The most recent episode of "Lost," the compelling "The Man From Tallahassee," is probably the best episode of Season 3. While it's clearly better than most of Season 2, which played out like a turgid melodrama stripped of any real consequence, it's also not quite up to the level of Season 1, which barreled along like a runaway train while successfully using a character's individual backstory to deepen the main island plot. Granted, it's not exactly rocket science to psychologically link a given character's past with whatever they're going through on the island — Charlie leaned on drugs and now can't emotionally support himself, or something — but when it cooks, it cooks.

What made the episode so great was Jack's willingness to morally compromise in order to get things done and pursue what he perceived to be the greatest good for the islanders, namely, growing somewhat friendly with the Others and even offering medical care for Ben in order to secure passage off the island on the mythical submarine and possibly get help back in the real world and return later to rescue his friends. Jack has been the (often overly) moral leader of the group since the first year, playing the part of the great physician and watching over the flock of castaways to keep them safe and even journeying into dangerous parts of the island to rescue the one who'd gone astray or been kidnapped. He was an occasionally flat but ultimately noble representative version of all things good and true, which was the center of his beef with Locke: Locke was willing to redefine his worldview after landing on the island, and in fact deemed it necessary to mining the island for all its potential rewards, but Jack held even stronger to the ethical code that had guided him back home.

But Jack, after three seasons of getting jerked around, is finally starting to see the light by going dark. When Kate, Locke, and Sayid attempted to rescue Jack and wound up getting predictably captured in the process, Jack wasn't tossed into lock-up with them but actually given the opportunity to visit Kate and interrogate her. The scene was a fabulous inversion of the trials Jack had gone through while held captive by the Others, and the way he casually dragged up a chair and asked Kate just what she was up to spoke volumes about Jack's enlightened way of looking at things. Kate asked him, "So, you're with them now?" And Jack looked back at her with a mixture of annoyance, defiance, and even mild confusion, saying, "I'm not with anyone, Kate." Jack wasn't simply using the Others until he could escape back to his camp, or even get off the island. He was merely taking advantage of something that would first serve his interests and later, possibly, those of his friends. Locke has always been doing his own thing because of what he felt he owed the island after it magically healed him, which is why his decision to scuttle the sub and keep everyone trapped there, though lamentable, wasn't really surprising. No, the show turned a corner not by digging deeper into Locke's personal demons — though the episode was typical Locke-centric greatness, since Terry O'Quinn is hands-down the best actor on the series — but by finally setting Jack free to see where he goes. By eliminating the hero's strict moral code and having him venture into the surprisingly accepting waters of ethical unaccountability, "Lost" may be poised to have its characters do something I've been wanting them to do for a long time: Grow.

[A special dedication and salutation up front to the citizens of Curious People for a Curious America. This has been a long time coming.]

O "Lost."

Things have been going pretty poorly for the castaways for a long time now, and though the show isn't out of the woods (or jungle) yet, it just might be headed for a turnaround. Might.

• The biggest problem facing the show is that very, very little happens in each episode. Since half of each weekly installment is devoted to a flashback (the merits of which are also up for debate), only 20ish minutes per eipsode are used for actual plot progression. It's like watching one season of "24" stretched over three years, and it's more than little trying. The narrative boredom is compounded by the fact that this season, instead of sprinkling in repeats with the new episodes, the show took a 13-week break between its fall and spring segments. "Not in Portland," the most recent episode, feels so far removed from last fall's events I can't remember anything but the last few minutes of the fall "finale." (To be addressed shortly.) As for what's happening with the rest of the islanders: Who the hell knows.

• Juliet's ex-husband is Edmund Burke, apparently named afer this guy. This is not in any way deep or significant or a sign of writerly skill. The Wachowski brothers weren't brilliant for naming their hero the prefix for "new" and the anagram for "one," either. "Lost" already has Locke, Rousseau, and Hume. Adding Edmund Burke to their roster is neither original nor meaningful.

• Edmund is played by Zeljko Ivanek. You should all learn his name.

• Juliet is also one of the few hot grownups on TV. (Most women are in their 20s playing 18 or in their 30s playing 26.) I don't really know where to go with that. I'm just saying, if she made a movie with Diane Lane ... boy howdy.

• This is probably one of the better episodes of this season. The six episodes last fall had sporadic moments of greatness — the opening of the season premiere that revealed the second island was right up there — but on the whole, the best part of those half-dozen installments was the final moments of the previous episode, "I Do," which was a Kate-centric episode showing how she kept on breaking hearts and running from her problems back in her old life (this is easily the billionth time that's been pointed out to us). But it ended with a spectacularly taut sequence that recalled the show's heady early days: The stakes were high, the choices were clear, the consequences were unknown, and something big and bad was about to rain down.

• Jack's decision to use Ben's life as leverage to free Kate and Sawyer was a strong one, and Juliet's complicity in planning the murder finally gave her character some depth beyond the ice cold schoolmarm vibe she was putting out. "Not in Portland" picks up in that heated moment of balance, with Jack screaming at Kate over the walkie to run and escape with Sawyer.

• Juliet's backstory, though it follows the same pattern as everyone else's — get involved in something bad in the real world, look for similar situations on the island, attempt to right past wrongs, repeat — is rewarding because it actually has a bearing on the overall story and the reasons the island(s) exist in the first place. But for every sly hint the show makes at the details, it also beats the viewer over the head with meaning.

• For example: Juliet tells Shady Hispanic Doctor (Nestor Carbonell) that she can't go work for his creepy-ass experimental hospital without her husband's okay, and that will never happen, so unless he gets hit by a bus, she's stuck in Miami. SHD laughs it off, but sure enough, not too much later, Edmund is steamrolled like that kid in Final Destination. It's pretty clear that SHD arranged the vehicular manslaughter, which is driven home by the fact that he shows up atthe morgue to pass on his condolences, and he just so happens to have Ethan in tow. The shock of recognition as Juliet puts the puzzle together is wonderful, but it's completely undone by the fact that she keeps telling SHD about how she'd mentioned the bus thing before, and then SHD has to deny this, and blah blah go on already. The scene would have been stronger if she'd figured things out and then internalized it and gone right to "Why are you here?" The series wants to be a smart mystery, and that won't happen until it respects its viewers enough to expect them to keep up with the emotional changes of the characters and not spell out every little thing.

• What the hell happened to Walt and MercutioMichael? Oh, that's right, they sailed off into the sunset and were promptly forgotten by everyone. I haven't seen a series so spectacularly blunder characters since "The West Wing" phased out Ainsley.

• I strongly identified with Jack's mix of what could be called bemused indignation when Juliet informed him that yes, he would have to go back to his cell until his fate could be decided. That look is the look I usually have when watching "Lost" now: I just can't quite believe this all still happening.

• I've written before that "Lost" feels like two shows trying to co-exist in the same space, with one show following the medical conspiracy of Dharma and the other connecting the castaways through unbelievable interpersonal contrivances¹. The series is straining under the weight of its breadth, which is why "Not in Portland" could herald good things to come in that it represents a small but marked attempt to streamline the two warring shows-within-a-show. The relevance of Juliet's backstory provides welcome hints at the kind of genetic hijinks the Dharma folks have been up to, as well as explain why she's on the island and how she relates to its inhabitants. Granted, "Lost" still has a long way to go if it ever wants to come close to recapturing the fiery brilliance of its first season, which blended mystery and action in a kind of pop art/comic book mix that is poorly imitated to this day, most notably by "Lost" itself. But the show seems like it might finally have gotten the crap out of its system, and could be once more returning to its roots. I'm hopeful.

^{1. I stole that phrase from JMW's latest review. Just so you know.}

I miss "Lost."

Sure, on the surface that sounds like an easy enough problem to solve. The show's third season starts in a few weeks, and the second season just came out on DVD. But re-watching the first few episodes of the second season, I was struck again by the problems that would come to plague the show's sophomore year. In no particular order:

• Man oh man, this show is boring. The Season 1 episodes always presented a specific challenge: Leave the cave/beach/jungle and go find the water/food/pilot/cocaine in the cave/beach/jungle. The characters were constantly moving, and the flashbacks beautifully illustrated each castaway's traumatic past and how it had led them to Australia and how it connected with any number of other characters. The story's development had an organic quality, the crystallization of the growing relationships stretching out before the viewer. Unfortunately, this all came to a screeching halt in Season 2. The show did more than just get stuck in neutral: It fell down the hatch and got stuck in a giant hole in the ground.

• Seeing the characters walk into the hatch for the first time is completely different than when I saw it happen last fall: Whereas I was then filled with a sense of awe and foreboding, this time around I felt nothing but a sinking dread as the castaways discovered the dank, circular room that would come to dominate their lives and stories for the season.

• I've only made it through the first five episodes in the past week, which definitely shows a lack of motivation on my part. As I slid the first disc into the DVD player over the weekend (I'd delayed the inevitable till Saturday, hoping that would help), I felt none of the familiar rush of anticipation I usually get when starting a newly purchased season of TV. Always a bad sign. I watched out of duty, not joy.

• It doesn't help matters that I'm watching Season 2 of "Lost" so soon after re-watching Season 2 of "Veronica Mars," which is easily one of the best shows on TV and definitely the best show that no one's watching (and it's only on against "Law & Order: Another One," "Standoff," "The Unit," and "The Knights of Prosperity," which means it's officially the best show airing in the Tuesday 9 p.m./8 CT time slot this fall, so you'd better all tune in). "VM" packs more into some episodes than other shows do all year, something that became painfully obvious when I finally struggled my way through to the fifth episode of "Lost" Season 2, which is actually titled "... and Found" but could more accurately be called "The One Where Absolutely Nothing Of Consequence Happens."

• The "... and Found" episode was another Jin/Sun flashback, which means it will merely be boring; a Charlie-centric episode is enough to make me throw things at my TV. And instead of continuing the flashbacks from Season 1, where Jin starts to be drawn into a life of violent crime by his wife's father, the whole stupid episode was about how they met. The island story involved Mercutio, Sawyer, and Jin being rounded up by the Tailies and setting out for the good guys' side of the island. (I'm already eager, by the way, for Ana Lucia to take one in the chest.) The only moment worth anything was when Jin and Mr. Eko hid in the bushes and saw the Others walk by, clad in tattered pants, one of them dangling a child's teddy bear. That moment could easily have been grafted into another episode involving the Tailies' trek through the jungle, which would have bought the producers an entire episode to, I don't know, make something happen.

• Maybe it's because I've been spoiled by Sorkin and Whedon, but the dialogue on "Lost" has long since degenerated into vague generalities that do their best to remain monosyllabic: "It's all going to be ruined," "This isn't right," "I can't—..." followed by a trail-off. I'd give anything if these people talked in complete sentences.

• Only five episodes in, I can already see the show getting bogged down in itself and losing its sense of purpose, of direction. The numbers, the hatch, the symbology: It becomes a heaviness that weighs on the characters and the viewers, crushing them.

• And if it was a giant electromagnetic snafu that wrecked the plane, what's the point of having everyone be connected to everyone?

• There's only so long a show can draw out a mystery before people get tired of caring (call it the Twin Peaks Theorem: an inverse relationship exists between unsolved mystery and viewer interest). "Lost" is great at execution — introducing new mysteries, broadening the puzzle — but it's horrible at resolution. Answers come few and far between, which used to be exciting but is now just frustrating.

That said, I'm still a loyal viewer. Hell, I stuck with "The West Wing" through its abysmal last three seasons; I know what it means to commit to a show and see it through. I just hope that "Lost" gets back some of that momentum, that magic, that made it so captivating in the first place. Fewer flashbacks and more plot progression and interaction in the present would be a good way to start.

That pic's mainly for my dad, who's developed a near pathological crush on Evangeline Lilly, despite her early work. Anyway, there you go, Dad. It's gonna be a long summer of reruns, so let the photo tide you over.

As for the rest of you, I know you probably weren't even able to sleep or urinate or eat or do anything out of sheer anticipation of my knee-jerk, off-the-cuff reactions to last night's second-season finale of "Lost." Well, ask and it shall be given unto you.

• When Desmond, in a fit of drunken rage (the best kind), told Locke that there's nothing left but the island, he referred to it as a "snowglobe," which I couldn't help think was a thinly veiled reference/jab to "St. Elsewhere," the events of which were all inside some autistic kid's head while he played with a snowglobe. I'd say it's the writers telling us that such theories are bunk, and that the whole show isn't happening inside Hurley's head or something, which would be beyond stupid.

• Last night's episode was merely the last one of the season, whereas the first year's climax was a full-blown finale: The stakes were higher, they packed a lot more action and plot into two hours, and the parallelism of the cuts between the castaways boarding the plane before takeoff and watching them blow open the hatch were heartbreaking.

• The Dharma Initiative is shaping up to be this show's version of Milo Rambaldi. For those who didn't watch "Alias," Rambaldi was a 15th-century inventor whose prophecies unfolded on the show and whose writings influenced the show's overall direction, writing, story lines, etc. Depending on how the "Lost" showrunners handle it, Dharma could be very cool, like Rambaldi, or very bad, like Jenna Elfman.

• How depressed am I that I actually made that Elfman joke.

• Speaking of "Alias": The shift "Lost" seemed to make last night, away from the castaways as subjects and toward the story of Dharma and the island, could in time be seen as the moment the show decided to reboot its main focus, and its future success will be judged on whether viewers are willing to accept that. In the middle of the second season of "Alias," the good guys won, and I'm not talking a minor victory; I mean they beat the huge syndicate of villains, the Alliance, they'd been fighting all along. They took down SD-6, the local cell run by Arvin Sloane, as well as every SD outpost around the world. Halfway through the second year, the show abruptly changed from Sydney's efforts to take down SD-6 while living a double life to her attempts as a CIA agent to pursue the now independently evil Sloane, and the rest of the series hinged upon whether this switch was pulled off efficiently (it was) and whether it was a good idea (not completely). By abandoning the show's original conceit of double agents, double lives, and the pursuit of justice via vengeance, "Alias" lost most of the energy that had kept it going, so that by the end of its third season, it had run out of emotional and creative steam. Case in point: The fourth-season finale involved Russian zombies. So while it's possible that "Lost" could survive such a creative realignment, if indeed that's what happened last night, whether such a move would be wise won't be made clear until next season. Offhand, though, I'd say it's a bad idea.

• Eko was pretty stupid to think that dynamite would open the blast doors. They're called blast doors for a reason, man. Crazy priest.

• First Locke, then Rousseau. Now Desmond Hume. I get it, okay, guys? I get it. You took Intro to Philosophy. I get it. But knock it off. There hasn't been a forced mishmash of supposedly relevant philosophy this bad since the Matrix films, and we all know how those turned out.

• So the plane crashed because it was sucked down by the electromagnet? What's the point of having all the characters know each other from before the crash if the accident was Dharma-related, i.e., didn't involve them at all?

• There are now two shows trying to co-exist within the same space: The first involves Dharma and the hatches and Desmond and the electromagnetic clusterf**k that wrecked the plane, not to mention the multi-layered sociological experiments that were performed there. The second show wants to make use of the fact that the castaways all had tangential relationships before the crash, and that something pretty spooky and otherworldly is going on with the island, see for example the island's ability to restore Locke's ability to walk, Walt's natural psychokinetic abilities launching off the charts, the fact that everyone seems to have pretty relevant dreams about ghosts and/or the future, the whispering voices in the woods, the duplicitous Others, the black sentient cloud of whatever that flies around and at one point had a stare-down with Eko, etc. I like the second show.

And just like last year, I'll have a solid four months for my questions to be answered. ABC is supposed to air the first seven or so episodes this fall, then break, then air the rest. Here's hoping they stick to that, since the uneven repeat schedule this year was annoying. And here's hoping that J.J. Abrams gets back in the saddle to do some writing and directing. He should bring back David Fury, too. "Lost" promised to be a great show, and it was, and it could be great again. Just not the way things are going.

Two quick points, and, well, you know:

• It's time once again for The Pajiba trade round-up. We spent all week putting that together for you people, so enjoy it.

• Maybe Desmond's in that boat that started cruising toward the island right as Hurley was getting all weepy over the still-warm corpse of Libby (who would never sleep with you, dude, so this kind of separation was probably inevitable). At any rate, it's kind of a relief to see the slope-eyed and definitely testicularly enhanced Michelle Rodriguez gone from the show. And I'm glad Sayid is still smart. But man oh man, tonight's finale has nowhere near the interest going in as last year's, which had the hatch and pirate ships and kidnapped babies and dynamite and all manner of goodness. I'll still watch tonight, though. I must obey the inscutable exhortations of my soul, for those who know what I mean. I just have to watch.

Okay. I'm pretty close to giving up.

The Historian Emeritus proved to be remarkably prescient when, at the start of the second season of "Lost," he expressed doubts as to whether the show could maintain its peak performance. The first season was amazing, but being kind of stubborn and hopeful in these situations, I said that the second season would surely be as good, and maybe even better, since some shows really find their footing and take off in their second seasons.

But I was dead wrong.

Look, I'm all for Bernard wanting to get his interracial swerve on, but last night's episode was another pointless one-off with no connection to the rest of the season. Also, why would Eko and Charlie build a church on the beach, where storms or boars or psychically manifested polar bears could knock it down? Just have it in the hatch. There are plenty of rooms, just borrow one for an hour. No problem. Plus, watching Libby laugh at Hurley's jokes in the ending montage was a little unsettling, since she's totally scamming him for the cash. She's nuts, Hurley. Let her go. And then there's Jack and Kate getting all grindy in that booby-trap net, rubbing around in what could be one the show's thinnest metaphors yet.

Worst of all, there are only three real episodes left, and the show doesn't return till May. Be sure and check this site to see when the show is a repeat or a new episode. There's precious little time for this season to pull out the nose-dive into medicrity its been enjoying most of the year, but it night surprise me yet. Like I said, I'm hopeful.

---

"Passover's about the telling of a great story to people who've never heard it before. It's usually children, but Gentiles will do."

I got home from work after 9 p.m., but decided to catch the last 40 minutes of "Lost" anyway, since the show has long since regressed past the point where you need to actually watch every minute of an episode to get the full effect of the story. And within 30 seconds, I sadly called the Dave-centered revelation, since I've seen Fight Club and A Beautiful Mind and the "Normal Again" episode, not to mention that it was pretty much the most natural twist you could want.

The first season of "Lost" was extremely well-plotted. A friend of mine recently nailed it when she said that throughout the first season's arc, each individual episode was driven by a journey: Somebody was always going across the island to get a radio or a briefcase or dynamite from a pirate ship or whatever. But this season, everyone just seems to be sitting around, not doing much.

Plus, it's beyond disappointing that there are only four episodes left and it looks as of now that the Henry Gale thing will be bigger than it should have been. Henry should be the doorway to the finale, not the destination.

P.S. It would have been funnier if Hurley had recognized Libby because she was a porn star. At least that would have been different from the truth, which turned out to be pretty predictable. And she's definitely chasing him for the money.

---

"Do you know what I do when I feel I'm about to lose it a little? I buy a lamp."

"Well, lady, you must have one well-lit apartment, because you turned a corner somewhere."

Can I just say: Finally.

Basically, I'm going to pretend that most of the second season of Lost never happened, like the Matrix sequels or the Bush administration. Last week's "Lockdown" episode featured movement on the Henry Gale plot (I never trusted that guy), some slight progression with the love-hate-animal-attraction between Jack and Sawyer, and even a reappearance from Libby the Trashy Tail Section Girl, who has got to know that Hurley's rich back in the States, since no sane woman would tease any man with the strip-down wardrobe show Libby gave Hurley in the hatch back in the day.

It was the first good episode in weeks, not least because it dealt with Locke, one of the three genuinely rounded characters in the bunch. Locke's flashback also had an actual bearing on the current island situation, something the writers forgot about with the stupid Charlie-can-see-ghosts and the-island-gave-Jin-magically-restored-sperm plot lines. You know Locke's heart was gonna get broken about 45 minutes in, but that didn't make it hurt any less. Killer. Great stuff.

They've only got five more episodes this season to turn things around, and I think they can do it. Pull J.J. Abrams off postproduction and publicity for Mission: Impossible 3, since that thing's gonna be huge regardless. Let him write and produce one of the few good shows on network TV. The show needs him.

---

Also, in the interest of turning you, dear reader, into an all-around better person, I'm inaugurating the Quote of the Day. It won't always happen, but when it does, be prepared to change for the better. And now:

"Hello."

"AHH!"

"Why'd you scream?"

"I meant to say hi."

"What happened?"

"I misspoke."

I know I expressed some concerns recently about the internal consistencies of Lost, and though I still maintain that some hygiene issues are just too big to be ignored, and that Jack's hair should really be noticeably longer, I've got a bigger bone to pick with the show.

Nothing's happening.

Sure, on the surface there seems to be plenty going on, especially compared to most other shows on network TV. But creator J.J. Abrams sets the bar high, and the show's not living up to it. The first season of Abrams' Alias was a phenomenal display of action, mystery, and emotional conflict; except for the random clip show episode where Sydney is interrogated by the FBI (repped by Terry O'Quinn), the entire season is tight, and almost flawlessly paced. Lost took the same mix of soap and sci-fi to epic new heights in its groundbreaking first season, a year that may prove impossible to top. Maybe it's because Abrams' energies have been focused elsewhere of late, but Lost is definitely suffering from a sophmore slump. The best evidence of this?

Nothing's happening.

The show's myriad plot lines, once so tightly interwoven, have become almost helplessly unraveled. Michael's been off in the woods looking for Walt for who knows how long, and except to make a few cameos to welcome Shannon to an apparently pretty Twin Peaks-ish afterlife, Walt hasn't been seen all year. Sawyer finally went bad again and swiped the island's stockpile of guns, an arc which was summarily dropped the next episode when Sawyer spent his time chasing a tree frog.

We're 14 episodes along in season two. At this time last year, Locke and Boone had already found and begun to excavate the hatch; it was revealed that Sawyer knew Jack's father; Claire had been kidnapped; the anagrammatically evil Ethan Rom had made his presence known; Sayid had already been captured by Rousseau and escaped; Charlie had already kicked the monkey off his back; and, of course, Walt was psychically manifesting giant polar bears, and possibly the daily rainfall. Last season was packed with drama, while this season has slowed to a crawl.

Maybe it was impossible for the show to continue on the stellar trajectory it charted its first year. But rather than continue to push the characters forward, to have them grow, the writing this season (again, with the exception of "The Long Con") has been stuck in neutral. The best dramas are ones whose characters show marked change over time, which Lost pulled off in its first year: The characters weren't the same at the end as they were when they started. But this entire season has felt like one long, turgid answer to the question posed in last year's finale of just what's down the hatch. The answer, it seems, is less than we hoped.

I love Lost, but:

How can Jack and Sawyer maintain that perfect Indy-level of stubble? And how can Locke stay clean-shaven?

Shouldn't Kate's dye job be fading?

Where do the women get the makeup?

What happens when the women run out of tampons? (This could be an amazing, murder-filled season finale.)

Why isn't Jack's hair growing?

Why hasn't anyone suffered food poisoning or some kind of food or plant allergy?

How many olive-colored wife-beaters did Sayid bring with him?

Why aren't the castaways tanner and thinner? According to the show's chronology, they've been stranded for like two months. Their bodies should really reflect it.

And on a completely unrelated note, how can Ferris be so smart but still expect the odometer to roll back by driving in reverse? This is unacceptable, and takes me out of the movie every time. It's like when Johnny goes from evil to good in the literal final seconds and hands Daniel the trophy. It just doesn't hold water.