Image A- Sound A+ Extras B
"A Tale of Two Cities," "The Glass Ballerina," "Further Instructions," "Every Man for Himself," "The Cost of Living," "I Do," "Not in Portland," "Flashes Before Your Eyes," "Stranger in a Strange Land," "Tricia Tanaka is Dead," "Enter 77," "Par Avion," "The Man from Tallahassee," "Exposé," "Left Behind," "One of Us," "Catch-22," "D.O.C.," "The Brig," "The Man Behind the Curtain," "Greatest Hits," "Through the Looking Glass"

by Walter Chaw By now, "Lost" is resolving as an interminable adaptation of that old PC puzzle game "Myst": lush environments, episodic brain teasers of medium intensity, and a mystery revolving around the failed construction of a society that suffers from a paucity of real forward momentum. The rate at which new characters are introduced accelerates rapidly in Season Three as Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are taken by the Ben-led Others to a neighbouring island on which the Others have built a quiet little bedroom community complete with outdoor cages, a surgical theatre, and a book-club. (This month's selection? Of all things, Stephen King's Carrie.) It's all very "Days of Our Lives"–particularly that show's supernatural stint from a decade or so ago which saw purportedly massacred citizens of Salem actually spirited away to the secluded island of Melaswen. Is "Lost" the further adventures of our Melaswen castaways? Why not. It's ultimately not more preposterous than this framework set for returns from the dead, alternate timelines, and suggestions that that glimpse of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" in the hatch in the middle of Season Two will finally bear middle-school fruit in the show's dedication to slack foreshadowing and Gen-X/pomo 101 pop-culture references piling up thicker than desiccated corpses on the main island. If it bugs you that the characters periodically take breaks from worrying about their continued, casual existence amid polar bears and carnosaurs to do shtick on "Skeletor" and Thundercats while hot-wiring a VW bus to play Three Dog Night in an episode that blows the dust off Cheech Marin for a cameo as Hurley's no-account daddy (why not have him light up a spliff and shove his arm elbow-deep up a horse, too?), phew, then you're not the right audience for "Lost", a series that now averages one slo-mo musical interlude per episode to match its pace of introducing new people and storylines.

Image A- Sound A+ Extras B+
"Pilot," "Tabula Rasa," "Walkabout," "White Rabbit," "House of the Rising Sun," "The Moth," "Confidence Man," "Solitary," "Raised by Another," "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues," "Whatever the Case May Be," "Hearts and Minds," "Special," "Homecoming," "Outlaws," "…In Translation," "Numbers," "Deus Ex Machina," "Do No Harm," "The Greater Good," "Born to Run," "Exodus"

by Walter Chaw From the two-part pilot, I gotta tell you, I don't trust it. I like the gore, I like the United Colors of Benetton centrefold models as castaway chic, I love Terry O'Quinn and invisible dinosaurs… What I don't like so much is this sinking feeling that "Lost" is a throw-it-all-at-the-wall creation cashing in on post-9/11 discomfort and zeitgeist Ludditism that was genuinely surprised to be asked to hang around for six years. Meaning I have my doubts that any of this cool-ass shit has been remotely plotted out to provide for a commensurately cool-ass resolution–especially since it's not on HBO and therefore not privy to HBO's seemingly bottomless roster of brilliant short-form, long-term dramatists.