Lost Visions

[note - for some reason this post didn't take the first time so I am posting it after the Feb. 21 episode instead of just before.]

It's almost time for a new Lost and I haven' said anything about the last one, yet.

First the reruns. ABC has been saying that they will never shw a rerun of Lost ever again. Instead they scheduled Lost "encores". At 9:00 they show the episode from the prior week.

Huh? How is this not a rerun?

As long as they are showing "encores" it would be nice to show an older one. The Feb 14 episode was all about Desmond. It would ave been nice if they had repeated the season 2 cliffhanger instead of the Feb 7 show. The much of the Feb 14 episode referred to the cliffhanger which we only saw once, eight months ago. Instead they repeated the only episode we have seen this year.

Anyway...

All three survivors of the hatch explosion have had visions that seemed to involve direct communication with the island through some sort of spirit guide. Locke induced a vision through his sweat lodge. His spirit guide, Boone, gave him a symbolic view of everything going on in the island.

Eko's vision was induced through his delirium with his brother as spirit guide/judge.

In the middle of a temporal fugue, a spitit guide in the form of a jewelry dealer stopped to explain the workings of the universe to Desmond.

I feel a little better about the season after realizing this.

Things that worry me about the season:

The rules of the universe as explained to Desmond sound a lot like Final Encounter - a set of B-grade horror movies.

The show was always about the relationships between characters with each episode changing the mix. None of that has happened this season. Most of the episodes have either been about Kate/Sawyer and Jack/Ben/Juliet. The exceptions have been single character episodes. The backstories in the episodes featuring Locke, Eko, and Desmond crowded out the current story. I want to see more time on the island and less time in flashbacks.

Ratings have suffered. At its peak the show had 20+ million viewers. It was down to 14.5 million on Feb. 7 and 12 million on Feb 14. At this rate, the producers will not have time to tie things up before the show is canceled.

Updates on the Feb 21 episode:
They promised to answer major questions. I'm not impressed. What did we learn?

• The others live on the main island and work on the Hydro-base island. This was obvious.
• The kidnapped passengers are ok. They said this several times. Now we know for sure.
• Jack's tattoo says, "“He walks amongst us, but he is not one of us.” This was very low on my list of mysteries. In fact, the show could have ended without revealing this and I never would have noticed.

A few new questions that probably will never be answered:

• Since when is tattooing a near-religious rite in Thailand?
• Why does someone who is "reading" and "marking" people in a near mystical rite dress like a hooker?