Line of the night – I actually laughed the most at - “Welcome to the meeting, Twitchy!” courtesy of Sawyer.
This week’s episode was entitled the Variable and from the previews we expected that it would focus on Daniel Faraday, but would this episode deliver like “The Constant”?
We start off with Daniel telling Desmond to find his mother in Los Angeles. Then we see Ben shoot Desmond’s Kevlar grocery bag, and we jump to Seattle Grace hospital where Penny is running along while Karev and George are fighting over who gets to save Desmond. Eloise Hawking enters the sitting area and admits that it’s her fault that Desmond is in this predicament. “My son is Daniel Faraday!” (official reveal 1 of the night).
WHOOSH to 1977. Daniel is back on the island from a research project at Dharma headquarters in Anne Arbor Michigan. He’s back because he saw the new recruit picture featuring Jack, Kate and Hurley. So Miles drives him to see Jack and his first words are, “How’d you get back here…how did you get back here!?” (Umm, a polite ‘hello, good to see you again’ would have sufficed). Jack offers that Daniel’s mother told them how to get back to the island. Daniel responds, “well what did she say..did she say it was your destiny?” Jack responds, “actually those exact words.” “Well Jack, you don’t belong here at all, she was wrong!”
WHOOSH and Danny Boy is playing the piano. Nice exchange between a young Ellie Hawking and her prodigy. Her job now is to keep Daniel on the path. To nurture his gift, which is his mind. Danny still wants to play the piano, “I can make time!” Love that subtle reference to time travel.
Back in 1977, Sawyer has fill locked in the cupboard and Daniel goes with Miles to the Orchid station. Hey! This looks familiar! We are revisiting the opening scene of EP1 from this season. So now we know why Desmond was down there. Desmond has a word with Dr. Chang aka Marvin Candle. “You must order the evacuation of every man, woman and child because that one guy died as part of the consequences of the electromagnetic activity they released. 6 hours from now the same thing is going to happen at the site for the Swan Station!” This time the energy will be 30,000 times more powerful and the accident could be catastrophic. Dr. Chang wants to know what could qualify him to make that kind of prediction. “Because I’m from the future!” Awww yeah…but it stinks they cut out the rest of the line where he says, “I came back in time machine that YOU built.”
Still in 1977 and Dr. Chang is really freaked out, even more than Dr. Emmitt Brown after Marty told the story of how Doc hit his head on the porcelain and when he woke up he had a vision of the Flux Capacitor. “Oh and by the way, Miles is your son!” Now Miles is freaked out and tries to distract Dr. Chang to get him to leave. Daniel is just trying to make sure that Dr. Chang does what he’s supposed to do (which is evacuate everyone).
WHOOSH and we flashback to graduation day at Oxford. Daniel looks like Tom Keifer (lead singer of the 80s hairband Cinderella) as he walks out with his babe on his arm. I can here “Nobody’s Fool” playing in the background which is kind of ironic. Eloise takes Daniel out to lunch and continues to push Daniel to focus on his research and avoid women and all the finer things in life. She gives him his journal.
WHOOSH to 1977 and our LOSTIES are huddled up in Sawyers bungalow. They have 2 options, hijack the sub and head to the mainland, or go back into the jungle and start back at square one. Daniel joins the party just in time, and wants to go out to find the hostiles because his mother is one of them. She is the only person on the island that can get them back to where they belong.
WHOOSH and we see another familiar LOST scene from last Season. Daniel is resting in an armchair and starts crying while watching the Fake Oceanic Flight 815 Footage. Daniel doesn’t know why he is so upset (and neither do I EVEN AFTER THIS EPISODE IS OVER). Charles Widmore pays Daniel a visit and apparently Daniel has short term memory loss from his experiments at Oxford. “I have a condition that affects my memories.” Charles informs Daniel that the plane didn’t crash in the ocean and there are survivors and the TV is showing a very elaborate, expensive fake! Daniel doesn’t understand why he is telling him this. “Because I put it there!” (official reveal 2 of the night). Widmore assures Daniel that if he goes to the island it will heal his mind and his memory so he can continue his research.
WHOOSH and we are back in 1977. “Your mother is an other?” - Sawyer. Then Hurley adds, “you guys were in 1954, like Fonzie time?” Great line Hugo. Jack explains that none of them belong there. “I belonged here just fine till you showed up Doc.” Whoa Sawyer, settle down buckaroo. Daniel is determined to find the hostiles, so Juliet gives him the code for the fence. Jack and Kate are going to go with Daniel, while the other LOSTIES pack up everything they can in an effort to start all over again on the beach. Jack, Kate and Daniel make there way to get supplies when Daniels spots someone. Could it beeeeee Charlotte? Jackpot, there she is on the swings and Daniel tells her to get on the sub and leave. “I didn’t think that I could change things, but maybe I can!” God Daniel is such a whiny little sap.
Jack, Kate and Daniel are loading up when Captain A-hole Radzinsky and his Goons come rollin up looking for trouble. We’ve got a little shoot out on our hands and it almost reminds me of the final scene from Young Guns! God I love that movie, “Regulators…mount up”. (Ironically Terry O’Quinn was in that movie). Kate drives them out of there, but Daniel gets shot near the neck and Radzinsky gets shot in the hand.
Whoosh and we have another Daniel flashback. His mother comes to visit him and convinces him to join Widmore’s expedition to the island. “It’s very important that you say YES to Mr. Widmore’s opportunity.”
Back in 1977 and Jack doesn’t seem too flustered about the gun fight until Daniel explains that just because they are in 1977 (in the past) doesn’t mean their present can’t change. “This is our present…any one of us can die Jack!” I immediately interpret this line as…”This is our present, and I am going to die in one of the next 3 episodes.” That sucks because I really like Faraday’s character. In the jungle Daniel really lays it on thick. In the next 4 hours, the Dharma folks will hit a massive pocket of energy, and they are going to have to concrete it in to contain the energy like Chernobyl. Because of this accident, over the next 20 years they are going to keep the energy at baby by pushing the ‘button’. The same button that Desmond will one day fail to push, and cause their flight to crash, which leads to the Freighter expedition, etc. Daniel wants to change these course of events. “I was so focused on the constants, I forgot about the variables.” The variables in this equation are the people, so Daniel is now convinced you can change your destiny. Daniel plans on destroying the energy by detonating the Hydrogen Bomb.
Back to the present and Eloise is still with Penny in the hospital. Apparently Desmond was a casualty in a conflict that is bigger than him or bigger than all of them. “For the first time in a long time, I don’t know what’s going to happen next.” Out in the parking lot, Widmore is waiting there for her. “I had to send my son back to the island knowing full well…” Widmore cuts her off (which ticks me off) and says, “He’s my son too Eloise!” (official reveal # 3). I think we all anticipated that, but it was cool to hear.
Our final scene of the night, and Desmond enters the Hostiles camp. He holds a gun at Richard as he looks for Ellie, but then gets shot in the back by none other his own mother! “You knew, you always knew…you knew this was going to happen and you sent me here anyway!”
Ellie - Who are you?
Daniel’s last words – I’m your son!
Bamm End Credits….
So is Daniel really dead? If so, then this happened in Ellie’s past, which means she’ll remember killing her son all along the way. This is similar to how Charlotte knew that Daniel visited her when she was a little girl. It already happened for her in her past, but Daniel had experienced it yet in his present.
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