Lost: Desmond’s Kinda Dumb

First, thanks to J.B. Perlow for figuring out that the older woman at the end of the last episode was Ms. Hawking, who had a memorable (although apparently not to me) appearance last season.  I maintain that she’s also Daniel’s mother, though.

This week, we get a Desmond episode!  Yay!

We also get not a single appearance of any of the Oceanic Six.  That’s right – no Jack.  No Kate.  No Sun, either, but it’s a fair trade.  Instead, we get a lot of Daniel, plus our standard sides of Locke and Sawyer.

See, writers?  You’ve got some good characters here!  You don’t need to have 18 regulars or whatever we’re up to now.  Give us more Desmond/Penny scenes.  Give us more Jeremy Davies quirkiness.  Give us more Locke/Richard love fests.  Honestly, none of us care anymore whether Jack and Kate get together.  Haven’t you heard?  Sawyer/Daniel is all the rage this season.

And you don’t have to break your contracts with the really-quite-good Matthew Fox and Evangeline Lilly, either.  Now that we’ve got this time-travel stuff happening, you could put them back in, like, the 1800s or something as completely different characters who happen to look exactly like Jack and Kate.  Let Sawyer freak out over that one for a while.

Anyway.  The actual, not-just-in-my-fantasy-world episode takes place mostly in 2007 (our three-years-post-island-departure Oceanic Six universe) and in 1954 (our time-traveling-islanders universe).

The 2007 edition follows the adventures of Desmond, who is trying to carry out Daniel’s request to find Daniel’s mother.  I guess Desmond doesn’t know about Google, so, disguised in hipster sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled down kind of low, he goes to Oxford.  It looks just like it did last season, and like it did when Charlie was going to high school on the same generic-British-academic-locale set in season 1.  The university is a dead end, but he finds a lead that takes him to the sickbed of a woman named Teresa who’s in a semi-vegetative state and who was, rumor has it, abandoned by Daniel some years back.  He also finds out that Charles Widmore was a big funder of Daniel’s research.  So Desmond, who, bless his heart, has never been the brightest crayon in the box, goes to see Charles Widmore.  Yep, the guy he’s been hiding from on a boat for three years.  Widmore tells him Daniel’s mother is in L.A. and lets him go without killing him.  Yeah, okay.

But before that, we get a flashback to Penny giving birth.  Yep, Penny had a baby a couple of years back, while she and Desmond were living on their fancy secret boat (and that’s love, right there – agreeing to give birth on a boat so your fugitive boyfriend won’t get caught by your psycho dad).  Now, they have a little boy, named Charlie (awwww!) and he’s way adorable.  I like how on this show, just like on every soap opera, they eventually all start having adorable children.

Anyway, when Desmond comes back to the boat at the end of his very unproductive day, he lies to Penny, which is really not something you do to the woman who gave birth on a boat for you.  But of course she sees right through him.  Desmond wants to go to L.A. to find Daniel’s mother, but Penny knows this isn’t going to work out for the best.  Methinks their three years of successful fugitivedom will soon be over.  But, I mean, what, were they just going to live on a boat forever?  Won’t the kid need to go to school someday?

Meanwhile, back on the island, Daniel isn’t giving much thought to his mother.  He, Charlotte, and Miles have been captured by the British/Australian types from last week, who now have bows and arrows.  They also have a hot female squadron leader named Ellie.  I love Ellie, with her non-regulation tank top and her lived-in French braids and her unique-on-this-show tendency to ask questions that make sense.

Miles tells their captors that Daniel’s their leader (Miles is like a less annoying version of Sawyer; I kinda like it).  Ellie and her guys turn out to be Others, circa 1954.  They’re pissed, because a group of U.S. soldiers recently turned up on the island (um, how did they find it?) to test hydrogen bombs.  So, the Others killed the soldiers.  But now they think our time-travelers are here to finish the work.  The captives go along with that story, because what else are they going to do.  And then there’s some business with Daniel declaring his love for Charlotte that made me squirm because Jeremy Davies is so creepy, and then Daniel goes to check out the bomb and probably gets himself a healthy dose of radiation poisoning, so way to go, science genius.

Elsewhere on the island, remember how last week I said Locke killed a couple of guys?  Well, apparently I was wrong because this week the guys are alive and well and being held hostage by Locke, Sawyer, and Juliet.  One of the guys is willing to make nice with our heroes (it helps that they speak Latin, and so does Juliet, since she’s an Other herself) but the other guy smacks the nice one on the head and runs away.  Of course, Locke tracks him to their camp.  And then the guy turns out to be a teenage Charles Widmore!  OMG!  Did not see that coming and I loved it.

Sawyer’s top priority on reaching the Others’ camp, which looks a lot like the set of M*A*S*H, is to save Daniel from getting shot.  Aww.  Locke, however, doesn’t care, and goes marching right into the camp to look for Richard.  Locke is very into Richard now.  I like Richard too so I consider this a positive development in Locke’s mostly uninteresting character arc.  Richard, of course, doesn’t recognize him, which makes Locke sad, even though Richard told him last week this would happen.  But they hang out for a while, and although Locke doesn’t seem to get any useful information from Richard, he has now visited Richard prior to his birth, thus setting up his future greatness in Richard’s eyes.

Okay, I’m getting used to this time-travel stuff.  Writers, if you just want to use it as an excuse to expand the show’s mythology by showing us more of the island’s history, that’s cool, if it’s always going to be as interesting as it was in this ep.  But please don’t make my head spin too much with the whole destiny thing, okay?  I prefer to have my shows spoon-fed, thanks. (Unless they’re called Mad Men.)

Next week, the Oceanic Six are back, and so is Graham Chase, and some aliens.  Well, the Graham Chase part should be fun at least.

Season 5, Episode 3: Jughead (originally aired January 28, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out A Tale of Two Charles Widmores by J.B. Perlow.

For more on Lost, click here.

Wednesdays, 9/8c on ABC

Photographs courtesy of ABC