![]() ![]() ![]() Lost was consistently vague about whether we could understand its flashbacks as memories the characters are distinctly reflecting on in the context of the episode itself. ![]() Lost didn’t need to reinvent the wheel in order to blow open their mythology and embrace the temporal-all they had to do was to hold their hands in a different position on the wheel, with Desmond occupying both the position of the subject and the spectator in his own life, as though he watched his own flashback episode. However, the themes found in this episode-returning to your past, reflecting on your choices, confronting your “fate”-are inherent to the flashback structure, and to the way we understand the show’s characters. But I remember “Flashes Before Your Eyes” being highly reassuring at the time, as a reminder that so long as Lost was capable of producing an episode this good, it was going to be worth following across any rough patches.ĭon’t get me wrong, “Flashes Before Your Eyes” is distinguished by its flashback, which is a character recalling a sequence of events in which said character relives a series of previous events-there’s no other episode of the show identical to it. And there are a few rocky episodes ahead before season three kicks into high gear at the end-ultimately kicking Heroes’ ass with their respective season finales. Neither episode really pushes the master-plot forward in a major way (although “Flashes Before Your Eyes” does introduce the mysterious jewelry store clerk (credit as Eloise Hawking), as well as the idea that the universe “course-corrects” whenever someone tries to alter their destiny). But as you noted last week, Myles, in retrospect the excellent “Not In Portland” signaled the start of a Lost comeback, which “Flashes Before Your Eyes” confirmed. At the time, Heroes was being hailed as a show that had learned from Lost “what not to do” with a serialized, densely mythological action-adventure show, and “Company Man” was exhibit A in the “ Heroes is better than Lost” argument. On February 25th, 11 days later, NBC broadcast “Company Man,” the best episode of Heroes (written by Pushing Daisies/ Hannibal honcho Bryan Fuller). Which brings me to the other relevant point about when “Flashes Before Your Eyes” aired. Those two little tidbits will have huge repercussions, both at the end of this season and for the rest of Lost. ![]() Specifically, the lesson Desmond derives from his little sojourn to London is that he can’t permanently affect the future, and that his premonitions that Charlie’s “gonna die” are bound to come true. That’s not to say that what happens on The Island isn’t highly connected to this “flashback,” though. (Another theory: Once Lost was an established hit, it was able to attract better actors.) Whatever the reason, by this point in the season three, Desmond had become one of the show’s most fascinating heroes, and his troubled love affair with Penny had become maybe Lost’s best off-Island storyline. Maybe that’s because by the end of season two Lost had figured out how to construct characters that better fit the master-plot, or maybe the excessive flashbacking of the first three seasons just exhausted a lot of the interest in the 815 survivors, making any new characters and new stories more welcome. For all the dramatic tension that Lost’s writers tried to generate from the Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle (and then quadrangle, once Juliet entered the picture), they also kept introducing new characters that a lot of fans found more compelling than the originals. First off, the episode originally ran on Valentine’s Day, which is apt, given that it’s about Lost’s most romantic couple: Desmond and Penny. The airdate for “Flashes Before Your Eyes” is significant for a couple of reasons. ![]()
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