Episode Report Card Cindy McLennan: B+ | 746 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
By Cindy McLennan | Season 5 | Episode 3 | Aired on 2009.01.28
Ellie and her commandos lead Daniel and crew to The Others' camp. On the way, Miles walks over the grave of four U.S. Soldiers who've been dead just under a month. He tells Daniel that three were shot and one died of radiation poisoning. Unfortunately, he didn't hear them say what year it is. During the march, Daniel takes note that one of the commandos has bandaged hands, and you can see the wheels of his mind spinning a million miles an hour. Once they reach camp, the ageless and dashing Richard, who is quickly becoming one of my favorites on this show, exits his tent to greet them. Oh, and to settle this once and for all, 'Guyliner' is a misnomer. Daniel is careful to reveal less than he learns and turns Richard's questions back on him, so Richard introduces himself. "My name is Richard Alpert." You killed my father. Prepare to die. Wait, that's not it. "I assume you've come back for your bomb." Dah duh dah duh dah duh dah duh dun!
At Oxford, the clerk with whom Desmond is dealing can find no record of any Faraday employed at Oxford, never mind Daniel or his mother. When Des insists that he's visited Daniel in his attic lab above the Physics department, the woman admits the possibility of a clerical error, and asks him what year he visited. I can't decide if she's hiding a smirk or if I'm just looking for things that aren't there. Desmond can't answer, so he apologizes and walks out, hoping I'll stop typing his name D-a-n-i-e-l, then back-spacing and correcting. He complains to me that I'm just like Penny -- I forget that he's a uniquely specially wondrous snowflake. As if I could. Outside, he stops outside the building that houses the Physics Department, which I know because the sign reads: "Department of Physics" and underneath, "Clarendon 142-08." Oh, they're mixing the numbers up a bit, now.
Desmond enters the building and breaks into Daniel's old lab, which has been sealed with a fumigation warning. Inside, Desmond finds Daniel's papers scattered about, all his equipment shrouded, and a picture of Daniel and a pretty young blonde. As he removes the tarps, he places a hand to his head in the international sign for It's all coming back to me now. He uncovers the rat maze and stares at it in wonder, when a voice behind him says, "Yeah, I wouldn't touch that." Desmond turns to find a workman entering the lab -- and shutting the two of them in. "I wondered when someone'd figure out we weren't just fumigating here. You a professor?" When Desmond says he's not, not exactly, the workman credits him for being honest (although none too exactly, don't you think?), then covers the maze back up. Des asks why the man told him not to touch it, so he answers, "Because I'm the one who had to take the rats that he made run through this bloody thing down to the incinerator, so that no one would find out what he was up to." Desmond asks if the man is referring to Daniel Faraday. "Yeah, you're not the first one to poke around here, asking about him and his work. Rumor had it, he was trying to send rats' brains back in time." He laughs. "Ridiculous, innit?" And Desmond agrees. The workman must be getting time and a half to play exposition fairy, because he's awfully chatty. "Look, I'll forget you broke my lock, if you tell your mates that all you found was rubbish left behind by a madman." Des says that's fair enough and mentions that the University has no record of Faraday. The workman says, "Well, can you blame 'em, I mean, after what he'd done to that poor girl?" Des asks who he means, and we're swept away to...