Have Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof LOST their minds?

The creators and producers of the amazing ABC TV show LOST have really got fans buzzing after airing just one episode of the final season.

"Darlton" had promised LOST's loyal audience that after five years of a series told with flashbacks then flashforwards they were going to unveil a new storytelling device for this final season, which premiered last Tuesday. The show featured two seemingly alternate and parallel versions of reality. Now, the ABC LOST website has up a page explaining the phenomenon as a flashsideways.

I know this all sounds a little nutty to the non-LOST fan, but as the show winds to a close in the next few months devotees like myself will be looking for the series to tie up a boatload of loose ends and explain a whole bunch of mysteries seen as key to the show's mythology. So for the writers to seemingly introduce a deeply complicating plot device was shocking to say the least.

LOST, the TV series airing on Tuesday night's this season, is just one part of a larger fan experience:

I begin the experience of each episode with a "pre-hash" audio podcast released two or three days before each new show and available free through iTunes. Carlton and Damon talk about what happened last week and what we can expect in the next episode. They read and sometimes answer questions submitted by fans. They definitely prompt you to notice something you wouldn't otherwise, or wouldn't consider significant at least.

Then, after watching the show on ABC, I go to Mac Slocum's great LOST blog. He writes a fully cross referenced episode recap, post usually four hours or so after the show airs. Mac's blog entries are well organized, insightful and funny as hell. Then an incredible community of fans discusses the show's minute details and the potential meaning of it all. (Link to this blog lives always in the list at right.)

I then try to watch each episode a second time before the next one rolls around. ABC knows LOST fans like to do this, and has in past years even run a pop-up-video-version of last week's episode just before this week's new one. The so-called enhanced and non-enhanced versions of each episode are also available to watch anytime for free at abc.com