lost |lôst; läst| (adj): (1) unable to find one’s way; not knowing one’s whereabouts.

This is where I believe the writers currently are. Lost returned to us last night after the winter hiatus and Captain Obvious was pretty psyched having waited through the break tiding himself over with Gilligan Island episodes. Oh that crafty Professor, I bet you he would’ve figured out that smoke monster by now. So heading into the new episode there were questions a’ plenty regarding our castaways, the others and all the other random island happenings. Surely they’d at least focus this episode on them, right? Hee hee, right.

The past two three several episodes have been mainly focusing on Jack, Kate and Sawyer, living as <s>prisoners</s> guests of the Others on a small island about two miles off the coast of the main island. I guess you consider it their ’summer island’ for when life gets boring on the mainland. Before christmas vacation we watched Kate and Sawyer get their dirty bits all tangled up, Jack and Juliette kinda hover around an interesting storyline and Ben wandering around, creeping out the bugs. Then what ho, Jack discovers Ben’s spinal tumor and under much duress (and prodding by Juliette as a potential way of killing Ben without anyone knowing he meant to kill Ben) agrees to operate on him. So Jack intentionally tears Ben’s kidney sac (how porn does that sound?) and tells the Others he’ll let Ben die if Sawyer and Kate don’t go free. Yadda yadda, Kate and Sawyer escape and this week’s episode begins.

We learn about Juliette’s background back home. I hate the way Lost lives in flashbacks so I’m not going to reveal it all slow and methodical-like but instead just tell you what the fuck is up with her. She’s a doctor, pretty good one too researching fertility problems using experimental medications. She worked under her ex-husband, career wise and not in that other dirty way, and was pretty happy remaining anonymous and obscure in her research but then interviews with a company that’s ‘not based in Portland‘ who offers her the chance to study some really screwed up cases involving really screwed up reproductive system behavior. She tells them no, that her ex wouldn’t even let her if she wanted to and that the only way she could ever escape all that would be her ex-husband getting hit by a bus. Then she wigs out and takes off, retuning to her office. Outside her building, however, she runs into her ex-husband who, predictably, gets hit by a bus. The company she interviewed with approaches her again a few days later and bada-bing she’s now on the island.

Meanwhile Jack paces around only to discover Ben has regained consciousness mid-surgery. He requests to speak to Juliette who later confides in Jack that Ben offered to let her finally return home if Jack would just finish the surgery and save Ben’s life. In return for this Juliette would help Sawyer and Kate escape and eventually does.

Kate and Sawyer in the meantime wander around the jungle a bit until they run into Alex (Rouseaux’ and Ben’s daughter) who offers to lend the two her boat if they help rescue her boyfriend from what turns out to be some sort of Others reeducation center. They break into the place and find him in a room strapped to a chair in front of a large screen flashing images and messages at him. I’m sure all the hardcore Lostreopithicans out there will be slow-mo’ing their way through that footage. Probably hints about why the second season existed if all they did was introduce and then slowly kill off all the tail section members. So they break ol’ boy out and make their way to the beach where Nina finds her boat and all is about to be hokee-dokee when Danny emerges from the jungle and holds them at gunpoint. Sawyer starts to move toward him but Juliette is faster, emerging from the jungle and shooting Danny, letting all of them go with the exception of Alex who can’t be allowed to leave on account of her dad’s wrath. Kate and Sawyer (with Alex’s boyfriend in tow) have absolutely nothing to say about this and happily take off and… LOST.

So what did we learn this week? Well. Nothing. Really, entirely and absolutely nothing. They took what most shows would treat as ten minutes or even a commercial break and stretched it into an hour, and what for? I’m all for back story but there are better ways of doing it than creeping along. This episode reminded me of every term paper I wrote in elementary school where I would start them off, “I thought long and hard about what to write about with regards to ‘SUBJECT’ and in doing so discovered that I found ‘SUBJECT’ to be very, very interesting in a lot of unexpected ways. I say unexpected because I didn’t think I would feel this way about ‘SUBJECT’ but in doing my research I kept finding myself more and more and more and more interested in ‘SUBJECT’ and that came as a big, big surprise to me.” That would continue for about twelve pages and in the end I always got a D, and rightfully so. I learned my lesson back then, don’t fluff up what doesn’t need to be fluffed. Concise is appreciated, brevity rewarded and mentally jerking off onto paper is never warranted. I feel that’s what Lost failed to realize last night. They mentally jerked off all over the audience and didn’t even bother giving us a towel.