Desmond Hume has always been one of my favorite characters on Lost. While he's the man who's had all these unimaginable supernatural things happen to him, he's also the one most grounded in reality. He can see the future, but longs for the past; longs to make amends to the one person he cares so much about.

And as I think about it, in all of Desmond's flashbacks, there has been one thing in common. One "constant."

Penny.

So in this episode, "The Constant," we don't get a flashforward or a flashback, we get a time-warp. Because of the electrical storm the helicopter encounters as they leave the island (and because of the electro-magnetic exposure he got when the hatch blew up) Desmond goes back and forth from his current timeline to his time back in the army.

Everything about Desmond revolves around one thing: True Love. He's always trying to get back to Penny. And every episode about him is a love story. You've got to love that!

I'll admit most of this episode was way out there. Time-travel rats? Come on. Meeting Faraday in the past to make sure the future works? Uh huh. Okay. But the heart of the show was Desmond and Penny and now things start making sense.

I don't believe we were ever told why Desmond was in the brig; if they did mention he went AWOL, we now know. And we know the reason Penny is looking for him. It all fits together.

So far in this abbreviated season, this is by far my favorite episode.

I'm not the biggest Heroes fan. In fact, I've only seen the last few episodes. But I did catch tonights episode set 5 years in the future. In it Hiro and Ando meet the future Hiro after the bomb (Sylar?) went off in New York City.

Now, maybe I watch too much science fiction, and maybe I'm too much of a Dr. Who fan, or perhaps I've seen too many Stargate episodes, but what happened (traveling to the future as Hiro and Ando did) shouldn't/couldn't have the same results as the episode showed.

You see, what Hiro and Ando experienced was an alternate future. It couldn't have been the 'real' future.

Why? Because Hiro was in the future.