Episode 3.8, "Flashes Before Your Eyes"
Original Airdate: February 14th, 2007

Honestly, this week's episode of Lost was a relief.

After my tortured rant in last week's review regarding the ongoing state of affairs on this show--the endless questions without answers, the flaccid attempts at creating suspense or dramatic tension, the unilateral focus on Jack Skywalker, Princess Kate, and Han Sawyer--I get to enjoy a (relatively) standalone episode of the show.

Mind you, the writers can't even let a single damned self-contained story go by without layering in another random, pointless mystery that may or may not involve TIME TRAVEL. And it HAS to end with some earth-shattering revelation featuring Charlie, a character who by virtue of his not being Jack, Kate, or Sawyer will probably not appear again for a season and a half.

Still. "Flashes Before Your Eyes" manages to stand all by its lonesome as the strange, sad story of Desmond, the long-haired Scotsman who used to man the hatch and then flipped a key and appeared naked in the middle of the jungle. (The naked, by the way, could very well have been a sly shout-out to the Terminator flicks, where Ahnold always shows up naked after he...TRAVELS THROUGH TIME.

(YES, I'VE CRACKED THE LOST CODE. MYSTERIES ARE SOLVED. WORSHIP AT MY FEET AND GIVE ME TOERUBS, YOU SNIVELING CHILDREN.)

Desmond is now back amongst the castaways and continues to demonstrate a strange propensity for knowing the future. He runs randomly to the beach and just happens to save Claire's life, which prompts Charlie and Hurley to get Desmond drunk so that he will spill the secret of his remarkable mental gift.

Instead, Desmond gets drunk and flashes back to a brief window of his life when he seemed to first discover he could see the future. He seems happy enough, until a matronly Brit in an antique shop basically fills him in on what's to come: He's gonna get stranded on an island, he's gonna push a button for a few years, and worst of all, he will not marry and live happily ever after with his girlfriend.

At first, Desmond resists the idea that his course is determined, and that he will arrive at his destination, no matter what. Yet in a flash (literally--the flash of a cheesy photographer's camera), he seems to suddenly embrace his destiny, rejecting marriage with his lady friend and resigning himself to saving the world, over and over and over again, every 108 minutes.

I think the reason I most appreciated this episode was because of its distinctly Twilight Zone vibe. We're presented with a main character and given an opportunity to get to know him, and to sympathize with him. Then something strange happens, and we watch that character grapple with it, only to fall victim to the fates or the universe or whatever--the crushing inevitability of reality itself. And it's all hard-wired to an emotional core--Desmond's love for his fiancee.

I personally felt that critical pivot, when Desmond accepts destiny instead of battling against it, came too quickly. Otherwise, it was a textbook example of what science fiction can do better than maybe any other genre--take us to the heart of a character and use extraordinary circumstances to reveal emotion and development.

This was a really good episode of Lost, and it felt good to type that. Finally, this show is returning to provocative character-based storytelling...at least for one week.

iTunes Links:

Lost Series
Lost Season 3
"Flashes Before Your Eyes"