1. Widmore taking three days from LA to the island with a drugged Desmond just to test him between two high voltage electromagnets seems stupid. If he wanted to "test" Desmond, he could have done so in LA in an industrial complex with machinery he would know would work. Widmore had not been to the island in 25 years, so how would he know whether the island had the test equipment or whether it would still work? You would not go blindly on a voyage without such testing if Desmond was key to defeating MIB.
2. The Charlie babysitting mission. What is extremely weak about this whole segment is that if Driveshaft, the band, was still performing (it was not pre 815 crash) then band members would travel together to their gig, with their roadies and their equipment. And if it was just two hours before the gig when Desmond arrived at the party, the rest of Driveshaft would have been there doing their sound checks. The show would have gone on without Charlie.
3. The science of the show is getting lost.
Electromagnetic radiation (EM) takes the form of waves in a vacuum or in matter. It consists of electric and magnetic fields which oscillate in phase perpendicular to each other and perpendicular to the direction of energy propagation. Electromagnetic radiation is classified into several types according to the frequency of its wave; these types include (in order of increasing frequency and decreasing wavelength): radio waves, microwaves, terahertz radiation, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays. EM radiation carries energy and momentum which may be imparted to matter with which it interacts.
The dual coil device appears to be two large electromagnets. When the red shirt gets caught up, he is burned to death, which imparts that radiation is deadly to humans and probably beyond the visible light spectrum. When Desmond is toasted, the computer graphic has him in the middle, actually absorbing the waves (or the very least negating them). The energy that killed the red shirt did not kill Desmond (it suddenly enlightened him without explanation).
Now, why is Desmond's EM shield important? If Flocke is Smokey, and Smokey is made up of EM energy, then Desmond could interact with him without being killed, except that when we have seen Smokey attack, the victims are crushed and torn a part, not burned to death. So maybe Smokey is indeed more mechanical than electromagnetic. But that does not make a charged Desmond a lethal weapon against Smokey. The only shield we have seen is different wave form: sound waves (the sonic fence).
4. The real illogical part is after toasting Desmond, he turns into a polite zombie ready to do Widmore's bidding. Which gets me back to a headache that continues to be shown lately: most of the characters have forehead wounds - - Widmore and Desmond are the latest. Sun got her's last week, and Jack has been sporting his unhealed mark for some time now. I get the sense that either this is to symbolize the characters have been lobotomized or "claimed" by some other force.
5. Dan Faraday-Widmore deux machina revelation of quantum physics on his musician note pad was really, really lame. This on top of his Love Line chatter about hitting on redhead Charlotte on the rebound from her Sawyer fumble. And considering a total stranger gets Desmond to follow a hallucination (bump on his head) defies common sense for the Desmond character of being a cool, collective, smart businessman. The sudden thrust of trying to appease viewers, some not buying the current heavy religious context, by now throwing old science theories into the story line, is like pouring mush into a simmering gumbo.
6. Continuity errors are dumb distractions for most, but get on my nerves. Point one, when Widmore and Flocke met at the beach, the sonic fence did not encompass the plane. The plane which Flocke said he needed to get off the island. Point two, the plane's tail is pointing (almost overhanging the beach). It should be pointing down the runway toward the center of the hydra island, and not on the beach.
7. The Desmond-Penny stadium hook-up had timing issues. If Hawking said the party was to start in two hours, Penny is running up and down stadium steps. It takes time for Desmond to find her, so when they get a coffee date in an "hour," does that mean Penny is ditching her brother's big party?
