It's baaaaack...

So yes, I did indeed watch the season premiere of Lost. Although I have to say I was a bit disappointed – the show only focused on Jack and Kate and Sawyer, and we still have no idea what’s going on with the rest of the castaways on the other side of the island. So many questions were left dangling at the end of the season finale, and I was hoping to see a few of them answered. But I suppose if they answered ALL the questions at once, the show would be a lot shorter…

The first five minutes were great, though – we finally learned that the Others have been living quite comfortably in a little village on the supposedly-deserted island. They own houses, and listen to CDs, and bake muffins, and have book clubs – it’s like isolated wacko mad scientist suburbia. And in the middle of one of these book club discussions, the village is rumbled by an earthquake (or by Desmond not hitting the button in the hatch? Is that what happened??) – and when everyone runs outside, why, there’s our fearless travelers’ plane streaking across the sky, breaking in two! Creepy not-really-Henry Gale begins delegating responsibilities, as if he were expecting just such a plane crash. He sends two of the Others out into the jungle to pose as crash survivors, and we realize for the first time exactly how those two ended up with their ill-fated missions. (Now, what I really want to know is this – why would anyone ASSUME there’d be dozens of survivors in a plane crash like that? Is this just one of those lapses in reality we’re supposed to accept, or is there more to it than that? Did the Others KNOW people would survive that crash?)

The rest of the episode seemed to point at one of the many semi-plausible theories I’ve heard about the show – the whole island is set up as some kind of crazy scientific/pseudo-scientific experiment. They’ve got Jack locked up under an aquarium (so I DID see a shark with a Dharma logo in one of those episodes…), where a “nice” doctor/scientist/whatever tries to ply him with food and water in exchange for his “trust.” But I think now that she’s broken him, she’s just turning him over to creepy not-really-Henry Gale. Kate is treated to a shower, a new dress, and breakfast on the beach – which, of course, is nothing but a prelude to also being locked up. And Sawyer is locked in what can only be described as a giant hamster cage, complete with buttons that must be pushed in the proper order to receive food and water, otherwise an electric shock is administered. Okay, I get it – so all three of them have become some sort of test subjects. But why? What’s the point? Do the Others HAVE a point? And how is it that they already know everything about the tormented plane crash victims?

And then there’s all the stuff we didn’t see last night – what’s happening back on the other side of the island? What, exactly, happened with the hatch? Are Locke and Eko and Desmond still in there? What about the final two minutes of last season, where apparently the electromagnetic energy from the island was picked up by instrumentation in the Arctic (Antarctic?) and a call was made to Desmond’s ex-girlfriend? Are we going to see Michael and Walt at ALL this season? Are Sayid and Jin and Sun still on the boat somewhere? Did Hurley ever make it back to camp? And whatever happened to the crazy French lady? (All these questions, and more, will maybe, perhaps be answered or possibly addressed in some way in the next episode, or in the episode after the next one, or maybe not until next season, but definitely, or at least probably, at some time, so be sure to watch!)

Oh well… good thing I’m a patient person who enjoys a bizarre, complicated, weird puzzle now and then. (Or should that be, good thing I'm a bizarre, complicated, weird person? Whichever...) :)