Well Heather, this is one of the best thing i have ever read about the show. Really. I was only expecting your own theory for the third season. Your thoughts about the characters and the plot is really imppresive.

You have only one imprecision: Michael finds that the gun Jack gave him is empty when he tries to shot the bird.

Is also very interesting how the world have take this show. I download every chapter of the season 2 via bittorrent, but here --in my contry, Chile, the season 1 has just started and in prime time the sundays, the show wins the audience.

Its very imppresive. I think that the human nature of the show is the key.

I thought that JJ Abrahms pretty much handed the reins to Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, and isn't as involved in the continuing trials of our castaways as he was at the beginning.

Shouldn't you be praising those two for the show, and Abrahms for handing it over?

Did I miss something?

I haven't seen anyone else point this out but Desmond's keeping one Dickens book to read at the very end is true of the writer John Irving. He talks about it in one of his essays, I believe. Irving's havorite writer is Dickens and he wants there to be one Dickens book he can still look forward to enjoying. He keeps a copy of it anywhere he spends time. I think it's even the same book that Irving is saving.

I like what you're saying here. I really do. But I honestly felt somewhat betrayed by the writing in this season. The numbers that have to be entered into the computer where a huge plot arch and now I was told the writers basically said in an interview that they were dropping that focus. This makes them untrustworthy to me.

I feel like you've given then too much credit here. They did come through and answer a lot of key question while leaving a lot to look forward too, but the plot twist felt like the end of a bad 80's drama somehow and I smell cop-out somewhere down the beach.

Maybe I'm too cynical?

but what about the giant four toed foot?

I don't know which spelling is accurate; I don't know if we've seen it on-screen.

Also... he's not a priest. He's pretending to be one, but he took on the identity falsely. It's never been presented that he's taken any vows, been ordained, etc -- only that he took on the identify of a priest so he could smuggle heroin. And then lived the role.

I was very impressed with the finale: it's one of the subtlest cliffhangers I've ever seen.

I hope this bodes better for the series and than the Alias finale did.

I too was disappointed by the season finale, not because of it's content, but because I know whave to wait for the their d season to start.

However, I have a new mystery to unravel in the coming coming months, one that will only be solved by piecing together tiny clues that will be provided once a week or so here on Salon.

Has the sarcastic, flippant, "more than a little mean, but wonderful none the less" Heather been replaced by a thoughtful television critic? Will she no longer call her readers various food products? Will she still watch all of the worst reality television in order to make us feel better about the fact that we watch it as well?

Was it the marriage that did this? Has she been replaced by some sort of Stepford Wife?

Only time will tell...

Richard - yeah, what about the foot?!?!

Personally, I was more disturbed by the four toes than by the fact the rest of it was missing. I'm pretty sure it's something like "The Colossus of Springfield" - giant stature to Homer Simpson that once stood astride the harbor...

I have to disagree that the attraction of the show is the range of reactions from the characters to their circumstances. What really bothered me about the final episode was the lack of realism of those reactions. It's not that the ideas are too big or unexplained. It's that the character's react in ways that are too contrived, and are there just to further those ideas without any thought to believability.

Claire wanting to give her baby a vaccine that was forced on her by those who abducted her and tried to steal her baby? Then accepting the vaccine from someone she doesn't really trust anymore, but not using it because some guy she never met said it's pointless? Three people may be hurt badly, dying or dead, but no one seems to care all that much? Desmond going along with Locke's on his plan to stop pushing the button, even though he knows something bad started to happened the last time he was late pushing the button? Desmond telling Locke he saved his life by knocking on the door and looking into the hatch one night, but then not opening the hatch to meet him? And Desmond not telling the love of his life that he really did write to her from prison, but having absolute belief that winning some race will make everything alright? It's just too much to swallow.

And will someone please explain to me how paying a bunch of people to observe other people in a hatch but ignoring their observations is a brilliant psychological experiment. What observations into the human psyche were they hoping to discover? To see if someone would show up at a meaningless job if you pay them? Don't most people do that every day?

I like the byzantine story, and I can suspend disbelief to go along with the fantasy, but I can't buy the characters.

Lost is so clearly a response to the success of the Survivor series. It is basically the same idea, but with tons and tons of traditional dramatic shtick added. It is survivor "pumped up", as they love to say in the business. Which leads to interesting lines of speculation about what the JJ Abrams versions of "Blow Out" or "So You Think You Can Dance" would look like.