Time to get Lost!

I think if I'd grown up back in the days when movie theatres showed serials like "Flash Gordon" and "Tarzan", I would have been one of those kids that was at the theatre every Saturday. Action, adventure, romance, perilous situations always concluding with a cliffhanger, guaranteed to leave you unfulfilled and barely able to wait for next week's episode, just to go through it all again. Frustrating and manipulative? You bet! And I love it! Luckily for me, serial storytelling is alive and well on television. FX's under appreciated "The Shield" just concluded it's seven year run about a month ago, "24" is five hours into Jack Bauer's latest bad day and tonight, "Lost" returns to ABC.
If you've never watched the show but have always been intrigued and are considering getting involved with it this year, I have one word for you: don't. There are so many plot lines and characters and off-the-wall elements that to try to jump into it and make sense out of what's happening after it's been on for five years already is impossible. Sort of like trying to figure out what's going on in "Twin Peaks" at all.
If you are already a fan of the show, here are my bold predictions for what we'll see this year (bold, in that I guarantee they will all come true, unless the characters are killed, which could happen, in which case these circumstances can't occur because the progenitor(s) will be dead...unless they really aren't dead at all, which allows for the possibility that these things could all still happen. Unless they don't. Or not.):

• SAWYER will effectively utilize the full range of all both of his facial expressions; The Smug Smirk and The Pissed-Off Sneer

• LOCKE will continue to give me the creeps, not in small part because he so closely resembles Uncle Herb (not an actual relative) from my childhood, and the less said about that the better.
• BEN will say something like "I know I've never given you any...ANY...reason to ever believe a single word that comes out of my mouth, because I'm always lying and every time you demonstrate the judgment capabilities of an infant by believing me, someone suffers greatly because of it, but I swear when I tell you that taking these scissors and running just as fast as you can through the thick underbrush of the jungle at night is the only possible way to save (insert some character's name here), I'm really really REALLY telling the truth this time".
• Someone will do it with about two seconds worth of hesitation and they will suffer greatly because of it. (This will probably happen more than a few times, actually)
• KATE will come ever closer to realizing just how deeply she cares about JACK and will continue to sleep with SAWYER as a means of coping with that.
• Something that hasn't been a factor since season 1 or 2 will suddenly become extremely relevant for a couple of episodes.
• New, interesting characters will be introduced.
• Many of them will die.
• SAYID will negate the fact that he is actually the one true badass in the whole affair by making really stupid emotional decisions.
• We will continue to learn more sordid, twisted details about these characters and their sad, miserable lives while the island continues to look so lush and luxurious that you will have no choice but to wonder aloud "and why exactly do/did they want to leave?"
• In spite of constantly calling everybody "dude" all the time, HURLEY will continue to be the least obnoxious character on the show.
• I will love each and every mind-bendingly maddening minute of it!