At Long Last

Lost returns tonight, and I am eager and giddy with anticipation. While reports from critics and bloggers may indicate that many have lost their passion for the show, I haven't at all. The fall's six-episode arc may have left many cold, but I liked it just fine. My suspicion is that much of the problem lay not with the story itself, but with (irony of ironies) how they had to rush through the "Jack, Sawyer, and Kate are kidnapped" story in six straight eps, as opposed to taking maybe 10 or 11 to get to the same point, as I suspect they would have in a normally structured season. The necessity of such a structure made the pushing of many characters almost completely off-screen unavoidable, and I think it's left a bad taste in many mouths. But after what I assume will be a more or less conclusion to that arc tonight, I imagine we can expect to get back to the core cast pretty quickly. So, no, I'm not apathetic, or less interested than I was in September. Not at all.

One related aside: I've read from dozens of people how stupid it is, how straining the bounds of suspended disbelief it is, that Jack, with Ben on the operating table in the fall finale, doesn't ask for a boat, or a phone, but merely for Kate and Sawyer to be released. But he's got a very limited window of opportunity here. After all, if he does let Ben die he loses any power he has. There's simply no time for a boat, and it's not as if he can assume that they have a portable phone they can just bring him. So he asks for something the time frame won't effect. Made sense to me.

Until Whenever