Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert!

I agree that Lost appears to be on the mend. Good episode last night. The shift from flashback scenes to flashforward scenes is possibly ingenious. I don’t have a clue where the creators intend to take all of this, and I remain braced for a letdown of cataclysmic proportions, but they’ve revived my interest, which had been flagging.

24, however, is another story. Last year’s series was silly. This one was worse, by a lot. The constant effort to out-do the show’s previous threats from season-to-season and episode-to-episode is a path to absurdity. The soap-opera elements are even worse. There should be no smooching at C.T.U. The good news is that 24, unlike Lost, doesn’t have to carry much baggage from season to season–it can essentially start over. And that’s what it desperately needs. Also, I hope Powers Boothe comes back. He’s the show’s best commander-in-chief since Dennis Haysbert (even if his character is technically the veep). Final thought: If anybody ever makes a movie about the life of Bob Dole, Powers Boothe gets to star.