After an outrageously long hiatus, "Lost" [1] returns tomorrow, Feb. 7, at its new time of 10 p.m. This season has seemed a little desperate at times, trying feverishly to keep viewers riveted while the many, many plotlines spread out in chaotic ways, raising more questions than can possibly be answered. It’s been sometimes boring, and other times frustrating.

Still, like any addict, I can’t give it up! If you’ve forgotten some of the things that have happened in those six fall episodes (oh, they seem so long ago!), here’s a refresher.

• Kate, Sawyer and Jack are being kept in captivity by "Henry Gale," whose real name is Ben, and some of the Others. Kate and Sawyer are in outdoor cages, while Jack is in an old shark tank. Jack’s main caretaker is an Other named Juliet who looks vaguely like Jack’s ex-wife, Sarah. The Others have a thick file on Jack, documenting his entire life up until the plane crash.
• The Others’ community is like a real, modern village, with homes and kitchens and well-kept lawns.
• Kate and Sawyer are forced into manual labor, breaking and moving rocks. Being prisoners together, without any other original "Losties," brings Kate and Sawyer together to the point where they get it on in Sawyer’s cage, and he tells Kate he loves her.
• Alex appears at the place where Kate and Sawyer are breaking rocks and demands to talk to Ben, and tells Kate "They’re going to kill your boyfriend!" There is confusion about whether this means Jack or Sawyer.

Lots of other developments, so

• In Sun’s flashbacks, we learn that she had an affair with Jae Lee, and since we already know that Jin is sterile, Sun’s baby may be Jae’s. We also see that Jae died by either jumping or being pushed out of a building (out of room 1516, yet another variation on the "special" numbers in the show).
• On Desmond’s sailboat, an armed Sun encounters an Other named Colleen, who calls Sun by name and tells her, "We are not the enemy." Unconvinced, Sun shoots Colleen.
• Ben proves to Jack that he is in touch with the outside world by playing a video of the Red Sox World Series win, and then promises Jack that if he cooperates with them, Ben will take Jack home.
• Somehow, Desmond, Locke, Eko and Charlie survived that crazy explosion that reduced the Hatch to a hole in the ground. Then, however, the smoke monster returns to beat Eko to death. Just before he dies, he whispers in Locke’s ear, “You’re next.”



• Eko’s God stick has the scriptural carving, “Lift up your eyes and look north,” which seems to be a message meant for Locke.




• A vicious polar bear makes an appearance having dragged Eko into a cave sometime after the Hatch explosion. Inside the cave there are human skeletons, one of which sports a t-shirt with the Dharma logo on it.
• At the Pearl hatch, Locke and the fresh-faced newcomers, Nikki and Paulo, discover video footage of a man with an eye patch.
• Ben reveals to a psychologically tortured Sawyer that there are actually two islands: the one where the Losties crashed, and the one where the Others are keeping Jack, Kate and Sawyer captive. Thus, escaping the Others just got a lot harder.
• Sawyer has a daughter he has never met, but for whom he set up a bank account. He had a large sum of money put into it, demanding that the transaction be anonymous.
• Jack spots X-rays of a man’s spine and notices a cancerous tumor. It becomes apparent that the X-rays are Ben’s and that he will die unless Jack, the only qualified surgeon around, operates on Ben. Juliet asks Jack to mess up during the operation, making Ben’s death look accidental. She lets him know that "some of us want a change."
• Having escaped from the shark tank (probably not a mistake on Ben and Juliet’s parts), Jack steps into a room full of TV monitors and sees Kate and Sawyer cuddled up together in Sawyer’s cell. Ben appears and reminds Jack that he will get to go home if Jack just does the surgery, and Jack agrees.
• During the operation, however, Jack makes an incision in Ben’s kidney sac and threatens to let him die there on the table unless the Others set Kate and Sawyer free. This is how the first part of the season ends: with Ben possibly dying and Kate and Sawyer possibly being freed from the Others.

Need more? You can watch all six episodes online [2] before "Lost" returns tomorrow night.