If there's a TV series better suited for DVD than Lost, I'm not sure I know what it is. And I don't just mean on the basis of individual episodes, and all the stuff that sneaks by in the background, things that might be clues as to what the hell the Dharma Initiative was up to, or what's going on with Jack's tattoos, or where those six numbers -- 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 -- might keep showing up. I mean on a full-season basis too, and even across seasons, because sometimes we don't even know the clues are clues until 10 episodes later.

So if you've got the time and the dedication to sit through Lost frame-by-frame, now you can do so with the latest batch of episodes, Season Four. With the season interrupted and cut short by the writers' strike last year, watching it on TV made for a frustrating experience. If you watched and waited then, here, at least, you can rewatch it all at once. And if you didn't watch at all, thwarted by its on-again, off-again schedule, you are in for a treat. Because after stumbling around in Season Three, the show hit its stride again with these latest episodes, by ramping up the mystery and the drama and getting back to driving us nuts trying to determine what the island's secrets are ... not to mention the secrets of the survivors of Oceanic 815.

I won't spoil too much for newcomers, but one word defines the mind-bendy-ness of the 13 episodes of Season Four: flash-forwards. Unlike the flashbacks of previous years, which slowly introduced us to the complicated people Jack and Kate and Sawyer and Hurley and all the rest are, this season we jumped ahead in time, discovering that -- goodness! -- only a few of Our Heroes will be rescued, that whoever engineered that rescue is putting them through hell, and that whatever strange power the island is exerting over them doesn't stop once they're back home. Apparently, there won't be any flash-forwards or flashbacks in Season Five, which debuts in January, so enjoy 'em now, while you can.

Two other words seem to haunt this season: time travel. But I'll leave you to discover that on your own. (Those who've already discovered it can join me in a hearty WTF? It's a good WTF, though: I love all the new levels of intrigue the show introduced in this season, but I love this one the most.)

All the great bonus material makes this six-disc set a must for the devotee. There's commentary on a few episodes. I liked learning from showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof and editor Mark Goldman how, for the time-travel episode "The Constant," they cheerfully admit they "ripped off" an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. (There's also commentary by Cuse and Lindelof on the season finale, a first for the series on DVD.) Discs 5 and 6 are given over totally to bonus stuff, and there's the usual entertaining mix of bloopers, deleted scenes, and production featurettes.

My absolute favorite is the mockumentary "The Oceanic Six: A Conspiracy of Lies," which opens with a "disclaimer" that it's from an "anonymous source" and doesn't "reflect the views of the producers of this DVD." By talking to "experts" and comparing security photos from the Sydney airport before the boarding of Oceanic 815 to the photo of the "Oceanic Six" washing up on that island beach, it seems we can determine that there's a massive cover-up going on. How did the survivors not lose any weight? How could the plane have survived a water landing almost intact? And hey, Kate Austen was never pregnant! This is hilarious, a perfect pastiche of ominous conspiracy-theory documentaries.

Oh, and you know what? Even the DVD menus are beautiful. Enjoy.

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MaryAnn Johanson (email me)
film reviews and TV blogging at FlickFilosopher.com

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