So, because the opener was so good, I'm going to give you a stream of consciousness reaction to the first three minutes of the show: We hear beeping, and a man's eyes fly open. He walks over to this old, War Games-style computer. It's huge and clunky with a black screen, but it looks like he's sending an email from it. Maybe he just likes things retro, though, because his apartment has all this mid-century furniture and decor, but we can definitely see a brand-new washer and dryer and a fancy blender, so we know it's pretty close to present day. Now he's picking out a record to play on his tricked-out (as it were) old school stereo system. Is one of the characters a hipster? Maybe one of the other castaways is a music executive from Echo Park. Hee. Wait, is this Sawyer? They don't show his face but he's big and has longish hair. Must be Sawyer before the crash, then.

Actually, now I'm not so sure. This guy is way more ripped than Sawyer. Aaaaand now he's injecting himself with a big ol' helping of steroids. Sweet. So, professional athlete? Oops, earthquake! The whole house shakes, so he....WAIT A SECOND! Wait a damn second! Is this the hatch? Holy poop, I think it is! What?! The guy starts freaking out and running around. He changes into a snazzy uniform (which I can respect. If you're going to start shooting people, you may as well look good doing it), then grabs a gun and starts fiddling with dials on the walls. The lights go out, wall fixtures change direction, and we slowly pan up….to where Locke and Jack are staring into the dark hatch. Dudes. Somebody lives there. Not what I was expecting. And, may I say, a far better choice than any mystical nonsense they could have tried to throw at us.

Now, it occurs to me that some of you may be new to the show, or maybe just need a refesher course on last season. If not, just scroll down a few paragraphs. Here's a quick(ish) rundown on the main characters from last season: Jack is the reluctant leader of the group; he was given that responsibility mostly because he’s a doctor and seems pretty unflappable. He had gone to Australia to get his alcoholic father, who turned up dead - the body was on the plane, but only the empty coffin turned up after the crash, which led to Jack having visions of his father walking around the island for a while there. Sawyer is one of two anti-Jack characters. He's a hothead and is Jack's competition for the affections of Kate, who is perhaps the worst character ever written for primetime television. Nothing redeeming about her. She's also a murderer and a bank robber, which means she has more in common with Sawyer (a con man) than Jack.

Locke is Jack's other competition; here it's for the loyalty of the castaways. While Jack wants to be pragmatic about keeping people safe and trying to get off the island, Locke believes in destiny and says the island chose them to come. He would believe that, as where he was once confined to a wheelchair, he regained the ability to walk when the plane crashed (it's still a mystery why he was paralyzed - he was NOT paralyzed from the kidney donation surgery he had for his long-lost manipulative biological father; if you try to offer that theory in the forums or comments section you will feel my verbal fury). Let's see, who else? Jin and Sun are a mafia couple from Korea whose backstory at this point isn't as interesting as everyone else's, but we can forgive them because they are two of the prettiest people ever put on god's green earth. Oh, and Jin doesn't speak any English. He left on the raft at the end of last season with Sawyer and Michael and Walt, the father-son duo who were reunited for the first time since Walt was a baby, when his mom died. He was kidnapped off the raft by The Others, and it was very sad. The Others have some sort of obsession with children.

Posted by Kat on September 22, 2005 12:33 PM