Here's a way to make season 5 the most interesting yet:

If my theory about the island going back in time is true, why not have 'em go back to the 60s or 70s? Lost's producers promise to open the show with the usual "What are we looking at?" kind of scenario that's designed to deceive us. (Season 4's sucked, though I did have a vision of a car chase before the show aired...it was weird. I read no spoilers but somehow knew there'd be car chase in the opening scene.)

If they truly want to surprise us, they should have the show open with the Dharma people doing their work. Maybe...the very beginning of Dharma, which could've been the 40s for all we know, or earlier. Show 'em doing experiments, the filming of the Dharma initiation videos, etc. And then, among all those people in white lab coats, we see a glimpse of a guy who could be Sawyer. Then a glimpse of a girl who could be Juliet. As the episode progresses, we learn that they've gone back to Dharma's formative days and are now pretending to be a part of their group.

The best part of this would be that, instead of showing us Dharma's full story via flashbacks, they could now provide most of the revelations from a first-hand viewing -- with Sawyer and the gang mixed in.

And you know, it might be interesting if they were in some strange time warp or something, and time advanced faster...so by the end of the season they were witnessing the plane crash that brought them to the island!

Of course, this does go against my theory that they'll end up in an ice age..but this new one would be so much more fun.

Along with this, they could sometimes change the format of the show. Right now, we hear a howling/whistling noise whenever it jumps from present to flash forward or flashback. Well, instead of doing that, they'd have to come up with a new transition to go from the future back to the island where Sawyer and co. are. I don't want flashbacks to go away entirely -- they can still do 'em, and bring 'em back in full force in the final season. But why not experiment with something different? Lost has been it's best when it's different.

BTW, I think I figured out why the last scene of the finale sucked: no JJ Abrams. I didn't watch Alias, but I'm betting each season ended with a great cliffhanger. Well, so did Lost when he was still with the show. He left in season 3, and we haven't had a good cliffhanger finale since.

JJ is far from a perfect filmmaker...but he knows some things Cuse and Lindelof clearly don't.

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