10 Burning Questions About Lost Season 4

The new Lost: Season 4 Trailer:

Ka-blooie, I’m STOKED!

How pumped are you for the return of the best show on Television not named American Idol? With Heroes stuck in a crazy low sophomore slump, a sub-par How I Met Your Mother set (Can we please find a real reason to keep Robin on the show? General Idea “salute” is not enough.), Bionic Woman failing to become a hot lesbain robotics porn drama, or even at all watchable, Journeyman starting strong and fading faster than Sarah Michele Gellar’s big screen career, Scrubs daydreaming through a glaringly bad final season, Private Practice barely finding it’s legs, and even my beloved Friday Night Lights mired in melodrama (the Landry/Tyra murder cover-up is the second worst plotline of the Fall season after George & Izzie), the only thing keeping me going has been Gossip Girl. But that all changes come the new year, cause here comes the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815!!!

The Season Three finale might have been the best episode of television aired in 2007. With the reveal of not one, but TWO shocking discoveries:

1. We were watching a flashFORWARD, not a flashBACK. Jack and Kate get off the island! Boom, FLOORED!

2. Jack has the most righteous fake beard in the history of history. It looks like the propmaster spray-painted peet moss brown and Elmer’s glued it onto Matthew Fox’s face. It didn’t look remotely real. TomKat is realler than that beard. The Michael Jackson/Lisa Marie Presley kiss at the VMA’s was more believable than that grouping of facial pubes. Hell, the Apollo 11 “moon landing” was more convincing than the Jack Shepherd Shrub of Flashforwardness Survivor Guilt .

Not to mention the bittersweet death of Charlie, a character I had reviled for the entire run of the show, but had my support by the end. His death was poignant, beautifully shot and brought untold amounts of awesome by letting us know that Penny has nothing to do with the rescue boat currently winging its way to Craphole Island.

The finale redeemed what had been a season of inconsistency. The Nikki/Paolo arc was poorly managed. Nobody in the world cares about Mike and WAAAAAALT! Locke was seeing imaginary people. Hurley was driving VW vans around (seriously?). Sayid was essentially nuetered from the action. And the more I see of the Others, the less creepy they become (why was the dude from The Tick wearing eyeliner?). But with the impending “rescue” ship, the capture of Ben, Charlie’s death and Penelope looking for Desmond, Jack and Kate off the island!, and Locke trying to blow them all the hell up, this might be the greatest season of the show yet. And I for one can’t wait.

But because it’s Lost, there are still eleventy-billion questions. Questions that may never get answered. Questions that may not even have answers because the writers never intended them to be questions at all, but still left the hint that they could be so they seem smarter than they are and that they have a plan for the show even though their timeline is screwed up from season one and they never told us what was up with the Polar Bear or the Pony so why should we believe them anyway, and did I mention I hate this show?

So here are my Ten Burning Questions for Lost: Season 4.

1. Not to quote Se7en or anything, but seriously, WHAT’S IN THE BOX?!!! Who is in that coffin? It was too big for someone like Ben, maybe too small for Hurley. Who becomes so important that FutureJack has to go to South Central for their poorly attended funeral.

2. How quickly did Evangeline Lily pack up Dominic Monaghan’s stuff after finding out he got fired? Half an hour? Fifteen minutes? Did she already have him packed up by the time he got home from the set that day? Cause you knew that ship was never sailing after they finished shooting the show. He was kidding himself if he thought he could keep her after she moved back to L.A. And you know Evangeline was starting to look at the hobbit sharing her bed and think “I’m Evangeline Lilly and I’m with a hobbit? I should at least be tagging Legolas!” Him getting fired was for her like a guy needing a hail mary only to find out she inexplicably got her period a week late.

3. Who did Kate have to go home to? Is she still tagging Sawyer? Is it a new guy we haven’t met yet? Did Sayid work some Iraqi juju and turn Kate on to the pleasures of the brown? And why didn’t Jack ever get his shot? Or did he…?

4. Who will take the mantle from Charlie as the show’s Most Annoying Character? My money is on Hurley. His “dude” crap is wearing thin. Unlike his waistline, which inexplicably hasn’t shrunk after three months on the island. That may be the biggest mystery of the series. Survivor contestants are popping six pack abs after two weeks, Hurley is still a behemoth after three seasons! That Dharma Initiative canfood must be carb-loaded to the max.

5. Will Jack and Claire ever realize they’re related? If they do, will she make Jack godfather to her BAY-BE?

6. When is the Black Smoke Monster going to show up in front of Desmond, flash him his life, and drop the judgement on him (cause the guy needs some direction)? My guess for what it will be: “Tone down that accent, BRUTHA! You’re Scottish. We. Get. It.”

7. Will Mac from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia be coming back for another cameo? Maybe to guard another Others torture center. Or beat up Sawyer some more. Or, you know, JUST TO GET A BASE!

8. Will the writers ever realize that we want answers to the big questions like “How Locke got the use of his legs back” and NOT “What’s up with Jack’s tattoos?”, cause seriously, no one cares. Bai Ling never made anything better by showing up in it. Less useless tattoo crap and more Black Smoke Monster info, bitches!

9. Did Michael and Walt survive the boat trip back to dry land (it’s not a myth!)? If so, does Mike pick Walt up from school everyday by going to the school counserlor and yelling “I WANT MY BOY BACK! WAAAAAALT!” Cause you know he would and the school would totally never let him volunteer to coach the Little League team.

10. When do they got off the island? How far in the future were we really seeing? Who else survived? Why does Jack want to go back so badly but Kate does not? How did Jack become such a raging drug fiend? Were the survivors compensated by Oceanic Airlines? Did they all get their own reality shows? Was there a movie made of their experience, wherein Kate Beckinsale played the part of Kate and thus shattering the time/space continuum? Or is this all a dream inside the mind of batshit crazy Hurley?

Season 4, baby! SEASON FOUR!

Bangarang!