The Televangelist: ‘Lost’ Season 6, Episode 1

As Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons once sang, “Oh, What a Night!”  Was there any way “Lost” could even begin to match the expectations created for the final season?  If, like me, you were rusty on your last few “Lost” episodes, ABC abided by the “no geek left behind act” prior to the season opener with a handy guide to the first five seasons.  And in case you still didn’t really feel the emotional resonance of that final season 5 episode, you were treated to seeing Juliet heroically sacrifice herself over and over and over again, detonating the bomb a total of four times by my count.  As if the epic factor needed to be raised!

Last night’s episode occurred in two parts - Part One was essentially a name check.  It’s helpful after the detonation of a hydrogen bomb to use the buddy-system to determine who is still alive here, where the bomb was detonated, and elsewhere, in an alternate time scape. Who didn’t learn that in Scouts? So let’s get that check list out of the way: those aboard the plane (Jack, Kate, Hurley, Rose, Bernard, Artz, Jin, Sun, Locke, Boone, Sayid, Desmond -or his ghost-, Cindy, Sawyer, Charlie, and later Claire in a cab outside LAX), and those on the island (Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Juliet, Sayid, Miles, Jin, Hurley, Ben, Lapedus, Not!Locke, Richard and Jacob’s ghost).  Missing?  Christian Shepard.  Can’t keep a hold of that guy.