Lost: "The Constant"

One of the peculiarities of filming "Sin City" against a green screen is that many of actors never met each other, even when they were acting together in the same scene. Most people know that pretty much everything in the movie that wasn't a human being was designed on the digital backlot. The monochrome cartoon-noir cityscapes, the back-alleys with the light from the streets causing the shadows to stretch just so, the occasional tar pit: all digital. Far more interestingly, and telling, many of the human interactions (non-visual, subliminal, yet also the foundational basis for just about every great movie ever made) were also assembled in post-production.

You can pick out the scenes like this pretty easily; they're even more stilted than the rest of "Sin City," a waxwork montage of geek-chic desktop wallpapers masquerading as a movie. The exception - the great exception - are the scenes that feature Mickey Rourke as Marv. Mickey Rourke never met Jessica Alba or Rutger Hauer, even though he shares a scene with one and executes the other. But that's all right - Mickey Rourke has said in interviews that he loved working on the movie, spending so many days just by himself, in heavy make-up, walking in front of a green screen without any atmosphere or companionship except for what his demented, punch-drunk, ex-famous razzle-dazzle-addled brain could imagine.

Rourke makes Marv seem like the last man left on earth; somewhere between the perfected human animal and the Piltdown man, a missing link, an imaginary specimen. The other actors in "Sin City" are just playing versions of their own iconic selves (which is why Robert Rodriguez hired them) – Clive Owen doing his dark-yet-noble junior Bond, Bruce Willis gritting his teeth, Jessica Alba dancing as a virginal stripper, and Rosario Dawson playing a dominatrix with a machine gun. Given a few more years, Rodriguez could have just taken their old performances in other movies, run them through his digitalizer, and come up with pretty much the same thing. Mickey Rourke, though, is desperately real. Like your average modern man, he thinks the world's gone batshit crazy; unlike your average modern man, he kind of likes it.

I was thinking about Mickey Rourke and Marv while I watched – with heaving breath intakes at every commercial break, my toes tapping the floor through my shoes, my hands running through my hair trying to massage my pulsating cerebellum – the latest episode of "Lost." As I hoped, it was Desmond episode - like the Sayid episode two weeks ago, you could pick out its lineage right from the first shot. (That picture of Desmond and Penelope seems to accumulate meaning the further along we get in the show.) This was one of those amazing "Lost" episodes - "Confirmed Dead" was the most recent, "Walkabout" the first, "The Man Behind the Curtain" the most flamboyant - where every single moment seemed perfectly choreographed.

This was the first time that our heroes (some of them) (if they are heroes) got off the island in the present (2004), and not only was that not the most amazing revelation of the episode - you had practically forgotten it just a few minutes after it happened - hell, you barely even noticed when it did happen, because Desmond, for at least the second time, TRAVELLED THROUGH FUCKING TIME.

Just before we watched the show, me and my fellow watchers were talking about who "Lost" is really about. There are certain characters who, when their episode rolls around, seem to announce themselves once and for all as the true protagonist, or main character. The obvious choice would be Jack - after his vague presence in season 3, the flashforward finale seemed to re-announce him as the tragic, tortured heart of the show. Certainly, in the sweepstakes of who gets the most consistently screwed, Jack would have to win. Some people might say Locke, but although he is always a forceful presence on the island, his entire storyline is about being in thrall - serving the will of the island, or of Jacob, or whatever malevolent or benevolent force is giving him directions at any given time. A dark horse could be Hurley, who introduced The Numbers and saw Jacob (and, in the future, is haunted by a dead Charlie); or Ben, who may yet be revealed, after all his malevolence and machinations, as the "good guy" he's always claimed to be.

And then there is Desmond, who, by the way, with this episode, officially has the best record of episodes - 4 for 4. It's not just that his episodes - the season 2 finale "Live Together, Die Alone," the time-skip flashback "Flashes Before His Eyes," the boys'-campout slash predestination-meditation that had the gall and wit to call itself "Catch-22," and now this instant classic - press us deeper into our understanding of the island, of the peculiar forces circulating throughout the show. Each episode also shakes up the show's narrative style, and plays with our perception of time and space - flashbacks, flashforwards, flashbetweens.

As such, each episode is entirely unique in structure. "Flashes Before His Eyes" spent most of the show off the island, taking its slow-burning time to lead up to the great tragic-heroic decision of Desmond's life (leaving Penny - either because he was too cowardly to marry her, or because he was brave enough to damn himself to life without her if it meant saving the world, depending on which time continuum you're talking about); "The Constant" was just the opposite, clicking back and forth with past and present at an ever-quickening rate until the perfectly cross-cut finale - Desmond leaving Penny, and Desmond finding her again.

What's funny about Desmond is that he remains a character that is oddly aloof from the others. He hardly ever appears in other people's episodes, and when he does, it's rarely in any kind of active role. Sayid is the go-to heavy when you need to fight some Others; Hurley can always be counted on for some hearty chit-chat; Claire can inevitably provide some kind of emergency subplot (baby! drowning!), but Desmond just kind of hangs about, waiting, pondering.

Consider how many aspects of island life Desmond has never experienced. He's never met any Others besides Juliet - would Ben, Mr. All-Seeing, have any idea who Desmond Hume is? He's never seen any monster made of smoke, nor any dead relatives walking on the island. He sailed away from the island without noticing the Hydra-Alcatraz island; he'd shrug if you mentioned sonic fences; he could probably build you a shack, but if you asked him to include a half-invisible bearded god who might be Christian Shepard, he'd probably look at you and say "Christian Shepard? There's a name for ya, brotha." Remember - he used to be a monk.

Yet Desmond also, in many ways, combines elements of all the other characters. He's got Jack's hero complex - the need to prove himself that led him on his cross-the-world quest to win his beloved, even though she was right there the whole time. Like Sayid, he used to be a soldier; like Eko, he briefly wore the clothes of a holy man. Like Kate and Sawyer he's a criminal - and why was he dishonorably discharged out of a military prison, anyway? Just in this episode, he experienced amnesia, like Claire. Richard Widmore lurks around his flashbacks the way Anthony Cooper once lurked around John Locke's - a grinning face of disinterested evil (did Desmond start his quest to prove himself to Penny, or to her father?)

It might be that reason that, whenever Desmond takes center stage, the fog that may descend over the show in lesser moments seems to clear, and nothing seems more important in this world or the next than that Desmond Hume - our very own 21st century Odysseus, cast adrift in the sea of time and space - get back to Penelope Widmore - our very own 21st century, well, Penelope, spending a lifetime waiting and searching for her man.

Of course, it helps that the creators always seem to tilt things in Desmond's direction. This episode focused in on a few key characters - Desmond and Daniel Faraday, with Sayid providing moral support (Sayid fixes communication hardware - DRINK!), and mysteriously charcoal-voiced George Minkowski earning himself a double play for walk-on parts, with a great entrance ("It's happening to you, too, isn't it?") and an even better, sadder, weirder exit ("I can't.. get... back..." he says, dyingly). As great a cast as this show has, it works best in lean, mean episodes like this - not a moment spared to dally on a single solitary subplot. Boom, boom, supersonic megaboom.

Focus, focus. "The Constant" leaped between three distinct planes of reality - real time, in 2004, on a boat (which is in the Pacific - any Atlantic, Arctic, and Indian Ocean theory enthusiasts had to groan at that revelation); Island time, now and forever definitively revealed as not quite normal time, on the beach; and past time, in 1996, at Scottish boot camp and Oxford and then, finally, London. Desmond, finally leaving the island that was his prison, flips backwards in time and returns with amnesia. Confused by the ocean, by the muscular Iraqi who claims to know him, by his own disheveled appearance, and most of all at how quickly all of this fades back into what he thinks is reality - in boot camp, in the rain, alone without his girl.

Through a number of plot shenanigans that would be death to explain but that flow smooth onscreen like tears in the rain, past-Desmond finds himself talking to past-Daniel Faraday; with long hair and a long beard, Jeremy Davies looks even smarter, and crazier. Faraday shows Desmond an experiment: using radiation, he can unstick a mouse in time, so that it can find its way through an epic maze, as if it had already tried every wrong way a thousand times and perfected its route (shades of "Groundhog Day.") But the mouse dies. Will this happen to Desmond, Desmond asks? "All of these are variables," says Daniel, waving to his physicist's blackboard that's probably covered in gibberish but which may feature a mathematical proof ending in 4, 8, 15, 16, etc. "You need to find a constant."

You have to smile at this. This is Lost at its finest - the loftiest, swirliest of science-fiction psychobabble (sci-chobabble?), combining with the most postmodern meta-theories, and the answer is true love. The science keeps the storyline from being mawkish; the emotion humanizes the narrative trickery and scientific complexity. How's this for a modern day love story: In a world of variables, You are my Constant. And lest you think it's getting to heady or too softy, then don't stress - the love, like the science, is just a macguffin. Because, you realize, this episode is that oldest of storylines, that DW Griffith perfected back in 1907 - the Race Against Time.

Past Desmond comes to Penny's door and says: I will call you, in eight years, on December 24, 2004, on Christmas Eve, but just tell me your number and keep it. And she gives him his number. And eight years later, Sayid, god bless him, has the communication device working. Desmond picks up the phone. And we are on the edge of our seat, because what is about to happen is more long-awaited than Jack and Kate kissing, more satisfying than watching Sawyer take his bloody vengeance in the belly of a lost slaver ship, and packing more energy than a dozen time-space-continuum-breaching, purple-sky-creating, second-season-ending hatch implosions: Desmond is about to talk to Penelope.

And he does. And she has waited for him. She tells him that she has been searching for him. She says something about researching the island - there is static, of course. They say, in unison, "I love you." And there's a Christmas tree, too. You'd be disappointed if there wasn't.

Alone among the Losties, Desmond doesn't just remember the worst parts of his life - he has had to relive them, in excruciating detail, unstuck in time like one Billy Pilgrim. And here is the show's very own Christmas miracle - a moment of calm perfection, aided by hyper-modern transcontinental telecommunications.

"Lost" may not be all about Desmond. But it sure feels like it, tonight.