Lost

Is there anything better than time travel? That question is rhetorical, of course, because there isn't, and last night's episode of Lost proved that. In “The Constant,” Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) became “unstuck in time” once again and it provided the Lost team an opportunity to confirm many of our assumptions. Time is perceived differently on the island and the exploding Hatch and the release of the electromagnetic pulse is the cause of Desmond's visions.

More importantly, the episode gave plenty of clues about many origins. We know more about the Widmore/Hanso connection, we learned about Daniel Faraday's experiments, and we finally got to visit the infamous freighter. Overall, for people who love to be challenged mentally while watching TV, this episode of Lost was the cat's meow.

Let's begin the Easter eggs for “The Constant” with a literary lesson. If you're familiar with Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, then this episode may not have been as impressive, technically. That's because the entire premise of Desmond jumping between timelines is a direct lift (or homage) to that classic novel, in which Billy Pilgrim becomes “unstuck in time,”

In fact, Lost didn't even try to hide this fact, having Daniel Faraday use that exact expression in describing what he does to Eloise the rat. The only thing missing was a porn star named Montana Wildhack. This show is very fond of literary allusions, though it often sticks to Alice in Wonderland. What's important is that, while deciding how to portray time travel in this series, the Lost writing staff has chosen perhaps the greatest fiction book about the subject to lift from.

Interestingly enough for Desmond, former member of the Royal Scottish Army, this is yet another World War II literary reference.  His last flashback episode was called "Catch-22," title of  the classic Joseph Heller novel.

NEXT>>


-John Kubicek, BuddyTV Senior Writer
Source: Lostpedia
(Images courtesy of ABC)