We know when it comes to Lost there is a lot of questions. Too many to keep count of. What is the island? How does the island travel through time as it does? These are recent questions with this new season, but there have been so many more questions that have come up since the series premiered. The black cloud monster, the significance of the numbers and their sequence. How no one really seems to age on the island. How the dead seem to walk again when they arrive on the island.

As a fan of this series, I have been there since the series first premiered. I had heard about it, and I knew it would be something to watch. Oddly enough, I think I was one of those in a test group for the series a year or so before the series even premiered, with a very rough cut put together. I knew the series was something even with that rough cut, and now we’re almost at the end. One more season before Lost comes to an end. Will all the questions that have come from the series will be answered before things come to an end?

We have seen the return of some faces from Lost’s past because those that have died live again with this time distortion. That is the only word for it. We have also seen that some didn’t die at all as first thought. One of these faces that we thought died is Jin. Sun had left the island thinking her husband died when the freighter blew up. Now we know he is far from dead, and he is another one traveling through this time loop.

Lost really has changed the entire ball game when it comes to this series. This week, the group did make it back to the island, and now we have to wonder if this will stop the island’s trip through time. The next episode will focus on John Locke and his adventure on the island and leaving it. Something tells me Lost has a lot more in store for us before the final episode airs in 2010. What do you think of Lost’s fifth season so far?

Lost will take over the time slot owned by Private Practice, which was just given a full season order for its second season. No word on where Private Practice will move to yet, but I’m pondering this right now. Could ABC have some method to its madness? Could they be planning to move Private Practice to Thursday nights following Grey’s Anatomy? Life on Mars is currently in that time slot, but that series is in jeopardy of cancellation.

Private Practice and Grey’s Anatomy are connected, and there is even word of a crossover episode to air sometime this spring. There is no word on whether or not this is happening, but it would make sense. Lost will return though, and we will have all the answers to the questions we were left back in May answered, or we’ll just have more questions. That second one is more likely. I think we may even have questions when the series does come to an end. Lost has never done anything easy. When Lost returns, there will be full weekly recaps at Celebrity Today.

One Tree Hill jumped in time for the end of the high school years to past the college years just this season. Lost goes back and forth in time each and every week, displaying the past, present and the future in one episode. Now another series has decided to play with time, Fox’s 24. It is being said that when the series returns this season, we will have jumped in time four years. In fact, since the beginning of the series, there has been a seventeen year time span dealt with. Jack Bauer will now be a man in his fifties. Kiefer Sutherland is actually 41 years old.

I think a jump in time isn’t a bad thing. Series show snippets of the lives that would make interesting television. Not every moment is going to be television worthy. Playing with time allows things to happen. However, I do think some instances go so far. As I mentioned before, this happens mostly when it comes to daytime drama. Having a child leave as a toddler one year, and come back as a sixteen year old the next is stretching it!

I actually think Lost has dealt with time quite interesting. It was confusing at first, but it became easily to follow as the season moved on. I’m excited to see where the next season of Lost takes us. However, we will have to wait until 2009 to find out.

The additional hour added to each season will make up for the hours lost this season when the show was cut short during the writer’s strike. This means instead of sixteen episodes next season and the following one, we will see seventeen episodes. The story just gets more complicated each week. This week, we will more than likely see the Oceanic Six go home. What does this mean for the rest of the survivors left? I’m sure we will know all about what happens to him as the next two seasons unfold. In my opinion, this has been the best season for the series yet, even with the long hiatus before and the break in between.

In other ABC news, Boston Legal has been renewed for one more season to air next year. David E. Kelley is the man behind this one, and it looks like he has another show already waiting in the wings when Boston Legal goes off the air. Ugly Bettyis getting ready to start its next season, and it looks like they are making another drastic change. They are plans in motion to move the production of the series from Los Angeles to New York. The governor of California is trying to stop this move, but it looks like it will move forward. This is another in a long list of changes that have happened to the behind the scenes making of the series in the past six months. Too many changes are never good. We can only hope the series survives all these changes.

The new Thursday night on ABC is looking to me to be the new must-see-TV night. All three shows are highly popular, and if they do well together the remainder of this season, ABC might keep them like that on the schedule for next year. I see more Lost as a good thing. It is definitely one of my favorite shows on air, and I will not be happy to see it end. I know it has to eventually. If I remember correctly, the series is only supposed to be go six seasons.

In other Lost related news, one of the executive producers of the series, Jeff Pinkner, is hopping over to do another series on Fox. Fringeis coming to us from J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. The series will be a science fiction police drama that follows a FBI agent that investigates unexplained phenomena with another guy and his dad. Sounds like it could be interesting. With J.J. behind it, we know it will be good. Comparisons are already being made to the X-files. It seems everything this man touches turns to gold. With Felicity, Alias and Lost all part of his resume, and the new Star Trek film yet to come, it seems there is nothing J.J. can’t do.

A cocktail, your laptop for easy reference on a kajillion references because every scenario of each name/photo needs to be researched and then Vicodin to ease the brain explosion after watching the episode. (Legally, of course.)

One of the things about Lost that makes it such a brainstrain is so much happens at once that it’s hard to put it all together. Thank God the Writer’s Strike is over and ABC will keep putting the last episodes up so geeks like myself can go and pour over 40+ minutes to make sure we didn’t miss something.

In last night’s episode, we have seen the future of Sayid after the island. We see he’s living a lovely life of running a daycare center named after deceased girlfriend Shannon (I keed. I tease because I love.) Nope, he’s an assassin. And he’s not your run-of-the-mill killer. He’s one with a purpose apparently but we don’t know that until the last few seconds of the episode which I won’t spoil you about but when you see who Sayid is hanging out with, you will be surprised. Don’t doubt it.

The evolution of the show has once again offered viewers a multi-layered mystery with an outcome revealed but we haven’t been on the journey yet on how Hurley, Kate, Jack and Sayid got from the island to where they are today. We do know that Jack the control freak now has no control over his life. Kate, who can be billy bad-ass and a hot mess at the same time, seems to have it together more than her male counterparts. We know Hurley has returned to the comforts of a mental hospital drawing pictures of Eskimos (remember the finale of Season Two) and that Sayid is in over his head.

But why?

And that is the beauty of Lost. The questions are always so much more important than the answers and in some ways Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have given us answers every week as we go along.  You have to pay attention though.

Lost has redefined television in many ways but I do see some comparisons with shows such as “The Prisoner” which also saw a lost man living in a world that had a set of rules that were not in the manual of what is supposed to happen and what isn’t.

Lost will also have five more episodes, according to the producers, now that the Writer’s Strike has been resolved.  And for fans salivating over what is going on, this is good news indeed.

What makes Lost work are the small moments that may or may not open up doors later in the narrative. Last season, viewers were surprised in the finale to see that Jack and Kate had made it off the island and things were not going so well for the stubborn doctor. We were alerted in the first episode of this season referred to the Oceanic 6, although we have only been alerted to Hurley joining the felon and the moon-eyed physician in what is being called a fast-forward.

Bringing in new characters has usually worked for Lost except for an ill-advised addition of Paulo and Nikki, who after fan outrage, were killed off in a delicious and decadent way. New characters include a mysterious foursome who have come searching for something other than the castaways. One appears to be a very cranky psychic named Miles as well as  the man who should have piloted Oceanic Flight 815, a woman with the initials of CS Lewis and a goofy little guy who doesn’t appear to be dangerous and says he’s a physicist but doesn’t like to be “boxed in.”

And it is working. We know some of the reaction that came out of unknown actions created on the island and the mythology remains intact.

As I said, it’s the small moments that make Lost so intriguing. Small looks, tight dialogue and excellent acting that moves the story forward even in the midst of crisis. Emmy-winning actor Terry Quinn is a perfect example as he doesn’t chew the scenery, like Josh Holloway’s character Sawyer does, but that he is comfortable in the character of Locke who could be a prophet or a victim of an ambitious hoax. Both characters play off each other beautifully though. Each piece of the character puzzle fits exquisitely.

Lost, obviously, is an acquired taste. It’s a show that lasts long beyond the credits for those smitten with the rocky hard turns the writers have mapped out. What does each name mean? What is the significant of small Easter Eggs to the overall theme of the show? Is it supernatural forces guiding the island’s control over characters or is it a man-made nightmare?

And, as we refer to here so often, the writers’ strike has impeded the promised 16 episodes that fans were promised cutting it in half.

But each week, there is a scrumptious bit of information revealed and more questions that arise.

No one expected the strike though, and that has thrown a monkey wrench into a lot of things. Only eight of the sixteen episodes were finished filming before the strike started, and some rumors were going around that the network and Lost executives might actually hold the series back until next fall. However, they moved forward with what they have now, and the week for Lost to return has arrived. Thursday night, season four will premiere, and we hope that a lot of the unanswered questions fans like myself were left with will be answered.

In case you missed the season finale or you don’t have the third season on DVD, ABC does plan to re-air the season finale in a special format with background information and additional features this Wednesday night. Fans of the series can also look for signs of their favorite series in Marvel comics now out on sale including Wolverine Origins. The season four premiere of Lost airs Thursday night in the regular time slot for Grey’s Anatomy.

Mark you calendar for January 31. I’ll wait.

You back?

Lost return on that date which for many of us who are diehard fans have anticipated for eight months. How the series will fare during the darkness of the writer’s strike but we Lostophiles do not care. We just need a bit of a dose of our favorite yet flawed castaways.

But a new show will be following the highly anticipated return of the Damon Lindelof/Carlton Cuse masterpiece (yes, I said masterpiece.) It’s a show called “Eli Stone” starring Jonny Lee Miller. The show has hit the network jackpot by debuting behind Lost.

There is a bit of buzz about the show. Everwood creator Greg Berlanti and Jack and Bobby writer Marc Guggenheim are attached to the show as is Ken Olin, who directed the pilot. Not too shabby.

The story is about a young, ruthless attorney named, wait for it, Eli Stone who starts having a series of hallucinations. According to the official website at ABC, Stone has an unoperable anuerysm which allows him to see, and do, amazing things that are not in his character. His hallucinations are apparently quite elaborate (George Michael is in the debut) but the underlying thread of what the show is ultimately about is peculiar. Is Stone a prophet and there is apparently an element of faith vs. science.

Heady stuff, but this sort of formula has worked in recent shows. Lost, Holly Hunter’s Saving Grace, Battlestar Galactica, which I wrote about earlier this week and countless others. Stone is getting a cookie by opening it’s 13-run season after Lost.

This should be a good night for ABC.