If anything happens to Desmond before he actually gets to see Penny then this show can go to hell. Excellent episode!!! I am a bit confused on the island time in days and it being Christmas Eve on the freighter.

No Ben but I see the guy you think was Ben in the back. Not him though.

Interesting that the seller of this item, lot #2342, is in the Hanso family and Charles Widmore must have it apparently.

This show has been such a mindfuck...I love it!

NEVERMIND, going back at it and doing a frame by frame fast forward I finally got a good shot when Desmond first walks in and it isn't him. From a distance it looked like him but it isn't.

I have the auction audience up. It could be him, but it doesn't quite look like him. The hair yes, the face not so much. But when they reverse angle from the rear, they don't show this guy from the back, it starts with the row in front of him.
Oh wait. Definitely not him. There is a close up of him as Desmond is walking in to the rear.

Anyway, absolutely great episode.

Speaking of the auction, the other big thing, I thought, was the Black Rock had Hanso relatives on board!

Was it me, or did Jack and Juliet not seem surprised it was 2004?

The doctor from the freighter is on Eli Stone right now...in HAWAII.

No alternate dimensions.

Why would they seem surprised? It IS 2004

Wonder where Regina is. Maybe she's the one loose on the boat opening doors. Probably still Michael.

Like the episode explained, he didn't know Desmond in the future until he met Desmond in the past. It would probably be confusing to me as well if I didn't see so many movies about it before.

Only when the two timelines connected did Faraday know Desmond in both the past and the present.

So the scene where Faraday was crying a few episodes ago... was he in the middle of a "time jump" sequence at that point?

1996 Faraday wrote the note in his journal about Desmond being his constant thus changing 2004 Faraday's present notebook and no doubt his memories as well. Which is why he looked there is the first place.

So Faraday says to Jack and Juliet: "Your perception of how long your friends have been gone...it's not necessarily how long they've actually been gone."

That makes it sound like time on the island is moving slow (or at least gives the perception that time is moving slow), but if that was the case the 815 survivors would think it was later than 12/24, no? Of course their true perception would be based on day and night, and obviously the sun isn't going to go slow JUST for the island, so it has to be the same day on the island as in the real world...just weird.

I hate to be a spelling Nazi, but you really need to learn to spell "bawling!"

Not yet.

So, it's really 2004 in the real world with that phone call to Penny or perhaps that was just a scene of Penny getting a call from Desmond in 2004 and the real world is really 2008? Oh my.

If Desmond is Faraday's constant, then why couldn't Faraday be Desmond's constant?

That's a good point. Since Desmond saw Farraday both in 1996 and 2004, couldn't he be Desmonds constant? Why did he need Penny?

A couple questions:

-Is Desmond going to get all his memories back now? Will he remember how he got to the island and everything that happened after?

-Did we see Ben's "man" on the boat yet? Not saying I think it's him, but the big guy (Keamy, I think? WTF kind of name is that?) said, "You got my word on that." Very Ben-ish type thing to say.

-Why would Ben's "man" let them out of that room, knowing full well they would try to contact the outside world - wouldn't this person working with/for Ben want to prevent anybody from contacting the outside world? Ben's goal, after all, seems to be to keep the island a secret.

Best episode since season 1! Maybe the best of the whole series. The Desmond-centered episodes are always great.

They are really moving things forward this season! It's a welcome change from last season. I hope they keep the pace up, but I also hope they don't blow their wad too quickly with two more seasons to go.

Farrady said it had to be something you cared about. I think Desmond probably had more feelings for Penny than Farrady at that point...

That's right, that's what I said.

Maybe she was shooting some hoops.

Not ever. The end game about the Island itself is starting to become much more clearer and it has nothing to do with alternate dimensions.

Faraday said it had to be something that the person really cared about. Penny was the love of Desmond's life. To Faraday, Desmond was the person that validated his life's work. I don't think future Faraday means enough to Desmond to be his constant.

No it doesn't. Think about this. A "year" on Mars is longer than a "year" on Earth. If someone on Mars could immediately travel to Earth, it could be 2008 on Mars but 2025 on Earth. Same for the island vs. real world.