So, yes, loyal Internet pals, I’m back.  What, you didn’t know I’d gone anywhere?  Double what, you don’t even read the names of the authors of these articles?  My bad (But you should check out, for example, Veronica Santiago’s Top Model recaps, which are very good.  Also, my stuff is uniformly awesome).  Anyhow, I (that would be, David L. Williams) am back from my wedding and honeymoon, which where perfect and wonderful.  Also wonderful?  Both events happened in the central time zone, aka the place where I can once again watch “Lost” at 9pm.  Now that I’ve returned to NYC, however, I have to suck it up and stay up a little later.  But I’ll deal.
Lost, I’ve noticed, has been taking some hits in the press lately, and here are my two thoughts about this: “Shut” and “Up.”  Then again, maybe all of the negative press will drive away the casual viewers who complain to me on Thursday morning that “they really didn’t answer anything,” and when I explain how they’re wrong they’ll say, “Oh, really?  I missed a few episodes last month, so I didn’t understand what that one part meant.”  Lost should have always been a cult show, but it somehow tumbled its way into accidentally being a hit show, which is good because it means it won’t be cancelled, but bad because, well, because of the people I just mentioned.  Anyway. Lost is still head and shoulders better than anything on network TV and every week each episode has at least five awesome things about it (except for the week when Hurley found the van because … what the hell, dude?), so I’ve decided to take it upon myself to list these five awesome things after each episode.  Ready?  Okay!

Jin Kicks Ass – The island seems to be populated by an unusually high percentage of people who can shoot guns and fight at incredibly advanced levels.  I know there are good explanations for some (Desmond and Sayid were in the military) and not so good for others (I think Kate went hunting with her dad and Jack’s … a surgeon.  Yeah, even I can’t explain that one), but it’s always pretty fun to watch the cast throw a beatdown on each other (or a recurring guest star).  We’ve seen Jin go after Michael early on, when we thought Jin was a total ass (and some of us were really confused by him in the first episode since the NYC feed never showed us subtitles on his conversations with Sun, though they were there on the dvds), and we’ve seen him beat up a guy on the behest of Sun’s father, but we haven’t really seen him jump in the air and beat on somebody on the island.  Or maybe we have and I’m just not remembering.  Either way, that was pretty awesome.
The Return of Mikhail – Or “Patchy,” for those of you who like the internet nicknames (I do not, ever since my fiancée wife mocked me for using the term “Tailies”).  I had a feeling there was something up with him since that long shot of his supposedly-dead body in the episode where they crossed over the fence, and when I saw what the real active fence did to the smoke monster, I was even more suspicious.  His return made an already interesting plotline, the pseudo-Sanjaya-looking parachuter on the island, even more charged with energy.  Plus he went first season E.R. (back when I learned Clooney wasn’t just the guy who came back from Kuwait to help Blair, Jo, Natalie, and Tutti with “Over Our Heads,”) and fixed Naomi’s (that’s the parachuter) punctured lung.  Blood spurted everywhere, and it was awesome.
The Acting Team of Sun and Juliet – Lest you think I’m just in this for the violence and gore (and I’m not; I liked “Deathproof” more than “Planet Terror,”), I’ll include in my list the performances of the amazingly expressive Yunjin Kim and Elizabeth Mitchell.  Elizabeth Mitchell has been acting gold since the first episode of this season.  She (along with Michael Emerson and Terry O’Quinn) is somebody who brings up the game of some actors who rise or fall to the level of that scene’s costar; for example: Matthew Fox’s acting when he’s with Elizabeth Mitchell – fantastic; Matthew Fox’s acting when he’s with, say, Bai Ling – not so much.  So any plotline that involves Juliet is worth watching.  Yunjin Kim, who’s often not given nearly enough to do, was extra shiny good this week, and I’ll point you to two scenes.  First, obviously, is when she get’s her Sophie’s choice of a sonogram (it’s an imperfect analogy, I know, but you get where I’m going), and the tears and expression on her face mean two different things at once.  But to me even better was her terrific scene with Jin’s father, played by John Shin (thanks Lostpedia.com) who’s been in all of two episodes but was really great in both.  She held so many different conflicting things together in that scene, but it all came from a place of love, of her husband, of her family, of her reputation, and of the life that she and her new husband were going to lead.  Both performances, awesome.
Definitive answers, you non-believers! – Not because I need there to be these every week (otherwise, according to my earlier complaints, I’d be a big old hypocrite), but because it’s nice to knock the haters back on their heels with some open-and-shut truths once in a while.  Boom, Jin’s the father of the baby.  Bang, the island could heal Jin’s problem.  Thwap, Mikhail’s not dead.  Sometimes answers can, indeed, be awesome.
’‘Flight 815?  The one from Sydney?  That’s not possible.  They found the plane.  There were no survivors.  They were all dead.’‘  What a cool ending line!  And no, you dopes, this isn’t proof that they’ve been in purgatory the whole time.  How many times must the creators say this isn’t true before you believe them? (also, there’s no inherent drama in being in purgatory, because EVERYBODY’S ALREADY DEAD!)  My theory?  Mittelos, the company that brought Juliet to the island, gets informed by the Others when a plane (or other item, such as the real Henry Gayle’s balloon) crashes on the island, and then they stage the crash wreckage elsewhere so that nobody pokes his/her nose into island business.  We know they’re privy to a whole lot of information about the people on the plane; who’s to say that an organization that powerful couldn’t stage such things to throw rescuers and other governmental organizations off their scent.  Anyway, the ending, she was awesome.
See, five awesome things right there, and I didn’t even mention Juliet’s tape recording or Jin’s creepy prostitute/mom (mostitute?  prostimom?).  Can’t wait for next week!  See you then.

David L. Williams contributes full articles to TV Envy a few times a week.