'Lost' recap: What's Your Worldview?

Two, two, two shows in one! The two-hour season premiere of Lost, with its dual tracks of parallel world yarns, was a twin-patty, double-pounder factory burger of story, slathered with saucy ideas, drippy with messy emotions, and chewy with mystery meat. It was a delicious meal for this ravenous eight months-starved Lost fan, and while it wasn't easy to digest (check that: I'm still digesting it), I felt properly served. Where to start? Should I sketch how the premiere was an elaborate metaphorical rumination on the afterlife? Should I be a good host and first introduce our newcomers, Mr. ''I hate the taste of English on my tongue'' Dogen (The Twilight Samurai's Hiroyuki Sanada), the crankypants master of the Island's spiritual heart, the Temple, and his scruffy-hippy sidekick/mouthpiece Lennon (Deadwood's John Hawkes)? Should we just begin with the beginning and deconstruct the brief yet deceptively dense teaser sequence, with Jack's cryptic shaving nick, his deja vu-suffused encounter with Desmond Hume, and that wayyy cool-or-wayyy fake (debate!) f/x shot of a sunken Island? Maybe I should curb the geek stuff and dote on the rich emotional content and the plethora of poignant character moments — Sawyer's grief and rage over Juliet's death, Locke's shame and pain about his wheelchair, Rose and Bernard's gooey canoodling. (If it wasn't for a certain hobbity rocker hogging the airplane craphole with his dope-swallowing suicide attempt, I think the Mile High Club would have two new members today.) Then again, how could I not start by shouting HOLY FREAKING MOLY! over the revelation/confirmation that Fake John Locke = Man In Black = The Smoke Monster?!? ''I'm sorry you had to see me like that'' = greatest Lost line ever? And good lord, how satanically scary was Terry O'Quinn with those furious eyes and disquietingly ironic grins? Finally, I can relate with dastardly Benjamin Linus: I was totally bug-eyed terrified by that man/thing/demon/whatever. But let's not resort to name-calling...

Okay, time to choose and I say let's start with... none of those options! Because I think we need to spend a few minutes wrapping our minds around the season's high concept storytelling conceit, which the producers are calling ''flash-sideways.'' The premiere presented us with ''a separate reality,'' to borrow the title of the Carlos Castaneda book Lost name-dropped last season, a world where Oceanic 815 never crashed and the Island rests at the bottom of the Pacific, the cabins of Dharmaville and the Four Toed Statue now a sprawling industrial park for carp. Was there a Dharma logo branded on that shark? Help me out, readers, because I couldn't quite tell.