TV is the new reading

Losing it over 'LOST' finale

In the show “Lost,” there’s an electromagnetic barrier surrounding a mysterious island in the South Pacific. If you go through it in the wrong place, it drives you crazy.

Having watched the fourth-season finale, my guess is that the writers have all taken wacky funhouse tours back and forth through this barrier in every possible direction.

Don’t get me wrong – crazy is the right mindset for these folks to have. If you’re writing a story about a group of 70 or so survivors on an island and, as they explore it more deeply, discover it is a far from ordinary island, you have to have wandered through the looking glass yourself.

In terms of the fourth-season revelations, the identity of a half-dozen passengers, the Oceanic Six – so named for the plane they were on, Oceanic Flight 815, which crashed and deposited them unceremoniously on this island – were confirmed, and some of their adventures since finally leaving the island have been detailed in the course of the show.

Also, some of the more mystical aspects of the island have been explored, and some of the corporate interests involved in trying to exploit some of these mystical properties have been identified. A freighter sent to abduct Benjamin Linus, a rogue leader on the island, seemed impervious to destruction because one of the crew was being protected – apparently, by the island itself.

Until the finale, of course, when the freighter went up in a glorious “kaboom.” And there were tales of self-sacrifice when Sawyer, played by Josh Holloway, leapt from the chopper that was rescuing six other castaways to help improve their chances of survival.

And perhaps most alarming is the little science project Linus undertook, blowing up a chamber in a secret lab on the island, climbing through the passageways this opened up and encountering an astonishing wheel apparatus that appears to have moved the island someplace else.

In that this seems at least somewhat irregular, one wonders what, in fact, he did. But by all appearances, the island had been there moments before, but after Linus manipulated the apparatus, it ... wasn’t.

This exercise seems to have propelled Linus forward in time about seven months because a few weeks ago, in a flash forward, that’s where we discover him, newly deposited in the Tunisian desert, dressed as he was in the wheel chamber and otherwise none the worse for wear.

In contrast, the island’s other bizarre manifestation, a black cloud of smoke that seems to be able to grab people and whip them around in the air seems almost ... dull.

Looking ahead to Season Five, there are still lots of people trapped on the island – wherever it is – and it seems that the Oceanic Six, despite having managed to escape it, must track it down and return in order to rescue them.

This compulsion begins three years after the crash. Depending on where the island actually went and who has survived and what’s going on there ... who knows what they’ll find.

I know for a fact, however, that I’ll be on the edge of my edge to find out when the show returns in 2009. As finales go, this got me excited for the new season like few others have.