Confirmed Awesome

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Thursday’s episode of “Lost” was called “Confirmed Dead” and correct me if I’m wrong, but by my count it had (spoilers!):

  • Four new characters with immediate flashbacks
  • An irritable Asian ghostbuster who uses a dustbuster
  • The sunken, decaying corpse of Greg Grunberg
  • A through-the-body bullet wound with a tie-in to Locke’s continuity
  • Three cases of Ben getting the tar beat out of him
  • Vincent the dog leading the gang on a wild goose chase, confirming my suspicions that he’s the ultimate mastermind behind the entire mystery
  • A polar bear skeleton in the desert
  • More of the mysterious new Live and Let Die-esque villain
  • Post-Grindhouse Jeff “Lawnmower Man” Fahey as a cross between Jimmy Buffet, Jeff Lebowski, and pure drunken badassery

I’d say that this was getting back to the “Lost” I used to know, but “Lost” was never that cool. This is what I wanted the old “Lost” to be, the kind of coolness that it always hinted at but never quite delivered on. It’s like they finally said, “Screw it, let’s take the training wheels off” and let her ride with whatever wacky stuff they felt like throwing in there.

Story still doesn’t make a damn lick of sense, and it’s got too much of people standing around looking confused or just moving for the sake of getting to the next plot point for me to say it’s approaching “high art”. But hell if it ain’t moving.

I think the last season ended up redeeming itself by the end, but even after the best episodes, I was never fired up to see the next one. But as it is now, I can’t wait to see what happens next week. Who’s the rest of the Oceanic 6? What’s happening with the cabin? How does Taller Walt Ghost fit in? Who’s Ben’s “man on the boat?” What connection do the new people have with flight 815? Why did they want Ben? What’s the deal with Naomi? When is Libby coming back into the picture? Or Penny and Desmond? Why doesn’t Ben know what the smoke monster is? When do we find out more about Forever Young Nestor Carbonell?

It used to be I had no faith that the show would ever answer its questions; now I’m saying they should keep piling ’em on. And how cool is a show that can make me genuinely interested in the answer to a question as cheesy as “Who are the Oceanic 6?”