.
16 of 29 | Posted by fffearlesss | Posted on March 4, 2008 10:05 AM
I just made the Black Rock connection. Geez...sometimes I really miss stuff...
17 of 29 | Posted by jenny10girl | Posted on March 4, 2008 11:45 AM
Desmond always has excellent flashbacks. Will we ever see how he got that courtmartial now though? Does all of that history exist anymore?
18 of 29 | Posted by Merick | Posted on March 4, 2008 12:14 PM
GB, great recap of what I think was one of the best Lost episodes yet.
Nice to see Fisher Stevens getting some work. Speaking of getting unstuck in time, when I saw him on screen it made me think it was 1991 again.
19 of 29 | Posted by JasonR | Posted on March 4, 2008 1:07 PM
Nice job GreyBishop. Very thought provoking. I loved the episode, but members of my family were not so impressed, in fact seemed pretty darn pissed about the whole thing. Time travel paradoxes make them cranky I guess. Please allow me to comment on certain points made.
“That's two good questions in a row for Jack. And he didn't cry once.” Quite Right and isn’t it amazing that his character is so popular considering that that one statement you made is the antithesis of how Jack normally behaves.
“Was I the only one who assumed that Eloise was going to turn out to be a student that Former Faraday was fondling?” Nope, you were not the only one, although I took it a step further. I thought that in addition to shtupping the good professor she held the role of lab asst and that he had somehow lost her in a tragic time travel experiment gone awry.
“So if Faraday was having an affair with Eloise, we all have questions about his equipment.” I spit my soda all over my desk thanks to you!
FreewayShark:
"Did anyone else notice that Former Faraday told Desmond that you can't change the future when that was exactly what Des was trying to do all through season 3?" True, but he was told that he couldn’t do it then too by the shopkeeper lady. And ultimately he wasn’t able to because Charlie died despite all of Desmond’s interference.
Greybishop:
“what year did Oceanic 815 crash?” The flight crashed 09/22/2004 and now its 12/24/2004. Jack, who doesn’t have a calendar, said they’d been on the island about 100 days and they’ve actually been on the island 93 days according to the calendar on the boat. So was Jack wrong about the time they’d spent on the Island given his lack of a calendar or has time on the Island passed more quickly than that off the island. A week over 3 months isn’t all that significant, I would have liked something a little more definitive, like maybe the plane went down on 09/22/2004 and 100 island days later its 12/24/2005. ‘Course, the calendar on the boat may not be accurate, but Penny was in front of a XMAS tree, Des was on the Island for 3 years before the crash and Penny was looking for him for 3 years so timewise, things seem accurate from Island to real world. So now I'm just confuzzelled.
20 of 29 | Posted by Splotchie | Posted on March 4, 2008 2:37 PM
Splotchie: I believe that Jack's reference to 100 days referred to how many days since he'd seen a ball game rather than how many days they had been on the island.
By the way, another great recap, Greybishop! You rock!
21 of 29 | Posted by Lady-in-Gray | Posted on March 4, 2008 2:53 PM
Jack was just estimating.
Lostpedia has a very accurate timeline, they've been on the island a few more days than was stated. Whether this was a goof, a bending of the truth to fit around Christmas, or another affect of wacky time remains to be seen.
22 of 29 | Posted by merick | Posted on March 4, 2008 6:44 PM
inre penn's daddy. i'm thinking the crew/freighter are his. he's also probably one of the investors/backers of the orig dharma proj., and piss'd w/ben for killing his orig staff.....
whom else thus far introduced has the unlimited funds he does?
love the recaps... :)
23 of 29 | Posted by kikz | Posted on March 5, 2008 6:53 AM
Thanks JasonR, Splotchie, Lady and kikz for the kind words!
To answer a few of the questions (at least those I think I can answer) Merick asked about Des's courtmartial. Interestingly, Mr. Widmore mentions Desmond's cowardice (although he seems to be referring to Desmond not asking Penny to marry him) so I'm certain that the cowardice that landed him in prison has not been forgotten.
Splotchie asked about the time thing. To be honest, I don't think that's a question ANYONE can answer with certainty. My best guess (this works with my elastic pendulum deal) is that Sayid was surprised it was so close to Christmas because on the island we're not quite there yet. Best guess.
As for kikz question about who has enough funds to be behind the boat and/or Dharma, we have three suspects. Widmore, Paik and presumably Hanso all have (or had) enough money to mount the boat expedition.
These three men as the powers behind the curtain is outlined by my good buddy WesB in what he calls his "three kings" theory. If you're interested, it's at my blog, in downloadable audio form. Just look in the links for my "audio project" and take a listen to WesB schooling yours truly on what's probably the "cleanest" theory of the why's and wherefores of the LOST universe to date.
24 of 29 | Posted by Greybishop | Posted on March 5, 2008 8:10 AM
Okay, has anyone else completely forgotten at this point how Desmond ended up on the island? Because I sure have, and it's driving me crazy.
Anyone want to volunteer a refresher for me?
thanks!
25 of 29 | Posted by qupert | Posted on March 5, 2008 9:38 AM
qupert -
Des was entered in an around the world sailing race (boat mysteriously supplied gratis by Libby!) and somehow wrecked on the island, only to be found by Dharma button pusher Kelvin.
26 of 29 | Posted by Greybishop | Posted on March 5, 2008 9:49 AM
GB:
Thank You! I can't remember all this continuity stuff, my brain is overloading!!
27 of 29 | Posted by qupert | Posted on March 5, 2008 10:11 AM
Oh my gosh, greybishop. The Captain Janeway reference: priceless.
28 of 29 | Posted by MasKarla | Posted on March 6, 2008 2:27 PM
"As Desmond hands him a soon to be bloody tissue, he's soon to be bloody...elsewhere."
Priceless :)
29 of 29 | Posted by skilldrick | Posted on April 2, 2008 1:39 PM