10 Unique TV Episodes That You Must See
2. Lost - The Constant
An episode which jumps randomly through time.
Time travel is a tricky theme to explore. There is no definitive right or wrong and most sci-fi shows like to create their own rules. Lost was no exception, and this episode, the Constant, was their first big foray into the subject. But what was remarkable about the Constant was the way the theme of time travel affected the structure of the episode, with the episode's lead, Desmond Hume, being thrown backwards and forwards in time through jarring smash cuts.
Lost were one of the important developers of the flashback format; the Constant takes it one step further by weaving the flashbacks physically into the present. Desmond would be part-way through a sentence in one year and finish it 20 years earlier. Only the audience was experiencing the story in the same way as him and his desperation to return to normality was felt intensely by the viewers.
The Constant is frequently dubbed as the greatest episode of Lost, even of the 2000s, because of its inventiveness to slice and dice the standard structure of a television drama.