After a nine-month hiatus, 'Lost' is back for the beginning of its final season.

It's rare that a show is not only able to take radically different directions multiple times during its run, but to do so effectively each time. When 'Lost' began, it was about a group of survivors of a plane crash on a remote tropical island, and there were a few things that were 'off' about their new home.

Season two brought the Hatch and more exposure to the Others, and wasn't terribly radical in change of tone. Season three focused on the Others, and on Ben and Juliet in particular, and then there was the bombshell that was the season finale, which turned the show on its head by having been a flashforward episode.

This led to season four being comprised of the regular Island narrative and flash-forwards (except in a few spots, with the show even screwing around with the new narrative to good effect in the episode 'Ji Yeon') of the six survivors who made it off the island, with both stories slowly heading towards a collision.

This led to the time travel of season five, a bold move that firmly took 'Lost' into the realm of science fiction that it had flirted with all of these seasons. The latter half-half of season five finally gave us insight into the Dharma Initiative, and closed the book on that segment of the mythos. And as with any time travel storyline, inevitably someone is going to want to change history, despite being told that they can't, and that seems to hold true as the season comes to a close... only for Juliet to successfully detonate the Jughead atomic bomb, which we all know never happened in the show's past... or did it?

And this is where season six picks up. Juliet detonates the bomb, and everything goes white, only to then reveal Jack flying on Oceanic Flight 815... a flight that, despite some turbulence, never crashes on the Island, due in part to the fact that said island is at the bottom of the ocean, apparently in the aftermath of the atomic explosion. We are then again treated to the same scene of Juliet attempting to detonate the bomb, which detonates... and the Dharma Initiative-era time traveling group is scattered across an area of the Island, in the present, history having not been changed.

The episode lays out the story of the crew on the Island in the present, and as well another (flash-sideways) featuring a parallel universe where Oceanic Flight 815 never crashes. And of course, there is the story of faux-Locke, Ben, and that other group across the Island at the four-toed statue in the aftermath of Jacob's death. Even the most ardent 'Lost' fan has to admit that the introduction of the parallel universe story seems like a bit much this late in the game. With 18 episodes left, this dramatically different concept for the show is going to be tricky to pull off. The problem is that the parallel universe story fails to add very much at all to the series.

Yes, there are subtle nuances to pick up as to what is different in this other universe, but over the course of two hours, what essentially happens? Jack has a conversation with a couple of people he knows in the "proper" reality, using the well-worn convention of deja vu to give winks to the audience. Kate escapes her US Marshall (again... this guy sucks in any timeline) and hops into a car with a (surprise!) pregnant Claire. Jack's father's coffin is 'misplaced' by the airline. By the end of the two-parter, most of them are still at the airport. Not the most compelling two hours of television.

Does this mean I disliked the parallel universe concept? Not at all. I'm just cautious about how it will play out, and keeping my expectations tempered.

The other caveat I had with this story was the introduction of other Others, with a Japanese man named Dogen as their head, who all dwell inside the walls of the temple (which is a lot bigger inside than it looks from outside). How is it the series has gone this long without seeing this branch of the Others, and how is it that Dogen seems to have more pull than Ben did (considering Jacob communicated to him)? These are minor nitpicks, but this reminds me of the beginning of season three, which I found to be the weakest point in the series. Then, as now, the story was divided into three distinct strands, and the pacing suffered for it. Being so close to the end of the series, I would hate to see it falter, and hopefully the unevenness of 'LA X' will not carry over into the rest of the season.

And am I the only one who thought the special effects for the underwater Island sequence looked particularly bad?

The episode does a few things right. Finally, Hurley seeing dead people comes in handy. Sawyer gained a new edge that we hadn't seen in seasons, and the animosity he directs towards Jack appears to mirror the hatred the Man in Black had towards Jacob (possible foreshadowing here?). We finally discover who the Smoke Monster is, and faux-Locke and Ben's conversations were the best parts of the story.

In all, 'LA X' is not a bad season premiere; it takes 'Lost' in an interesting new direction, but how well this new direction works, and how it ties into the overarching storyline, remains to be seen. It's a very bold move with so little time left in the series; but as the 'Lost' producers have shown in the past, they are adept at making these moves pay off. Let's hope they can do it one more time.

Julio Angel Ortiz maintains his collection of curiosities at www.voxbomb.net.