'Lost's' indescribable return

If you attempt, as I recently did, to describe the events of the first two episodes of the new season of "Lost" to someone who hasn't watched the show in a while, you will find it a humbling experience. So much cool stuff happens it is difficult to articulate properly -- rescuers arrive, except chances are they aren't actually rescuers. And anyway, Locke (Terry O'Quinn) killed one of them last season, so he's probably smart to heed the words of the long-lost Walt (Malcolm David Kelley) and high-tail it with as many as will join him to the compound that once belonged to the Others. After all, Charlie's last words were "not Penny's ship," which means whoever is communicating with the survivors via that weird walkie-talkie, they definitely aren't who Jack (Matthew Fox) and Kate (Evangeline Lilly) et al. think they are, as the ever-creepy Ben (Michael Emerson) surely knows.

Even if you could explain such things in an orderly fashion, you would still sound absolutely insane. And you will see this reflected in the face of your friend as he or she slowly, carefully, edges toward the door.

Not that it matters. At this point with "Lost," you're either in or you're out. Which doesn't mean you can't enjoy this season just because you've missed what's happened before. For one thing, ABC is nicely recapping things before tonight's season premiere. For another, what happened is not nearly as relevant as you might think, because "Lost" is the ultimate postmodern television show -- all about living in the moment.

The show is crazy, man, now more than ever, and I mean that in the best possible way. Crazy like a really big roller coaster, the kind that goes backward, or the first time you have a full-on, drama-delicious blowout with your lover in public. An hour's worth of emotion-churning chemical dump right in the old brain stem -- horror, hysteria, regret, adrenaline and what, oh what, will happen next? Who knows? But as Jack says to Kate, "Let's just let this play out."

There's so much spoiler potential here it's difficult to offer a review except in the vaguest of terms. Most important, the flash-forwards that brought so many fans to their knees last season -- Jack, a drunken mess, insisting to a placating but ultimately dismissive Kate that they were wrong to leave the island -- continue, making it clear that rescue is by no means the end of the story, or the show. How very far we have come since the discovery of the hatch door.