Last night’s episode was short on revelations, and amply endowed with the trademarked Lost clues/hints/references that probably go nowhere in the long term but which we worry over incessantly and make us hungrier for answers that ultimately won’t matter much. Let’s rack ‘em up.

1)    Who are all those dead people on Hydra island? Were there really that many people on the Ajira flight? (Certainly didn’t look that way to me, but maybe they were all huddled in the back of the plane). More importantly, how did they all die? And how long was Tina Fey’s evil doppelganger hanging out, covered in grime, waiting for someone to show up?

2)    Who is Smokey’s crazy mother? It seems like he and Jacob have been around for a seriously long time, so she has to have been around a looong time ago. My guess now is that Smokey is Grendel. Which would make Jacob…Beowulf? Oh yeah. Mystery solved.

James Ford's highly symbolic reading list; Tina Fey's evil doppelganger

3)    Listen, I know that last item was funny ha-ha, but seriously: this show is now so full of probably meaningless literary references, it’s really not that out of place.  My favorite in recent episodes was Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, which I am nearly certain was picked just for its title and not for any overt connection with Orthodox Judaism. “Recon” gave us a return of James Ford’s love for Watership Down (and Kate subsequently eating a rabbit on the island, DUN DUN DUN), but even more suggestively, Watership Down is stacked on top of a copy of A Wrinkle in Time and a book called Lancelot by Walker Percy. A Wrinkle in Time is an obvious and quite nice shout out to all the time traveling shenanigans this show has indulged in, and if the free will vs. predestination theory of Lost gets any traction, the final showdown of L’Engle’s book speaks quite clearly to what side you should be on. I’ve never read Lancelot, but Wikipedia was quite helpful. Apparently, the plot involves a lawyer who murders his wife after discovering that he’s not the father of one of their children. Hmm, familiar… All of which is to say, Lost’s referential narrative technique tends to be a lot of smoke and not much fire, where all of these shout outs lead you down analytical garden paths and may not ultimately speak to much more than “look how these things are similar!”

4)    I think Michael Landon’s performance in Little House on the Prairie deserves its own item on the list, don’t you?

5)    Who or what is locked inside the padlocked cabin on the submarine? My money’s on Desmond, but that’s largely because I really wish Desmond were playing a bigger role in this season to date. If it were Desmond, at least he has some sea-faring experience, which might help with item number six…

6)    How, how, could it be any easier for Sawyer to pilot a submarine than an airplane? I suppose at least the sub’s in good working order and doesn’t require a maintenance team to get it up and running, but The Hunt for Red October has led me to believe that submarine maneuvers can be quite tricky. I’m now having visions of the submarine sailing into a New England port, with Sawyer perched looking out of the hatch on top, musing on moving to Montana. It’ll be a beautiful series finale.

First, a little history lesson from European History, 3rd period:

“And it was on this island that everything changed, that everything finally became clear. Elba is where Napolean faced his greatest test, because exile wasn’t the worst of his fate. What was truly devastating to him was the loss of his power. Sure, they allowed him to keep the title of Emperor, but without any power it was meaningless. He might just as well have been dead.” Oh Lost. I see what you did there.

I seriously enjoyed last night’s episode of Lost, and was thrilled both that it was a Ben-focused episode, and that it broke this season’s on-again-off-again trend. It’s so satisfying to watch Dr. Linus struggle with his desire for power and choose the right course of action, and then even more meaningful to watch him make the same decision back on the island. Who knows whether island Ben is in earnest about joining Team Jacob or whether this is just another one of his deceptions, but Michael Emerson sold Ben’s weeping collapse so well that I want to believe him.

The Dr. Linus flash sideways story worked not just because of Michael Emerson’s awesomeness, but because so much of what happened to Ben in this alternate world had enormous meaningful reverberations with his story on the island. It was great to watch Ben get it right with Alex this time, but it was also fascinating to watch him care for his sick father (rather than, you know, murdering him with poison gas), be manipulated by John Locke, manipulate Artz in turn, and especially, be passionate about doing his work as well as he could. Maybe Ben has always been about doing his job to the best of his abilities, but we never had a clear enough sense of what that job actually was to see that side of him. The school setting also proves to be a fertile place to carry out some of these themes outside the special rules of the island. Power grabs and manipulation are believable inside school politics, but there’s also the added humorous twist of rampant pettiness (possibly my favorite bit from “Dr. Linus” is Artz’s demand for a new parking spot – not the one under the maple tree, the one next to it).

Ben’s redemption narrative aside, the flash sideways also contained some clues about the nature of this side of the narrative that went beyond the “hey look, it’s that guy!” techniques of the previous episodes. We already knew that the island does exist in this timeline, but it’s been underwater for a while. Thanks to Ben’s dad, we now also know that the Dharma initiative existed, that Ben and his dad were on the island working for Dharma, and that in this narrative, something made them leave. These hints, combined with some nice clues dropped by Richard Alpert in the Black Rock, made “Dr. Linus” feel like a worthwhile character development story that also got the ball rolling on some answers about the island. Double the pleasure.

And speaking of poor, long-lived Richard, the more we learn about Jacob and the role he plays in people’s lives, the less I am convinced that Team Jacob is the best place to be. If, as has been suggested around teh Internetz, Jacob and Smokey are not good and evil but something more like destiny and free will, my instinct would be to side with the men of science. Ben’s decision to turn away from the leader who made him kill his daughter suggests that there’s something to be said for free will, and Richard is less than pleased with whatever his eternal life has brought him thus far. On the other hand, Smokey was hardly a saint at the temple, and Sayid’s been transformed into his own evil doppelganger. It will be fascinating to see where Charles Widmore falls once he finds a place to dock his submarine, and I can only hope that Desmond and Penny won’t be too far behind.

A great episode, and one that I hope bodes well for the rest of the season. One last question, though, that I do hope will get answered soon: what the heck happened to Sawyer?

Episodes like “Sundown” are exactly the sort of show Lost used to string us along in the early seasons without actually revealing much of anything, and make it an experience we enjoyed rather than complained about. It had a main plot on the island that moves slowly and deliberately before unleashing a fast-paced action sequence at the end, an off-island plot that develops characters and throws in a nice “and look how they connect to this other person!” bonus, and a sense that even though answers about the nature of things were not forthcoming, we are gradually learning what questions we’re supposed to be asking. We still don’t know what exactly Jacob and Smokey Locke are supposed to represent or who’s on what side, but “Sundown” made Smokey’s motivation and arsenal a little clearer. Plus, because firm information on the Smoke Monster was withheld for so long, it’s still incredibly novel to see the wind blow, hear that odd ticking sound effect, and then watch John Locke stroll out of the jungle.

Dialogue on this show still frustrates me, and after five seasons of lines like “Someone is coming” and the island-wide moratorium on specific, probing queries, it’s probably time for me to just walk away. But while Jack’s lack of curiosity seems like downright imbecility, Sayid does a much better job of selling the vagueness as carrying a hidden significance instead of a meaningless delay. (Tell it to me in Star Wars! Sayid’s version: These are not the droids you’re looking for. Jack’s version: I don’t know – Are they the droids you’re looking for? Is someone looking for these droids? We have to go back!) The result is an episode where the philosophy and thematic content are more palatable and have direct, concrete consequences on Sayid’s actions. When Sayid ponders whether he’s actually good or evil, he makes the whole journey from insisting he’s a decent man to giving us one of the creepiest crazy villain smiles I’ve ever seen, all inside of one fully packed hour. Even if that experience doesn’t give fans another tangible answer to the Lost puzzle, it shifts the character landscape so dramatically that it hardly matters.

The episode also had a lot of strong minor plotlines going for it. I loved the growing realization that Claire Crazypants is just waiting for an opportunity to rip Kate apart with her bare hands, even if the pit did give me some unsubtle “it puts the lotion in the basket” flashbacks. It was also great to see Keamy come back in a useful way, and nice to see that time itself may shift, but Keamy will always be a crazed, violent guy with creepy eyes who inevitably gets killed off. And speaking of killed off, I never connected enough with Dogen to care much when Sayid drowned him, but I did like his translator/sidekick, Lennon. I’ve missed John Hawkes since Deadwood, and I was hoping he’d become interesting enough to keep around for a while. But he was sacrificed to Sayid’s downward spiral into evil madness, so I guess that’s all right.

More than anything, the music for this scene freaked me out. It's so rare we get a new musical cue on this show, and Claire is already scary enough to make "Catch A Falling Star" seriously frightening.

This episode does little to develop my questions from last week about whether the nature of Lost is inherently scifi or fantasy (or something entirely different), except possibly as it relates to Sayid’s fate. But as I mentioned in the beginning, with an episode where the vague philosophical musings are followed swiftly by Sayid slitting throats and Smoky slaughtering everyone in the temple, Lost is able to set aside some of the deeper critical fretting that comes with frustration. Some of the audience may be dying for answers, but Cuse and Lindelof have made it very clear that the goal is entertainment, not instruction. When the show is sufficiently entertaining, that division feels satisfying.

If only we could have two good episodes in a row so that it didn’t feel like we have to earn every compelling episode by sitting through a dull one, I wouldn’t need to spend every other episode feeling cast into existential crisis about the show’s ultimate purpose. Fingers crossed for next week.

Can I get a hearty “ehhhh” about Lost last night?  It was a returning case of horrible dialogue that really did me in, and not horrible like The Vampire Diaries’ repetitive, dull horribleness – it was bad with that special breed of Lost bad dialogue that’s been floating around since season one. The primary characteristic is an overwhelming avoidance of specificity, which becomes the tip of the episode’s vague iceberg. No one says things like “whatever they think happened to you, they think it happened to someone else, too.” For any rational being you can imagine, that sentence would be, “Claire was also infected.” Also up on this list of the absurd avoidance of proper nouns: Claire’s “friend” who has been with her these past years, “someone” who is coming to the island, and “someone” who is coming to attack the temple.

"'Someone' is preventing me from actually saying anyone's name."

The problem with this, of course, is that it’s only a symptom of a bigger vagueness within the episode. Early in the show, wandering around in the jungle in search of “someone” for some reason you didn’t really understand got a pass for being mysterious and suspenseful. At this point, it’s just deliberate, unnecessary obfuscation that has the added detraction of no longer feeling fresh. We’ve seen it so many times before that the eye rolling starts to feel like a conditioned response. Even worse, at this stage of the game, any proper noun sloppiness is actually counter-productive in terms of emotional significance – maybe in the first season, “someone” was scary and effective, but by now, it would be so much more suspenseful and exciting if the characters just came out and said “Claire is infected! Desmond is coming to the island! Smokey is attacking the temple!” Maybe you’d lose a small payoff of surprise when the mysterious person is finally revealed, but those kinds of “who’s coming to the island?” surprises should no longer be the show’s bread and butter, especially when time is now so limited. And the vagueness is particularly egregious when it comes to Claire, because we already know she was “infected.” Just say it already.

My other big concern with last night’s episode was the magical lighthouse mirror. This goes much deeper into the fabric of what Lost is going to end up being by the end of this whole crazy ride, and so if this is the direction the show is going to take, it might lead me to some serious dissatisfaction.

The question is this: is Lost science fiction, or is it fantasy? It may not seem like that meaningful a distinction, especially as it’s a line Lost has been carefully obscuring throughout its whole run. It doesn’t even have that much significance on the overall makeup of the show, because science fiction and fantasy can operate in structurally identical ways. An unexplained technological phenomenon whirring along in the background works just like magic would. The distinction is more about paraphernalia than inner workings, and Lost has always aired on the scifi side, with regulated time travel, buttons to push at specific times, powerful magnetic fields, numbered experimental white rabbits, dials and compass readings, and a giant black monster that’s not a magical creature, it’s a “security system.” It doesn’t even bother me that Jacob and the Man in Black appear to be ancient, symbol-laden demigods, because science fiction and mysticism can happily walk hand-in-hand. (Star Wars! Battlestar Galactica!) Lost has always played with science fiction and mysticism, but it was always “Man of Science, Man of Faith,” not “Man of Science, Warlock With Book of Magical Spells and An Eye of Newt Around Here Somewhere.”

The one thing we did get out of the mirror business - Kate's name is on the list, and it's not crossed out yet. But because she's number 51, she's not a candidate?

With the lighthouse mirror, I think Lost steps over the other side of that line. Yeah, there’s a nice big gear that you can turn with people’s names on it, but ultimately, it’s a magical mirror, with no suggestion that it’s another machine built to harness the island’s wacky forces. Hurley does mention that they must have used a mirror because “there was no electricity back then,” but unless that glass somehow got dipped in special islandy Jacob-sauce or it’s run by magnets and tiny numbered time-travelling rabbits running around on wheels, it’s still a magic mirror mounted on a turntable. The other big example of this is Ben’s giant icy donkey wheel, which bears a suspicious likeness to the geared lighthouse system. It’s clunky and incongruent, and it hints that the path we’ll be going down from here on out is going to be less scientific Dharma experimentation, more eye of newt. I’d love for it to be an aberration, but just as with the ridiculous dialogue, we’re closing up on the finish line, and there’s very little reason to create more obstacles.

Just so this isn't all negative - I do like Claire Crazycakes Rousseau the Second over here.

Here’s hoping next week’s episode will be another “on” week, and make me forget this week like “The Substitute” helped me forget “What Kate Does.” At some point, though, too many “off” weeks are going to add up to an “off” season. In any event, I’d love to know what people think about this scifi vs. fantasy business. Is the mirror actually in character and I’m just cranky this week? Has Lost always been a fantasy show? Does the distinction carry any implications for the show’s resolution?

Hey, that was pretty fun! Although there were a few complaints from my weekly peanut gallery that some scenes in “The Substitute” were unnecessary filler (particularly the excessively long ladder scene), “The Substitute” was without doubt a more satisfying episode then last week. This was in part because the flash-sideways sequences were meaningful additions to the story of John Locke, whereas last week’s “What Kate Does” never gave us anything new about Kate’s character. In the alt-universe, Locke is a significantly different person than we came to know on the island: he’s still in a wheelchair, he struggles with life but has a strong relationship with Helen, and tearing up Jack’s business card is a huge step in the opposite direction than the one Locke takes on the island. Where island-John Locke was led down a rabbit hole and continually goaded to search for deeper meaning, alt-Locke refuses to fall farther down that abyss and chooses to be happy with himself.

And again unlike “What Kate Does,” that storyline gives us meaningful, rewarding narrative echoes in the main timeline. While I’m certainly still waiting for the two narratives to connect, it was enough for now that alt-John Locke shows us how awful the island has actually been for that character. When the plane crashes, he follows a crazy wild goose chase until being murdered (and then hilariously eulogized) by Ben. When the plane doesn’t crash, he’s paralyzed, but he can be happy.

“The Substitute” also capitalized heavily on our powerful audience love of twisty, surprising character connections, in a way Lost used to do often in season one and hasn’t done much of since. Locke sits down at the temp agency, and it’s Rose! One I didn’t initially catch while watching the episode – we’ve known for a while that Hurley owns the box company Locke works from, but I hadn’t realized that Locke’s obnoxious boss is Hurley’s former obnoxious boss at Mr. Cluck’s, Randy Nations. No doubt Hurley hooked him up with a new position after Mr. Cluck’s burned down, although I wonder how it burned down if Hurley’s actually super lucky in this timeline? And of course, Benjamin Linus as the world’s creepiest European History teacher. I would so take that class.

Back on the island, the entire episode built up to that fabulous, exciting final scene, where the caveman drawings turn out to be Jacob’s list of candidates, and the remaining candidates are the infamous island numbers of Hurley’s nightmares. The relationship between Jacob, SmokeyLocke, and the candidates becomes ever-so-slightly clearer with the knowledge that Jacob sees himself as the island’s protector (from what Smokey claims is a nonexistent threat), and the people on his numbered list are possible replacements – or substitutes – for Jacob’s role. Grief-stricken and angry, Sawyer ignores the fact that Smokey hurls the white rock into the ocean and declares himself Team Black Rock, on a Wizard of Oz homeward bound mission. Poor Sawyer. You’re clearly well read, but not sensitive enough to the incredibly obvious black vs. white symbolism that you can pick the right side of this battle.

It’s nice to come away from an episode with new questions that I care about rather than just the heavily repeating drumbeat of “what does it all mean?!” Why isn’t Kate a candidate? She’s certainly the only major Lostie whose name isn’t on the list and who hasn’t already been claimed in some way (as Claire has). As a corollary, why are all the candidates men, excepting the possibility that Kwon refers to Sun? In what way is Smokey so irrevocably trapped on the island, and how is Sawyer going to help him get off? And finally, what is with Child of the Corn over here?!

AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Thanks, Carlton Cuse/Jacob and Damon Lindelof/Smokey/Man in Black (or possibly vice versa). With episodes like this one, it’s starting to feel safer to sit back and let TPTB spin everything out as they see fit.

The general consensus among the Lost critics (see here and here) is that last night’s episode was a little lame, or at least not as satisfying as it could have been. The most interesting take on this is the idea that an episode like “What Kate Does” is going to be far more enjoyable in retrospect, when we have some idea of why we should care about these alternate timeline Losties. At the moment, the most exciting thing about that entire chunk of the episode was that Ethan shows up as Claire’s OB-GYN, and manages to be just as creepy in the guise of kindly doctor as he was as a masquerading Other. It may be true that with the benefit of hindsight, we’ll be able to understand this episode for all the pieces it cannily shifts into place, but that doesn’t diminish my sense of slight disappointment.

What Kate does: drive a cab, look surly, look suspicious

The problem is not just that we don’t have any reason to be invested in the alt-Losties – it’s that the episode was directly billing itself as a companion piece to an earlier, far more meaningful episode and failed to live up to that promise. Season two’s episode “What Kate Did” finally fleshed out the magnitude of Kate’s crimes, giving us context for her presence on Oceanic 815 courtesy of the US Marshal service and detailing her twisted family tree. That lovely hanging past-tense verb, “did,” gets a satisfying response – Kate killed the guy she thought was her abusive stepfather, only to discover he was actually her biological parent. As a bonus to all that pleasing backstory, the black horse that aids in Kate’s escape from the Marshal then appears on the island, totally freaking her (and me) out. In contrast, the answer to “What Kate Does” is much less interesting. Kate steals a cab. Kate hangs out with Claire, and they go to the hospital. Kate likes the name Aaron. Kate does nothing all that exciting.

To be fair, the episode titles do act as a nice little key to the narrative techniques here. While season two was still heavily in flashback land, “What Kate Did” is clearly a question of note. Immersed in an alternate timeline with as-yet-unknown significance, “What Kate Does” gives us a nice grammatical clue. Kate and Claire’s Super Exciting Hospital Adventure is in the present tense, further clarifying that these two storylines are simultaneous (or at least, that the alternate universe is the one happening now).

As for the rest of the episode, it managed to be both more compelling and more predictable. Sayid’s un-zombie resurrection is, as guessed, going to cause some problems down the line. The infection business is intriguing, especially as it connects with Rousseau’s account of her arrival on the island and Claire’s gun-toting reappearance. Unlike most other Lost characters, mystical Asian man seems to have spent some time sorting through lostpedia and is fully aware that Claire and Jack are siblings, which, coupled with his horticultural skills and wacky language preferences, hikes his “mystical” aura up into the stratosphere. And poor Sawyer is still broken up about Juliet.

I’m certainly intrigued by the temple and its mysterious restorative dirty pool water, and I’m all for the return of Claire and watching Sayid slowly turn into a werewolf. (Because as he made clear, zombie is not an option). Unless Lost gives me something to care about in the alternate timeline, though, it’s going to continue seeming disjointed and hollow.

• Apparently, there’s some sort of major televised sporting event happening this weekend. While I know very little about football, the Super Bowl has always been most interesting for its status as the one televised event where advertisements are just as renown as the actual programming, and this year is shaping up to be particularly notable. There are already controversies about two Super Bowl ads, one about a dating site for gay men that has been removed from the Super Bowl lineup, and one ad produced by Focus on the Family in which football star Tim Tebow discusses his mother’s decision not to abort him. (Presumably the message is that your unborn child might also grow up to play for the Florida Gators, and thus deserves life). To recap – the Super Bowl: not interested in gay men or Democrats.
• Conan O’Brien’s future has not yet been settled, and although it’s been widely rumored that he’ll jump over to FOX, apparently Rupert Murdoch isn’t so sure yet. It seems they’re not entirely certain they a FOX Conan show can “make a profit.”
• You know what, I just did these bullet points as an excuse to keep talking about Lost. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were on Jimmy Kimmel Live Tuesday night after the episode aired, and Jimmy grilled them on a list of observations that may or may not be coincidences.
  
  
  Obviously they confirm that changes to the alternate Flight 815 are meaningful – Shannon’s disappearance, Jack’s slightly altered conversation with Rose and the flight attendant, etc. They also confirm that Evil Locke is the Smoke Monster, much to the shock of several audience members who clearly weren’t aware that spoilers of that magnitude were going to be revealed. My favorite thing about this interview,* though, is when Cuse and Lindelof remark on the importance of the punctuation for the season opener’s title: “LA X.” Kimmel asks them if they meant to put a space there, and through the joking about typos, they agree that the space is actually significant.

  I love stuff like that. It’s a such a tiny, nit-picky, fine-toothed comb thing to do, and these guys know that their fans are crazy enough to instantly pick up on and caterwaul endlessly about the fact that they put an unnecessary space in the title of one of their episodes. And I want to close read it as much as the next crazy Lostie, although more because I like the exercise than because I’m painfully impatient to get some answers.

• *When I said that was my favorite part of the interview, that probably wasn’t true. My favorite part was actually the bit when Jimmy asks them if it’s important that Hurley picks up a book by Soren Kierkegaard in the recent episode. They say yes, of course they knew what they were doing, but the subtext here is really “Um, duh. No one – no one -  throws in a Kierkegaard reference and expects it to be a meaningless gesture. It’s Kierkegaard.”

Lost is off to a strong start for its final season, and it looks like it’ll have a fairly strong audience for its farewell tour – over twelve million people watched the premiere last night, up significantly from the season opener last year. There may have been some significant viewer attrition during seasons four and five, when the narrative looked particularly convoluted and didn’t seem overly invested in providing answers. Now, though, the prospect of jumping down the rabbit hole is a lot more pleasant with the guarantee that you’ll eventually come out the other side.

Lest you get too comfortable, last night’s episode did want to make it clear that you’re definitely jumping into a crazy narrative free-for-all. The biggest question to come out of the two-hour “LA X” was the real nature of the alternate storylines. The first few seasons were flashbacks, the next few seasons were flashforwards, and we now appear to be living in a Sliding Doors, Star Trek-reboot, Back to the Future, alternate timeline limbo land. There was some grumbling about this from some people I watched with last night – unless everything gets stitched together in a way that allows for meaningful conclusion, alternate timelines can be a serious cop-out. It’s already on weakened ground in terms of character development, because we’ve spent a great deal of time becoming invested in Jack, Kate, Locke et al. as they are affected by the island. I don’t really care about Alt-Kate or Alt-Locke, because they’re nascent, undeveloped versions of the characters I already like. (I don’t care about either Jack or Alt-Jack, though, so that’s okay.) If I grow to be invested in them only to watch them get snuffed out of existence when the timelines get fixed, it’s going to be seriously annoying. I think the best case scenario here is for the timelines to have a significant impact on each other in a cause-and-effect sort of way, and I’m holding out hope that Desmond’s disappearing act on Alternate-Flight-815 is the beginning of a breakdown between the two timelines. He travels between them? He’s a Matrix-like glitch in the timeline split?

The episode did offer quite a bit in the way of answers, giving us our first view of the temple, returning to Cindy-the-flight-attendant-turned-hippie-priestess, and fleshing out this whole Evil Locke, Man in Black business. (By the way, I believe there are now three Lockes: Dead Locke, Evil Locke, and Alt-Locke. Sigh.) Evil Locke/Man in Black is the smoke monster! Which is pretty cool! In fact, one person I watched with last night stated that all he wanted out of season six was to figure out who Smokey was, and now that it’s been revealed, everything else is pretty much extraneous. It has some nice implications for previous information about the island, too – if Smokey is actually Jacob’s nemesis, and The Others have been Team Jacob all this time, that explains why they built a big sonic fence to keep out Smokey, and why Jacob’s cabin was surrounded by magical anti-Smokey ashes. Smokey’s ability to look like other bodies could also explain various islandy illusions, like Kate’s horse vision, Eko’s visions of his dead brother, and the many early images of Walt scattered around the jungle. Did Smokey make Ana-Lucia shoot Shannon?

Evil Locke, Alt-Locke, Dead Locke. Heh, "Deadlock."

So now we’re left with poor dead Sayid, who is probably now also three people (Jacob-Sayid, Dead Sayid, and Alt-Sayid). The idea that Jacob is now inhabiting Sayid’s body might require a little tweaking, though, because why does Jacob need Sayid’s actual body while the Man in Black had no trouble becoming Evil Locke without actually inhabiting Dead Locke’s skin? What is it about this show that leads me to end every paragraph with a question?

In any event, Lost is back. Break out the fish biscuits, Dharma beer, and Apollo bars, because I think it’ll be a long, confusing season.

I was going to write about Chuck today. Instead, I spent most of the day thinking about Lost.

As a result, you get this very special crossover blog post, featuring my nascent royal icing skills. Namaste, everyone.

Like the rest of the television world, I am gearing up for the premiere of Lost’s last season, beginning next week Tuesday. My own Lost viewing tradition over the past several seasons has been to watch it with a few people who tend to have a different perspective than I do about what they want out of the show, which I’ve always enjoyed. In continuation of that, I will be pleased to bring you weekly blog posts on Lost, featuring the viewpoints of both a lit PhD as well as several chemists. They have not yet agreed to let their opinions appear here, but sometimes I feed them while we watch, so I bet they’ll be amenable.

In preparation for the last season, several interviews with Lost producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof have begun appearing around the web, including this first part of a two-part interview with Jace Lacob of televisionary. The whole thing is a good read, but there were two quotes in particular I found intriguing.

Carlton Cuse: I think that how people perceive the show has a lot to do with… the way in which they watch the show. It’s our belief that [viewers] who were in it strictly for the answers got fed up and jumped ship a long time ago… I think the people who have stayed with the show are people who really appreciate the idea that the journey is more important then the destination.

That’s not to negate the fact that we hope that the destination will be satisfying. But I think that our intent is to have made the entire ride an enjoyable one.

This may sound like bad news to a few people I watch with, who I think fall a little bit into a category of people who Carlton Cuse feels would have already abandoned the show. They want answers! I mean, I want answers.

But the more interesting thing here is that Cuse is focused on a particular aspect of his show that keeps people coming back, and it’s not as simple as withholding information. The experience of watching each week and following characters through the story is far more important than figuring out the smoke monster. Part of this has to be the nature of making a television show, which Cuse and Lindelof discuss elsewhere in the interview – there are so many unknown variables that it’s impossible to know what you’ll be able to say three years from now, or whether you’ll even be on the air. Maintaining suspense is all well and good, but it’s never going to be enough.

Cuse: We like to believe that we’ve sort of opened the door for certain types of shows that were not welcome on network television before Lost. It has led to the networks taking gambles with heavily serialized shows, and also genre shows. I mean, basically, there was no science fiction on the networks prior to Lost.

Obviously, this point about the presence of science fiction on network television can be debated, and Lindelof quickly jumps in to mention The X-Files. The idea that Lost has made room for “heavily serialized” shows is a more complicated and problematic claim. Certainly it’s been a huge presence on network television, and Lost made it eminently clear that there is some audience for demanding, multi-plot, long-arc shows. Still, that it has “opened the door” for more network shows in the same mold is a harder case to make. No one has been able to capitalize on a show quite like Lost, and when it leaves this May, its absence will leave a big empty hole, not a proliferation of rich, complicated, narratively innovative programming.

I do think, though, that Lost has played a more important role in the larger television landscape. There may not be a great deal of like-minded network shows, but SyFy’s Battlestar Galactica, HBO’s True Blood, Big Love, AMC’s Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Showtime’s Dexter – they’re complicated shows that have The Sopranos and The West Wing in their DNA, but Lost is in there, too.

It’s too early to start writing Lost’s legacy, but I’m happy to be reminded of how strange and different it felt at first, and whatever else Cuse and Lindelof think I’m actually in it for, I want to know what happens.