[TV] Lost: Season 3

It's not very often that a show keeps me guessing for long these days. I'm not trying to brag or anything - you have to admit that it's not very often that TV shows are written well enough to give viewers like myself a good run in terms of plot twists and story complexity.

The way that I was raised in terms of watching TV shows and movies was to constantly stay on the alert and try to predict the next step in the plot - or even the ultimate end of the episode or movie. It's something that my mom really was keen on and given the number of cop shows and mystery stories we watched together, I'd like to think that I got pretty good at it. I mean seriously, I'm pretty spot on when I really put my mind towards speculating my way to the end of a House episode.

It's not perfect mind you but it does happen more often than not. However there are those shows that do genuinely surprise me from time to time, and that deserves some degree of commendation.

Lost: Season 3 was an interesting turning point in the story. With the mixed bag that was the second season well in the past, the castaways now find themselves face-to-face with the once-mysterious "Others" - but they're not quite the brutal savages that everyone thought they were in the beginning. This season naturally focuses on these longtime residents of the island, thus providing new insights into what everyone had been considering as the villains for the past two season. Of course, things aren't quite black and white in any world, what more the world of Lost.

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Chief characters of interest are Ben Linus (Michael Emerson), pretty much leader of the Others and Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell), one of his trusted fellows amongst the Others who has an agenda of her own. There's the return of former hatch resident Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick), now enhanced with some form of clairvoyance or prescience. Plus there were all the usual juxtaposing of characters such as the contrasts between Jack (Matthew Fox) and Locke (Terry O'Quinn) as leadership figures in the group, the silent rivalry between Jack and Sawyer (James Holloway) for the affections of Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and all the little stories that each member of this large ensemble cast carry with them.

The season introduced even more mysteries than ever despite the slight sense of resolution attained in the second season when it came to many details about the Dharma Initiative. This season revealed even more about them but created new questions and revealed just convoluted Ben's lies truly were. And at the heart of everything is an even greater mystery - the true leader of the Others, a secretive figure known only as Jacob.

I have to admit that I enjoyed this season a lot more than the two seasons prior. The plot twists were fresh and inventive and I did in fact find myself uncertain of what was going to happen here and there despite my mind racing a mile a minute to figure things out before the reveals.

Plus the character development was just awesome in this season and it really brought to life many of the figures that seemed to be just useless cannon fodder in previous season. I'm totally in love with Ben and Juliet as the skilled manipulators and leaders of the show in more ways than one and I have to admit that I've become pretty much committed to seeing this through to the end because of them.

The third season of Lost was a great new adventure to take and one that deserves 4 resurrected one-eyed Russians out of 5.