''Lost'': Back and Forth

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Someone else desperate to know more about Hurley's Twilight Zone daze: the immediately arresting, sharply attired, cryptically named Matthew Abbaddon, played with quiet relish by The Wire's Lance Reddick. He tracked down Hurley at a sanitarium — dude thought he'd be safer if he just dismissed the Charlie visitations as crazy visions — and offered him an upgrade to a first-class loony bin with better views and more leg room. He presented himself as an employee of Oceanic Airlines, but when Hurley grew suspicious, Mr. Creepy cut to the chase: ''Are they still alive?'' Hurley freaked; Abbaddon walked out. Season 4 Burning Question No. 4: Who is Matthew Abbaddon really? And what are to make of that name? Matthew means ''gift of the Lord.'' By contrast, there's the hellish allusion of ''Abbaddon.'' My trusty TV Watch editor, Tom Conroy, pointed out to me that in the book of Revelation, Abaddon is ''the angel of the abyss'' and even the personification of death. I have theories — but they are best saved for next week, when we will encounter Matthew Abbaddon once again in an equally provocative scene.

Still, if I were to apply any Bible story to the premiere, it would be Jonah and the whale. Why? Because of the episode's curious fixation with fish, of course! Did you catch the chalkboard in background of that Hurley-Abbaddon scene? Sketched on it was a picture of a desert island and a big, toothy fish. There were also fish in Hurley's watercolor painting of an Eskimo. And there was another finny creature (partially obscured) printed on Charlie's T-shirt when the dead hobbit rocker — played by Dominic Monaghan, looking ethereally clean, like an airbrushed model — dropped in on Hurley for a (ghostly? hallucinatory?) visit. The self-sacrificing castaway had come to egg his old friend out of his hideaway hole and, more, to cajole him to do the right thing, which was to...what? Go back to the Island and save those left behind? It was unclear. ''They need you, Hugo,'' Charlie said. Of course, this is also the story of Jonah and the whale, which is never actually referred to as a whale but as a fish. Some scholars even suggest it was actually a shark. Jonah was given a calling to save damned souls from God's divine wrath. But instead of heeding the call, Jonah ran away. Bad Jonah! He got swallowed up by a fish, repented, and then, after being spit up (''hurled'' in some translations), finally fulfilled God's request. Season 4 Burning Question No. 5: Will the Oceanic Six answer Charlie's call and save the remaining castaways left behind on Hell Island?

Of course they will. But not yet. As he did with Jacob's haunted house, Hurley wished Charlie away — shades of ''Tricia Tanaka Is Dead,'' when Hurley used the power of positive thinking (and Island magic?) to restart the dead Dharma bus. In Hurley's final flash-forward scene, Jack (not yet sporting the beard; not yet screaming, ''We have to go back!'') stopped by the funny farm to shoot some hoops. Hurley told him that business about not doing the right thing, about being convinced that ''it'' wants them to go back — but Jack was having none of ''it,'' whatever ''it'' is. Season 4 Burning Question No. 6: What the hell do you think they were talking about?

These were the ideas and mysteries that captured my imagination. I would be remiss if I didn't add that I was moved by Hurley's attempts, both on the Island and in the future, to grieve and make sense of Charlie's death, and more, to honor his sacrifice by trusting his warning that the freighter isn't Penny's boat, that it might be really, really bad news. Which leads me to Season 4 Burning Question No. 7: Why does flash-forward Hurley now regret trusting Charlie and wish he had stuck with Jack instead of siding with freighter fraidy cat Locke? But enough of my questions — I want to hear your answers, plus your takes on all the stuff we didn't cover here, including the tribal split over the freighter-people issue and the arrival in the episode's last scene of Daniel Faraday, a fellow who brings with him to the Island even more burning questions — and a few truly curious friends, too. That's next week. Now: Post!