Well, the show’s finally over. We discovered the island itself is a black hole in the middle of the South Pacific as part of a classified experiment by several world governments. The smoke monster was just a biological weapon gone wrong and the castaways return to their lives as if nothing happened, thanks to neuroagents injected into them after they’re retrieved one by one from the beach. Claire is Jack’s half-sister, Eko was really a woman and Charlie had steamy sex with the love child of the polar bear and Locke and what the fuck did you expect from this review? Nothing’s solved, everything’s murky and Lost is still trying its best to play the confused old drunk in the corner, firing off cryptic clues and then laughing uncontrollably when you don’t connect the imaginary dots only he can see.

This week we get to concentrate solely on Desmond and his trials and tribulations. While in the middle of a meeting between Locke, Sayed, Charlie and Hugo about Eko’s death Desmond freaks out like Charo and goes diving into the ocean to save Claire who was, until then, thought to be taking a walk. He later claims he just “heard her” but Charlie and Hurley know better, they know he can see the future. Words get thrown around drunkenly, Charlie calls Desmond a coward and gets tackled for his trouble. Then we get to find out what happened when Desmond turned the override key at the end of last season. Between the turn and waking up naked in the jungle it turns out he is returned several years to when he was still in London, dating Penny and sucking up to her father. Generally speaking it seems normal to him as if he didn’t remember what the future held but little things here and there give him insight like Penny telling him it isn’t the end of the world followed by the microwave beeping. Just little things.

Numbers get bandied about as he arrives for his interview with Penny’s father. Trying to appeal to the patriarch he tells him that he and Penny want to move in together. This turns ugly fast as her dad rejects and utterly humiliates Desmond and tells him he isn’t worthy of his daughter. This ends, predictably, poorly and he leaves the building and walks out to find Charlie, also in London and playing his guitar on the sidewalk. This leads to a spark of recognition from Desmond who suddenly remembers everything about the future including the sudden downpour that he predicts a moment before it happens.

Desmond confides in this best friend about his new discovery. His friend who happens to also be a physicist is skeptical. Just like in any he calls the final score for a sporting event on TV followed by the appearance of an acquaintance of theirs smacking the bartender with a cricket bat. But neither of these things happen, instead he just looks like an ass and heads home to a sympathetic Penny. They get all tender with each other and the next day he finds himself buying an engagement ring for her. All seems to be going in a good direction until the clerk plays the spoiler and transcends the show, telling him he can’t buy the ring because then he won’t break Penny’s heart, enter the sailing competition, end up on the island and live for three years pushing the button and saving the world. I believe I saw her nametag and it read “PLOT.”

So PLOT and Desmond wander around town a bit while Desmond tries to figure out if he’s dreaming, crazy or just the central character on a recently disappointing but overall worthy television show’s latest episode. Using the death of a red shoe-clad man our white-haired expositionary woman turn Oracle tells Desmond that everyone has their path and that there’s no deviating from it, as life will always put you back on it no matter what. Apparently unwilling to pay attention or respect, Desmond takes off with the ring anyway to give to Penny. But after they get their picture taken, the very same picture Desmond carried with him all those years on the island, he realizes there’s no escaping fate and breaks up with Penny.

He escapes to the bar where he realizes he had made the prior day’s predictions prematurely and that the football game would end as he said he had sudden hope that he could change the future. So up he goes only to see that acquaintance stroll in with the cricket bat and, in a moment of retarded heroism, saves the bartender from it and takes it to his own head as a result. That shakes him back to the future where once again he’s naked in the jungle. Then we replay the first few minutes of the episode with the drinking and the tackling and all that followed by Charlie helping a bumbling Desmond back to his tent where Charlie’s told in the single actual useful moment of the episode that Desmond has seen his future and that Charlie is going to die. Jumping into the ocean was trying to prevent Charlie from drowning. Setting up the lightning rod last week was because he saw Charlie hit by a bolt. But he knows that there’s no preventing the inevitable and that Charlie is going to die.

Or maybe the show will forget about this like so many other storylines.