Lost Season 3 Premiere

"You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares. So go downtown..."

Seriously?

Seriously!

I sat there for approximately three minutes with my mouth open, drooling, catching flies, and growing mold when this opening was revealed!

Last season I thought there was no way you could top the Desmond in the Hatch reveal but here we are a year later and this one blows that one right out of the sky... so to speak!

The Others have created and set up their own village, and not with grass huts and mud but with Ranch style housing, picket fences, electricity, music, and book clubs for frak's sake! First we're introduced to "Juliet" as she tries to forget all her troubles and forget all her cares but damnit if she doesn't burn the muffins? The bookclub meeting brings a shout-out to uber fan Stephen King and reveals some tension between Juliet and the remaining houseguests. Tension is briefly interrupted by an earthquake. When the earth stops rattling, all the houseguests run outside to the grassy front lawn.

In the sky is Flight 815 breaking apart. Enter Henry Gale! He exits another house, tells Ethan and Goodwin to find the front and tail ends of the plane, to impersonate survivors, and to report back in three days. Juliet and Ben (apparently Henry Gale's real name) exchange some very tainted words...

"Guess I'm out of the bookclub"

Holy crow that opening had me mesmerized and mystified, bewitched, bewildered and hell possibly even bedazzled! If Lost knows how to do one thing and one thing right, it's open a season to unforseen heights!

As for the remainder of the episode it featured only Jack, Kate, and Sawyer from our original group of survivors.

The main story and flashback belongs to Dr. Jack Shephard as we delve a little deeper into the breakup of his marriage and the collapse of his relationship with his drunk of a Father. Jack is obsessed and actually a little psychotic after finding out that Sarah is dating someone new. He won't stop until he knows who this guy is. At one point he convinces himself that his Father and Sarah are having an affair. He confronts both to no resolve. Finally reaching his breaking point, he follows his Father to a hotel and crashes an AA meeting where he eventually accosts his Father and winds up in Jail. Sarah bails him out but wants to never see him again.

Here's where the tears come in folks... between the flashback scenes and the present day scenes in Jack's holding tank, Matthew Fox works it like never before. He's told that the altercation broke his Father's 50+ day sobriety streak leaving him unbearably guilt ridden and that he has forever lost the love of his life. Aargh, I was crying like a baby as Juliet tells Jack that Sarah is happy today with her new mate. It's a cathardic release for both character and viewer. Maybe now Jack can move on. Both Julie Bowen and Matthew Fox do some of their finest acting in this episode and it actually makes me wish we had more time to develope or see the relationship they had before getting divorced.

Sure there's a near death experience for Jack, Juliet, and Ben/Henry Gale but that's nothing compared to the fact that somehow these Others have volumes of background information on each of the castaways. Well, almost nothing. We did learn that Jack's holding cell is really a medical tank for studying sharks and dolphins (kinda explains the Dharma Shark back in Episode 2.02 huh?). Located underwater it is called "The Hydra". A Jigga What?

Kate's story is a little less complicated not that it's not incredibly complex in its own right. She's taken to a lockerroom, given a shower, and told to put on a floral dress. Tom tells her that she's not his type and takes her to meet Ben/Henry Gale at a beachfront breakfast. She has quite the scary run in with Henry Gale where she is given the opportunity to see the sun, the sand, the ocean, as well as to eat and drink coffee... to know pleasure briefly because the next two weeks will be sheer hell. WTF is going to happen in the next two weeks which in LOST time is about half the season? They're killing me!

Sawyer mean while is playing Pavlov's Dog or is it Dharma's Dancing Polar Bear? Locked in a very large cage with a food button that shocks you and a three part contraption for learning how to get food is not what this man is used to! Plus, in the matter of the hour he is set free by a neighbor boy and by neighbor boy I think I mean Other Mole, and then joined by Kate. It's dark and twisty folks, dark and twisty but I can't wait to see where it takes us this season.

I'm loving the tense interaction between Juliet and Ben/Henry Gale. Were they lovers, colleagues, siblings? We'll have to wait and see but one things clear, these two have differing views on how this operation should be run. When asked by Jack if she was part of the Dharma Initiative all she said was "That was a long time ago... it doesn't matter who we were, what matters is who we are now!"

Um, okay Oprah!