In what could arguably be called it's best season, Lost season four gave us the answer to the question "How did Jack, Kate, Sayid, Aaron, Hurley, Sun and Ben get off the island?" and made us ask the next big question: What happened to Locke?!

Season four also delivered what I feel was the best episode yet, The Constant. (The Desmond time-travel episode.)

Lost Season Four is available for pre-order and will be available December 9, 2008. (And Lost Season 5 should start in January/February 2009.)

Also available: Lost - The Complete Seasons 1-3

Lost finally returns! And although it wasn't the best episode of the season, it was pretty good. And suprising that so many people died! I guess we have an inkling of why only 6 people made it off the island!

(And my main complaint was with the flashforwards; they just didn't flow too well with the action on the island.)

Here are some of my thoughts on the episode.

On the Beach: Jack and Kate - still a spark there, at least from Kate. And Jack's appendicitis - good thing there's another doctor on the island! And not the dead one that floated up on the beach.

I miss Desmond. Hope we get to see him again before the season ends!

Flashforward: Michael Emerson as Ben Linus deserves every award he's eligible for - and more! Near the end of the episode when he's following the man who killed Sayid's wife (and who also works for Widmore) Ben acts like a fish out of water. But when he goes in for the kill, he's a whole different person.

Lost has finally done it. They finally come up with something so stupid that even I, a fan of the show, have to say enough is enough.

As you may know, Lost is a fantasy show. It does things that can't really happen in a basic drama. If a smoke monster showed up on Brothers & Sisters you just know that the writers have completely lost their minds. (No pun intended.) But on Lost you go with the strange stuff. Polar bear in the tropics? Okay. Dead people walking around the forest? Wicked. Lame one day, doing jumping jacks the next? Cool.

What the hell is going on here? Seriously, is he dead or isn't he?

(And, yes, there be Spoilers here.)

I should say that over the last couple of weeks I've been watching the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica to catch up on the show before season three comes out. Well, I've been mostly listening to the commentary tracks. In those commentaries one of the things that Ronald D. Moore says is that he wanted to avoid many of the cliched trappings that most TV lives in. Like, for instance, a woman having a difficult delivery, husband trying to get to the hospital, the husband gets there just in time to see the birth of his child. Everyone goes home. You know, the safe route.

And I thought for sure we were going the safe route tonight. Sun was in labor, and Jin was trying to buy a Panda for his child.

So we're following these two different storylines - Sun giving birth to Ji Yeon, and Jin trying to buy a stuffed Panda. But instead of marrying the two stories together, we find out at the end that they're not the same story. In fact, Jin was very much dead.

So was Jin's story a flashback? He said he was only married for two months, and it looked like he was at the beginning of his employment with Sun's father.

So a flashback and a flashforward in the same episode! At least they weren't taking the easy way! (Lost and Battlestar Galactica are pretty similar in this regard.)

Oh, yeah, Michael's back. Now known as Kevin Johnson, which happens to be the title of next week's episode.

And the ship's captain. Michael (presumably) left a note for Sayid saying not to trust the Captain. Ben's people probably told Michael that. But because Ben said it, is it true? Who do you trust?

Would Charles Widmore, who owns the ship and is Desmond's girlfriend's Penny's dad listen to Desmond regarding getting people off the island?

I guess it's a question of who do you trust more, Ben or Charles Widmore? Talk about a rock and a hard place.

Also, who staged the fake crash of Oceanic 815, Widmore or Ben's people? And should Sayid trust the Captain?

Next week we get to "Meet Kevin Johnson." Unless Sayid just kills him first.

ohmygod... Michael is the man that Ben has on the freighter! At least that's what everyone's being made to believe. That little almost-reveal of Michael at the end of this episode was wild, especially coupled with Sayid's look.

Desmond Hume has always been one of my favorite characters on Lost. While he's the man who's had all these unimaginable supernatural things happen to him, he's also the one most grounded in reality. He can see the future, but longs for the past; longs to make amends to the one person he cares so much about.

And as I think about it, in all of Desmond's flashbacks, there has been one thing in common. One "constant."

Penny.

So in this episode, "The Constant," we don't get a flashforward or a flashback, we get a time-warp. Because of the electrical storm the helicopter encounters as they leave the island (and because of the electro-magnetic exposure he got when the hatch blew up) Desmond goes back and forth from his current timeline to his time back in the army.

Everything about Desmond revolves around one thing: True Love. He's always trying to get back to Penny. And every episode about him is a love story. You've got to love that!

I'll admit most of this episode was way out there. Time-travel rats? Come on. Meeting Faraday in the past to make sure the future works? Uh huh. Okay. But the heart of the show was Desmond and Penny and now things start making sense.

I don't believe we were ever told why Desmond was in the brig; if they did mention he went AWOL, we now know. And we know the reason Penny is looking for him. It all fits together.

So far in this abbreviated season, this is by far my favorite episode.

Ah, the Kate FlashForward where we learn why she wasn't in prison for murdering her mother's abusive husband.

Fairly standard stuff. (Mom didn't testify against her and Kate got probation and can't leave the state of California.)

But wouldn't she have been tried where the murder took place? In the mid west? Shouldn't she be stuck in Iowa or Ohio or wherever it was?

Anyway, the flashforward was pretty standard. Jack still loves Kate, but can't be with her because of something that happened on the island. Might it involve Claire? We're told that only 8 people survived the crash, so two died on the island. Who they were is still a mystery. (Well, the real mystery is why they have to lie.)

Sayid is the clever one. Trading Miles for Charlotte.

But of course the most interesting part of this episode was Sayid's flashforward with him working for

Second episode of the season was a bit of a drag. We did get to meet the people who were there to rescue our stranded friends.

Oh, wait, they couldn't care less 'bout Jack and Co. They want Ben.

Apparently Ben goes around the world annoying people to the point of homicide.

So who do we have?

Some thoughts on The Beginning of the End...

1. Hurleysodes (What I'll now refer to any episode with a Hurely Flashback or Flashforward) are usually fun episodes. This one was just depressing.

2. Charlie is in fact dead. But in the typical Lost fashion. I heard that Boone will be back (depending on the strike).

3. Oceanic 6 - the six people who made it off the island. Jack, Hurley, Kate (and we find out) Sayid. After the Kate episode, we know Aaron made it out (if it's the same Aaron) but he's not counted since he wasn't on the manifest.

4. Hurley lies about not knowing Anna Lucia. So before they got rescued, they came up with their group lie.