Lost: I Do

I don't know what to expect from tonight's Lost mid-season finale episode, "I Do." I love this show, period, but I also really hope that there are some tantalizing revelations this evening. I don't want everything spelled out. I do love the mystery, but I'd like for it to be a progressively evolving mystery, one where some questions are answered and others are raised. That hasn't felt like the case lately.

I have a feeling that we'll be left wondering until February (when Lost returns) whether Sawyer is alive. ABC's teaser brief suggests that Pickett, the member of the Others that Sawyer keeps sparring with, may try to kill him. I hope not because as much as I often loathe Sawyer, I also find myself liking him and his contributions to the show.

My wife and I have discussed Lost at length (our friends may need Losticil to keep up with us), and one thing we love is how well the writers catch us by surprise on a regular basis. Almost anything is fair game (sometimes to a fault), but tonight's episode may test our untouchables hypothesis: Our theory is that Jack, Kate, Locke and Sawyer are exempt from the possibility of being killed off because they are too integral to the show. Many shows have these characters, but Lost has displayed more willingness to dispense with important characters than most, so it's an important distinction that this "core four" may never leave the show. We'll see the latest test to that theory tonight, but I'm not expecting it to be proved false.

The ABC teaser also indicates that Jack will decide about helping Ben by performing surgery to treat his spinal injury. I'm curious to see what he does and to see how much we find out about the consequences of his choice tonight. I can't decide whether Juliet was sincere about her clandestine communications with Jack during last week's episode or whether she was merely testing to see if he could be trusted to perform the surgery.

As an aside, I sure hope someone gives the castaways on the beach something to do. They've been especially dull so far this season.