What we do know is that we, the “ Lost” couch potato castaways, saw Ben turn the wheel hidden in a room below the unfamiliar Dharma Orchid Station, the sky white out, and the island vanish. All of this culminated a time-traveling, Emmy-nominated season of past and future stories that split up the “Lost” tribe — rescuing some people after 108 days, leaving some to linger on the island, and killing others.

If none of the above makes sense to you, yes, it’s too late to pick “Lost” up now. That’s what DVDs are for.

For four seasons, viewers have flashed back and forward through a maze of puzzles. When the penultimate season of the ABC hit premieres on Jan. 21, executive producers promise that answers will come our way, but it might take fans a moment to notice — because the fifth season takes viewers on yet another narrative roller coaster.

“Although the show occupies the same world, we’re always driven not by rules but by what is the best way to tell stories in any given season,” executive producer Carlton Cuse said. “Viewers will have to adjust to a little bit of a different mode this year, but we think that in that challenge also is the excitment that keeps ‘Lost’ fresh.”

First, we got to know our castaways through flashbacks of events that happened before Oceanic Flight 815 crashed in the South Pacific on Sept. 22, 2004. Then, viewers caught glimpses of them in the future, a future that revealed that some of them were rescued. The groundbreaking storytelling then took another turn when viewers became privy to future events that predated the future they’d already seen.

This season, the flashbacks and flashforwards will still exist, but another storytelling approach will dominate. And in classic “Lost” tradition, the producers won’t explain what they’re doing ahead of time.

“We’re really happy with the scripts that we’re writing, but at the same time, there’s this complete sense of fear and second-guessing in terms of whether or not the audience is going to groove on what we’re doing,” co-creator and executive producer Damon Lindelof said. “The show is taking on a new model in terms of the way we tell stories and finding a balance between what’s happening off the island and on the island. Are the characters having an emotional experience no matter how crazy it is? That’s the part we’re focused on.”

The first seven episodes will focus on the aftermath of Ben’s (Michael Emerson) pronouncement to Jack ( Matthew Fox) in the last scene of last season that the Oceanic 6 must all return to the island, including Locke (Terry O’Quinn), who has died. Jack’s challenge is to enlist the rescued castaways to go back, but that will prove tricky since he and Kate (Evangeline Lily) have broken up; Sayid (Naveen Andrews) is trotting the globe, killing people for Ben with Hurley (Jorge Garcia) in his custody; and Sun (Yunjin Kim) has gone rogue.

Viewers also will see what’s happened to Penny (Sonya Walger) and Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) after she rescued him and learn how Locke left the island and later died. The story of Walt (Malcolm David Kelley), who left the island two seasons ago, will continue, though his father, Michael (Harold Perrineau), died attempting to return to the island in the season finale. Sawyer (Josh Holloway), Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) and Charlotte (Rebecca Mader) survive on the island.

“The conventional thinking might be that we’re going to spend the entire season telling the story of how and if these charcters are able to make it back to the island,” Lindelof said. “That’s not what we’re doing. Not by any stretch of the imagination.”

Since death on “Lost” is a relative term, as Cuse likes to say, fans can expect to see more of Jin ( Daniel Dae Kim) whether he survived the freighter explosion or not; the mysterious Christian Shephard (John Terry), whose death caused his son, Jack, to be on the doomed airliner; and Rousseau (Mira Furlan), who was shot to death. The ageless Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell) will pop up again. Although fans do not know what happened to Claire (Emilie de Ravin) — the actress does not have a regular role this season, mind you — she will appear during the season.

For that matter, so will Vincent the dog, the only character the producers have committed to keeping alive for the entire run of the series.

source : latimes.com

Compelling, says Cuse.

Groovy, says Lindelof.

Sounds intriguing, but then again, that’s what makes “Lost” special. “What we don’t want to do in season five is basically stand around sort of shifting from one foot to another waiting for the last season of the show,” says Cuse of the acclaimed ABC series that’s set to wrap in 2010. “Like it or not, we decided to take some chances this year and be bold in our storytelling and we’re willing to accept the consequences of that.”

As the story picks up again, Jack and Ben are trying to reunite the Oceanic 6 and return them to the island, with Locke’s body in tow, in a quest to save the remaining castaways. But it’s going to be tricky convincing everyone to cooperate. And since Ben moved the island at the end of last season’s finale, they’ll have to figure out where — and when — it went.

Expect a lot of interesting things to happen sooner rather than later. But “Lost” is a character-driven journey, too, so there’ll be plenty of focus on the romantic quadrangle of Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Juliet.

Speaking of sardonic hunk Sawyer, will he get the screen time he deserves? “We really feel it’s the year of Sawyer,” says Lindelof. “He’s really stepping up in a major way.”

source : http://www.freep.com

Another filming report where i put the Spoiler image ’cause maybe some people don’t want to know about it

click to enlarge

I haven’t been lost but I’ve been out of range for a week or so. I’m on Oahu now with Fritz and Nisse. We’re going back to the main land tomorrow.

While driving up to Mokuleia today we stumbled onto the Lost set. They were filming a scene with Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Hurley (Jorge Garcia) and his VW camper. They were pretty friendly though and let us pass through the set so we could walk all the way over to the NE-most point.

source : http://blomdahl.org

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another filming report and i think it’s for the same scene.

More about that Dharma shooting we mentioned yesterday that includes the Oceanic Six and Sawyer. An eagle-eyed reader writes to us:

I live on the North Shore, where they shoot Lost. On a hike today near the ocean I saw a scene with Hurley standing around in dark clothes while a blue and white VW bus came buzzing up and stopped by him. An hour later when I was on my way back, I saw that Sawyer (i’m pretty sure) had joined the scene. There were two or three extra blue and white VWs on standby out of scene and the one I saw up close had the Dharma logo on its front.

source : http://io9.com