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Des goes to Penny's new residence in London; she answers the door, but she says she is trying to make a clean break from him. She is obviously very angry and doesn't want to talk.

But he persuades her to listen. He tells her he needs to have a phone number for her that won't change, because he will need to call her in eight years. He won't use the number until then: "December 24, 2004 -- Christmas Eve. I promise." She gives him the number and he memorizes it.

On the freighter, Sayid gets a ship-to-shore patch through, but they only have limited power. Des calls and Penny answers; they are overjoyed to speak with each other. Penny tells him she's been looking for him for three years, and that she got the message from Charlie that Des was alive. "I'll come back, I promise," Des tells her. The connection gives out, but Des gives Sayid his thanks: "It was enough." His constant, Penny, is still there; now he can cope.

Back on the Island, Dan's going through an old physics notebook. One page is filled with a scribbled note to himself: "If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant." This message from his past makes Dan look strangely hopeful.

The five minutes Desmond seemingly spent on the freighter were 75 minutes in Oxford, Dan says. Meanwhile, Eloise has died of a brain aneurysm, and Des is terrified that the same will happen to him. Eloise couldn't take the back-and-forth in time, Dan says, because the brain needs a constant, something that anchors you in both places.

"Can it be a person?" Des asks. He tries to call Penny in London, but her number's been disconnected. However, he finds Charles Widmore at an antiques auction, bidding successfully on the ship's log kept by the mate of the Black Rock. Widmore gives him Penny's new address, but advises that she will only tell Des that she hates him now.

Via sat-phone, Dan gives Des information, numbers for "the device," to tell Dan when Des finds him in 1996. And a code name, "Eloise," to convince Dan that Des is serious.

At Oxford in 1996, Eloise turns out to be a white lab rat. Dan's experiment sends the rat's consciousness into the future, allowing Eloise to solve a just-built maze she hadn't even learned yet. But Dan doesn't seem to know how to help 1996 Des: "You can't change the future," Dan tells him.

On the freighter: George Minkowski recognizes Desmond's name, tells him that he was the ship's communications officer, and that every so often there were incoming calls from Penelope Widmore, calls which they were under strict orders to ignore.

As the helicopter heads into a thunderhead, Desmond starts flashing in and out of the present. One minute he's with Frank and Sayid, who are strangers to him; then he's back in the army, getting in trouble for not following orders because he's having what seem like waking dreams. When they land, Des goes nuts and the men on the freighter lock him in a sick bay. There he meets Minkowski, who's tied to the bed and having similar flashes. "It's happening to you too, isn't it?" Minkowski asks Des.

Sayid is puzzled. How, he asks Frank, can it be that the helicopter took off at dusk, but landed in mid-afternoon? Frank has no idea. Sayid calls Jack on the sat-phone and tells him about Desmond's problems. He is having the "side effects" that Daniel previously warned Jack and Juliet about.

Is it just me, or does it feel like we lost a few potentially awesome singers this week and kept the mediocre talent? Not to be mean, but I wanted Luke Menard gone. Now. Instead, we bid adieu to alleged wig-wearer Robbie Carrico, whose voice is pretty amazing. (Then again, he kept smarting off to the judges. Bad career move!)
On the ladies' side, sweet Alaina Whitaker elicited a few tears from me in my living room. (I'm sure I'm not alone.) It's moments like that -- her initial panic about singing while crying, the other girls stepping up for support -- that make the show a hit.

She's gone, but Amanda lives on. Life: not always fair.

So it's the end of the Idol road for the Grand Prairie native. Sad. But unfortunately expected, after the grilling he's gotten from the judges.

Two observations about the remaining contestants:
- Robbie Carrico is receiving much flack about his hair after Tuesday's performance show. Seems many believe he's sporting a wig. (Tonight he has another bandana on, so it's harder to tell.) It sort of makes sense; if he is wearing a hairpiece, that would explain why the judges keep hammering away at the "authenticity" issue with him. (Then again, maybe he just has weird hair.)
- Kady Malloy has ants in her pants. She cannot keep still during those shots of the gang lined up and facing the cameras. If you haven't noticed this before, watch tonight. She'll be fidgeting.

Tonight's episode of Lost, "The Constant," should feature a little more physical action than last week's "Eggtown" did.

This is a Desmond Hume-centric ep, and the Hot Scot, as you'll remember, has precognitive flashes (one of which propelled poor Charlie Pace to his season-finale doom inside the Looking Glass Station). We can expect to see our Des having the sort of time-out-of-mind experiences that sent him -- and us -- reeling in last season's "Flashes Before Your Eyes."

In that "Flashes" ep, Des took some trippy walks down Déjà Vu Lane. Or maybe it was Presque Vu Lane. Who knows? This time out, it gets even weirder.

Spoilerish stuff ahead, if you prefer to avoid it... otherwise, keep going...