Lost - Season 3, Episode 8 - "Flashes Before Your Eyes"

Bravo, Lost. After weeks of disappointment, last Wednesday's episode marked a stellar return to form for tv's most mysterious drama. In fact, I thought this episode was so fantastic that for my money, I would call it the third best episode of Lost EVER (behind, of course, the pilot and the season two premiere-- that opening bit with Desmond in the hatch and the Mama Cass song was the best 5 minutes of Lost. Period.) Two Desmond episodes in the top three? Maybe they oughta stick with the Scotsman more.

This episode had everything the past half-dozen episodes lacked: characters besides Jack, Sawyer and Kate (thank God!), relevant backstory, and clever, meaningful, unanticipated plot twists. In fact, as a whole, the episode was 99% flawless (I'll get to the 1% in a bit).

First, we've got the provocative opening, with Desmond suddenly bolting into the ocean to save a drowning Claire. Scary stuff, right? We get some long-needed Hurley chillness, some patented Charlie jealousy/overbearingness, and most importantly, a whole lot of Desmond.

Most important to the success of this episode, in my opinion, is the structure. For only the second time (the first being the Season 2 episode, "The Other 48 Days", where we see what happened to all the Tailies), we get an episode that aside from the beginning and end, is one uninterrupted flashback. I love that we didn't have to get the annoying switch back and forth with that now-irritating swooshing noise that accompanies every single transition.

Also, the content of the flashback was awesome. Not only is Desmond's flashback interesting in terms of finally knowing what went down with Penelope, but for once, the flashback is critical to life on the Island, for it explains why Desmond is so wacky and why he can see the future. This is so much more fulfilling than a flashback like, for example, Jack's, which merely serve to fill in some blanks about Jack's personality rather than to inform his current life on the Island.

Moreover, we get some cool playing with death, a la 2000's Final Destination-- you can keep trying to stop fate, but no matter what you try to do, the outcome is inevitable.

My one gripe about the episode was the atrocious guest appearance by The O.C.'s Caleb Moneybags, a.k.a. Alan Dale. His British accent was perhaps the worst attempt at an accent since my little brother and his drama school did Oliver when he was 7. Atrocious. How could they let this get on tv? If I were British, I would never watch this show again.

I like how the writers, as they did with Locke, use Desmond's last name (Hume), to reflect the similarities between his own philosophies and those of Scottish philosopher David Hume, who had a lot to say about the nature of causation (wikipedia that shit).

The best part of the whole episode, by FAR, was the twist at the end-- that it was Charlie, not Claire, that Desmond had been trying to save. It was a brilliant stroke to have Desmond save Claire from drowning as a way of actually saving Charlie. This is what a plot twist should be-- totally unanticipated, but organically developed in a rational way from the story. Awesome. My stomach totally dropped when Desmond revealed the truth-- it's this visceral reaction that distinguished truly engrossing tv from plain entertainment.

All in all, this was really a fantastic episode and a high mark of what we should be able to expect from Lost when it's at its best. It's going to take more episodes like this to bring Lost to its former glory. For being one of the best episodes ever, I happily give this one an A

Favorite Scene: The final confrontation between Charlie and Desmond on the beach, when Desmond reveals the truth about his precognitive abilities.

Favorite line: "You may not like your path, Desmond, but pushing that button is the only truly great thing that you will ever do." -Ms. Hawking (a.k.a. Judi Dench look-alike)