Lost has been known for the flashbacks that it uses to show you the character's past and how they got there. Well, be prepared for a lot of flash forwards this year. There is a special feature that shows all of the flash forwards in chronological order, but I do recommend you wait until after you've watched the full season to watch it. Otherwise, you'll probably see something before you are supposed to.
At the end of last season (if you haven't seen the previous three seasons of Lost, I highly recommend you go watch them first), we saw a flash forward with Jack (Matthew Fox) and Kate (Evangeline Lilly). This means that at least they made it off of the island alive. Jack isn't doing so well in the future though. He looks horrible, his life is a wreck, and he tells Kate that they have to go back. They must go back to the island. Kate, of course, has no intention of ever returning.
Going back to the present, the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 think that life is finally looking up for them. A woman named Naomi (Marsha Thomason) parachutes to the island claiming to be on a rescue mission to save them. Jack and Kate are among those who trust her initially. Locke (Terry O'Quinn) has shockingly sided with Ben (Michael Emerson) and now believes that Naomi is not who she's pretending to be. Ben tells them all that if they let the "rescuers" find them, then they will all end up dead. Given that Ben isn't the kindest or most trustworthy of people, the group has to decide who to believe. Sawyer (Josh Holloway) is looking to be a better person than before. He even does very altruistic things this season. Jin and Sun will have to figure out what to do about Sun's pregnancy, since every woman who has gotten pregnant on the island has died.
The mysteries of the island aren't as prevalent this season. You just don't see the polar bears, magic smoke, and invisible men as much as you have in the previous seasons. Season Four focuses more on the people that have come to rescue the survivors and which ones actually make it off of the island alive. True to Lost tradition, more characters will die this season. Considering how large the cast is, it's not really that big of a deal to kill off people. For a supposedly deserted island, I swear there are more and more people there every year.
There are a lot of special features on the DVD set, 2 full discs worth in fact. Personally, I loved the 8:15 run through at the beginning of the season. The purely deadpan voice with the comedy and sarcasm is hilarious! The end of the season is jam-packed due to the writer's strike. They cut out everything that was filler so that they could get everything planned for the entire season into the shorter time frame that they were given. There are 14 episodes in Season Four.
Lost is probably one of the most mysterious and dramatic shows on TV right now. While Season Four probably isn't my favorite of the seasons, it's still better than most other shows on TV. You should go get this season today and recap everything before Season Five starts back up in January 2009.
