Lostwatch: Days of Future Past

SPOILER ALERT: Don't read this until you've watched last night's Lost. But don't blame me if you have a mysterious premonition about this post in the meantime.

There was a split at the Tuned In household over this episode. I thought it was a good episode... of The Twilight Zone. As an episode of Lost--eh. It established that Desmond has been having flashes of the future (which we already knew), that the mystery of the island is somehow connected to time anomalies (which we'd already had hinted at repeatedly) and that Charlie is going to die. Which I'm delighted with, he being the island's most annoying and superfluous major character--can we kill him twice?--but the revelation probably didn't need such a singleminded buildup.

Mrs. Tuned In countered that the flashback brought out more about Desmond, a character we actually need to know more about, and that while dorks like me who read Lost wikis and listen to podcasts may be blase about the time-dysfunction theory, people with real lives (who don't use phrases like "time-dysfunction theory") actually got something from the episode.

Well, I'm not going to go against the woman I married the day after Valentine's Day. If the show didn't satisfy my inner geek, it did do a nice job of tweaking our expectations of the flashback format. And if Desmond's mind is basically taking trips to a parallel universe, witnessing future events he may or may not be able to change, I guess it merits an episode to dramatize that mind-twisting setup. A few other things I liked:

* Nice touch having Penny's microwave sounding exactly like the clock in the hatch. They're probably made by the same company. I hear you can get them at Sharper Image, right by the gaydar.

* Since Suckshaft--sorry, Driveshaft--was so clearly modeled on Oasis, right down to the fraternal squabbles, it was funny to see Charlie as a street busker playing Wonderwall.

* Good to see them bringing back Alan Dale, TV's go-to evil dad, now playing the role here and on Ugly Betty. But it may be time to invest in a dialect coach (surprisingly, since he's a New Zealander, and you'd figure he could do as convincing a British accent as an American). It's like listening to a high-school production of My Fair Lady.

Finally, clearly somebody at ABC is listening to all the whinging that Lost isn't offering any answers, because the preview of next week promised Three! Big! Answers! to three of Lost's biggest questions. Judging by the clips, though, those three questions are apparently (1) What did the Others do with the tailie kids? (2) What do Jack's tattoos mean? (A map of a prison, maybe?) (3) What happened to that one stewardess?

Of course, that's a week away. Between now and then, the future could change.