Welcome to another edition of TV or Not TV where I wish there were more constant to The Variable.

When I first learned the title of this week’s episode I was excited since it seemed to be one that would be paired directly with last season’s stellar episode The Constant. When it comes to season 4 of LOST I think many would agree that The Constant delivered on so many levels and packed such an emotional wallop that it is by far one of the stand-outs not only from that season but perhaps the entire series. If The Variable from it’s name alone seems to be a sister episode to The Constant so I was just plain giddy.

This week’s episode of LOST was very similar to the previous episode Some Like It Hoth because it was another bridge episode. The episode exists solely to move the story from point A to point C while having to traverse that awkward point B. They slip in some interesting revelations but really the episode exists just to nudge the characters in the direction our story tellers need them to go. There was no wallop, there wasn’t much emotion, just a brief step taken in certain directions with a shocker once again thrown in to the ending to make us go oooh and aaaah (which I just didn’t do).

In the way of the underlining thread that ties everything together we finally received confirmation (I hope) from Charles Widmore that he is in the fact the one who purchased a plane, filled it with corpses and sunk it to the bottom of the ocean to be the fake Oceanice Flight 815. This may or may not be an important item for a lot of people, but in my dicussion groups where we are trying to determine if Widmore or Ben are the more evil of these two apparently bad men (with one friend still holding hope for the fact that Ben will be proven in the long run to actually be the good guy) it is nice to see that something that Ben Linus told us seems to actually be true.

Even though the flashbacks in this episode related to Daniel Faraday we didn’t really learn a whole heck of a lot. There wasn’t really much revealed, and it all really just kind of came across as a part of the story I just didn’t care too much about. Some elements of the flashbacks even kind of confused me when I look at the overall scope of the show and the things that have occured. One of them would be when Charles Widmore comes to a now mentally hindered Daniel Faraday to offer him the job of going to the Island on the freighter. One item used to entice Faraday is the knowledge that the Island might heal his mind. In this season’s episode Jughead we find out that Daniel loves fellow freighter scientist Charlotte. This makes me wonder just how long they were on that frieghter and just how charming is the mentally hindered Faraday that he was able to some how hook up with Charlotte and have time to really fall in love with her? The timing just doesn’t add up in my head.

Another item of frustration for me with this episode is the former man of science Jack finally decided to take some action since getting the Island, only to take that action in following Faraday with his seemingly crazy plan to undo the Incident that will soon happen at the Swan station that initiates the chain of events that brings our Flight 815 people to the Island to begin with. The fact that the entire plan screams paradox doesn’t seem to concern Jack in the least, even when Kate tries to tell him that the whole thing sounds crazy. Jack is also not taking in to account that when everyone last saw Faraday he had mentally come unglued and to be honest I think his idea that people are the variables that can actually cause change comes from that same mental breakdown, a delusion he is creating to try to justify his actions. Faraday himself could have proven his very own concept of variables by not talking to Charlotte as a child in 1977 as she told him he previously had done in the episode This Place is Death. If he hadn’t done that prior to what we saw happen at the end of the episode we would know that his theory was sound. Instead I would think that his actually still telling her exactly what she said he toldher proves more than anything else that “whatever happened, happened” and there is no chance to make any changes if you are playing around in a time that can be considered your past.

This episode of LOST also suffered from a convention that the writers of this show often use to a frustrating degree. Many times characters will ensist on taking certain actions or try to talk other characters out of certain actions, however they never give a compelling reason. They will use dialogue to dance around the reason but they’ll never say why. One great example is from the season finale of Season 3 when Ben is trying to tell Jack that if he calls the freighter everyone on the Island will be killed. He never gives more of a detailed reason so Jack has no reason to comply at all. Faraday did this a bit last night and it is like nails dragging on a chalkboard for me whenever it occurs.

My last gripe with The Variable is in the ham fisted dialogue handed to us from Faraday in reminding Jack that any of them could die here in 1977. The writers were clearly trying to not only telegraph to use the ending of this episode, they were also setting us up for something that is clearly to come in the next three hours of the show. I would lay good money on the fact that one of our original Flight 815-ers is going to be shuffling this mortal coil, and that’s too bad since I like just about every one of them.

I will admit that even with all of these complaints I still really enjoyed the episode. If anything I’m probably just frustrated by the fact that I still have to wait two weeks to see how the rest of this season plays out and that is coming out in my perception of this episode.

– Will Wilkins still recited “the numbers” in his head at night.

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