xoxoxo e: "stuck in a bloody snow globe . . ."

LOST: It's all about Desmond, brutha.

Not Penny's Boat. Of course Desmond would experience the first direct connection between Island world and the fractured Sideways world. If anyone can pull together the two worlds, it's time-tripping Desmond.

I thought it might be a good idea to re-watch the two most Desmond-centric (and brutha-brutha-brutha fabulous) episodes, Flashes Before Your Eyes and The Constant to prepare for last night's episode, Happily Ever After. The title sounds even more ominous after viewing the episode, but maybe that's because I still think Sideways is a false world, a place of smoke and mirrors. I'm all about the Island surviving. Of course now all three episodes are flashing before my eyes, like mirror fragments, confusing me. A bit like what it must be like to be Desmond. Is that the whole point of this season?

The Island isn't done with you yet. White experimental bunnies aside, on the Island Desmond is now the lab rat, or maybe he always was. In The Constant, his encounter with Daniel Faraday and his rat's maze helped Desmond to realize Penny was his constant. Sideways Daniel also told him where to find her (running in the same stadium where a running Desmond originally met Jack), setting him once again on that path towards love and self-realization. The theme of lovers destined to be together kept repeating throughout Happily Ever After, as Charlie reported seeing a vision of Claire, Daniel felt déjà vu on seeing Charlotte, and Penny flashed before Desmond's eyes while he was under water and during his MRI (In hospital, any excuse to get Desmond to unbutton his blue shirt. I'm not complaining.) Desmond and Penny's romance has always had very definite Odysseus/Penelope parallels, without the rival suitors. Is Sideways Circe's Island? Will this hero ever find his Ithaka again?

There's always a choice, brutha. But is it the same Desmond flashing between both worlds? We have been thinking that these are two separate worlds, but it is looking more and more as if Sideways doesn't truly exist, except in the mind, or maybe through the looking glass.

In the Island reality Desmond had major connections to the Losties. He foretold Charlie's death, tried to prevent it on numerous occasions, and even named his son after him (it was SO great to hear You All Everybody again.) Desmond and Charlie are bound together by fate, near-death and by water. Sideways Charlie is always trying to get himself killed, guiding Desmond this time—towards Charlie's death? Uniting the two realities? Breaking the damn mirror? (Yes, Jack, I'm STILL pissed.)

On the Island Desmond rescued Claire from drowning (Sideways he predicted the sex of her baby.)

Sayid helped Desmond stop tripping through time by doing his best MacGuyver to help Desmond place his phone call to Penny. I had forgotten that Sayid was so important in The Constant. Last week Zombie Sayid discovered Desmond was "the package" on Smokey's recon mission.

In The Constant Faraday hoped Desmond would become his anchor, his constant—he never had the chance to test his theory. Sideways Daniel uses his father's last name of Widmore and has been free to pursue his music, although this reality is shattering and his Island physicist self is peeking through. We may just end up with one big cubist painting . . .

And now to that not-so-happy couple, the Widmores. Sideways Desmond & Widmore are BFFs? As Charlie called it, Desmond is Widmore's lackey, his henchman. And talk about a mirror image—the 60 year-old McCutcheon scotch scene was great. I wish I could have seen the painting on the wall a little closer—I wouldn't be surprised if Sideways "Namaste" wasn't in reverse . . . (I swear I've seen it both backwards and forwards) [NOTE: It turns out I saw a painting, but later viewing clips on the 'net it appears to not be the Namaste painting at all in the Sideways world, but a painting depicting a scale with one black stone, one white stone, just like the one in the cave on the Island. Hmmm . . . ]

The universe has a way of course correcting. And then there's Eloise, who always seems to know what's up, Sideways or Island. Is she, like Desmond, able to flash between worlds? Was that even Eloise, or was that Smokey on the loose? Whatever happens, happens. She sure was acting like a miffed smoke monster You have everything you wanted and you're still not happy? Except he doesn't. He doesn't have Penny (yet). Or (baby) Charlie. In Flashes Before Your Eyes Eloise told Desmond, "If you don't go back to the Island, we all die." Sounds a lot like Hurley's message to Richard in Ab Aeterno. Eloise was as creepy as ever.

After Widmore's magnetic jolt on the Island Desmond started flashing between worlds again, but he was so much more zen about it. And so far, no nose bleeds. Will it be up to Desmond to decide which world survives? On the Island he seemed so ready to help Widmore, which I at first assumed to mean that he would do whatever it takes to make the Island the only world. But then he meekly followed a Widmore-flunky-murdering Zombie Sayid, and when he almost immediately flashed Sideways he seemed just as happy to be there, too. He told Widmore he "knows" what to do. Does he know how to stop the Sideways world? Or to merge it with the Island world? Sideways it looks like Desmond, by using the 815 flight manifest, is going to track down the Losties to tell them how to flash Islandways.

That's not how it's supposed to happen. Eloise said that to Desmond in Flashes Before Your Eyes. That sort of sums up Sideways for me. See you in another life (or two) brutha.