Lost – “Happily Ever After” – review

What an episode, huh, brother? Not only did we get rock-em-sock-em excitement in both the now and the then, but we also got a big funky clue to the Sideways world, maybe, and also some AW SO ADORABLE moments up there with anything else the series has ever done.

Naturally, any episode focused on Desmond will make everyone swoon all over it; he’s clearly one of the most lovable and romantic characters on the show, not just for the whole Pesmond thing but also because he’s a time traveler and has an excellent accent. So no wonder everyone’s doing backflips over “Happily Ever After” from the very outset. Bonus points for violent attacks against Charles Widmore before the credits even roll and for the sinister mechanicals set up by the submariners. The two massive electrocoils that fry the redshirt would seem to be bad medicine for Des, but Widmore is a-gambling that anyone who has survived this kind of thing before must have some kind of mystical power. And what better way to test that than by slapping our hero into a makeshift cube and tacking up the Magnetic Flux Density levels to a Gauss level of “dangerously red”?

Electromagnetism serves as a portal in this ep, so welcome to Sideways. Desmond is footloose and fancy free, no wife, no child, no nothing–he doesn’t even have Sideways Widmore’s hatred! Instead, he works for ol’ Chuck as a glorified flunky; excellent acting choice by H.I. Cusick to underplay this character’s melancholy about his supposed “freedom” from attachments. He offers Side-Claire a ride (she’ll regret her “I’ll take a cab” stance in about five minutes, no?) and meets his chauffeur, the unctuous George…who of course is George Minkowski, the time-addled crewman who originally died due to temporal displacement sickness. Remember that this happens when one lacks a constant. Remember also that Desmond’s constant is Penny, while he is the constant for Daniel Faraday.

Whom we hear about from the crusty but nicer Widmore in this reality–apparently his son is a classical musician who wants to collaborate with some English rock group called Driveshaft. Leaving aside questions of taste here (seriously? Driveshaft?), we realize this must be Daniel, and we remember how Eloise drove him away from music into science in that other reality. Hmmm. Anyway, Des gets the thankless assignment of babysitting Driveshaft’s bass player, Charlie, who we know OD’ed on the Sideways 815. Once we meet this version of Charlie Pace, we see that he’s just as annoying as “regular” Charlie…but that there might be a reason for it. He talks about having some epiphany upon having seen Claire on the plane; somehow, he’s seen the truth. What truth, we don’t know. But we know we’re about to find out.

Charlie disparages Desmond in the car, first for not knowing the awesome song “You All Everybody” and then for thinking he knows something about his life. Then, of course, he drives their car into the harbor. Desmond, good lackey that he is, goes down to rescue Charlie, and that’s when everything goes weird. Desmond gets flashes of the last time they were underwater separated only by a window–then, of course, Charlie sacrificed himself with the infamous hand-message “Not Penny’s Boat.” Whose boat was it? Charles’ boat, of course. So now Desmond knows something’s afoot; this impression is taken further when he’s in the MRI machine and suddenly sees his whole other post-island life with Penny and their baby…who let’s never forget is named Charlie, okay? This causes him to freak out and press the panic button. Man, dude can’t stop pressing buttons, can he?

This is where everything starts to break down in kind of a Matrix-y sort of way. Clearly, Charlie has seen into the other world, and now Desmond has, too. Then we learn that so have at least two other people in this reality: Eloise (Widmore here, not Hawking) and Daniel (also Widmore here instead of Faraday). E tries to shove him away, getting really pissed when he tries to find out more about this mysterious “Penny” and giving him the whole “you have the perfect life and you have my husband’s approval so stop looking” speech. D finds him and talks to him about his own mysterious ability to channel nuclear physics, and his multi-dimensional stalking of Charlotte. (And now before we move on to the next paragraph let’s remember that little pairing: Charlotte, as a child, was told by a man that she needed to get off the island; that man was Daniel traveling from the future; Charlotte, as an adult, died from temporal sickness; Daniel died because he was shot in the past by his own mother, who had sent him into the past knowing that she would shoot him there. So Eloise turns out to be the biggest jerk in the whole show, which is saying a lot.)

Okay–Des meets Penny at the same stadium where we’ve already seen him meet Jack. (And why was Desmond there before? He was training for the around-the-world boat race so he could impress Charles Widmore and win Penny’s hand. WHOA.) Anyway Penny doesn’t have any future flashes from him, but he passes out…only to awaken, crispier but alive, in the coil-cube. There, he’s in some kind of ecstatic and hyper-cooperative state; obviously, he thinks he can help get back to Pennyville by helping. This plan is quickly disrupted by Sayid popping up, snapping a neck or two, and taking compliant Desmond with him. This situation will bear watching.

And then there we are at the stadium, where we get a whole other meet-cute between Desmond and Penny; haven’t they had about twelveteen of these by now? Desmond goes back to the limo, and asks George (who is being lit all angelically and weirdly, and who keeps asking “can I get you anything” and “did you find what you were looking for” like he knows what’s up; maybe he has been temporally displaced in this reality as well) to get him the list of 815ers, because he has to “show them something.”

Best thing about episode, as always: Cusick’s acting, which imbues his character with warmth and confusion. He may be a boor who grabs random crew members, but he sure can act the crap out of this part. Worst thing: Nothing’s springing to mind, except that it must take a few bulletin boards at Lost HQ to track Desmond’s character. Oh, and Charlie’s creepy attachment to Claire, who has never really been all that nice to him. But that’s about it. Great ep, and the endgame has TRULY begun with this one.

Also check out about 2 dozen promo images to next week’s episode of Lost, “Everybody Loves Hugo.”