Lost Television Program

In the beginning, the producers of "Lost," the team that created the popular drama, cast it and shot it in a record 12 weeks, wondered if their show would make it past 13 episodes. Now, in its third season, "Lost" is a hit on television and the Web, and executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are talking about (gasp) ending it all. Relax, Losties, they are not talking about this season, but relatively soon.

It takes a village to make a TV show, and two islands to make "Lost." When last we left them in November, Sawyer and Kate were having prison sex and Jack was in surgery, forced to remove a tumor from the mercurial villain Ben, head of the mysterious island sect called the Others. It was Jack's bad fortune to catch Sawyer and Kate going at it on the bank of monitors on which the Others otherwise watch for intruders.

The return of "Lost" was something of a renaissance for viewers whose passion for the show has been bogged down by an ever-sprawling mythology and characters so numerous that many have ridden the bench since fall. For the cult-like followers of its intrigues, Wednesday's episode dropped clues to several new mysteries -- e.g. Alex, the presumed daughter of the Frenchwoman, calls Ben "dad" -- and revisited several old ones.

Hollywood is notorious for its meetings, but even by L.A. standards this one was unusual. A few steps away from the CTU set of Fox's "24," an unlikely alliance of human rights activists, the dean of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and veteran interrogators with experience stretching from Saigon to Abu Ghraib gathered around two tables in mid-November.

After a promising rebound episode revealing Juliet's pitiable past, "Lost" returned to its lazy ways this week, offering up the kind of one-hour filler that has become all too common for the series this season. In Wednesday's episode, we get only a little more back story for affable human teddy bear Hurley, whom the writers consider the show's primary source of comic relief. After a run of episodes at the heavy-on-torture Camp Others, a lighthearted Hurley-centric hour may have seemed appealing.

There it is: Locke wants to stay lost. At least he's got good reason. Wednesday's episode of "Lost" flashed back to perhaps his biggest screwing-over yet. When a nearly bald Locke threatens to expose his father as a con to his latest target, Daddie Dearest pushes him out the window of an eight-story building. What's more, he and the island have been sort of serious about each other since Day 1, when he discovered he had the use of his previously inanimate legs.

\o7Spoiler alert: TiVo viewers be warned. This article contains plot points from recent episodes. \f7* IN the last two episodes of "Lost," John Locke told a few lies, killed an "Other," blew up a hatch full of communication devices and then set off more explosives in the Others' submarine to prevent anyone from leaving or arriving on the island. It's a far cry from the weeks he spent in a hole in the ground last season, punching computer buttons, only to emerge feeling like he wasted his time.

THE debate over the meaning, worth and legacy of "Lost" has raged since the show debuted. Three seasons in, we're still getting flashbacked personal bios while the secret of the island seems to be a fertility issue. Meanwhile, with only three episodes left in the season, many viewers are tapping their feet and making little snorting sounds: We want answers! And after three years, they'd better be good! Infused with myth and meaning!

Exhale, "Lost" legions. ABC's popular, genre-bending drama will go on for three more seasons with its creative team intact. In a highly unusual move, ABC announced Monday that it would air 16 uninterrupted episodes of "Lost" from February to May in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Yes, that means fans won't know exactly what the island is, why the airplane crash survivors are there and how a polar bear survives in the tropics until midway into the next U.S. presidential term.

WE know now who the Others are on "Lost." They're good actors, playing good characters, and they've jogged the show's writers out of a funk. On Monday, the Hollywood Reporter broke the news that "Lost" show runners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse had an end date for their maddeningly enigmatic series -- spring 2010, or 48 more episodes after this year's finale.