Why is “Lost” trying to win me back?

I was done with “Lost”, I was tired of it and never wanted to watch it again, and then what did Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof go and do?

Make me care again.

You bastards!

The people behind “Lost” must have noticed that our household was getting tired of their little televised social experiment, because out of the blue they’ve started putting on far better shows than we were used to seeing on ABC on Wednesday nights. Except for a few glitches this season (like the horr-i-ble Jack-centric “Stranger in a Strange Land”) the second half of season 3 hasn’t been too shabby, with episodes like the Desmond-centric episode “Flashes Before Your Eyes” being the stand out for me this season, followed by “The Man from Tallahassee” and last week’s fun (for me, at least) “Expose” where they killed off the latest clumsily introduced members of the Losties.

The producers definitely were yanking our chains when the season started, what with the downbeat episodes of Jack, Sawyer and Kate’s captivity and Jack’s growing relationships with Ben and Juliet. I love Ben now, he’s just so creepy/weird and you really (up until “Expose”) didn’t know where he was coming from, but he’s either manipulating people to do what they wouldn’t normally do and he’s a mastermind of sorts, or he’s delusional and thinks he’s some amazing puppet master. And Juliet has evil written all over her. Just a feeling I get.

John Locke has been infuriating this season though. You can’t stop playing with computers, can you John? First Mikhail escapes because you want to play chess on the Fire Station’s computer, then you blow up the Fire Station out of stupidity, and then you kill Mikhail because he knows you were a paraplegic, and to top it all off you go and take that C4 that you found and blow up the one reliable mode of transportation off of the island? What’s your angle, John? You better pray that Penny Widmore rescues your ass, or at least your compatriots, since you’ll never want to leave the island now that you can walk.

Charlie can die anytime he wants now. After the drug storyline was done with he started feeling extraneous, like Shannon. Hey Desmond, don’t tell Charlie when he’s going to die so he won’t know you didn’t save him, okay?

Where did Rose and Bernhard go? I liked both of them and they’ve just disappeared, but of course, in “Lost” time, they’ve been gone for probably 5 days.

I keep hoping we’ll see Michael and Walt again someday. I like to think that the coordinates that Ben gave Michael when he left at the end of last season took him straight to the second island and that they’re both there. They’re probably locked up somewhere, but I wish they’d explained Walt’s weird gift with animals and drawing them to him. Guess that’ll go straight into the toilet, won’t it? Along with so many other mysteries.

And I don’t miss Eko. He had the ability to become cool, like Locke, but he used all of his street cred up with me. RIP, Eko.