The Plot Thickens...
Last week on the abc.com site, a strange thing happened. This photo suddenly appeared in the slide show of screen captures from Lost's season premiere. And a couple of hours later, after fans madly rushed back to their recorded episodes and emailed each other to see if they'd missed something, the photo was gone.

This is not a scene from the episode, so you didn't miss anything. It appears to be one from an upcoming ep, and ABC accidentally included it with the photos for "A Tale of Two Cities." But the speculation has already begun: Who is that little girl? Is Jack hallucinating Sarah as a little girl? Or Juliet as a child? Or imagining the child he could have had with Sarah had things worked out? Or is it less mysterious? Could this little girl be Emma, the girl who was in the tail section of the plane with her brother whom Ana Lucia promised to get home to her mom in L.A.? The Others took her, her brother, and 7 other people the second or third night they were on the island. She was wearing a striped shirt (different from the one in the picture, but striped nonetheless) and carrying a teddy bear when she was kidnapped. Six weeks later, Eko and Jin hid in the bushes as they watched the Others walk silently by, and near the back of the pack was a pair of little dirty feet, dragging a teddy bear tied to a string. Could it have been Emma? Or was she being kept somewhere else and the teddy bear was a ruse to make Eko think it was her? Have they pulled her out, made her one of them (a la Alex) and now she's being put to work?

Also, I'd said I couldn't find Miss Klugh in the episode, but a friend of mine pointed out a photo on the same site where you see her sitting at the book club. I didn't see Alex, though.

I appeared on G4TV in L.A. on Thursday night on their Attack of the Show, and a Variety reporter was the other guy being shown via satellite (which is sort of set up, since he's right there in L.A., presumably). He didn't like the premiere as much as I did, and said the numbers were down and maybe ABC should be worried. Just this morning I saw the report that the episode drew more than 18 million viewers, and was the #1 show of the night. Woohoo! Take THAT! Our Losties are not in any ratings danger.

Smith and Kidnapped, on the other hand, are the season's first two casualties. I blogged earlier that I thought Smith was pretty good, but probably not one to hold my attention. It had a really good cast, and frankly, it surprised me to hear the news. Kidnapped is one that people I know are watching, but I had a bad feeling about it from the start. It sounded like Reunion, and we all know how THAT turned out. However, the producers of Kidnapped -- UNLIKE those of Reunion -- will allow them to finish off the story in 13 episodes. Good news for those who watch that.

Heroes has been picked up for a full season, yay! I loved the second episode even more than the first. The porn mom is very intriguing -- her power still isn't clear, but it seems to have something to do with splitting herself and her unconscious side takes care of business, while her conscious side seems to go to sleep and not realize what has happened. She's the most intriguing one. Greg Grunberg finally appeared in the second ep, with the same power Buffy had in "Earshot" -- hearing people's thoughts. (Let's hope it's more honed than Buffy's was, and that he doesn't begin to go mad.) In a second Buffy nod, Clea Duvall (who was Invisible Girl in season 1) plays the detective who puts him under arrest.

The Office ROCKS this season. Of course, I'd love to have Pam and Jim back together, but the fun is in the anticipation. The scene in the second episode where Michael is asking Pam to look into getting him "one of those Chinese babies" for adoption was absolutely hysterical. Dwight has turned on Michael, incurring Michael's wrath and forcing Dwight's complete subservience to him. Jim is stuck in an office hell where everything shuts down several times a day so they can play war games on their computers. I love it.

I watched the second ep of Jericho and it's still intriguing me. I have no idea what the numbers on that one are, or if it's being looked at for cancellation yet... every episode contains suspense, intrigue, and terror, but it always seems to wrap up in a neat bow by the end of the ep. So it might be the very show Middle America loves. The dialogue is dull, the acting is good but sometimes overdone, so it won't be winning any awards or anything, but it's a good show nonetheless.

I have way too much still sitting on the PVR, and need a serious catch-up night. Or five.