Of course, the Season 4 premiere airs tomorrow night (1/31/08). And, of course, it will be immediately be preceeded by the usual 1-hour recap special. However, there is some additional viewing that you may want to consider watching in preparation for tomorrow.
1) Tonight (1/30/08) sees a repeat of the 2-hour Season 3 finale. It's not just any repeat, though...it's Enhanced (thefutoncritic.com). The enhancement comes in the form of "pop-up" facts, without the "pop-ups." Read the PR - you'll see what I mean.
2) Verizon V Cast subscribers had first access to a series of Lost mobisodes called "Missing Pieces." Essentially, these are never-before-seen-clips (less than 5 minutes in length). You might be tempted to refer to them as simple deleted scenes, except some seem to be *really* important to the overall story. You can watch them here. (abc.go.com) As I type this, only 12 of 13 are available for viewing right now. This is a shame, because #13 absolutely drops your jaw. #13 made its way to YouTube for about a day, before Disney had it removed.
The Missing Pieces episodes go up a week after they are available on V-Cast, from what I understand. Some of these clips have been interesting. Some have been less so... A few have me concerned about attempts at rewriting history. (Using spoiler tags to discuss MP content.)
Spoiler Below: Highlight text to read
The whole Sun has a CA license and Michael and Sun pseudo-kiss was irritating. I know there was tension between the two of them, but to go that far felt like a retcon. And how obvious is it that Sun's license will show up at some point this season now? Plus, Arzt was full of shit? The only really good one was the birds outside Room 23. The introduction of Frogurt, a character who had been hyped in the podcast was sub-par, too.
The most interesting thing about the mobisodes is that you get a feeling for who will be appearing at some point this season, as I wouldn't expect them to fly certain guest stars in just for a 3 minute web-only clip.
I'm looking forward to tonight's enhanced episode. I've been trying to blitz S3 over the last week to get ready for tomorrow.
You believe me, don't you? Please believe what I just said...
Just as a "heads up", I had to coerce my TiVo for tomorrow to get both the recap show & the premiere episode. (I'm sure it had to do with the overrun time that I have in my season pass.)
I don't think we've had a thread on here about the Find 815 (find815.com) game. This is the game referenced in the Oceanic commercials that have been running on TV. Reports indicate that the characters & information introduced in this game will fit directly into the actual show. (The previous game had some supplementary information, but there wasn't a real explicit crossover.)
There's explicit information in the game, plus arcane, easter-eggy stuff. I'm pretty bad at some of the point-n-click games, but there are several sites that have links to all the success paths.
=================== 2/5/08
Just stumbled across a link to a talk that JJ Abrams gave at "TED". (Not totally sure exactly what TED is, but don't think it's relevant.) The title of the talk is "The Mystery Box" (ted.com), & touches on a number of themes & factoids included in Lost. Very entertaining & worth watching!
Funny thing is, I'm not even all that familiar with Jonah Hex, and I thought the same thing as odessasteps. I always did like Zatana. I hope the DVR caught this.