Fancast: Inside TV

Less than one week to go until the new season of Lost. You can watch a full course of tantalizing "rescue" previews and backstories here. For those needing more of a refresher, ABC will be showing an enhanced version of this two-hour season three finale next Wednesday (January 30), the night before the show’s return for season four.

The enhanced version will feature on-screen facts, clues, and new information on the backstories of the flight 815 survivors. As for that much-anticipated season four opener, it’s titled "The Beginning of the End," and in it the survivors, feeling that their rescue is close at hand, don't know whether to believe Charlie's final message that the people claiming to liberate them are not who they seem to be.

Lost returns, finally. Tonight is a re-run of last season's all-important finale, and then tomorrow night starts the new season. For the Lost obsessed, and they are legions strong, the Los Angeles Times "Show Tracker" has performed a service "to help ease your transition back into the feverish world of flashback parsing and narrative puzzle-solving." They've put together a list of 48 unanswered questions that they "hope will be answered in the series' 48 remaining episodes."

48. Will the WGA strike permanently disrupt the original plan to end the series with three seasons of 16 episodes apiece?

47. What is Charles Widmore's association with the Dharma Initiative?

46. Who were those guys in the icebound monitoring station at the end of Season 2?

Wondering how "Lost" fared on it's return following an eight-month absence of original episodes? It easily won last Thursday night's ratings war, capturing 16.1 million viewers and trouncing the nearest its closest competitor by 4.2 million viewers (CBS’ “C.S.I.” - 11.9 million).

Popular Mechanics wondered if the satellite phone technology the Lost castaways used in last week's season return was viable. Was it legit? Or was it a a writer's clever take? Good question. Here's the answer.

In addition to watching Lost clips on Fancast, there was an excellent update on the series in yesterday's Boston Herald: "Two episodes down, six to go and about a million unanswered questions. The mysteries of ABC’s “Lost” (Thursdays at 9 p.m.) continue to tease, tantalize and torture home viewers. (Warning: Mindless speculation bordering on spoilers ahead!) What do these supposed rescuers want with Ben (Michael Emerson)? Why is Hurley (Jorge Garcia) so terrified in the future? Why does Jack (Matthew Fox) think they have to go back? What mistake did he make? Who was in the coffin? Who is Kate (Evangeline Lilly) with now? How were they rescued? It’s probably easier to decode a Dharma Initiative film than to decipher what will happen in season four. This week, Sayid (Naveen Andrews) and Kate search for Locke (Terry O’Quinn) to settle the tensions among the various groups of castaways. On Feb. 21, Kate’s recklessness threatens her relationship with Sawyer (Josh Holloway). What else can you probably expect?" Read the rest of the story.

The LA Times' resident Lost expert Patrick Day writes, "It's astounding how fast this season of "Lost" has taken off. Remember last year, when we spent episode after episode watching Jack, Sawyer and Kate sit around in cages? Not this year. It's a testament to the incredible amount of information the writers have been able to pack into each of the first three episodes that each one sparks a debate on which revelation was the most important of the episode.

"In my house, my girlfriend seemed quite taken with the revelation at the end of Thursday's episode: Post-rescue Sayid (Naveen Andrews) remade as Sayid Bond (with unfortunate Fabio hair), flying around the world and killing people for Ben (Michael Emerson). Who are these people Ben is having him kill? I'd say a big clue was found on the wrist of Elsa, the woman Sayid had to kill in this episode. Her bracelet, no doubt given to her by her mysterious employer, looks to be an exact duplicate of the one worn by Naomi, the freighter rescuer killed by Locke. Naomi's bracelet was inscribed by R.G. So who is R.G.?"

Get up to speed with everything you need to know about Lost before April 24 ushers in a whole new batch of strike-halted Flight 815 craziness with this four-minute recap.

Lost returns next Thursday, April 24th. If you haven't seen the show (for shame!) catch up with this everything you need to know about Lost in 4-minutes clip, and then read E!'s Watch With Kristin juicy interview about the upcoming new episodes with Executive Producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, affectionately deemed "Darlton."

This year's huge season-finale shocker is being referred to as the "Frozen Donkey Wheel." It does not involve donkeys, wheels or anything of an en-suffix nature. (Now it's totally obvious, right?) Darlton won't say a word about whether anyone is dying this season. Carlton says: "If we basically were to tease that there was going to be a death, sort of like when Shannon died, it kind of lead everybody to chase it down and spoil it. On the other hand, if we were to say that everyone is safe, that would kind of really ruin the dramatic impact of the finale. So we're excited about what's happening. There are definitely some very large and seismic events that will happen to our castaways between now and the end of the season. By the end of the season, some people's fates will be clear and others will not be so clear."Something big is up for Claire. "I think there is a very compelling event involving Claire's character that will take place between now and the season finale." (Rumors include everything from a kiss to the kiss of death...) The flash-forwards and flashbacks are a "mosaic," and when the "mosaic" is complete, the story of Lost is complete. Damon explains: "There is the story on the island, which we perceive to be the present, and then there's the story of the Oceanic 6, which is happening off the island in the future. But if we were to switch perspectives at any time and suddenly we were off the island, focusing on the Oceanic 6 trying to get back, that would be the present, and what was happening back on the island would be either a parallel present, possibly a future, possibly a past. Who knows? So when you hear that whoosh noise, the question becomes 'Where does it take you?' Hopefully, if we do our jobs right in the finale, in the eight months in between the finale and the season premiere next year, the audience will once again be asking, 'What the hell are they going to do in the season premiere?' And that means we're keeping people on their toes. And that's our intent."Regarding Jaters and Skaters, Damon says: "All we can say is that Sawyer is not one of the Oceanic 6 and Jack and Kate are. And obviously, there will be a huge focus in these final three hours of the show that comprise the finale in terms of how that series of events transpires, and ultimately what happens to Sawyer, and it's all on the axis of the love triangle. So we think that both fans of Sawyer and Kate, otherwise known as the Skaters from what I'm told, and Jack and Kate, the Jaters, will have a bounty of interesting romantic scenes."

Continue reading on E!, and then watch a Their Only Chance Of Survival">sneak peek clip from the new episode.

Jimmy Kimmel, an avid Lost supporter, sat down for an interview with Executive Producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (these guys are making the rounds!) before tomorrow night's all new episode.

Kimmel: The island heals some people and doesn't heal others. For instance, Ben needed an operation from Jack to beat cancer, but it seems like Sawyer gets injured every sixth episode and by the next, he's fine. Is that just a TV thing?
Carlton Cuse: Wow. [Laughs] Where are the softball questions, Jimmy? What about the warm-up?
Damon Lindelof: The short answer is, it's not arbitrary. Yes, there is a certain degree of compressing story. The idea that everything you've seen has really happened in 110 days of real time feels fantastical, but that's the convention of the show. However, who gets sick and how fast they heal is something we talk about. In the second episode back [airing May 1], that becomes a major issue in the story. One character gets sick and another who has had experience being healed voices exactly that question: Is there any rhyme or reason to it?
Cuse: The healing is related to the degree to which you are in communion with the island at any given moment. Perhaps Ben getting sick and needing surgery had to do with the fact that he had fallen out of favor, that his connection with the island was maybe not what it had been in the past.

Continue reading the rest of the interview on TV Guide, and watch previews from tomorrows episode here.

Things have become pretty bonkers on Lost this season, and tonight's all new episode is no exception. How so? For starters, an unidentified dead body washes up on the beach, and the way in which the Oceanic 6 are rescued will be revealed. See more in this preview video.

By Jonathan Weichsel
Fancast.com

So much to say about season ender of Lost, so many emotions, such a huge season -- not doubt the best -- and as I sat through this experience, everything I want to say boils down to this: Wasn’t it a great episode? Rather what a great episode! I’m already dying for next season. We start right where last season’s finale left off. Kate has just driven off, but she turns right back to tell Jack off some more. We learn that the man in the coffin is Jeremy Benthem. Well, the big Twilight Zone twist at the end of the episode reveals that Jeremy Benthem is Locke, so, I’m going to discuss this episode as if we already know this.

Kate does not care that Locke is dead. When Locke came back about a month ago, and said something to her- she doesn’t say what- she thought he was crazy. Jack believed Locke. So, from what we learn later, Jake and Kate have been arguing about returning to the island for some time now. Not your typical lover’s quarrel… By the way, we learn for sure that these events are happening three years after they escape from the island. And, for those of you who didn’t pick it up last year, Jack has been celebrating the anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death all day, one of the many reasons he looks so fucked up.