Well we’re only on a brief break until the approximately five additional post strike episodes start to air in late April, but I have to say I can’t wait. Since we’ve come back this season the introduction of a post island life for some and how we all get there is quite a nice shakeup. And of course keeping the focus on fan favorite original Losties doesn’t hurt. It also makes us more willing to be interested by a bit of the new. But seriously the way they keep introducing new mysteries while almost resolving the old is as infuriating as it is interesting.

So where are we at since last we spoke? We learned that there is a definite difference between time on and off the island, the repercussions of which we have yet to fully see. We watched Desmond’s consciousness get hijacked on the transition off the island via chopper to his life in a different time, or vice versa. Desmond is a little more susceptible to things since he got all blown up in the radioactive hatch, resulting in his future flashes among other things. So past Desmond met past Science guy from “not Penelope’s boat’ and through contacting his beloved Penelope via a macgyvered ship phone, grounded himself again. And we were a little choked up at their loving call, she’ll find him! And maybe she will, because we also learned that it is Penelope’s dad’s boat.

We also got a little more info on Juliet. She’s apparently quite the hussy and was having an affair with unhappily married Other Goodwin (who went and joined the tailies, and was of course eventually killed). This all came out as we met the scorned wife who tried to warn her, for Ben, that the boat people were off to hit the lethal gas (that Ben had previously used to kill the dharma folks for the Others). Though the boat people don’t have the best diplomatic skills they did in fact deactivate the gas. And of course Juliet wasn’t the most forthcoming about all the info since she was all preoccupied as we learned that Ben had a big thing for her (because she looked just like “her”?) and was responsible for her Goodwin’s death. So now she’s worried about Jack since she has feelings for him, though how long has Goodwin been dead for? Hussy. (Does the island heal inner wounds as well, Hurley lost Libby, Claire lost Charlie, Sayid lost Shannon… hmm if this is love I fear for the next island couple…)

So no one trusts Juliet including Sun who not long ago found out she was pregnant and if she doesn’t get off the island she should be scheduled to die in her second trimester. But does she believe her? When asking if the boat people were going to rescue them Science guy had to admit it wasn’t his call. So Sun decides to get away from them and go visit Locke’s group, but Juliet feels so strongly that she shouldn’t leave and risk not getting off the island that she outed Sun’s pre island affair. But Jin forgave her and said he’d always be with her, which as we learned through flash forwards is the kiss of death. Sun joins the Oceanic 6 off island and has a successful birth, which we are delighted about until we find her visiting Jin at the cemetery.

And while the island whatnot is going down, Desmond and Sayid met some boat people, apparently hired by Penelope’s dad to track down Ben. Boat people have the black box to the wreckage of the supposed Oceanic 815 with all the passenger’s corpses accounted for. And they at least implied that Ben was behind it. And if you recall Ben has someone on the boat. Michael’s back! Turns out he and Walt got off the island, and were living under assumed names of course. He fessed up to Walt about his shenanigans to get them off the island and he wasn’t forgiven (killing Ana Lucia and Libby and of course generally turning on his friends). When given the opportunity to save the island folks and try to redeem himself a little, by none other than the Others. So after a couple of failed suicide attempts he boarded the freighter and is responsible for its sabotage (being told that these folks staged crashed Oceanic 815 and will kill everyone left on the island after getting Ben). Sayid couldn’t let Michael the traitor be and turned him in to the boat people.

Oh and Ben is of course manipulating Locke and he’s hanging with that bunch of folks out of confinement by sharing all he knows… which so far isn’t much. And he sent his ‘daughter’ off to theoretically join the Others in safety but her boyfriend and her mother both seem to be gunned down in the middle of the jungle leaving her alone with the unknown shooters.

The list of questions brought about are endless but here are a few of my top new ones:

• Who are the bad guys?
• Who is behind the big cover up and staging the fake plan,  Ben, Penny’s dad, soemone else?
• How did the Oceanic 6 (Jack, Kate, Aaron, Sayid, Hurley, Sun) get chosen, forced, allowed or whatever to leave?
• Who are the two unsurviving survivors?
• Who was the guy in the coffin?
• Is anyone besides Ben of the non Oceanic 6 islanders hanging around off island in the future?
• Was that Walt back on the island or was Locke hallucinating?
• What’s up with Jin’s death? Is he really dead?
• What happened to Claire? And why is Kate pretending to be Aaron’s mom?
• Are people still on the island and if so who and why?
• What the hell is Ben doing off the island controlling things? And why is Sayid working with him?
• What’s up with the passing of time and how much time has passed? (did Walt’s grandma say they had been gone for two months? before he got on the freighter in fiji…?)
• What turns Jack from “Not Going Back” guy to “We Have to Go Back” guy.
• How and why is the frickin’ island controlling their lives?

I’m as caught up as I’m going to be before tomorrow night’s episode. So of the Losties we’ve got Jack, Kate, Hugo, Sayid, and Aaron…? Kate’s flash forward trial for misc counts against her after returning from the island was quite a revealing episode. But then again so was Sayid’s. Where to begin?

Well we now know that the official future story is that 8 people survived the plane crash and that 2 of them were supposedly killed, or something. We know that quite a few people have been killed on the island, so why 2? I mean the number of dead people seems an odd thing to lie about, but clearly this lie is particularly crafted. Some of the folks could have been known to have initially survived I suppose.

So future Kate gets out of jail time… I could see how Kate’s mom not testifying might get her off of murdering her dad (or stepdad?) but didn’t she rob a bank and kill at least one other guy there? Whatever. Also random that part of her parole agreement was that she couldn’t leave the state for ten years, something tells me that will come up again.

So after future Jack testified about Kate’s heroism (and the fact that he no longer loved her?) did he not want to hang with Kate and her ‘son’ Aaron because he has issues with his being his nephew, or leaving sis Claire behind (his dad was Claire’s dad too as we recall though I don’t believe island Jack knows that)? Or my secret unrealistic theory that it’s because he has issues with the fact that it’s Kate and Sawyer’s baby!

Unrealistic but, Kate denies being pregnant as she turned down Sawyer for sex but being pregnant could explain why she gets off the island to face prison. Also unlikely to name her son Aaron in tribute, and for her kid to be that old. But how old is that kid? Assuming it’s Claire’s Aaron, they’d only been there but 100 days so far, not sure how far into that Claire had him, but how much time elapses before they get off, or after they get back but before the trial.

And speaking of time we know that time isn’t universal, as one of the ‘rescuers’ from ‘not Penelope’s boat’ (who are apparently there to get Ben, but also have a photo of Penelope and Desmond?) sent a little test tracker from boat to island and time passed differently on the island. This of course gets us all ready to hear that the helicopter that took off from the island the day before still hasn’t landed on the freighter.

And we assume the chopper hasn’t crashed because we also know that future Sayid is working for Ben, WTF? He’s killing folks in an apparent attempt to protect his ‘friends’, the other survivors I assume. And someone is trying to kill Sayid to get to Ben, or for info on who he’s working for. Ben wasn’t on the original flight so he’s theoretically not a part of the six. We also know that when island Sayid found Ben’s little hidden room at the barracks that he had a number of passports and piles of cash. For some reason I was thinking that we were told that he had never left the island, but I could easily be wrong.

And new angry asian “recuer” is trying to blackmail extort Ben saying he’d tell his team that Ben was dead if he gave him 3.2 million. So clearly he knows that island Ben has some access to that amount of cash, or else it’s some crazy code for something. We do know that Ben says he has an insider on the boat.

And what of the rescuers? We know that the four folks were picked for some reason. One guy talks to ghosts (angry asian rescuer), one guy is some sort of scientist (spacy can’t remember -or predict- three cards), one woman is an anthropologist (i think this is the role VMars almost got), and one guy was supposed to be the pilot of the Oceanic crashed flight (old chopper dude). 

All were gathered by creepy black guy who said he was from Oceanic when he visited future Hurly in the loony bin. And dead rescuer Naomi was supposed to be the trained one to see that the four got on and off safely. Whoops.

What will the next episode reveal? Tune in or Tivo Thursday night to find out!

Well this weekend I caught up on Lost. I watched the pop up video styles of last season’s two hour finale and watched the recap episode to bring us up to date. I won’t try to recap what’s happened over the seasons here because even these episodes couldn’t touch on everything. Former cast, numbers, smoke monster?

But it did get me back in the groove again. It had been so long since I’d seen this I had forgotten how compelling it was. I somehow remember that Lost kept introducing new mysteries and not resolving anything. In retrospect more has been resolved and certainly way more has happened than I could remember, or keep track of.

And then of course we had the season premiere. They’re following the format tweak that blew folks away at the end of last year. We’re doing flash forwards, and how forward are we? Well they seem to be playing a little loose with that format as well. Last season ended certainly more forward than this Hurley interaction.

We now know that the ‘Oceanic Six’ appear to have gotten off the island. Kate, Jack, Hurley, obituary person? Who else? And we know that something happened that they’re not telling. Alas another mystery. So back on the island we’re going to start getting acquainted with yet another posse of people. The ‘not Penelope’s boat’ people. And seriously there are more new characters on this deserted island than Gilligan could ever have hoped for.