It’s official. We’ve hit the halfway mark of an 18-hour season. And I can’t think of a better way to crest the hill than with the long-awaited Richard Alpert back story, Ab Aeterno, which not only fleshed out everything there is to know about this ageless stranger but also stands as easily one of the two or three best hours of this show. It was that good, and if the finale can come close to matching the emotional and mythological crescendos hit here, then we are in for a real treat.

Before moving into the meat of the show, I wanted to touch on one of my usual off-topic tangents. I was reading late last week that all signs point to this being the final season of 24. There is some chatter that it may move to NBC but I think that’s an outside chance – an audible that will only be called when NBC clears pilot season and sees how their deck is stacked for next year. The conventional wisdom seems to point to the show making the jump to the big screen.

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Well, this was unusual. I’m a Sawyer fan. And I’ve made it abundantly clear in these posts that when you strip away all the mystery, mythology and smoke monsters, what truly compels us to follow Lost is the intricate character dynamics. We love some of these people, and loathe others. And we’re dying to see how their lives turn out and how the various threads pull together – especially over the last few weeks.

So it’s a complete shocker to me that I found a Sawyer episode completely boring. Now, each season, I always look forward (with tongue firmly in cheek) to the requisite Kate episode – knowing we’ll chase our sour with the sweet. But Sawyer eps usually deliver – mainly because I love the character and it’s always fun to see his latest con. And while this episode helped to lay the framework of his newest (and most dire con), I can’t help but feel that the sideways stuff did nothing to develop the off-island storyline. It felt like filler and a time killer and with only 10 episodes left, that feels like the wrong play. That being said – next week we dive into the Richard Alpert mythos so I’m chalking this up as a slight speed bump.

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I think I know where these alternate timelines are going. At the beginning of the season, it was reasonable to assume that everything we saw on the island was part of the straight chronology – the timeline we’ve been following since the very beginning. So, Oceanic Flight 815 crashed on the island. The pilot was eaten. Hatches were cracked. Tailies were found. Tailies were killed. Secondary islands were discovered. Others became DHARMA became original Others. Shacks rocked. Donkey wheels were spun. Everything got groovy as we did the time warp back to the 70′s. Jughead blew his stack. Jacob lived. Jacob died. MiB Locke began assembling his army. Sawyer called someone tubby. All that happened in one constant timeline – no matter where the island happened to pinball to.

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Like another famous castaway, I write to you one-handed, having just had a wisdom tooth extracted with nary a coconut or sentient volleyball around to comfort me during my recovery. Halfway through what should have been a very routine extraction, the oral surgeon offered me the bravery prize. When they start cracking wise like that, you know things aren’t going 100% according to plan.

Anyway, I made it through without a tear shed, knowing I had a night of ice cream and “Lost” in my future. And as we hit Episode 6, just two episodes away from the hump, it feels like the pieces are falling into place. The game board seems set and Lindelof & Cuse have everything in place as we rush head-on towards the end of this rare event – a densely mythological, heavily serialized show that’s being allowed to lower the curtains on its own terms – at the best possible time.

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About a week ago, I found an article on EW.com in which Matthew Fox and Evangeline Lilly announced their post-“Lost” plans. That got me thinking: how about dreaming up some future career marks for some of my favorite “Lost” cast members?

Before hitting that proverbial wish list, I’ll cover Fox and Lilly.

According to Fox, he aims to ape David Caruso and turn his back on TV for good. After a successful run on “Party of Five,” followed by his arc on “Lost” (his character was originally written with Michael Keaton in mind), he wants to explore the Hollywood hills and make his mark in the movie biz. While I think that’s a decent plan – to trade on his goodwill from this show – I’m not sure Fox has exactly what it takes to be the strong leading man on the big screen. While I like the dude, there’s a dryness to him (think David Duchovny) that works better when establishing a long-running character. TV seems to fit him just right. Besides, we’re still basking in the Golden Age of television drama. I’d take “Friday Night Lights,” “The X-Files,” “Lost,” “Millennium,” “Battlestar Galactica” and countless other shows rather than most multiplex fare any day.

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Last week I made it abundantly clear that I am not a Kate fan. She just has a knack for dragging the story down. Sure, once upon a time I thought she was 8 miles of eye candy, but that stretch of road is way behind me. Give me the dearly departed Juliet any day of the week. This week we got a heady dose of mythology-expanding goodness. With that said, we have a lot to chew on, so let’s dive right in.

The perfect salve for a Kate episode is a Locke chaser. It seems like the writers know well my disdain for Freckles and her so-called life, so they always make things right with my world, season after season. And often the Locke episodes don’t disappoint. In fact, they are usually heavy on the mythological sweep that hooked us in the first place. And last night was no exception – with some big answers provided – assuming we are to believe the guy revealing them, which might be a pretty tall order.

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Previously on Lost…

Don’t panic. This happens every year.

I’ll get into it in detail below, but after last week’s slam-bang premiere, which kicked off the season in style and simultaneously left our minds stirred, shaken and blown – we were bound to get that patented Lost letdown where the writers stop for a spell to get everyone’s bearings straight. It’s akin to setting the chess board – they need a little bit of exposition to get the characters pointed in the right direction – especially considering this is the final lead-up to the end game.

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Previously on Lost…

The beginning of the end.

That’s what ABC’s crack team of sales weasels have been billing last night’s season premiere. And based on what we’ve seen, they may be right – or they could be way off. After all, there seemed to be ample evidence to support that we may just be watching the End of the Beginning. After all, our intrepid brand of heroes eventually made their way to their original destination, LAX, as spoiled completely by the Title Card.

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Previously on Lost…

Season 4

Time after Time – Episode 4.5 The Constant

What elevates a show like Lost is the character development. Sure, what draws me in is the mystery, but over time we have truly grown to love and loathe these characters. They’re indelible. Love ‘em or leave ‘em, we’ll never forget ‘em.

And that’s the beauty of the show – as crazy as things get, we are always grounded by our ragged group of Everymen (and women) who are confronted with the surreal and supernatural. It’s the same core tenet that Stephen King has found such sweeping success with – take normal people and throw them against the abnormal. As long as the characters are written and performed well, the viewer can accept anything.

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Late last week, Nintendo released its latest round of sales figures. While touting the continued dominance of the Nintendo DS as the most successful video game handheld to date (all four iterations have moved a total of more than 125 million units), they took time to underscore a fairly significant milestone. The Nintendo Wii has officially eclipsed the original Nintendo Entertainment System by selling 67 million units, as opposed to 61 million for the NES, arguably resurrecting video gaming as a legitimate entertainment form since Nintendo first rolled their Trojan Horse up to our doorsteps in the mid-1980s.

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Previously on Lost…

Season 2

With a Surprise in Every Box – Episode 2.1 Man of Science, Man of Faith

One thing the Lost creators know how to do is open a season properly. Where the first season stumbled a bit at the finish (sure they popped the hatch but what the hell is in it?), Lost didn’t waste time when Season 2 started up. In a move that would become a signature moment for the series at the onset of each new year, they dropped us in strange environs with a character we’ve never seen before – throwing off our bearings as we seek to re-establish contact with the show after a long summer siesta.

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Yes, I know this is a gaming site, but darn it – this slab of real estate is my personal Blog and I’ll write if I want to. As a Dad to two young kids, I find that by the end of each day, I prefer to settle down with a video game to soothe the stresses away. I’d much rather indulge in this hobby than mindlessly channel surf.

That being said, there have been a handful of television programs that have grabbed my peepers and instantly become appointment viewing. Lost is just the latest and while it certainly has its detractors, I think it’s a fun mish-mash of high adventure, sci-fi, character drama and conspiracy thriller. It’s entertainment and it knows it – and I love pouring over the various mysteries.

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Just the other night, I watched the fifth-season finale of “Lost,” in anticipation of next week’s final-season premiere. As I re-watched pivotal scenes pregnant with all kinds of possibilities inherent to the true nature of the island, I came to a quick realization. I have a good idea what’s going down now, but my theories are completely contrary to what I thought was doing way back when.

Using this as a springboard, I then turned my powers of prognostication to the gaming frontier in hopes that some fears I currently harbor will eventually be countered. That said, where “Lost” is an entertainment obsession that is free to rewrite its own rules as the story dictates, my real-world concerns are less malleable. Especially when tackling a rock-solid monolith like Microsoft and some recent, troubling developments in their online space.

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Last week I sat down to survey the landscape of games due to arrive in 2010 and made my selections for the ones that I would step over women, children and grandmothers to play. These are the games worth quitting your day job, shutting out the real world and skipping bills and sustenance to spend just five more minutes enjoying. At least, that’s the fond hope we harbor.

After all, we all make these lists early in the year, and while some games match their hype, there are so many that fall woefully short.

So, for this piece I decided to temper my expectations and pick a game that I long to play this year, but I have a sneaking suspicion is just going to royally disappoint me.

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Sometime early last year, I cobbled together a list of my most anticipated games of the year. And as we’re often prone to do, as the year wound on, and new and exciting enchantments were revealed, that list changed numerous times. E3 will do that to you.

So, despite the fact that I fully intend to provide you with my picks for the top handful of games that I’ve just got to play in 2010, please don’t hold me to it. Something is bound to give at some point. Either that, or a whole helping heaping of them could simply be jettisoned to 2011 – which is what we saw last Fall when seemingly every publisher used Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 as a reason to turn turtle, as if this were an industry where gamers only pledge allegiance to one title. I’m sure a few FPS boogied out of that release window to avoid sales comparisons with the juggernaut but how does that excuse some of the third person action games? Do I detect the cloaked need for additional development time? Oh well, if the end product ends up justifying the means, then by all means, run and hide. I’ll just have to add you to next year’s list.

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