OMFGLOZT

I've been meaning to wipe the dust off this old thing for a while now, and what better excuse to over-analyze pop culture than a new season of Lost? Lost is the one show I've been with since its first season debuted and I've followed it religiously ever since. I'm not much of a TV guy to begin with, and all my other favorite shows (The Wire, Mad Men, Arrested Development) I discovered late in the game and on DVD, allowing me to cram entire seasons into two-day weekend binges. On the contrary, it will have taken me six years to finally complete the Lost saga. Although I've switched jobs three times, moved twice, and graduated from college during this period, Lost, has been one of the few constants in my life. It's the Penny to my Desmond. And so it's with a mix of excitement, nostalgia, and even a bit of sadness that I approach the final chapter of the Oceanic 815 survivors.

I remember back in Season 3, around the time of the infamous "Nikki and Paolo" episode, when Lost was losing viewers by the couchful each week, and even the most devoted fans (myself included) began to question the direction of the show. People said there were too many mysteries and not enough answers; that the writers had pinned themselves in a cage, not unlike the ones that housed the show's three major characters for a large chunk of that uneven season. Even after the mindblowing revelation that not only had some of the survivors escaped the island, but that those same people were so unhappy on the mainland that they wanted to return, I still felt like there was no way the writers could end the show in a way that was even remotely satisfying to the majority of their fans.

And then, as the first hour of last night's epic two-hour premiere came to a close, I found myself thinking: Holy shit, they're actually pulling this off.

Every season premiere of Lost has featured some game-changing twist, whether it's the revelation of how the Other half lives in Season 3 or the controversial time travel tricks of season 5. But what I loved most about the Season 6 premiere is that its twist was more than merely clever or shocking; it actually brought the audience's understanding of the show's characters and themes into closer focus than ever before. We've seen flashbacks, we've seen flashforwards, now it's time for flash-sideways (flash-sidewayses?)

By throwing parallel universes into the mix, the writers can show us what would have happened if the plane had never crashed on the island, without sacrificing any of the excitement and mythology of the past five seasons. As the show toggles between the relative mundanity of an island-less reality and a separate reality where the survivors are still entrenched in an epic battle between opposing forces on a grand scale, the show is able to ask some fairly deep questions about the art of storytelling itself. Why do people tell stories? What use are they to ordinary people? And how does one find ways to be heroic when you're not being chased by giant polar bears and smoke monsters on a semi-weekly basis?

Take Charlie for instance: on the island, he was a veritable martyr, the walking image of redemption who sacrificed himself to save the closest friends he ever had. But in this new "corrected" reality, he's nothing more than a junkie with no friends. Sure at least he's alive, but just barely; the guy almost chokes to death on a bag of heroin in the airplane bathroom and has to be resuscitated by Jack (ironically, Jack has the opposite problem; he's perfectly comfortable playing the hero in the altered reality, but back on the island he is unable to revive Sayid and is also indirectly responsible for the death of Juliet.)

One of the last scenes of the episode may \shed some light on what Lost has been getting at for the past five seasons: it's not the island that can save these people, it's each other. It ultimately doesn't matter whether the plane crashed or not. What matters are exchanges like the one we saw between Jack and Locke as they bonded over lost luggage. Locke, always the man of faith, consoles Jack by saying, "The airline didn't lose your father. They only lost his body." Conversely, Jack, the hotshot spinal surgeon gives the once-again paralyzed Locke his card and utters the unbelievably loaded lines, "Nothing is irreversible."

The writers have always said that the show was more about the characters than the mythology. It wasn't until last night's episode that I finally believed them.

Theory of the week: the springwater in the temple is clouded by the spirit of the recently-deceased Jacob... and that spirit now inhabits Sayid.