The TV Zone

Ya know, I don't often confess to this sort of thing - being the sort of fellow who watches TV with a jaundiced eye, and fully expecting the worst and often getting the worst. But last night's 44 minutes of "Lost" were among the most satisfying forty-four minutes in front of the tube in my life.

It wasn't merely a brilliant episode, which pushed the Mythology forward more rapidly and richly than any episode in my memory, but it was an emotional release. This, I say, by way of explaining that I actually cried when Penny and Desmond finally - finally, oh God, FINALLY - connected. Yes, what a silly ass I am - shedding a couple of hot tears over a reunion we've been waiting a year for, when the world is going to hell, and the economy along with it, and Newsday whacking 120 jobs...Yet here I am, blubbering over Penny and Desmond.

"I love you," said Desmond.

"I love you too," said Penny.

"Me, too, me TOO," said a silly ass who pretends to be a TV critic.

Oh what a fool am I, but who cares? This is why we watch TV - to escape the follies of our daily existence, and no TV show I can think of has more successfully achieved that standard - OK, maybe "The Sopranos," maybe "The Wire," maybe... - than this one.

There wasn't one, single, solitary false note, or at least nothing that let us momentarily try to reconcile Desmond's past history on "Lost" with his time-travel toggling last night. It was an episode in and of itself, pulling in just enough back story to enrich that spectacular climax. (And that wonderful off-key endnote, when Faraday stares at the piece of paper and learns that HIS "constant" will be Desmond.)

As always, "Lost" was a joyous hall of mirrors that forces the viewer to navigate - mentally - off-screen to understand, or attempt to understand, the maze (rat's maze! another wonderful touch) of references and links.

Minkowski? Our dearly departed communications man? Named for the German mathematician who - to quote "Lostpedia," which as usual is the indispensable source for such matters - created the "hyper-dimensional manifold in which Einstein's equations for special relativity are perfectly solvable."

Hyper...huh, whaaa??? That strange outgrowth of quantum mechanics which establishes, sort of, that we exist simultaneously, in different realms of "realities," hence hyper-reality.

Now you're crying too. I'm sorry. But I hope you see my point: That there's nothing like "Lost" on TV, never has been, never will be, and four seasons in, that I still care so deeply means a.) That I need to get a life; or b.) These guys are doing something right.