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Kind of a bizarre episode. I didn’t expect Locke to have a past like that. Nice to see the polar bear back. Who in tarnation were those two new faces on the beach shooting questions to Hurley when Locke, Charley, Hurley, and Ecko stumbled back into camp? Can you say SAG card? They were awful. And they only said a few words each.

I’m sure you all caught the Geronimo Jackson dialogue. What I want to know is, why was the agent wearing a tee shirt from the obscure group and why was the leader of the drug commune a fan also? Berry berry interesting.

Here’s an illustration of Mr. Ecko by my dear friend Nathan Lindsay. It made me chuckle. Perhaps he’s making that pained face because a bear is gnawing on his leg.

Season 3 has got off to a roaring start. It began exactly like Season 2 did by opening with a character we’ve never seen before in an environment we’ve never seen before. The two scenes were almost identical. The most sinister of the new characters is Juliet, who freaks me out even more than Ben Linus (pictured here), known last season as Henry Gale and who claims to have lived on the island on his life.

I was bummed to learn that (spoiler alert) Sun had indeed had an affair with the hotel heir. An adulterous relationship was only hinted at last season, but the truth came out in the second episode. Seems likely that Sun’s baby came from that affair and not from Jin, who we learned last season was impotent. The only other possible solution is that the island cured Jin in much the same way it cured Locke and Rose.

Can’t wait for next week when Mr. Ecko, Desmond, and Locke are back on the screen.

The winning Powerball numbers have just been announced: 1 21 43 44 49 29. Someone in Oregon—where the winning ticket was supposedly sold—is now worth $340 million, the biggest jackpot in lottery history.

Congratualtions to him or her, right?

Well, maybe not. As anyone who watches ABC’s LOST can tell you, winning the lottery jackpot could be the worst bit of BAD luck to befall you. In fact, if I’ve learned anything from watching the show it’s not to play the lotto.

Before our misfortunate cast members crashed on the island, Hugo (one of the show’s most lovable and huggable stars) used a sequence of numbers to win the lottery (a $150 million jackpot—give or take a million). The numbers he used, 4 8 15 16 23 42, were given to him by a psychiatric patient who does nothing but repeat the sequence all day. And once he finds out Hurley used the numbers to win the lotto, he breaks his numeral rant to say, “You’ve opened the box. It won’t stop.”

That which won’t stop is apparently a string of ill-fated events, including the infamous crash that put our folks on the island in the first place. Hurley, spooked out by this whole Pandora’s box hysteria, follows a lead from the psychiatric pateint to a chap in Australia who discovered the numbers sixteen years ago. But upon arriving in Australia, Hurley discovers that not only did this chap use the same numbers to win something (in his case he correctly guessed the number of beans in a big jar) but he also had a spell of bad luck so intense that he committed suicide four years ago.

And that’s our first numeral clue: the last poor chap to use the numbers died . . . FOUR years ago. Four is of course the first number in the mysterious sequence.

Let’s look at the other numbers:

815 = The next three digits are the flight number of the Oceanic (fictional airline) flight from Sydney to Los Angeles that crashes on the island.

16 = The number of years the French chick has been on the island, and the number of years ago someone first heard the number sequence being broadcast via radio. (Incidentally, one of the two people who heard that sequence is the very poor chap who commits suicide twelve years later).

23 = When the plane crashed, it split in two. Twenty-three is the number of survivors from the back of the plane who, throughout the entire first season, were believed dead.

42 = Yet unconfirmed, but believed (by me, anyway) to be the number of survivors from the front of the plane. They keep saying that there are “about forty survivors.” My guess is that if anyone counted, the number would be forty-two.

So we see that each of the numbers has incredible significance. How all of this is possible is yet to be seen, but it’s clear that all the numbers mean something.

Which brings me to this week’s Powerball numbers. On LOST, the second, third, and fourth digit of the sequence is the number of the flight that crashed: 815. The second, third, and fourth digit of this week’s winning Powerball is 214.

Out of curiousity, I Googled “Flight 214,” and the first hit was to the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. This is what it had to say:

“On December 8, 1963, the aircraft, a Boeing 707-121 registered as N709PA, took off from Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico at 4:10 PM EST for a flight to Philadelphia with 73 passengers and 8 crew on the manifest. . . . At 8:58 PM EST, the aircraft, named Clipper Tradewind, was hit by a lightning strike, which ignited fuel vapors in a reserve tank, causing an explosion. The crew of Flight 214 managed to send a final message – “Clipper Out Of Control” – before it crashed near Elkton, Maryland. All 81 onboard were lost.”

That’s a direct quote. All onboard were LOST. (Cue The Twilight Zone theme music.)

Lauren and I have been longtime Alias fans. We got a late start, catching the first season on DVD after it aired, but once we got into it, there was no turning back. That is, until now. For those of you who aren’t caught up with the series and don’t want to read what’s happened so far this season, stop reading now. I mean it. Unless you don’t mind spoilers, stop reading now.

OK, you’re still here. Alias isn’t Alias anymore. Firstly, Sydney is pregnant. I’m not opposed to parenthood, of course; I have two little angels myself. It’s just that a pregnant woman can’t beat up people. And that’s one of the reasons why we watched Alias: to see Jennifer Garner take out a horde of thugs with a tube of lipstick and her stiletto heels. But now that’s she’s with child–and rather far along, I might add–she can’t go crashing through windows or jumping off buildings onto waiting helicopters. So now, instead of being the hero, Syd is the mentor. APO (the name of the secret CIA ops group to which Momma Garner belongs) has some new recruits, namely a guy who looks exactly like Liev Schriber and has an annoyingly breathy voice and a young blondie who looks like Lauren from Season Three. They’re the new stars of the show. Oh sure, it still revolves around Sydney, but she’s more an observer of the action now instead of being in the thick of it.

What’s more, Vaughn is dead. Or he is for now, anyway. Alias has a way of resurrecting the dead, and if I were a betting man, I’d wager money on seeing Vaughn alive by the end of the season. His absence is likely the result of his and Jennifer Garner’s real-life separation (the two were an off-screen item until Garner decided Ben Affleck was the better man). Vaughn probably asked to be off the show.

But regardless of the reasons for his departure, depart he has. And so has Weiss, another series regular, who has taken a job in “Washington,” which is a nice way of saying, “I’ve outgrown this show, and I’m starting my own.”

And Nadia, who I was never a fan of anyway, is still holed up in the hospital with some terrible disease. So she’s out of the picture as well.

Yes, shows must evolve, but all of this is too much for me. It’s like being told your favorite ice cream is no longer available. There’s another flavor that shows promise and has some of the same ingredients, but eating ice cream will never be the same.

Oh well, at least there’s LOST.