So the Bad

Please understand that by "bad" I don't mean bad. Smallville is bad. Sitcoms featuring hot, exasperated wives and fat, sloppy, idiotic men, neither of whom have any redeeming characteristics, are bad. This isn't that kind of bad.

No, this is the kind of bad you get when a show is written and acted so well, they make you love the things you hate. They make you, oh, totally not mean it when you swear you're going to stop watching if they kill Charlie.

On to the bad...

The first bad thing.

This is the one annoying thing. The network and Damon/Carlton are partly to blame because they announced Harold Perrineau's (Michael/Kevin Johnson) return to the show last summer before/at Comic-Con. I didn't mind that, really. I like him and am really glad he's back. My thirst for good TV, which hasn't been able to be satisfied by actual TV to the extent of my need, has led me to read speculation and mild spoilers, so I'd seen some people guess that Michael was the man on the boat. Which, again, was fine. I didn't mind fulfillment of that guess.

What I did mind, quite a bit, was ABC's promos touting the return of someone we never thought we'd see again. DUDES! One of your executives told us at the TCA or whatever they're called, right before the announcement at Comic-Con, that he was coming back! So we TOTALLY knew we would see him again!

Bad thing number two.

Last week, they had a really tearjerking, poignant, heartfelt ending, when Desmond and Penny connected, and things all came together from flashbacks and the bits of the present. Their exchange..."I'll find you"..."I love you"...was perfect. And I was so sure the bastards were going to have him drop dead like Fisher Stevens. I wanted to run to LA and hug them when they didn't.

But I knew they wouldn't do it two weeks in a row. I kind of figured out that Jin's flash was a back. The whole panda thing was out of place. The phone was older, too big. And Sun's desperation for him to be there was too intense. So the whole episode I was expecting his death, as much as I held on to hope that he wouldn't die. Of course, as soon as he told her he'd never leave her, I knew he wouldn't have a choice.

HEY! Darlton! Stop freakin' killing my favorite characters!

Bad thing the third.

WARNING: Speculation ahead.

I think Juliet is pregnant. Please, please, don't let it be Ben's baby. I don't even like the idea of it being Goodwin's, but that's the only choice we know about, right?

About Other Stuff that's Not the Bad

The Oceanic Six

Jake, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, and Sun. Jin obviously not. Did you notice that his gravestone had a date of September 2001? So they lied about him, too, and said he died in the crash. I wonder if he really dies, or somehow gets left behind or something. The grave marker could be only a marker.

I'm soooo intrigued by the story of the Oceanic Six and wonder how far they'll get on the path to going home this season.

Ben and Aaron don't count as part of the Six because they weren't on the plane--or weren't passengers, anyway. Aaron was technically on it. So the last person who is part of the six is the person in the coffin from the end of last season. Someone who suffered a far different fate as one of the Six, it seems, given the empty church at the memorial "service."

I wonder if the Ben in Sayid's flash-forward is really Ben, or his not-evil twin or something.

My biggest question is...this future that we're seeing. Is it unchangeable? I sadly expect that it is. But that makes me really hope the final season will occur after all these flash-forwards, and they'll go back to the island, and it will be an even bigger adventure.

I'm almost unhappy we have to wait so long to get there.