If you planned on leaving the house during the week of January 19th, perhaps you should rethink things. To wit: On Tuesday the 20th, our long national nightmare will end as Barack Obama takes the oath of office to become the 44th President of the United States; Thursday the 22nd brings us the 81st annual Academy Award nominations; and, of course, the biggest event of all happens on Wednesday the 21st (drum roll please!): That’s the date when Lost returns for the start of its penultimate season.
Screeners of the first two episodes have been sent out already and various reviews have popped up online; you can read them here, or here, or here. (Perhaps our copy got lost in the mail …) From the sound of things, expect total mayhem combined with awesomeness. Can’t wait for the season premiere and don’t have time to read all the reviews while you get ready to go out for New Year’s Eve? Here’s what you can expect, with as few spoilers as possible.
We’ve already seen most of the first 15 minutes!
The amount of footage release from the season premiere is borderline laughable. We’ve joked that by the time Lost actually airs, we’ll have seen the entire show already. Well, fear not! Those clips of Jack shaving, Ben packing and Kate leaving all apparently happen within the first 15 minutes. One thing that hasn’t been shown yet is the collar-grabbing opening sequence that may or may not feature Daniel Faraday and a record player.
"Let’s get the band back together!"
Keep that phrase in mind while watching the early episodes of season five. As we had thought, the major crux in the early going is Ben and Jack trying to reconvene the Oceanic Six for a trip back to the Island. Supposedly a monkey wrench gets thrown into that plan during the second episode (ominously titled "The Lie"), which prevents our heroes from returning too early. Hmm, sounds contrived to us. Ain’t It Cool goes so far as to call "The Lie" a "time-killer".
Flash-forwards and Flashbacks are soooo 2008!
As confusing as Lost has been, the structure of the show has always been pretty easy to follow. You knew that things were either taking place in the future, or the past, by looking at the characters’ situations. Now, all bets are off. Apparently the season premiere flies around through time and space like Pulp Fiction–a fragmented non-linear story that fits together like pieces of a puzzle. We’re scratching our heads just thinking about it.
And for the ladies …
Do you like it when Sawyer has his shirt off? Good! Because according to TV Guide, he’s shirtless for the entire first episode and the beginning of the second. As for us guys, no word on whether or not Kate gets down to her skivvies.
