I used to be an avid television watcher, but lately, I’ve moved to the “trade paperback*” version of television watching — I wait for the DVDs.

On the plus side, that plan eliminates the wait between episodes (but it makes the wait between seasons worse), and I can watch shows when I have the time, not when the networks think I should watch them. On the other hand, when I see an episode of a show that I really enjoyed and want to write about, I’m so far behind the times that it’s effectively pointless.

Still, there is one show that I make it a point to watch “live”, as one friend of mine puts it: Lost.

Lost has been a bit hit-or-miss for me this season (though, to be fair, a Lost miss is better than a hit for most shows), particularly the last few weeks.

Last week’s Sawyer-centric episode was terrific, despite (or because of?) the fact that the ending felt like something I really should’ve seen coming. This week’s flashbacks (starring Sayid, who is one of my favorite characters) didn’t quite parallel the main story as well, but they did do a fine job explaining how Sayid, who always seems like a good man, became someone who was capable of torture. (Plus, we got another connection between the survivors, though I’m not going to spoil it here.)

I’m really looking forward to next week’s episode, since it appears we may learn something new about Dharma.
* Hypocritically, I tend to get annoyed at people who opt to wait for the trade paperback instead of buying monthly comics. In my defense, though, my watching (or not) a particular show means nothing to the market, so opting to wait for the DVDs doesn’t make it any more likely that the show will fail, therefore yielding no DVDs anyway.