"Happily Ever After"

JANUARY 29, 2011

FOCUS: DESMOND
EPISODE: 6.11
AIRED: APRIL 6, 2010

After making a brief, almost unrecognizable appearance (due to the low light and being roughed up), Desmond finally makes a true return in "Happily Ever After", after being M.I.A. since the season premiere. According to his IMDb, Henry Ian Cusick has not made any feature films since Hitman, which was made 3-4 years prior, so I am baffled by his lengthy absence. But nothing I can do about it, and at least he returns in a good episode.

As usual with Desmond, the flashes are presented atypically; instead of cutting back and forth between the sideways world and the island throughout the episode, the flashes are presented all in one group. And it's one of the better sideways adventures, because it gets the "ohhhh, neat!" moment out of the way early (Desmond happily working for Charles Widmore and being told he's worthy of his MacCutcheon, a total reversal of the real world), and then gets to the meat of the tale: starting to explain the sideways world! The Eloise scene makes a lot more sense now, and is even somewhat touching - she doesn't want her family members to "move on", so she's perfectly fine with Desmond losing Charlie (I'd argue that if she wanted to prevent our heroes from meeting up she wouldn't have arranged for DriveShaft to come in the first place, but whatever).

And you can never go wrong with a Desmond and Penny scene. Why she has to be running a tour de stade, I'm not entirely sure, but it's a nice scene all the same. Plus, once again Desmond gets to "conscious travel", seemingly waking back up on the island with memories of the sideways world, and is thus now willing to help Widmore (and then Sayid) without any resistance, because he knows in the afterlife he'll be with Penny, which is all he cares about. Again, this only makes sense NOW, but that was one of the main reasons I wanted to do this - re-evaluate Season 6 in quick succession with the other seasons, but also with the answers at my disposal (at least, the ones I still remember), so I'm not watching it in confusion the entire time.

Then again it does raise other questions. Since Daniel is apparently the first one to sort of understand what is happening to him, how come he doesn't get to go to Lost Heaven with the others and be happy forever with Charlotte? Both actors were in the final episode, so it's not like Eko, who didn't get to come because his actor was demanding too much money. I toyed with it being only 815ers who got to go (Miles and Frank don't get to come either, I guess), but Juliet and Penny ARE there, and they weren't on the plane (hell Penny never even went on the island). I really don't get the mentality of whoever made the guest list for this place.

Bad Los Angeles geography also makes a comeback in this one, at least based on my assumption. I assumed that the stadium was near Jack's hospital since he came still wearing his scrubs, and Jack's hospital is in West Los Angeles. But Penny and Desmond arrange to meet nearby at the coffee shop at Sweetzer and Melrose. First of all there is no coffee shop there, but it's also a good 15 minute drive away - there has to be closer locations. I wouldn't care, but the show's production offices were in LA (Burbank, actually), so it always tickled me how bad they were with the geography. However, once they get there and realize there's no coffee shop, maybe they'll decide to go to a movie, and thus end up at the New Bev, which is only a mile or so from there. If George the limo driver "knows all the hot spots" he should know about it.

Well, only 6 to go! 5 if you discount that one thing. I'm so excited about getting 90 minutes or so of my day back!

Where are we?