Deep into the Hollywood writers? strike, television has become something of a mix of reality and otherwise ?unscripted? shows, late night programs with hosts who dance instead of delivering monologues and assorted depressing documentaries about people with unhealthy amounts of children or intriguing birth defects.

Personally, I will admit to even having watched two episodes of MTV?s ?Life Of Ryan,? known to most as ?that show where a punk teen waxes philosophical about his family problems while making more money than most will ever see.? Similarly disturbing is the numerous hours I have logged watching TLC, home of such girlfriend-mandated appointment television as ?What Not To Wear? and ?Trading Spaces.?

Thankfully, however, there is light at the end of the tube when one of my perennial favorites returns to ABC with script in hand. Yes, I mean ?Lost,? the ultimate in living room suspense premieres Thursday night in a triumphant two-hour kickoff. No more will we have to suffer another Thursday night of housewives and home improvements; no, for another eight episodes ? all written before the strike began ? there will be a nail-biting alternative.

For those of you four years too late, ?Lost? is a primetime drama focusing on the lives of plane crash survivors stranded on a mysterious island in an undiscoverable location where a secret organization conducts dangerous and undisclosed research. As if that weren?t enough, pile on conspiracy theory, espionage and good old-fashioned romance for the makings of one of the largest television phenomena in recent years.

As I intimated above, ?Lost? has been an annual addiction of mine since receiving the first season on DVD with a Netflix subscription stolen from my parents one long summer. Today, though, after having been bombarded by mind-numbing shrieking of VH1?s ever-lovable New York and even, of all people, Billy Ray Cyrus, I decided that before the premiere I would need to hit the Internet to refresh my memory on what happened over the course of the last season. You know, to prepare myself for full absorption. For the record, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I started my quest at ABC.com, which had posted some relatively tame trailers and episode recaps. Yes, I thought, this is all I needed, and all anyone would need to refresh their memory on what is actually going on. I quickly discovered this is not all that meets the eye in the ?Lost? experience.

Last season?s bombastic finale ended with an unusual flash-forward scene showing two characters ? Jack, played by Matthew Fox, and Kate, played by Canadian actress Evangeline Lily ? off the island. The exciting promotional slogans for this new season read ?The Lost are Found,? and, of course, this notion has created a great deal of speculation. Fueling the hype is the more mysterious ?Oceanic 6,? inferring that a grand total of six survivors actually return home. So who are they? For the sake of not losing my mind to endless guesswork, I think I?ll leave that debate to the forums.

Moving past ABC.com, I unearthed a link to some of the ?theories? web forums where obsessive members talk of synchronizing the pilot episode to Pink Floyd?s Dark Side of the Moon a la ?Wizard of Oz,? and how Kate resembles Judy Garland. Another poster explains the mysterious presence of polar bears on the island simply by saying they were brought there because they are used to a habitat with a strong magnetic field ? the South Pole. A reply to this post remarks that pigeons would have been a better choice for magnetic experimentation, as they navigate by way of magnetic fields. And here I thought magnets were only used for writing bad poetry.

By far the best resource for speculation, though, is the massive Lostpedia.com. Modeled after the old research standby, Wikipedia, Lostpedia.com is a user-edited encyclopedia of all things ?Lost,? and I succeeded in actually getting lost within it, not remembering that I was there was for plot summary, not that the ?DI? in DI 9FFTR731 ? the strange code written across many items at the Swan station ? likely stands for DHARMA Initiative. As though I knew what DI 9F-whatever stands for anyway.

After some initial awe and puzzlement, I soon realized that though I considered this all to be a somewhat insane level of detail and theorizing about the development of a primetime television show ? but Lostpedia.com and the many others like it are at the very least creative and at best, perhaps educational. The refreshing thing about this mass of scientific and conspiracy theory is that at least ? fictional as it may be ? the writers of ?Lost? have actually created television that inspires thought and creativity. Nerdy? Yes, but it sure beats the hell out of the ?Bad Girls Club.?

So even though my foray into the digital experience of ?Lost? didn?t bring me any closer to wanting to watch every past episode again just to catch a glimpse of DI 9FFTR731, it did bring me not only some justification for watching the show religiously, but also some proof that there can be television life after ?reality.? But until the negotiations progress, relatively casual fans like myself can only sit back on Thursdays and hope ABC?s writers make it back to work before our eight episodes are up.

Daniel Hooker ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in English.