"Lost" in Cyberspace

Last night was the season 3 premiere of ABC's *seminal* television show, "Lost". Here is my analysis:

Flashback:
It was a Jack-centered episode with his broken marriage being the centerpiece. We learn that Jack can't let things go and is really stubborn. Oh wait, we already knew that. He needs to know the name of his wife's new lover. He suspects that it's his dad and has an confrontation with him at an AA meeting that leads his father back to drinking. Overall, boring. Jack's backstory is being stretched pretty thin.

On the Island:
We learn that the "others" live in this village somewhere on the island and that they have bookclub where faith, destiny, free choice, blah, blah, blah are discussed. It looks suspiciously like the fake American town in Russia where spies were trained in that episode of "Alias." If there is anything that J.J. Abrams knows how to do well, it's recycle his own ideas, e.g. the whole CPR thing at that end of M:I III was in Lost as well. Also, the character formerly known as Henry is revealed to have the name of Ben. So revealing. At least is wasn't "Cosmo."

The "others" are keeping Jack, Sawyer, and Kate is some sort of zoo compound called the "Hydra," which I'm pretty sure involves that alternate reality game that went on during the summer. Sawyer hilariously manages to feed himself in a bear cage, and gets caught trying to escape. Kate is told that the next two weeks will be terrible. Two weeks! That's like half the season. Jack is in an aquarium and is being tended to by some woman named Juliette. The "others" also seem to have a file on Jack and presumably the other people on the island.

Overall, we don't really learn anything this episode, only more questions. No info on the Charlie, Locke, Eko story or the Sayid story, or Michael and Walt, or Hurley, or Desmond and Penelope, or any of the 100 story lines that are going on. The writers certainly have enough material now to work with to fill out the season.

As a sidebar, people are saying that Lost has gotten too convoluted, too silly, too stupid, and they are jumping ship. These people are dumb. Of course it has. If you couldn't tell that this was going to get convoluted by the end of the fourth episode then you weren't paying attention. If you've stuck with it this long, there is no need to leave the island now.