This Week on Lost

Once again, my pre-season predictions were dead on.

Except that it wasn't Charley that fell into the shaft and lost his memory, it was Kate, and instead of losing her memory she had a chocolate rush and decided to spend the next two episodes in a ventilation shaft.

And it didn't actually take two episodes for Locke to get into the hatch, but it took two episodes to get back to the end of Episode 1, which is close enough.

And the rerun of the Season Premiere came right before Ep 2 rather than in Week 4.

And the most important Waterworld revelation (yummy bad-boy-with-heart-of-gold Sawyer isn't dead) came in Episode 2 rather than Episode 3, but we still won't find out about Walt or Jack Sparrow or Tick until Episode 3.

Best of all, this episode was full of wonderful extras that I never anticipated:

* Locke confidently bluffing his way through the dialogue with the Mad Hermit until he unexpectedly runs up against a password check. Damn. So close. And when Mad Hermit then demands, "And who's THAT?" Locke tries one more time to get away with an all-pronoun answer (although "This is HER," would have been better than "She's with me.")

* The embedded comic mini-series with The Odd Couple on the raft was priceless. I thought it had potential as a spinoff. Except for the fact that every time we cut back to the raft there's only about half as much of it as there was the last time. That does kind of limit the long-term possibilities for a series.

* My personal favorite? When Mad Hermit forces Locke at gunpoint to enter the evil numbers into the ancient mainframe computer with the inexplicably DOS-like prompt: 4...8.......15..........16............23......... *ulp* ..... 42. Then the suspenseful pause before Locke finally hits the Execute key, vaguely hoping that it doesn't cause any of his friends to blow up. And then the result - the computer totals them all up!!! And that's it. ta-DAH!

Tune in again next week, when we vist the Gilligan Resort Hotel on the north side of the island, complete with its own marina, snack bar and nuclear power plant.

But the best thing about Lost this season...

... might be that it's followed by a new show called "Invasion." They used that totally annoying lead-in technique where you sit through 5 minutes of commercials to see the "Next week on..." trailer, which flows right into the action of the following show. It worked. I was hooked before the first commercial. Once you get past the massive tastelessness of premiering a show that takes place in the immediate aftermath of a hurricane immediately after Katrina and more or less DURING Rita, it's a great show.

Most of the premiere episode was spent trying to explain the ridiculously complicated blended family that the story revolves around. So far, this family structure includes 3 men, 2 women, a heap of stinky bones in the trunk of Uncle Dave's car, two pleasant teenagers and the most absolutely adorable little girl you've ever seen. They all live in two houses on the same bayou, but they keep moving around. Fortunately one of the ex-wives is dead, or it would have been even more complicated.

The key to the entire show is this: Uncle Dave, the scruffy conspiracy theory buff, is right about everything. And adorable little Rose is right about the rest of it. Everybody else in the cast is trying to think rationally, which is clearly a mistake. Knowing this will not ruin the show for you if you haven't seen it. It will just make it easier if you try to come in at episode 3.