Chimpomatic

With the endgame in sight, Lost's fifth season gets off to a pretty confident, solid start. Now that they have worked out when they're going to end it all, it feels like they can relax with the whole story and just get on with telling it, rather than faffing about so much and adding unnecessary side-tracks all over the place. They must have got enough loose ends to play with by now - here's where they start to tie them up.

We pick up where we left off, with Jack and Ben in the funeral parlour with Locke's body, Sayid and Hurley on the run after busting Hurley out of his mental institution, Kate and Aaron living in suburbia and the rest of the islanders left behind trying to work out where the boat's gone...

As we hoped when the Freighter Folk first showed up, it looks like Team Weirdo (Daniel Faraday, Charlotte Lewis and ESP-man Miles) are going to come into their own now there's a bit more room on the island. Faraday in particular really steps up in these first two episodes, and for once it feels like someone other than Ben knows what is going on - and might actually tell someone else. As they've hinted before with Desmond, time travel feels like it's going to be at the core of things - more a case of when is the island than where is it perhaps...

It also seems like we're going to be skipping around back and forth between the island and the mainland for this season, with Locke rounding the gang up to take everyone back in one storyline, while we see how everyone else - Juliet, Sawyer, Rose & Bernard, Locke etc - are dealing with being left behind in a state of confusion.

As ever, it's Hurley who gives us some classic moments, explaining in dude-speak what crazy shit he's really been up to since the plane crash - a nice way for the writers to acknowledge just how loopy this story has got - and then carry on telling it.

There's more from the Dharma Initiative, which is great, as it kind of felt like they'd forgotten about them for a bit, and they've got the coolest outfits. It's also clear that Ben's operation on the mainland is pretty organised - and that the other Others - ie the people he's worried about (the Widmore Group?) are also closing in. All in all, a very enjoyable return from a show that it would be great to see head for the final straight in style. No doubt they'll probably get a little lost again on the way, but it really feels like they're focused on delivering on the show's early promise again.

BONUS SPOILER TRIVIA BELOW

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Dr Marvin Candle lived on the island for a while, filming the Dharma Initiative Orientation films, liked vinyl and is really called... Dr Chen.

Ana Lucia returns.

Hurley's a shitzu fan.

Charles Widmore (aka hardest working man in TV cameos, Alan Dale) shows up.