3:42 p.m. - Last night’s Lost. Excellent! It made the long and painful wait for the season opener, and our patience paid off with a fantastic beginning to the sixth and final season.

First off, we’ve had a wacky run with Lost since it first premiered in 2004. The first season quickly found it’s feet. It might have started with a new character's Adventure of the Week, but they found their core characters and plot lines. The writers very cleverly incorporated small details throughout the episodes which were clues to later developments. 

Here's to Kate's inexhaustible supply of low cut and skin tight shirts.

By the Second or Third Season, Lost was, well, lost. Some plot lines came and went, and in my opinion, it was due to the writers not knowing whether the series would be cancelled mid-season or be carried for another few years. Those fans that stuck through the difficult 2^nd and 3^rd season, are the die hard fans who are waiting with bated breath from week to week to see it through to the end. Again, that faith is repaid by the writers' tantalizing clues and details along the way, like the parting glance at the ruined statue along the coast in Season Two. While most shows can be DVR’d and watched at your own pace, Lost rewards the watcher with these clues which need to be psychoanalyzed at lunch the next day with co-workers and fans. Watching it all at once on DVD is not as rewarding as the weekly episode digested over the next six days. Entire chat boards are dedicated to these crumbs they've thrown at us, which may be later revealed to be a red herring or an entire feast. 

I hope they finally show an episode where Ben can make his patented 'pop-eye in shock' expression!

By Season Four, the writers had correctly set the timeline from beginning to middle to end of the series. They ignored extraneous developments and were bent on taking us to a meaningful conclusion. Fortunately, they are ending the series at the end of this season rather than stringing our castaways along for season after season, until the show becomes unprofitable and boring, and then writing a hurried ending to wrap it up (think Star Trek: Voyager or Cheers). Better to properly end the series on a high note this way. 

Which brings us to last night’s episode. When last we left them, Jack was determined to detonate a hydrogen bomb which would undo/rewrite history, where crash landing on the island would never have happened. We were left with Juliette dying at the bottom of the Swan station, detonating the atomic bomb with a rock. Fade to white, and we’re left hanging for six months. 

This season, we find ourselves more or less in the present, and mon dieu! two time lines! To be explained, are they in parallel universes, separate timelines, alternate dimensions, or what? On the one hand, Jack and Co. are back aboard Oceanic Flight 815, landing in Los Angeles and heading about their respective adventures in 2004. We are given the rare treat of seeing Boone chat with Locke, Charlie OD’ing in the airplane lavatory, Bernard and Rose sitting across from Jack, and Kate with gyves upon her wrist, a prisoner of the FBI guy. We even get a brief glimpse of Arst, the georgraphy teacher who blew up in the first season aboard the Black Rose. Concurrently, Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hugo, Jin, and Miles are on the island in 2007, trying to rescue the dying Juliette. Meanwhile, Sayid is still dying of his bullet wound. Jacob appears to Hugo and has the Scooby Gang bring Sayid to a temple where they are taken by a heretofore unknown group of Others, led by a Japanese guy with fabulous hair. Esau, in the form of John Locke, has induced Ben to kill Jacob and is now heading to the temple. 

Jennifer frequently compares me to Sawyer. Quite favorably.

We’re in for quite a ride this season, True Believers! There are quite a number of new strands revealed – Sayid’s miraculous recovery in the temple, for example – which will have to come together. I have complete faith that the writers will use this season to the best advantage to bring the pieces together. I’m still ambivalent about Michael and Walter, and I’ll be very interested to see how their roles are resolved, as I will with Penny and Desmond who makes a brief appearance aboard Oceanic Flight 815. 

The writers have a challenge to resolve these two time lines. Will Juliette be revived and reunited with Sawyer, or will Kate choose between Jack or Sawyer? Sawyer has emerged as something of a leader, and I'll be interested to find out if he keeps his promise to Juliette to get home. Sawyer has certainly mellowed from the prick he was in the first two seasons, but  what he (or Jack) see in Kate is beyond me. Or vice versa, for that matter. The writers know that we’re wrapped up as much in these kind of specific plot lines – who will Kate choose – as we are in the bigger mythology. The fan boys are here for mythology and the details, and the writers deliver it to the fan boys in spades!

So where do I think we’re heading? You got me. Sawyer does his best to be the bad boy (he does his best thinking with his shirt off, as the New York Times noted), but he is becoming the hero of the piece even as Jack wallows, the victim of his own doubts. Is John Locke really dead, and is Sayid really alive? Who are the Others? Who are these people in the temple? What happened to the children, snatched during Season One? I think we’re going to have an interesting season, and more importantly, we're going to have all these questions revealed to us in the coming months.