Lost Returns!

I know you've been patient, Lost, fans. Not only have I not talked about Lost here since 05/24/2007, but the wait has been somewhat interminable between seasons as we've anxiously awaited brand-new episodes. Some of us spent the time making do as best we could. As both Daniel Faraday and Richard Alpert would tell us: time is relative. And while the traditional flashback/flash forward structure seems to be a thing of the past (relatively speaking, of course), what we're now seeing is something related yet even more insidious. To quote "Marvin Candle": time isn't merely OF the essence; it IS the essence.

To talk about what happened during this first two episodes in "chronological" order is almost pointless. Too many people are in too many time periods to try and reconstruct things in a linear fashion. That's what happens when everyone on the Island turns into a mixture of Desmond Hume and time-traveling bunnies, "dislodged" as Faraday puts it, ending up in various points along the string of time. There is however one constant: Sawyer's pecs. That'll stop anyone's nose from bleeding, except if you once were exposed to the Island's unique properties as a child.

That's right, I think we can now correctly assume Charlotte's a Dharma baby, born and raised back when such a thing was possible. She tells Daniel that she hadn't experienced a nose bleed since she was a child. Who else in this episode had a nose bleed? One of the original builders of the Orchid Station, once a massive edifice laid low by...well, a catastrophe of some sorts, once accurately predicted by "Marvin Candle," a man thanks to a video at Comic-Con really known as Pierre Chang. And leave it to Pierre to have a record player that skips through Willie Nelson's "Shotgun Willie" just like the Island is currently skipping through time.

So, why was Daniel Faraday one of those construction workers deep beneath the Orchid in its infancy? I think the clue lies in what was possibly the most mind-bendy of scenes all night: Richard Alpert's frantic instructions to a confused (and bleeding) John Locke aside the fallen Beechcraft. Alpert references an encounter between himself and Locke, one Richard remembers but Locke hasn't yet experienced. Methinks Daniel will eventually visit the Past Orchid in Faraday's Future, which is widely confusing and yet pretty sexy all at the same time. Kinda like Faraday himself. But I digress. And overshare.

Clearly, people shouldn't be passing through time in a non-linear way. There are consequences and risks associated with improper use of time manipulation. Thus, it's no accident that the two episodes tonight are bookended by people saying, "God help us all," in relation to the use and potential abuse of the endless energy stored in the Island. Chang uttered it the first time, and Ms. Hawking, who has a Ph.D. in Druid Mathematics, is the other. Or, should I say, she's the Other?

Some of Ben's off-Island activities, hinted at in the photograph presented by Miles Straume in Season 4's "Confirmed Dead," came to light in these two episodes. Looks like Ben has people all around the world sympathetic to his cause. It's unclear if the butcher was on the Island during the time of the Lostaways, but it's clear she wants to go back as badly as Ben. As for Ms. Hawking...well, looks like Ben's back to being middle management again. He's long hinted that he is not responsible for all of the Others' actions, and it looks like Ms. Hawking is his superior when it comes to the Others' hierarchy. Not THE superior, but superior to Ben all the same. On the level of Brother Campbell, for instance. Remember what Sayid told Elsa: "Everyone has a boss."

Naturally, this means we know all have to go back and rewatch Season 3's pivotal "Flashes Before Your Eyes," in which we met the enigmatic Ms. Hawking. Looks like she's manned what can only be described as an off-Island hatch, located underneath a church in Los Angeles. Emails sent out over the winter to those that participated in an ill-advised alternative-reality game learned of a new hatch (whose logo can be found here), but few could have imagined it would be off of the island. But I suppose it makes total sense: if you're building a series of hatches on an Island with the propensity to violate the space-time continuum, you'd want an off-Island station to find the darn thing if it takes your keys in the middle of the night and goes on a late-night Sonic run.

Using a very Dharma-esque computer and a version of Foucault's pendulum, she's determined an "event window" for the Oceanic 6+Ben+Locke+Butcher+Baker+(Marvin) Candlestick Maker to re-enter the Island. It's less important to question how she exploited the earth's rotation and the Island's electromagnetic properties and more important to question why she needs Ben and Company to head back to the Island. Is it because of a potential paradox, or simply due to some very bad people already there wreaking havoc? In either case, I'm thinking Ms. Hawking might have ordered the construction of that mysterious runway that dominated the early part of Season 3.

Speaking of very bad people: we learned that the Arrow Station isn't only good for storing edited film strips and glass eyes: it's also a military hatch, designed to develop offensive and defensive strategies against the Island's natives. Why use the moniker "Arrow"? Well, just ask Frogurt. That fiery display on the beach should answer your question nicely. Methinks the Island lets people die 1) when they've finished what work they need to do, or 2) when they are super naggy. As went Arzt, so went Frogurt. But while the Hostiles were acting...well, hostile, those military men weren't so chummy, either. And one man named "Jones" sure sounded a lot like a certain man currently looking for the Island.

That's right, a prediction both obvious yet eminently debunkable: Private Jones will turn out to be Charles Widmore. This is long before he had most of Oceanic Airlines in his back pocket: here's a young man with a fiery soul and a covetous heart. And that Island's already his preciouusssss. You can hear it in the way he loathes Sawyer and Juliet for being on "their" Island. And having Jones=Widmore makes the last scene in "The Shape of Things to Come" take on a whole new meaning.

In that scene, you'll remember Ben and Charles casually noting that neither can kill the other. Many of you might have simply chalked that up to Island will: after all, Jack and Michael have both had suicide attempts swatted down by the Island. But are we talking about Island will or the effects of major players in the Lost universe being unstuck in time? Remember what the increasingly important Daniel Faraday notes: the universe won't allow the creation of a new "string" of history. "If it didn't happen, it can't happen."

But there's an unspoken corollary to that: Everything that did happen, will ALWAYS happen. That's what course correction means. In short: Ben and Charles can't kill each other in London in 2005...because one or both die in the past. A past that hasn't exactly occurred yet, at least from the perspective of those two people at that particular moment. It's all relative. And it's all relatively awesome. And yet, completely and utterly baffling if you take it to its logical conclusion.

The one exception to the rule, and possibly the most important person in the Lost universe? Desmond, brutha! He's the exception to the rule, both in terms of changing the past AND the future. Course correction in fact does NOT apply to him, which means he wasn't fated to push the button despite Ms. Hawking's warning. He's the violation of the show's central rules and thus uniquely positioned to make the impossible possible. This is why he could visit Faraday in "The Constant," and why Faraday looked with such awe at his journal at the end of the episode: he's unique, outside of math, time, space, and rules. And that in and of itself rules.

When Desmond wakes up off the coast of Greece, he remembers his encounter with Faraday as a memory, not a vision. Which means, essentially, that that particular memory only entered his consciousness in that dream, AT THAT MOMENT. The past changed for him with Faraday's encounter, due to his being "miraculously" special. Faraday's orders? To find his mother. Let's see...a semi-elderly woman...Oxford-trained....brilliant in math...can we get a "Ms. Hawking" from the crowd? TESTIFY!

You've probably noticed I've spent little time on the Oceanic 6 in this recap. That's because, by and large, they didn't do a whole lot in these two episodes. Jack had the sweats, Sayid took a nap, Kate took off, and Aaron colored outside the lines. A lot. Only Hurley and Sun had moments of real interest in these first two hours. Hurley's heartbreaking confession to his mother, in which he purged the weight of three years of lying, was both hilarious in a "here's the plot of Lost in 34 seconds" kind of way, but by the end heartbreaking as he spoke of those left behind. And it's that pain that sold his story to his mother, who, in true mom fashion, replied, "I don't understand you, but I believe you." Sounds like my Mom when I try to tell her about the Dharma Initiative over Sunday dinner.

As for Sun...let's just say I never, ever want to visit a 31-st floor hotel room for a one-on-one with her. Am I alone in thinking she's currently the most terrifying person on the show? We saw her inner strength in Season 4's, finale, but what we saw tonight was nothing short of monstrous. What made it even scarier was the way she delivered each menacing line with either a smile or a gesture of comfort. Did any of you think Ms. Austen felt relieved when Sun told her she did not blame Kate for Jin's death? Sun is on a vendetta, plain and simple, and I'm not sure she's got anything on her mind except for revenge.

A few random thoughts:

Who do you think the "client" is that sent the lawyers after Kate? My early money was on Ben, but by ep's end, I started to think Sun did it. If she's not happy, then no one's happy. She's like a passive-aggressive Vidal Sasoon that way.

Loved the shot of the massively tall Orchid. Looked like a damn office building was being erected atop that site, and yet something blew the whole thing to smithereens. Since the Arrow and the Swan seem to dabble in similiar properties, perchance the Incident caused the Orchid to blow sky high at some point?

If Ms. Hawking is Ben's superior, did she have a hand in ordering the Purge?

Nice to see Ethan again, and even Ana Lucia. I think he says something about her character that her two most interesting appearances on the show happened after she died. And that something is, "No one liked her when alive."

Note the appearance of the compass? Look familiar? It should: it was one of the three items Locke apparently "already owned" when Richard visited him as a child. Look for a vial of granules to appear soon.

Speaking of that scene, I think these episodes confirm what I've thought for a while: if Richard doesn't know Locke during the Dharma era of the Island, as he hinted during his frantic instructions, then he only could have visited Locke throughout his life AFTER Locke arrived on the Island. So, Richard went back in time, behind Ben's back, to see if he'd made an error in choosing the Island Leader. And yet, since Locke's within the rules, he'll always and ever choose the knife when Richard confronts him. God, this show rules all.

If Widmore has Oceanic seemingly in his back pocket, does that mean he'd have an easier time than Ben staging the fake crash at the bottom of the Sunda Trench?
Just think: if Sayid hadn't been so busy watching out for Hurley, he probably would have done the dishes. And had he done so, Mr. Dart Man wouldn't have died such an awesome death. Sayid's ninja skillz are only matched by Hurley's Hot Pocket shot putting.

As for Hurley's incarceration: seems like a convenient plot point to add drama to the Oceanic 6 returning. After hearing Ana Lucia's message from Libby, Hurley should put aside his fear and loathing of Ben. C'mon, they were sharing Apollo Bars just a few years ago, people!

The appearance of the Beechcraft flying over Locke's head helps identify why the Black Rock is so far inland, I feel. If the Island suddenly appears in a certain time, then anything within its magical "radius" gets stuck in there, almost like a fly in an overturned glass. I'm guessing the Black Rock was literally in the wrong place at the wrong time: it's not so much that the ship landed on the Island, but rather the other way around.

The Beginning of the End

WOW. That's all I had to say. After the last night's season finale of Lost, that's all I could say. I was shocked. My mind was racing. That was one hell of shocker.

Everyone got it wrong, basically. For much of season 3, the freaky theorists among us suspected that Lost was setting us up for some continuum-contorting twist of Hiro Nakamura-esque proportions. Instead, the wrinkle in time that the show's sensational season finale laid on us was smaller and more human than our fantasy-soaked imaginations envisioned, and yet it was every bit the capture-the-imagination mindquake we were hoping for: Goodbye, flashbacks; hello, flash-forwards. Although we don't have confirmation that this narrative conceit will become Lost's new format, the epic episode seemed to strongly suggest that beginning next season, the on-Island drama in the present (or is that the new past?) will inform the revelations about the castaways' off-Island future (the new present?) — and vice versa. Wow. Wow! With this simple shift, Lost flipped the switch on itself, revealing new dimensions to its creative world and grander ambitions in its exploration of redemption and damnation. And lest we miss the episode's most important implication amid all this talk, we learned that yes, eventually, at least some of the castaways are definitely gonna get their butts rescued! (But how many? And who?) Again, I say: Wow! Wow!

Although the big twist was saved for the final moments of the episode, titled "Through the Looking Glass," I suspect some people figured it out in the opening sequence. (I did!) We saw Jack on a plane, badly bearded and guzzling booze, clearly a man transformed — for the worse. We weren't given a time frame for this flash-forward, and how coy of the show to give Jack a newspaper but not give us a good peek at the dateline. Something else about the newspaper was denied to us, too — a death notice (but whose?) that left Jack emotionally rattled. When Jack got off a plane, he drove to a bridge and made a call to a person unknown. "I just read — " he said through tears. He just hung up and the despairing, spiritually distraught doc made a move to jump off the bridge. But Jack's suicide attempt was interrupted by a car crash, and suddenly, Action Jack, Island Superhero, found at least one fleeting moment of off-Island relevancy.

As we watched him sink into the depths of pill-popping, booze-guzzling, rock-star-sunglasses-wearing spiritual oblivion, Jack reminded me of all those stories of real-life heroes who can't make the adjustment back to "normal life" after their extended moment of living in a heightened reality fades. Later in the episode, on the Island, Rousseau told Jack that if they were to be rescued, she would never want to leave: "This is my home now. There is nothing for me off the Island." Perhaps in her oblique way, she was trying to warn Jack, too. "Through the Looking Glass" wasn't a fantasy about tumbling into Wonderland — it was a cautionary tale about what can happen when you tumble out of it.

The future drama of Jack was spliced into the Island-set story that brought the season-long conflict between the castaways and the Others to a close. It was also an interesting meditation on varying degrees of heroism, from the innocent, desperate-to-help idealism of Hurley to the by-any-means-necessary Machiavellian manipulations of Ben. There were many separate strands of plot — Charlie and Desmond in the Looking Glass trying to deactivate the jamming signal; Jack and the castaways trekking to the radio tower to hail Naomi's ship; Sayid, Jin, and Bernard on the beach battling Tom and the mercenary band of women-swiping thugs; Ben at the Others' encampment, scrambling to repair his unraveling plans amid a growing revolt among his doubting people; and John Locke in the Dharma mass grave, finding new life from an old, young friend. (Walt!!) Taken together, the finale paid off on a plethora of season 3 plot points and set up many more for next season and beyond.

The castaway exodus provided the backbone for the sprawling story. They began on the beach, with tearful goodbyes said to the brave trio of sharpshooters tasked with blowing the invading Others to hell. Rose made Bernard repeat, "I am a dentist; I am not Rambo." I also loved the line Naomi said to Jack as they trudged along the shoreline and into the jungle like Israelites marching toward the promised land: "What did you do before you became Moses?" (Even Jack the Shepherd had to laugh at that one.)

Of course, Jack's "blow 'em all to hell" gambit to avert the Others' abduction plot didn't go off exactly as planned: the sharpshooters succeeded in detonating only two explosions instead of three, killing some but not all of Tom's posse. When the castaways realized something had gone wrong at the beach, Kate wanted to go back, and wanted Sawyer to go with her. The shaggy con man — sleepwalking through life since killing Anthony Cooper in "The Brig" — seemed not to care. But, awyer roused himself to reluctant valor, though he refused to take Kate with him. Jack later had to spell it out for her: "He only wanted to protect you." Then, the whopper: "I love you," the doc told Kate. Though she didn't say it, Kate's eyes said it all: "I know." It hit me like Cupid's arrow: All these weeks of Jack cozying up to Juliet may have been a ruse, perhaps an attempt to draw info out of the former Other. Whatever the case, Juliet was into it. She gave him a tender kiss before heading back to the beach with Sawyer. Clearly, next season will focus on the Jack-Kate-Juliet-Sawyer quadrangle.

It also appears that next season will see Ben rejoin the beach bunch as a prisoner. Tipped off by the lovely ladies of the Looking Glass that the castaways were en route to the radio tower, he moved to intercept them, determined to prevent them from leaving the Island. And having learned that his daughter, Alex, had betrayed his plans via her boyfriend, Karl, Ben brought her with him, telling her that he was abandoning her to the castaways, her "new family." We learned that the reason Ben was so determined to keep Alex and Karl separated was that he didn't want her to get pregnant and fall victim to the Island's curse.

When Ben caught up with the castaways, he and Jack retreated to a quiet place for a superpower summit that played out like some Art of War scenario from hell. What came out of Ben's mouth was either a torrent of lies or some serious foreshadowing of next season's central conflict. He alleged that Naomi was not the woman she said she was but rather a representative of a group of people who've been trying to find the Island for a very long time, presumably for nefarious, exploitive reasons. These people, he claimed, were "the bad guys," and bringing them to the Island would be very, very, very bad — for the Others, for the Castaways, and especially for the Island. Ben's deal: Naomi's satellite phone in exchange for Jin, Bernard, and Sayid, who could be heard yelling, "Don't negotiate with terrorists!" over the walkie-talkie as Ben laid out his proposal. Jack refused. Ben ordered that the hostages be killed. Bang! Bang! Bang! Jack responded by beating Ben into a bloody pulp, an act of violence as terrifying as it was cathartic. Boy, did Ben deserve it. And boy, do I worry about the rage in Jack's heart, especially when he followed it up by swearing War on Terror vengeance on all the Others. His ultimate dream: humiliating Ben by making him watch as the castaways get rescued — then killing him. Heavy stuff.

The twisted twist of Jack's rage was that back on the beach, Sayid and company were still alive. Ben's order was, apparently, a coded bluff: Pryce actually fired his bullets into the sand, even though Doubting Tom — increasingly disenchanted with Ben's leadership — wanted to blow the captives away. But the mercenaries paid the price for not killing and running when the castaway cavalry arrived in the form of...Hurley, charging onto the beach in his magic Dharma bus! Sawyer, Juliet, and Sayid sprang into action. Bullets were fired, necks were broken, and the Others were subdued — and then executed. In a move that left Hurley and Juliet shocked, Sawyer put a bullet into Tom. "That's for taking the kid off the raft," said Sawyer, referring to the Others' abduction of Walt in the finale of season 1. "Dude, it was over," Hurley said. "He surrendered." Sawyer's response: "I didn't believe him." Like Jack, Sawyer's "heroism" in this episode was darkened by the complexity of personal history, unresolved angst, and deep-seated fear. Sawyer, it seems, is still stuck in the brig of his damaged past.

A cleaner portrait of selfless heroism was provided by Charlie during his assignment in the Island's aquatic underworld. I loved the wisecracks while the lovely ladies of the Looking Glass were playing good-cop/bad-cop on him. And after some bloody speargun violence involving the lovely ladies, Patchy, and Desmond, Charlie succeeded in shutting down the station's signal jammer by inputting a harmonic code, one loaded with tons of theory-spawning potential — the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations." And when the light stopped blinking, a transmission came in — it was Penelope, Desmond's lady love, confirming for certain that nope, Naomi wasn't working for her, and nope, she doesn't have a ship waiting offshore. Then Charlie died. Now, I know a lot of people are going to question the logic of this scene, as it seemed Charlie had many options to save himself. But remember why Charlie swam down to the Looking Glass in the first place: to fulfill the requirements of Desmond's prophecy of rescue for Claire, baby Aaron, and hopefully the rest of the castaways. For that to happen, Charlie needed to die, per the rules established about Desmond's precognition. The image of him pushing away from the window and crossing himself was so sad and it got to me. Rest in peace, Charlie Pace. You earned it.

The drama of season 3 came to a climax in the shadow of the old Dharma radio tower, a legendary locale that's been begging for a visit since season 1. With the jamming device disabled and Rousseau's distress call turned off, the mysterious Naomi phoned the freighter — then sputtered blood thanks to a knife in the back. The cause of her fatal misfortune? Locke, who was beckoned out of the Dharma ditch by a vision (?) of Walt, and who seemed to share Ben's seemingly mystical conviction that the castaways were not meant to leave the Island. At least not yet. Jack was furious. He grabbed the phone. Locke pulled his gun. A standoff ensued, and Locke was the one who blinked. Distraught, the born-yet-again true believer disappeared into the jungle as Jack made the call to Naomi's freighter.

Ben begged him not to. "Making that call will be the beginning of the end!" he said. "Jack, please — you don't know what you're doing!" Jack: "I know exactly what I'm doing." The castaways cheered their fearless-leader hero as a friendly voice on the other end named Minkowski told him that rescue was on the way. ("Minkowski," no doubt, is a nod to Hermann Minkowski's theory of four-dimensional space-time, which has inspired many Lost theories.) Ben shook his head in defeat — or was that a bloody smile on his face? Did Jack just save his friends or doom them all? Take your time answering the questions: We have seven months to debate and theorize.

And we also have seven months to debate the climactic, show-changing twist. In the final scene — the big reveal that the whole flashback was actually a flash-forward — we saw Jack meeting a cleaned-up Kate near the airport. He asked her why she didn't go to the funeral for the mystery person — a dude or dudette so dislikable that nobody except Jack bothered to pay his respects. (Who could this be? Locke? Ben? Who?) Their dialogue was full of other cryptic bits that raised many other questions. Jack: "I'm sick of lying. We made a mistake!" (About what? Have the surviving castaways been sworn to secrecy about their Island ordeal?) Kate: "He's going to be wondering where I am." (Who's "he"? Sawyer? Maybe her husband, the cop played by Nathan Fillion?) Why isn't Kate in jail, considering she's a fugitive? Did she get pardoned? As the third season of Lost passed into history, Jack called out to the woman he said he loved: "We have to go back, Kate. We have to go back!" But Kate just drove away, leaving Jack the Hero all alone, and hopelessly...lost.

Spoilers Time!

Lost:

1. The finale is nuts. There is at least one death and also that big "game changer." That one death is a huge shocker and will require lots of kleenex.

2. The format of the show is completely changing thanks to the events in tomorrow's sure-to-be-awesome finale.

3. Three main actors might not be in every episode next season.

Grey's Anatomy:

1. Isaiah Washington has been taking meetings in New York and Los Angeles in search of a new job that would take place during the coming TV season, so it certainly appears that Isaiah's Grey's days are over. Insiders at ABC say that "not everyone will be coming back" to Grey's this fall, and although T.R. Knight's fate was also left hanging in the balance after the season finale, it seems like he will be back. However, Isaiah looks to be a goner. It kind of makes that scene of Cristina ripping the shackle off her neck while sobbing "I'm free" and the Chief's lecture to Burke that he's "disappointed" in him this year all the more poignant.

Heroes:

1. Both Milo Ventimiglia (Peter) and Adrian Pasdar (Nathan) are series regulars next season. The question regarding Peter is not, did he survive? It's, can he swim?

2. Hiro will starts next season in 17th-century Japan in the midst of a war, and it takes him about 6 episodes to get back to present-day NYC. And by the way, those last few minutes of tonight's finale are the first few minutes of season two's premiere.

3. Next season begins four months into the future, and two of the main characters are in deep despair—one having completely lost his memory and the other having developed a major drinking problem.

Nip/Tuck:

1. Not only are Christian and Sean dipping their toes into showbiz, the entire series is diving into the world of Hollyweird. There will be a new major recurring character who plays a hit TV show runner (like Damon Lindelof or Tim Kring)! They're also bringing in a powerful studio exec, who lives a bit of an alternative lifestyle on the down low.

Greatest Hits

Charlie Pace, the former smack-injecting British rocker, entered our lives with one question that still haunts us nearly three years later: "Guys...where are we?" For most of last night's episode, it appeared that Charlie would never get an answer to his inquiry this side of heaven. Desmond had another one of his precognitive "You're gonna die, bruthah" brain farts. And like "Catch-22" a couple weeks ago, the season's penultimate outing toyed wickedly with Charlie's fate with a story that seemed to be barreling toward tragedy. That breathtaking (literally) final scene was amazing and we should all have paramedics and shock paddles ready for next weeks' two-hour season finale. Yes, Charlie ducked the reaper's scythe yet again. But Desmond's prophecy is still very much in play.

"Greatest Hits" totally rocked. It was kind of a reunion show, wasn't it? Lost's curiously mixed third season has inspired a great deal of whining from those bothered by the way it split the castaways into separate subplots. Despite the absence of John Locke — currently pursuing a solo career as a dying holy man in a mass grave of gassed Dharma bums — the gang has been back on the beach for a few weeks now, albeit splintered into bickering, suspicious, secret-keeping factions. This episode finally collected them into a dynamic unit — you know, just like an actual "greatest hits" album. There they were in the opening sequence, the entire frayed Fellowship trekking out into the valley of the foreshadowing of war, led by Jack. Bringing up the rear of this ragtag parade was Charlie, soon to be saddled with an awful task. The episode was heavy with riffs on friendship, heroism, and weighty responsibilities.

The episode was all about the Oceanic 815 castaways' preparation for the mother of all battles with Ben and his barren, baby-hungry Others — a battle over mothers, actually. In the valley, Jack explained the gory game plan: Let the Others storm the beach, let them raid the tents that Juliet will mark with white stones — and then let them find Black Rock dynamite instead of Sun, Kate, or any of the women. It seems Jack and Juliet have been hatching this scheme for days, even enlisting Danielle Rousseau's help in gathering the explosives out of the old slave ship. (Finally, the loony French castaway's actions in "The Brig" are explained.) As he raved about no more running and no more hiding, about one irresistible opportunity to beat Ben at his own 15-moves-ahead chess-playing games, about the chance to expunge once and for all the evildoing terrorists of Quagmire Island, Jack's intensity was more terrifying than inspiring, more obsessive than cool-headed.

Later in the episode, Sayid diagnosed the doctor's problem: Consumed by anger and fear, Jack was more interested in taking down the Others than in getting the castaways off the Island. And the prospect of honest-to-goodness rescue seems to be legit: Sayid believed that Danielle's looping SOS signal was interfering with Naomi's satellite phone; if he could disable the signal, maybe they could make contact with Naomi's ship. But Juliet revealed an additional complication. Apparently, Ben's been jamming the radio tower's frequencies via another Dharma station, this one offshore and underwater, connected at the end of the beach cable that runs into the ocean. Our latest Dharma hatch has the most loaded, imagination-firing name: the Looking Glass. Its logo? A white rabbit, of course! How Alice In Wonderland. A Clue perhaps? "Greatest Hits" also pointed toward another fantasy text that's worthy of investigation, one not as famous yet more explicitly Lost-esque. More on that in a second.

Initially, Jack wasn't interested in Sayid's phone-home pipe dream, especially after hearing from Juliet that the Looking Glass was flooded because of an unspecified "accident" and that swimming down to flip the jamming switch was basically a suicide mission. But he changed his tune once Karl arrived on the beach with a message: Ben had stepped up the invasion plan. The Others were coming. Now. With his intricately designed counterattack ambush suddenly imperiled, Jack realized there might be not be a chance for rescue; the Looking Glass mission would have to be undertaken ASAP.

Which brought Charlie center stage. And by that time, he was ready for the spotlight, as was his actor, Dominic Monaghan, who I thought turned in his best performance yet on Lost. Desmond's latest Charlie-gonna-die vision suggested that he would be the man for the Looking Glass switch-flipping job. In his mind the psychic Scot saw his fellow Brit inside the hatch, surrounded by gunmen, flipping the switch, then — gulp — drowning. He also saw something else, something that upped Charlie's stake in actually allowing events to unfold as predicted: a helicopter, landing on the beach, taking Claire and baby Aaron off the Island. At last, rescue — but per the perplexing cause-and-effect rules of Desmond's future-seeing powers, the dream would only come true if Charlie was willing to play the part of martyr.

And he was. Even before Desmond spelled it out for him, we saw that Charlie had begun to reconcile himself to the idea that fate was hell-bent on calling his number. To that end, he began making a list of his five favorite moments ever — the "Greatest Hits" of his life. It was intended to be a love letter to Claire, but it proved to be so much more. In flashbacks, we saw each of them.

One of them is when he saved a woman from getting mugged. The woman whom Charlie saves is also something of a blast from the (Lost) past: It's Nadia, Sayid's Iraqi lady love, last seen in John Locke's "Daddy made me rip off the Mob" flashback from last season. The lady sure gets around, doesn't she? But why? Is her presence in these past lives purely coincidental or evidence of a divine (or devious) design that links all the castaways? Questions, I think, for another season to answer....

Charlie's most favorite moment, No. 1 on his all-time personal hit parade: his first encounter with Claire, on the night they crashed on the Island. The irony of Charlie's modest list of is that as a reflection of the life he's lived, it doesn't tell the complete story. Like any greatest-hits collection, it ignores all the crappy tunes. But what's interesting is how, in the end, the real Charlie Pace becomes the mythic Charlie Pace of his list. Optimistic. Courageous. Heroic. Ready to sacrifice himself for his family, his community, for total strangers. Ready to take the leap of faith that could end his life. You have to wonder if the Island has something to do with it.

Desmond tried to talk Charlie out of it, even offered to trade places with him — just like the Charles Darnay-Sydney Carton sacrificial swap in Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities, which was also the title given to the first episode of this season, a title that, finally, here at the end, really begins to make sense. As Charlie dove into the water and toward his destiny, the famous final lines of the novel came to mind: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known." We watched him as he swam down to the Looking Glass — a stunningly realized, Emmy-worthy triumph of F/X. And just when it seemed Charlie was going to run out of air, he made it to the moon pool of the hulking deep-sea station and discovered air! The place wasn't flooded, after all. (That Ben — such a liar.) But it was staffed with cute girls in jumpsuits with big guns, and as the episode came to a close, they had their weapons trained on Charlie's head, and suddenly we remembered: Desmond's prophecy is still very much in effect.

Spoilers Time!

Dirt:

1. The show has been renewed for another season! It will be back in early 2008.

Grey's Anatomy:

1. You know that girl we saw in last week's previews, making googly eyes at McDreamy? Well, she is played by former Reunion star, Chyler Leigh and has been offered a multiple-episode arc for next season. I love her, and it seems she may be sinking her slutty little paws into Mer’s man.

2. The intern's first year will finally come to an end with the intern exam, a chief will be named, Christina and Burke will make it to the church, Meredith and Derek will face an uncertain future, and the triangle that is Callie, Izzie and George will become more complex. Plus there will be surgeries and sex. Lots of surgeries and sex.

Lost:

1. The game-changer involves Jack and someone else.

2. A fan favorite will sacrifice himself for the good of the rest of the Losties.

3. This week ww will earn who really is in charge of the Others and more about Jacob.

4. Some mysteries will be resolved by the end of the season: what was up with the guys in the arctic, Walt's ability to rejuvenate animals, the "magic box" idea. They also said that Patchy's resurrection will be explained within the next couple of weeks. The smoke monster will not be explained until the end of the series.

Desperate Housewives:

1. In the season finale, Susan and Mike are set to wed in the forest and it seems that Susan lured Mike there without him knowing they would get married. When Gaby rethinks marrying Victor, Milton (his father) convinces her to give his son another chance. Soon after she does, Gaby learns that Victor marrying her may all have been to do better in polls (married man seen with a Latina wife.)

Heroes:

1. The May 21 season capper will set up two big ideas for the second volume of Heroes, to be titled "Generations." The new saga will focus on putting the Heroes mythology in a grand historical context of superpowered family dynasties. It focuses on heritage, the family line, and the source of the powers. That means the "older" generation of heroes — including George Takei's Papa Nakamura and especially Cristine Rose's Mama Petrelli — should expect more screen time.

2. Instead of just a cheerleader or a city, "Volume 2: Generations" will concern a plot to save the entire planet. Also, Suresh will learn crucial info about his Indian past and his dead (or is she?) sister in the finale that helps set up next season.

The End In Sight For Lost

Forty-eight more episodes. That's exactly how much more time we will be able to spend with our good friends Kate, Jack and Sawyer after this month's season finale, according to an official release from ABC this morning. Lost will continue for three more seasons of 16 episodes each.

The initial plan was to do two more seasons of Lost, with 24 episodes each. However, because of international deals already in place, producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse agreed to divvy up those remaining 48 episodes over three seasons. (

So, essentially, we are getting two more seasons' worth of episodes strewn out over three seasons. The remaining seasons will be just like this year—minus the first six-episode block. And they will be shot over three years to prevent spoilers from leaking out too early.

Also, in the season finale in a few weeks, it will end with what the producers are calling the "game-changer," or "the snake in the mailbox." Because of this, we will understand why the show cannot go longer than 48 more episodes.

Getting Even With Dad

If you look towards me this morning and see a mushroom cloud blooming on the horizon, don't panic: That's just my mind being blown by the latest in a series of top-notch Lost episodes. Last night, "The Brig" was like a box of highly unstable Black Rock dynamite blowing up in my mind. I'm not sure amid the billowing black haze just how much damage has been done to my vast collection of precious conjectures, but I do know this: I really don't have any idea anymore where the heck this damn show's going.

And I like that.

There's much to say about this dense tale of vendetta and vengeance, enslavement and liberation, and schemes within schemes within schemes. Simply, "The Brig" was the story of two damaged lost boys, Locke and Sawyer, desperate to be free of the awful man who made them and named them. War looms, we are told, in the form of an invading band of deadly, baby-wanting Others (or at least the threat of war; that's a big difference in these perception-manipulating, truth-bending times), but it seems that the intensifying possibility of civil war is more likely to rip apart the castaway community.

Here are the most salient developments of last night's episode.

Kate and Sawyer's sad and sweaty affair is destined to end in heartbreak. I'm sure that there's plenty of SawKat fans out there who got a kick seeing that the Fugitive Girl and the Killer Con Man are still keeping each other warm at night, or at least part of the night; it seems Kate is the kind of girl who gets suspiciously antsy for her own bed after a booty call. I think I prefer Kate and Sawyer to Kate and Jack; the latter coupling always seemed kinda forced to me, while the former pairing has dramatically earned a shot at life. At the same time, I think these two have a long way to go as individuals before they could ever make it together. Kate is clearly attracted to the shaggy cad, but there's no romance here, just exploitation. It reminds me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's season 6, when the lost-on-the-inside heroine foolishly decided to start knocking boots with redemption-starved Spike. I doubt SawKat will end up imploding as darkly as they did, but it will end. Both Sawyer and Kate need more spiritual reconstruction before they can have any kind of truly intimate relationship.

The whole thing about Sawyer going painfully barefoot throughout the entire episode probably has some deep symbolic significance or some illuminating literary antecedent, but I'm too tired to look anything up, please feel free and let me know.

The moment where Anthony Cooper bit his son is the key to understanding his baiting, bizarrely antagonistic behavior. In the flashbacks, we learned what happened after the climactic "Dad?" moment in "The Man From Tallahassee." Locke, stunned to find his demonic father bound in a boiler room in Othersville, reached to remove the gag despite Ben's protestations. Sure enough, Anthony Cooper rewarded him with his best Cujo impression, snapping at his son's hand and biting him like a rabid dog. A rather rude way of saying hello to your own flesh and blood, don't you think? Cooper kept up the inhospitable antics throughout the episode — mocking his son's gutlessness, shredding Sawyer's letter — and it seemed to me he was trying very, very, very hard to bait these guys into killing him. The question is: Why?

Maybe he thought he was stuck in a bad dream and hoped getting killed would wake him up. Maybe he really did believe he was in hell and wanted his demons to get on with the whole punishment part; at least that way, his inexplicable abduction and mad tropical-island ordeal would start making sense to him. But my guess is that Cooper just wanted someone, anyone to put his sick little life out of its misbegotten misery.

The execution of Anthony Cooper inside The Black Rock was just freaking awesome. Let's just simply celebrate this scene for its raw, heartbreaking, soul-shattering intensity. If nothing else, let us praise Josh Holloway for his furious performance. How I wanted him to kill this man. How I wanted him to not kill this man and instead forgive him. How I loved this scene for presenting without judgment some very complicated ideas about justice, personal responsibility, and how people become the people they become.

In the aftermath, I felt appropriately conflicted by the complex dynamics of the episode. Is Locke a hero or a villain for the way he manipulated Sawyer to commit the murder he couldn't do himself? Have these men purchased some liberation — or have they sealed the deal on their damnation? Regardless, I look forward to seeing how both these guys grapple with and rationalize their actions. Watching Locke march into the jungle with his father on his back, it was hard for me to know if Locke had finally found himself or if he was more lost than ever.

There's some more stuff that happened in the episode, but I'm running late and have to give this up. There's the revelation that Jack isn't the dupe of Juliet that we thought he was, that the Hero of the Beach seems to have been hatching some kind of master plan all along. That was all fun stuff, but pure plot stuff, and all setups for things to come.

Spoilers Time!

Ugly Betty:

1. One of the inspirations for our American Betty, Angélica Vale of the Mexican telenovela La Fea Más Bella, guest stars in the May 17 season finale, playing the assistant of Betty's orthodontic technician. I'm told that getting Angélica here was pretty much a nightmare (they ran into major immigration problems, and she ultimately was only cleared for a very short stay). And when Angélica arrived, it turned out she had lost her Bettylicious getup (wig, specs, etc.) on the way up from Mexico, so Betty's production peeps had to frantically search for replacements. Still, it all came together and the doppelgeeker action is fantastic, along with the rest of the season finale, from what I hear.

2. Someone is going to die in the finale, and it is someone who is a part of Betty's family. Get ready to weep! Still, the good news is that in proper soap-tastic fashion, the writers have left a loophole through which they can bring this person back if he or she ultimately decides to return. And based on recent developments, he or she will want to.

Lost:

1. Five people are going to die! Yes, five! Definitely splurge on the adult diapers. We are going to be totally and completely freaked out. It's not so much the number, but the who.

2. Lost Spoilers offers us a summary of the spoilers Cuse and Lindelof revealed in the latest podcast: They will be revisiting the psychic's predictions for Claire in the future as well as Walt's abilities. The Others' obsession with children and pregnancy goes beyond the inability to successfully bear children on the island. The Other's definitely have an interest in children with special abilities. That's why they took Walt. There are two factions of The Others and are in no relation to the hatches/stations. They will be getting back to the statue before the show ends.

Heroes:

1. Nathan's fate and future is in question come season's end. Adrian Pasdar himself said, "There's a little bit of perhaps a separation between my ability to see them (Nathan's kids) and, uh...I can't really say too much."

2. Linderman is going to heal Nathan's wife (Rena Sofer in a wheelchair)!

Entourage:

1. Don’t get too comfy with Amanda, even though it seems as though Vince is in to her. Ari’s about to make his move and swoop Vinnie right out from under her. Er, figuratively speaking.

Grey's Anatomy:

1. Burke starts to have some serious reservations about marrying Cristina. And you're never going to believe whom he turns to for advice.

2. In the season finale, the interns take thier test, the new Chief is named, George and Callie make a big decision about their relationship, and Jane Doe is reunited with her family.

The D.O.C

We have tons to cover: babies, blackmail, and how Lost has miraculously made me curious about quantum physics.

Without a doubt, my favorite part of the episode was the last scene. Next on my list? Hurley in general, Jin busting out with the martial arts, Mikhail's return, and the three women whose plotlines propelled "D.O.C." Here we go!

Sun

The title of the episode referred to Sun's date of conception. After Sun had an unsettling chat with Jack about her pregnancy, it was flashback time. We saw newlywed Sun's good day torpedoed by a mystery woman with a scandalous allegation. Mrs. Jin Kwon's brand-new husband? Son of a prostitute. (On the suspense meter, this scene was a letdown: Any casual viewer could guess that the blackmailer and Jin's mom would turn out to be one and the same.) The demand for $100,000 rattled Sun, who decided to research Jin's fibby-sounding stories about his deceased father. With a dossier from an unseen but superfast investigator, she located Jin's sweetheart of a dad at work in his fishing boat. He invited Sun to tea, verified the blackmailer's claim, and asked Sun to keep Jin in the dark. His most painful admission: that he'd never been sure, ever since he was left with the baby, if he was actually Jin's biological father.

Yunjin Kim's acting was Emmy-worthy throughout "D.O.C." Let's face it, Sun blackmailing her pops, in order to pay off her blackmailer, and threatening to have the long-lost mother of her husband whacked — all in an effort to be Jin's protector — was great. Sun has always had more moxie than meets the eye. Meanwhile, on the island, Sun was in a confessing mood. She confided to Kate her hunch that Jack might be working with the Others (a prospect Kate couldn't stomach) and, later, told one of her deepest secrets (the affair with Jae) to....

Juliet

As green lights flickered, and Dr. J spirited Sun into a hidden room inside the medical hatch ("where we brought the women to die"), I thought, here's the Lost we love: creepy and informative. We learned from Juliet that men on the island have a sperm count five times the average but no woman under Juliet's care who had conceived on the island had survived into her third trimester. Oh yeah, and nine pregnant women died on Juliet's three-year watch.

The freaky facts made me wonder whether the island was never meant to be found, much less populated — what if it exists in a different universe or dimension? So the natural laws of baby making are in opposition with the island's own natural order. To put it another way, maybe everyone's being shown the door, but Ben is leading a resistance.

While Juliet prepped Sun for the prenatal exam, scenes from episodes past crossed my mind. Juliet once suggested taking a pregnant patient off the island, but Ben told her, essentially, to drop it. Danny once complained about Kate and Sawyer's fellow prisoner that "Shephard wasn't even on Jacob's list." (Is that list part of the procreation quest?) Post-op, Ben told Locke that his people "need to believe they can leave if they want to." Did the now-dead pregnant women believe escape was possible? If the island dooms women who conceive, and the Others are able to travel off the island, it's malevolent beyond description to keep them there. Right about now, I'd love a Ben-Alex-Rousseau backstory to clear things up.

Inside the eerie medical hatch, the exquisitely two-faced Juliet (make that three-faced, what with the afterthought aimed toward the mini-recorder) convinced Sun she was on her side. Don't get me wrong — I buy that the Mittelos recruit's work has been heart wrenching for her. But her skill at deceit and her private motive, the desperate wish to go home, is all the more reason not to trust Juliet around potential lab rats like Sun. Witness her capacity to drop the ultra-soothing bedside manner when coldly reporting to Ben on specimen Kwon. Despite brief glimpses of Juliet seeming torn over the price she's paying for freedom, she's still frighteningly committed to carrying out orders.

Juliet's tragic news that Sun's baby was conceived 37 days after Sun arrived on the island filled Sun with...relief? Over the fact that she'll die in a few months, along with her unborn baby, but at least it's Jin's? I realize Sun's once-cheating heart craves redemption, but that immediate reaction seemed like screwy hormones talking. I really hope Sun's life can be saved, perhaps with help from...

Naomi

In the jungle, Desmond and Charlie disagreed on how best to help the multilingual parachutist they found in last week's episode. They figured out she'd taken a tree branch to the torso, but they had no idea where she came from or why. Hurley, after snooping into Naomi's bag, fired her flare gun, which brought about a shocking visit from the wily, optically impaired, not-so-great-with-the-social-skills Mikhail. Yep, the Other zapped by the sonic fence! (Had Patchy just been playing possum? Later in the episode he said, cryptically, "On this island, the wounds are a bit different.") Once Jin subdued Mikhail with kick-ass fight choreography, Desmond pinned him by the throat, and the onetime Soviet field medic bargained for his freedom — echoing Jack's spinal-surgery deal with Ben — by offering to treat Naomi's punctured lung.

When Mikhail demanded information about his patient, it took everything Charlie had not to smack Hurley upside the head for divulging Naomi's "fancy radio-phone thingy." Sure enough, once the Other saved Naomi, he promptly made off with the device. But Jin was just not having that. With the phone retrieved (but not functioning), what happened next seemed made for the Lost history books. Sitting next to Naomi, Hurley identified himself as a Flight 815 survivor and eagerly asked if she was a rescuer. Naomi, taken aback, replied, "Flight 815? The one from Sydney? That's not possible....They found the plane. There were no survivors. They were all dead."

Hurley said it all: "What?"

Could Lost be finking out on its creators' famous promise that the show's not about purgatory? If not, what's all this Naomi crazy talk? One possibility: After Oceanic 815 disappeared, maybe a large-scale cover-up was engineered (by Widmore?), wherein reporters and officials were bribed to report the false story, and/or hoodwinked with highly realistic "evidence." If that's too straightforward for you — and only on our favorite Wednesday drama would that be considered straightforward — read on.

Maybe it does have to do with quantam physics. I got this from another article from EW so bear with me:

Consider that Naomi may have just confirmed the existence of multiple universes. To someone who experienced such a thing, it might be mistakenly perceived as hopping around the time line of one universe. According to multiple-universe theory, we can be going along in the universe, and it can split in two, and then those two universes can proceed along independent time lines. This kind of split could happen over and over, so that the number of possible universes branching off would be infinite. On Lost, has an unforeseen ripple in one universe let matter from another universe through, allowing people to traverse a slippery path between them? Maybe some have done it unintentionally, let's say during an aviation disaster, and maybe others do it intentionally (or wish they could). Of course, Desmond was closest to the Swan meltdown, which, for all we know, was a critical mass of energy strong enough to tear into another universe. Suppose the event altered his consciousness so that it can ricochet between universes.

Remember the Pearl station film of Dr. Wickmund, and his strange insistence on the importance of observation? Maybe that Dharma experiment was inspired by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which states that measuring or observing an event is impossible without also affecting it. Do you know who Erwin Schrödinger was? His "thought experiment" known as Schrödinger's cat is a way of illustrating physics on the quantum (subatomic) level. If I understand it correctly, until such matter is observed, we can think of it as existing in multiple states — in the exercise, that would be a box containing a cat who's both dead and alive. Multiple universes are one way of explaining that trippy idea. It's a long shot, but if Schrödinger's cat inspired Naomi's bombshell about Flight 815, we may be on the cusp of finding out there's one universe where the passengers died and another where they lived. From there, the possibilities are endless! Patchy may be dead in one universe, while in another universe he's trotting through foliage searching for Nadia, his cat!

Phew....that was a lot to absorb. I thought that was a pretty good theory. Anyway, the main questions are: Will Sun live longer than her two-month prognosis? Is Jack in on Juliet's mission?

Spoilers Time!

Grey's Anatomy:

1. Studio insiders say the first hour of Private Practice’s pilot (which airs as a Grey’s episode in May) is close to completion and is so "fearlessly good" it’s the most likely of all ABC pilots to receive a pickup.

2. Regarding George and Izzie, their secret will stay hidden from Callie for at least a few more weeks, though she knows something's not right.

3. Cristina and Burke really are going to make it to the altar in the season finale, and the wedding will be everything Cristina did not want, including the big dress, having bridesmaids, and writing her own vows.

4. In a few weeks, the interns will take the biggest test of their careers, their first-year medical exams

Heroes:

1. Mastermind Tim Kring says that for season two, "There are plans to add one new, one big character next season." The character is female—to even out the gender ranks a wee bit. Tim also said that those Heroes who remain are likely to stick around, 'cause he's changed his m.o. "I thought Heroes was going to have an ever-shifting cast," he says, "but the cast hit in such big ways that now the challenge is to figure out how to use them all and still fold in a couple of new people, because I still think that the origin stories are the most fascinating, in some ways."

2. Regarding Nathan becoming president, sources are saying that visions from the future are not always as they seem.

3. Thrown five years in the future, Hiro and Ando discover that people with extraordinary abilities are not only widely known about -- after the destruction of New York City and the deaths of millions -- but are being registered, imprisoned, hunted and even killed as "terrorists." As the President takes his first step towards a "final solution," the pair get swept up in what could be the "Heroes" final battle and encounter a range of new and darkly familiar faces.

Lost:

1. There's a lot going on as far as that mysterious visitor from last week. She is a major twist to the plot. Supposedly, there will be a shocking moment when she tells Hurley the fate of the real (wtf?!) Oceanic Flight 815.

2. We'll definitely see more of Sawyer and Sayid working together. Plus, sounds like Penny's dad, Charles Widmore, may be seen again.

3. There will be a showdown in the season finale. Yhe beach occupants divide into two camps: one run by Jack and the other Sawyer or Locke. It seems that Jack will definately be facing off against one of them. The survivors will also have another showdown with the Others and the origins of the Dharma Initiative will be explained.

Desperate Housewives:

1. Susan will marry Mike, and Gaby is rushing into a big wedding extravaganza with just-elected mayor Victor. But all, unfortunately, is not well on Wisteria Lane: Lynette (and not Susan as previously believed) finds out she has cancer and Mike's shady brother Terry moves in, which opens the door to a new mystery to solve in 2007-08. Bree fans will be happy to know that the hostess extraordinaire will be back for the season finale on May 20.

2. It seems that Ms. McClusky came home from vacation and found her husband dead on the couch. Since it was 2am, she decided to wait until morning. However, when she looked through his desk, she found that she was not named beneficiary of his estate, but his first wife. So instead, she stuffed him in the freezer so that she can keep the money.

Desmond's Dilemma

For me, Desmond's groan said it all. It came at the climax of last night's outing of Lost, prior to the awful choice the episode had been building toward: Should he sacrifice Charlie's life for a chance at being reunited with Penelope, or should he put the Charlie's life and well-being ahead of his own self-interest and once again save him from predestined death? It was a damnable dilemma, and it gave rise to an existential growl congested with resignation, fury, self-loathing, and more. It spoke of being stuck between courage and cowardice, desire and duty, free will and fate — the clutch of tricky themes upon which this episode was built. It also spoke on behalf of an episode heavy-laden with deep thoughts and ominous subtext encoded in Biblical and literary citations, comic book references, and perhaps the most provocative hidden clue in the show's history. It's enough to make your brain explode — or implode, as is the case on Lost.

To be clear, this was one very amusing episode of Lost — that is, once you got past the opening sequence, in which Charlie tripped one of Rousseau's traps, took an arrow through the neck, gurgled up some blood and died in Desmond's arms while Hurley and Jin looked on in shell-shocked horror. I was totally taken aback by the violence but quickly recovered and realized that surely it must be a dream, which was sort of true — it was actually one of Desmond's precognitive flashes of the future, one that included glimpses of a blinking red beacon in the night sky, Jin (and then Hurley) pulling up a cable from the sand, and, most provocatively, a pair of legs dangling from a tree. Desmond's heart skipped — could this be Penelope, descending from the sky and bringing hope of rescue? Thus motivated to make sure that his vision would become a reality, Desmond began to round up all the participants that this scene needed.

Thus episode, "Catch 22," did a fine job at capturing the experience of Desmond's flashes and clearly telling the audience how they worked. He explained that it was like "a jigsaw puzzle, only I don't have all the pieces." Up until now, Desmond has been leveraging his inside knowledge to change Charlie's fate. This time, he believed that saving him would come at a price too precious to pay, namely a possible reunion with Penelope. Apparently, if you alter one piece in this jigsaw picture, you risk changing the picture on the box. Hence, Desmond's double bind.

Hurley, Jin, and Charlie went along with it, although none of them were hip to the awful twist involved in questing to find this newcomer from the sky. On the way there, Desmond's vision began clicking into place, the necessary events falling like dominos. They found the Cable, the super-size power line extending from an underwater sonar system to the now-destroyed Dharma station the Flame. And after a helicopter crashed into the ocean, they saw the red beacon, falling from the sky. Penelope's here, thought Desmond. In the jungle, a backpack was found containing clue fodder for theorists: a satellite phone with a seemingly of-the-moment menu; a copy of Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22, the darkly comic anti-war novel that coined the titular phrase — except that the book was in Portuguese (connection: the guys in the last scene of last season, scanning for electro magnetic anomalies for Penelope — they were speaking Portuguese); and inside the book, a copy of the picture snapped of Desmond and Penelope prior to their breakup (but only one copy of that picture is supposed to exist, and Desmond has it — right?).

And then, the moment of decision arrived. Charlie tripped the wire, Rousseau's trap activated, and Desmond issued his agonizing groan: "Arrrghhh — Charlie! Duck!" And with that, Desmond leapt at Charlie, knocked him down, saved his life, and according to Desmond's personal Theory of Relativity, the future shuffled its cards anew and recast the parachutist they soon found hanging from a tree — a young woman named Naomi. She wasn't Penelope, but since she did mumble Desmond's name; maybe she works for Penelope and has been searching for him. Perhaps she'll regain consciousness and tell us more. And having already seen next week's episode, I can tell you that she will. And that what she has to say is pretty...well, deadly.

Why did Desmond ultimately choose Charlie over Penelope? Some illumination was provided by the flashback. Going into this episode, there was rampant speculation that we would learn about Desmond's days in the Scottish army. Instead, we got a story about Desmond's days at a wine-making monastery. It seems that prior to meeting Penelope, Desmond wanted to be a monk. He believed he had been given "a calling." Reason to be dubious Number One: He received said calling after he woke up from a night of heavy drinking, in the middle of the street, with Brother Campbell standing above him. Reason to be dubious Number Two: Conveniently, said calling came one week prior to the day he was supposed to marry his then-girlfriend of six years, Ruth.

The early flashback scenes echoed with resonances to Lost episodes past. When Ruth accused Desmond of cold feet, I recalled how Jack struggled with jitters in the days before his wedding to Sarah. When Brother Campbell commended Desmond on completing his vow of silence as part of his monastery initiation, I recalled that Locke had a sentence of silence that was part of his reconnection process with the Island. And when Brother Campbell told Desmond that he was "one of us," of course, I thought of last week's Juliet episode, entitled "One of Us." All this in the wake of the most recent Desmond episode, in which his bid to get a respectable job with Penelope's father mirrored the almost-forgotten season 1 episode in which a smack-addled, post-Driveshaft Charlie tried to go straight by working for his girlfriend's Dad. Weird how this one character mirrors and twins a broad swath of others, from Jack to Locke to Charlie.

It's clear from the flashbacks that from an early age, Desmond has been driven by a desire for belonging and validation. At the same time, he also suffers from a profound case of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"'-itus. I'd love to know in a future episode what role Desmond's early life played in the formation of this personality; in his last episode, we were told he was left to raise his bothers after the death of his father. What happened there? Whatever the cause of his restlessness, Desmond seems chronically incapable of staying engaged, on mission, committed, for a prolonged period of time before something in him breaks down and spurs him elsewhere, usually into the bottom of a bottle. The lesson that Brother Campbell believed he needed to learn was the value of personal sacrifice, a lesson he illustrated for Desmond by citing the famous Biblical story in which God asked Abraham to kill his son Isaac as an offering. Abraham was torn, but was willing to do it — and at the last second, got a reprieve from the Lord himself. Talk about mirroring and symmetry: You can find this Biblical catch-22 in...Genesis, chapter 22.

In the end, Desmond couldn't cut it as a monk. The God/Abraham story bugged him, and besides, he had serious doubts about his own character. And so it was that he got himself fired from the monastery/winery after being caught sampling the product. But Brother Campbell saw the bigger picture, too; he told Desmond that he was surely being called to something, but it definitely wasn't monkhood. Of course, we were left to question Brother Campbell's own character thanks to a blink-and-you-miss-it Easter egg of monumental significance. There, on Campbell's desk, was a picture of him and the woman we know as Ms. Hawking — the creepy antique-store lady who, in the last Desmond ep, seemed to know all about his life, past, present, and Island future. What's the connection between the two? Has Desmond's life been orchestrated and manipulated from the very beginning? What was Campbell's true agenda for bringing Desmond into the monastic fold — to simply impress upon him a lesson about sacrificing his self-interest for the sake of other people, the greater good, or the higher power...

...or was it to facilitate his introduction to none other than Penelope Widmore? Turned out that her father is/was a rather generous customer/supporter of the winery/monastery. Which begs the question: How much does Papa Widmore really know about Desmond?

I suppose we should also talk about Sawyer and Kate having hot Island sex again, which I'm sure pleased all their fans out there. It was exactly the kind of reconnection the con man has been aching for since their last go around— especially after eyeballing Kate in her thong, a rousing sight which led to the hilarious request for some "afternoon delight," and even more hilarious, his offer of making a mix tape to get it. However, Sawyer would eventually learn that Kate's late-night booty call might not have been all about him> Earlier that evening, she had flirted with Jack to no avail, her oatmeal spoon seduction apparently not enough to entice the good doctor away from Juliet. This revelation put Sawyer in a double bind of his own: At what price nooky? Does Kate really dig him — or is he merely a consolation prize? And does he really want to know? In the end, he risked rejection and asked her to make sure she knows her own heart, and made his own feelings perfectly clear by giving her the next best thing to a mix tape he could find (or steal) on the beach: Bernard's copy of Phil Collins' greatest hits.

In the end, the episode was an intriguing, clever, altogether entertaining outing of Lost that didn't necessarily offer much in the way of answers or offer the same mythic wallop as last week's Juliet episode, but it did provide some revealing insights into Desmond and began to set the stage for the endgame of the season. Is a war on the horizon???

All About the Babies

Now here's an episode that captured the imagination, moved the heart, and made the skin crawl right off my bones. "One of Us" — focusing on baby-in-a-bottle miracle worker Juliet, with a title that played off of last season's Sayid-centric meditation on demonization, "One of Them" — was one for the all-time Lost list. It had answers (women who get pregnant on the Island die, and gruesomely), humor ),and a profound amount of heart. There was even another cryptic anagram, some ice cream, and a little sex to boot.

It began with a panoramic opening shot of Jack, Juliet, Kate, and Sayid — just a Hobbit short of a Fellowship — trekking through the Island's lush hills, then quickly segued to a camping scene that linked "One of Us" to "One of Them" — Juliet and Sayid sharing stilted silence, the Other sensing the castaway's accusing gaze shooting through her. "Okay, let's have it," she said, bravely meeting his stare and ready to suffer his justifiable anger. It was a gutsy move, actually, and the episode would track her transformation from Mousy Scientist to Steely Survivalist.

Like a machine gun, Sayid rattled off a list of questions, and within the long-suffering Lost Fan Nation, fireworks were ignited. At last! A castaway finally asked the questions we've wanted the castaways to ask of their kidnapping enemies. Why are you terrorizing us? Why do you take children? And who are you? And even better was Juliet's surprisingly candid response: Sayid, I'm so glad you asked. And now, with great detail and none of our usual cryptic wordplay, I am going to give you the answers that you desperately want.

Okay, that didn't happen. In fact, even as Sayid was ticking off his inquiries, I found myself thinking, "Okay. How are they going to squirt free from actually answering any of these?" Why, by ducking into a flashback, of course! (We'll cover that in a second.) Still, Juliet's ominous dodge ("If I told you what you wanted to know, you would kill me") was intriguing enough to make me think that the Others really do have a good reason for adhering to an irritating nondisclosure policy. I have a theory...but in true Lost fashion, I'm going to make you wait.

The flashbacks were devoted to providing the history, in broad strokes, of Juliet's Island experience. It's a classic Faustian story, spliced with a little bit of captive-princess fairy tale. Here's what we learned:

Juliet's downward spiral into the Island of Fallen Souls began in Oregon, on the vast, tightly guarded campus of Mittelos Bioscience, the apparently Others-backed firm with the cryptic anagram name (Mittelos = Lost Time) that recruited the brilliant fertility doc in the episode "Not in Portland." We were informed through conspicuous chatter that Mittelos has its own airfield, which made me think, "Why? What else might one find in Mittelos' big backyard? A large lake with an island, perhaps?"

Juliet's neo-Eden seduction took place in the lobby of Mittelos' aviation division, Herarat, which is an anagram for Earhart, as in Amelia Earhart, the aviator who went famously missing in 1937. Anyway, Mittelos exec Richard Alpert told Juliet that he had spiked her orange juice with a massive amount of tranquilizer. (It seems the trip to the Island is so turbulent that it's better to travel while tranquilized. Where is this island, anyway — Mars?) And his silver-tongued temptation was so persuasive, I think any of us would have gulped down that OJ as quickly as Juliet. When she woke up, she found herself not on an airplane but in a submarine. And when she climbed out, she found herself on the island.

Sperm + egg = death = totally, totally creepy The shocking revelation we were given about the Others and the reason they were so desperate to bring Juliet and her fertility science to the Island: Women who get preggers on the Island die. And there you have it, confirmation of one of the most widely speculated Lost theories since the abduction of Claire in season 1: The Others are sterile, albeit in a rather disturbing way. It's not that the men and women are infertile, it's just that the life they create...well, something is wrong with it. Something that causes destruction both to itself and to the mother. Something...unnatural? Unholy? Why does the Island not want these dreaded Others — or possibly any of its human inhabitants — to reproduce?

This unsettling new element to the Lost mythology supercharges the show with some high-octane creepiness and tension. Among the affected: Sun and her baby, obviously. And pretty much anyone who has had unprotected sex on the Island — and that means you, Kate. Unless, of course, she and Sawyer found some condoms tucked under the polar bear's water trough. This freaky fact may also explain Ben's apparent desire to keep his daughter, Alex, and her boyfriend apart. Still, the prospect of teenage horniness leading his child to ruin wasn't enough to make him give Juliet permission to test this theory by taking a pregnant woman off the Island. For some reason, Ben would rather have his people peter into extinction than let them leave the Island.

Her mission seemingly at an end, Juliet asked to leave; she wanted to be home in time for the birth of her sister's child. Ben manipulated her into staying by informing Juliet that her sister's cancer had returned and that Rachel would be dead before she gave birth. But Ben had a solution: Apparently, here on his amazing island, there was a cure for cancer. Invoking the name of the great and powerful Oz/Big Brother/Almighty God of the Others, Ben said that Jacob himself would see to the matter of Rachel's healing. Once again, Juliet succumbed to a devilish Other.

Juliet doesn't like to cuddle after knocking boots, but she does like a pint of ice cream. A couple years passed after Ben's promise to save Rachel, and in that time, Juliet evolved from fragile femme to strong, sexy woman. The details were left unsaid and will most likely be the stuff of a future flashback. It seems that at the time Oceanic 815 crashed on the Island, Juliet was sharing her bed — and her ice cream stash — with Goodwin, the Other whom Ben sent to infiltrate the Tailies. (He was eventually killed by Ana Lucia.) In light of the whole killer-baby thing, the question must be asked: Were they using contraceptives? If not...well, perhaps Juliet isn't as strong as she looks. Look out, Jack: Juliet might be just using you for sex — and a suicide solution to her own castaway hell.

Second best scene of the night Juliet and Ben fighting over the discovery of his spinal tumor. What you expected to happen was this: Juliet tells Ben he has a tumor; Ben gets bummed out; Juliet consoles him. Instead, Juliet got pissed. After all, didn't Ben tell her he had a cure for cancer? During their fight, Juliet again begged Ben to let her leave the Island. Again, he refused. My question, again, is why? Might he have another motive for keeping Juliet besides just saving his people? Perhaps he's in love with her. Or maybe it's this: Like Desmond, Ben knows the future — only he knows much more of it than Desmond does. He knows the ultimate purpose of the Island and the destinies of everyone on it. Perhaps he feels he has a calling to facilitate this future, or maybe he's motivated by other selfish rewards. Either way, to get what he wants, he has to make sure everyone does everything they're supposed to — by any means necessary. Hence, Ben the cunning manipulator. Bottom line: Ben might not be keeping Juliet on the Island because he's a jerk but because she's an element in the Island's future history.

But the best scene of the night was Ben, Juliet and Mikhail in the Flame. I am certain that Dharma's former telecommunications facility was loaded with Easter eggs and other clues, but I lack the patience for a proper investigation. No, it wasn't Ben's declaration of his creepy desire to use the surviving females of Oceanic 815 as possible breeders for his doomed people that made me upset. It was the moment when Ben proved his integrity by showing Juliet that her sister was alive and cancer free and the proud mother of a two-year-old son named Julian. Juliet wept at this happy revelation. Seeing Juliet rejoice in her sister's health was very heart-warming.

The flashback revelations — dense with detail — were intertwined with the present-set Island drama involving Juliet's awkward introduction into the castaway community. I break it down like this:

Jack: Whipped or wily? I first refer to the scene in which Jack and Kate were breaking sticks for firewood, the tension between them crackling louder than the twigs as the fugitive father killer pressed the father-haunted doc on his exile in Otherville. Does anyone really believe that Jack "kept his head down" and played the role of good doggie trying to earn a bone? And I'm not 100 percent sure I buy his explanation to Juliet that the yearning for escape that he glimpsed in her eyes is the reason he doesn't need explanations and justifications from her. Given the existence of Room 23 and its weird therapy film, we must allow for the possibility of brainwashing. What I'd really like to think is that Jack is a man with a plan and that, for now, he's keeping it to himself. Still, the scene in which he demanded trust from Charlie played like foreshadowing to me. Jack's integrity will factor into the endgame of the season.

Jack's triumphant return to the beach was great. I loved Sawyer's reunion with Kate, but I was more moved by his swell of emotion at seeing that Jack was back, and alive, too. Last night demonstrated how much we've missed seeing the gang all together. Then again, that wonderful reunion scene wouldn't have earned its emotion without the abduction story line.

Line of the night — funniest moment of the season? Hurley asked Juliet why she wasn't there when he, Jack, Kate, and Sawyer were bound and bagged in the finale to last season. "I had the day off," Juliet replied. Even Hurley had to try hard not to crack a smile. Interesting that both Juliet and the camera looked in the direction of Boone Hill when Hurley mentioned where Ethan was buried. I wonder if we should keep in mind the eye-for-an-eye ethos of the Others. I sense foreshadowing. And I worry anew for Ethan's killer, Charlie.

Speaking of the Claire-obsessed devil... I don't want to dwell too much on Juliet's explanation for Ethan's infiltration of the castaways in season 1; even though the sequence itself was thrilling in the way it cut between Juliet's narration and glimpses of season 1 scenes (a model, I think, for how Lost should handle future Big Explanations for Big Mysteries), I'm not sure how much of her story I believe in light of the twist ending. This is how I'm tracking it: Ethan was supposed to take blood samples from the women and monitor Claire's pregnancy. But the boy became obsessed with Claire and abducted her, which, according to Juliet, wasn't supposed to happen. Or was it? Perhaps Claire was brought to the medical hatch to be implanted with memories that corroborated an Ethan-was-an-obsessed-stalker cover story? After all...

It's all a scam The delicious final scene revealed that the whole business of Juliet being "left behind" by the Others in the last episode was all theater. In truth, she's been tasked with executing yet another component of Ben's master plan. Claire wasn't really suffering from the side effects of a drug Juliet devised to aid her pregnancy with Aaron; she had been implanted with a bug designed to eventually make her sick so Juliet would have "a nice little crisis to solve" to facilitate her infiltration — to sell the castaways on the idea that she was no longer "one of them" but now "one of us." Yet this twist raises many questions. Did Claire get the implant during her abduction, or is there another Other on the beach charged with completing Ethan's work? What is Juliet's mission? Has she come to keep an eye on Sun's potentially doomed pregnancy, or is she hunting other game? And can Juliet use any of the steel and smarts that she gained during her time with Ben to find a way out of her predicament — and better, to earn back the soul she sold away for a trip to Wonderland?

One thing's for certain, something suggested by the closing shot of Juliet pulling taut the knot on her tent: The noose is slowing tightening. But around whom? Charlie? Sun? The castaways? Or could it be Juliet herself?

"See you in a week," Ben told her. Of course, we'll have to hang on for seven days as well — but I can hardly wait to see how this plays out.

Spoilers Time!

Heroes:

1. Tawny Cypress, who plays Simone, is not off the show for good. Far from it! Even though she was "killed," Simone is coming back, along with her father (Peter's patient), in the season finale. It turns out she has abilities of her own, and as a source put it, "There are people on the positive and negative side. And Simone is on the negative side." According to another source, "[Simone and her father] may have some ties to some other characters that we had no idea about before."

2. Episode 21 is all about Sylar. According to creator Tim Kring, "We learn about his home life and where he came from, and after that episode, your opinion of him may change."

Lost:

1. Not much revealed. One thing though, it's finally getting to be Lord of the Flies time and it's going to be good.

Entourage:

1. Busy Philipps from Dawson's Creek shows up next week to give Turtle a little lovin’, but ultimately, they just aren’t compatible. However, Turtle does land a steady lady this season!

2. Ari does ultimately wins the war over Vince but Carla won't go away that quickly. The boys are happy with her...for the time being. As for Ari, you see a kinder, gentler side of him next week. For all his abuse directed at Lloyd, he actually does care about him, and there is a line he won’t cross. Even if it means losing major business.

Brothers & Sisters:

1. There definitely is an engagement in the family before the end of the season. So, here's hoping it's Kitty and the Senator! Rob Lowe states that he will be on the show until the end of the year. And then we'll just have to see what happens with Senator McCallister. We're going to watch the presidential candidate hit the campaign trail, of course. He's going to be courting the press, kissing babies and visiting wounded war vets.

Desperate Housewives:

1. Edie's got her heart set on Carlos and continues to scheme for him at least through the end of the season, if not longer.

Girlfight

Watching last night's episode of Lost, I couldn't help but enjoy the sight of castaway Kate handcuffed to Others doc Juliet, bickering over who wronged who, slapping each other around, and wrestling in the jungle mud. Oh my, I better settle down there. This Kate-centric outing, titled "Left Behind," was certainly a fine little fable about defiance and pride — not to mention atonement and social responsibility. Perhaps a little more than fine thanks to the chicks in chains. But I digress.

And the Others, they've departed. Packed up their guns and grilled-cheese-sandwich makers and abandoned the Dharma Initiative barracks for parts unknown and for some reason taking Locke with them. Was it just me, or did he look a little loco in the eyes when he came to Kate in the game room that served as her cell and told her that he was leaving with the Others? Even Kate saw it and asked the easily manipulated Man of Faith if he had been brainwashed. Is there something wrong with Jack and Locke? Have they been body-swapped? Maybe the reason they're not acting like themselves — or, maybe, acting more like themselves than ever before — is that they are literally not themselves at all. Have they become puppets under the control of the Others?

Perhaps they are now showing their true selves? Rumor has it a big revelation is coming that will shake up what we thought about the show. People are thinking that someone we know is going to reveal themselves to be the Big Bad that is behind everything- the "he" that the Others refer to. This came out of last week's episode and that TV show Nikki was working on. Something like that was revealed and I'm thinking that's foreshadowing what's coming up.

Anyway, back to last night. Thematically, the most important element of the Locke-Kate interaction came after Locke revealed that the Others had told him what she "had done" — clearly a reference to the season-2 episode, which revealed that the she had killed her abusive daddy by blowing up their house. The curious thing about this scene — besides Locke's odd demeanor — is how Kate didn't protest when she was confronted with this veiled, unspecified reference to her past crimes. The girl's got guilt, and a crushing amount of it. Kate seems utterly resigned to being marked as "a bad person," to use the Others' nomenclature. If the castaways were to learn that this place really is some kind of Dantesque hell, Kate might be the one who's the least surprised.

But resignation is one thing — accepting responsibility for sins and atoning for them is another. Kate found herself grappling with this fact (or at least reminded of it) when she woke up in the jungle handcuffed to Juliet after being knocked out by the Others. Being shackled to her rival for Jack's affections conjured memories for her of the time she formed a shotgun partnership with another illegal lady — someone the rest of us know to be Cassidy, former partner and lover to the other man in Kate's life, Sawyer. With the pregnant grifter's assistance (yep: it's Sawyer's kid, Clementine), Kate managed to sneak past that dogged U.S. marshal Ed Mars and meet with her mother so she could ask a furious question: How come you ratted me out to the cops? Mom's reply: Because you blew up my husband! It doesn't matter if he was an abusive monster — you had no right to take justice into your own hands!

Utterly shamed, Kate left, heartbroken. With this, Lost seems to be making an interesting statement about personal responsibility, especially in an episode in which we are presented with three women — Kate, Cassidy, and Juliet — who have been so profoundly shaped and damaged by the men in their lives. The message: The subjective truth of your experience is valid, but you are still beholden to commonly held values, or what Rousseau would call "the general will."

Nonetheless, Lost loves its island of sinners too much to pass judgment on them — but I do think the series is interested in exploring whether they're willing to put down their rationalizations and live in the conscience of their community. This is where Smokey the Monster comes in. More so than any previous episode, "Left Behind" seemed to suggest a clear, cogent theory to explain Smokey's m.o. It seems to me that the Monster has a bug up its incorporeal butt about human pride. Think back to Mr. Eko. Think back to what he said to the manifestation of his beloved younger brother, Yemi, prior to getting pounded by Smokey. Falling to his knees, the reluctant warlord turned faux priest proclaimed, "I have done nothing wrong!" Eko came to the belief that his sins and all their consequences were justified in the context of the sacrifice he made to save Yemi's life.

Kate's story echoed Mr. Eko's, which would have made her Monster bait, if not for two things: 1. Fortunately, as the flashback revealed, her mother had already confronted her about her self-righteous narcissism, so the lessons had already been implanted. 2. The experience of being tethered to Juliet helped to activate those lessons and make them real. Kate was made to understand, in a personal way, how her allegedly altruistic actions could be compromised by selfishness and have painful, destructive consequences. It was this that allowed her to apologize to Jack at the end of the episode for sabotaging his escape and denying him a chance at happiness.

Now what if the Monster's true target was Juliet. Maybe he was just checking her out — taking psychic pictures of her soul for future reference. Or maybe he was drawn to her sinful pride. After all, Kate was correct: Juliet is culpable for the evil the Others inflicted upon Kate and Sawyer. But given the opportunity to explain herself or apologize, Juliet declined. This might put her at risk for tempting Smokey's wrath.

All of this was mirrored in a much more lighthearted manner in the secondary story line, in which Hurley pulled a scam on Sawyer — tricking him into thinking that the beach community was on the verge of sending him to Exile for his greedy supply hoarding and for orchestrating last season's assault on Sun as part of his gun-seizing power play. "I don't do amends," he grumbled to Hurley, but he soon changed his tune and scrambled to campaign for his place in society like a politician way behind in the polls, doing everything from kissing babies to preparing a pig-on-a-spit feast — anything to win the hearts and minds of his castaways. When Sawyer learned he had been duped by Hurley, who merely wanted to teach him a lesson, Sawyer snapped: "You tricked me into being decent? That's got to be the lamest con in the history of cons!" And yet, by episode's end, Sawyer's Grinchy heart seemed to grow a couple sizes more, even as a look from Sun reminded him that a roasted pig is only the beginning of making good on past mistakes.

And now some questions:

1. I was surprised by Juliet's kung fu. Where did she learn it? How had she dislocated her shoulder three times previous to Kate's takedown? So many unanswered questions about Juliet. Why was she left behind? Is she of no more use to Ben? Is she facilitating the enlightenment mission of the Others? Or is she a Trojan horse on a more insidious mission?

2. Why couldn't the Monster breach the sonic fence or go over it?

Spoilers Time!

Veronica Mars:

1. The jury is still out on our girl. There had been rumors that the show has been cancelled. However, according to creator Rob Thomas, "That's simply not true. I'm the one who called them. I didn't say we were canceled. We're not." Rob is hard at work on his season-four pitch, which sounds mind-blowingly good as you saw a few weeks back here on the blog. The CW would be completely moronic not to pick it up!

Lost:

1. The Lost finale will be the finale that everyone will be talking about all summer. Not Grey's. Not Heroes. Rumors are rampant that Lost's season-ender will "change the show for good"— possibly in sort of an Alias-y Super Bowl episode kinda way. So get ready.

2. The upcoming episode "D.O.C." explores Sun's pregnancy, and I'm told the initials in the title stand for "date of conception." So I'm guessing we'll get answers regarding the baby's father. The flashbacks in the episode include more scenes with Sun's father, Mr. Paik.

Brothers & Sisters:

1. Emily VanCamp (Rebecca) is now a series regular. Producer Greg Berlanti says that: "She's gonna be around, so we're gonna have to kill off a few people at the end of the year to make space for everybody! No, I'm kidding. You know, she definitely is, in fact, a Walker. It's not a fraud, and that's important to know. But I think the obvious thing would be to sort of try and integrate her in a happy, healthy way and make her one of the family. We really don't take that route. There are a lot of surprises coming up for her character in terms of just who she is. And you know, the person who knows the most about her is the person the Walkers trust the least, and that's Holly. In some ways, [Rebecca's presence] will make them relate to [Holly] more. But mostly, it just drives them all crazy that they have to continue to be associated with [her and vice versa]."

2. Dave Annable says that Justin may just ship off right around season finale time. But before he goes, Greg tells me he gets quite chummy with his new sis, Rebecca: "Justin is sort of the family member who takes the lead in terms of bringing her into the fold. Partially because he’s closest to her in age and partially because his sense of going back to the war and going back to Iraq makes him a little bit more determined to make his family whole before he leaves. We definitely get into what the family dynamics were and how can they be shifted now that there’s a new member."

Grey's Anatomy:

1. The death of someone close to Meredith is not her father, but someone pretty close. The really wretched thing is that it will be Meredith's fault. Or, at least, it will be perceived that way.

Ugly Betty:

1. We meet more members of the Suarez family before the season ends. In fact, I think we may be taking a trip to Mexico.

2. Before the end of the season, we meet Nikki, Alexis' sexy and fearless ex-girlfriend, who works for an extreme sports magazine. Word is she's hanging with the Meade boys again, but now that Alex(is) is no longer "available," she starts getting close to Daniel.

Heroes:

1. The symbol on Niki's back, Isaac's paintings, Hiro's sword and Mohinder's computer mean certainly is a good mystery. According to creator Tim Kring, a third meaning for the Heroes symbol soon emerges, in addition to the description of the symbol as either a helix or a combination of two Japanese characters.