By Shalini Dore

No secrets were spilled, but there was plenty for Losties to geek-out on during the WGA Foundation’s panel sesh with "Lost" scribes Thursday at the WGA Theater in Beverly Hills.

The “Inside the Writers Room With Lost” evening gave fans plenty to chew over as Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, Liz Sarnoff, Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz talked about how they plot the ABC drama.

The process of writing each new season starts with a blue-sky meeting where scribes discuss what the season will accomplish. After that the writers break down the episodes and write them. Usually there are three storylines: on the island, off the island and one other.

What helps the writers? Rabid-fan discussions of reality shows like “Top Chef,” which Sarnoff took credit for introducing to the "Lost" writers room.

The hits just keep on coming for "Lost."

ABC drama appears to lead the TV-on-Internet herd by a wide margin, drawing 2.5 million unique viewers in the month of February, according to the latest numbers from Nielsen Online. Those 2.5 million viewers initiated some 48 million streams of "Lost" episodes, clips and made-for-Web content a la the ultra-fun audio and video podcasts that showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse grace us with once a week (or thereabouts).

As much as I love writing "'Lost' is No. 1'," there's an important caveat to these numbers. Nielsen Online's monthly survey does not include numbers from Hulu, the NBC Universal-News Corp. joint venture. Hulu is on a tear these days, as readers of today's Daily Variety know from this page 1 story on Hulu climbing to No. 2 among online video providers behind only YouTube (which remains the equivalent of Wal-Mart, Microsoft, McDonalds and Toyota combined when it comes to online vid).

ABC.com ranks No. 6 among Internet vid providers for February with 187.1 million streams, up 14.5% from January. Hulu, on the back of its big marketing push, spiked 33% to 309 million streams. The average Hulu viewer spent 176.9 minutes watching its vid, compared to 104.8 minutes for ABC.com

So with that understanding, here's the rest of the top five online TV shows per Nielsen's report. They're mostly ABC shows, but that would likely change if only Hulu would cough up some show-specific numbers. Nielsen's report does include the individual websites of Hulu partners NBC and Fox, so there is some representation of their shows.

"Grey's Anatomy" -- 18.7 million streams/1.3 million unique viewers

"The Bachelor" -- 15.1 million streams/962,000 unique viewers

"The Office" -- 15 million streams

"Heroes" -- 11.7 million streams

Good to finally get a proper look at this year's "Lost" vid from Comic-Con now that it's popped up on ABC.com.

"Secret Candle" drops a lot of hints, though I just don't know if I buy that Marvin Candle (aka Edgar Halliwax) is Pierre Chang, professor of astrophysics from Ann Arbor, Mich.

"Time isn't just of the essense, it is the essense," Candle/Halliwax/Chang pleads, from 30 years in the past (or is it his future and our past?). The audio of the "Lost" panel with Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse and Matthew Fox from Comic-Con is also posted on the show's podcast page.

I'm grateful for any morsel of fresh "Lost" material, but it's also kinda harsh to see the "returns in early 2009" posted on the show's home page, given that it's the dog days of August and we still have to wait another Six Months at Minimum for the next full-length adventure with the Flight 815's once-and-future castaways.

Can't wait for this year's "Lost" Comic-Con teaser vid with the creepy Dr. Marvin Candle (or whatever his handle is) to show up on ABC.com or iTunes.

I've seen the grainy versions captured on cell phone cameras and posted on YouTube but those are more frustrating than anything else because you can't grasp all the nuances, hints and clues. For those of us who didn't make it to Comic-Con, Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune has provided us with the next best thing -- a fabulous write-up of the "Lost" panel on her The Watcher blog.

It's so good, you'll feel like you've time-traveled back a few days to the S.D. Convention Center after reading it. Thanks, Mo.

Like parents trying to get the kids to turn off the TV and the Wii and spend some time between covers this summer, ABC and "Lost" stewards Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have launched the "Lost Book Club" via ABC.com and iTunes.

It is exactly what it sounds like: A running list of books that have made their way on to one of the smallscreen's Best Shows Ever. There's info about each title, details of how it was referenced on the show and of course, a forum for fan gabbery. It's a little something to help tide us over during the (argggh) seven more months (give or take a week or two) until our heroes come storming back in early '09.

(I'm just dying to know what's transpiring between Sawyer, Juliet and that bottle of Dharma rum right about now...)

Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise 4 Ever!

It kinda felt like time stopped for about 48 hours or so after "Lost" delivered to us its amazing season four finale on Thursday night. I couldn't think of anything else but the scads of plot developments served up in the three-parter, "There's No Place Like Home."

I watched it again the way it was clearly meant to be viewed -- the three parts consecutively, with pause and rewind buttons at the ready -- and tried to step back a bit and think about the larger story that has gripped so many of us since Oceanic flight 815 hit that first nasty pocket of turbulence on Sept. 22, 2004.

Interesting, if not surprising, to see that Jack is the most focused on piecing together the truth of what's been happening to them -- even in his pill-popping, boozy, out-there state in the flash-forwards, he's on a quest for answers. The remaining survivors, even Have Gun, Will Travel Sayid, seem to still be in a state of post-traumatic island fever denial.

On one hand, the fact that there is a conspiracy to cover it up -- the staging of the faux 815 plane wreckage, etc. - should give credence to Jack's stance that it's not about destiny or miracles but science, the individual and free will -- in this case some folks very determined to snuff out the free will, and the last breaths, of the 815 survivors. (It's not explicitly clear to me whether Jack's aware of who Charles Widmore is, but I'm guessing he got an earful from copter jockey Frank Lapidus during the time they spent together on Penny's boat)

But on the other hand (no pun intended), Jack has a fascinating conversion in the life boat after the helicopter crash, just before they run into Penny's boat. Soon as he sees the light at the end of the tunnel -- the lights of a boat that can help them get back to civilization -- he must've heard Locke's warning from the greenhouse echoing in his ears. In insisting that the shell-shocked survivors concoct a doozy of a story to cover their tracks, he's tacitly accepting at least some of what Locke asserted.

"Lie to them. If you do it half as well as you do it to yourself, they'll believe you."

Oh Locke. Jeremy. Locke. Bentham. Whatever your name is. Wherever you are...

"Lost's" fourth season finale, "There's No Place Like Home, Parts 2 and 3," wasn't 88 minutes of television. It was somewhere between a religious experience and a psychedelic journey through time and space, through the earth's crust, past the frozen donkey wheels, past disappearing islands, heroic dudes making the ultimate sacrifices for the ones they love and a latenight break-in at a low-rent funeral parlor in a bad part of L.A. I am still tingling from the enormity and the emotional gamut of the experience.

Friday ayem update: Ratings are in. Big but not nearly as big as you'd think for two of the Greatest Hours of Television Ever. No doubt the DVR numbers will add significantly to the viewership by next week, and the web streams off ABC.com will surely be flowing during the next few weeks. 9-10 p.m. hour of finale averaged 11.9 million viewers and 4.6 rating/13 share in adults 18-49. 10-11 p.m. hour did 12.5 million and 5.1/14 in 18-49.

There's so much to think about, so much info to process and plot development to parse that it would be folly to try to offer anything like a definitive commentary on these segs while the first viewing is still reverberating around my brain. I didn't know how they were going to be able to top last season's gut-wrenching finale, but Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof (who penned both hours) and helmer Jack Bender surely did.

So first some top-of-mind observations and a few questions. After repeat viewing(s), I'll try to draw some larger conclusions. There's plenty of time. I think part of the emotional roller-coaster of tonight is having to come to grips with the fact that we won't get any new episodes until January-February. Shudder.

**A moment of mega-significance seems to be the scene toward the end in the life boat (I felt the ghost of Tallulah Bankhead in the scene) when Hurley is talking about "miracles" and Locke moving the island. "One minute it was there, the next minute it was gone." Hurley's statement was such an echo of the conversation Jack had with Locke in the fantastic, fantastic, beautifully shot scene in the Orchard station greenhouse where those two are once again going at it on the science/faith seesaw.

"Just wait til you see what I'm about to do," Locke warns him, and then tells him he has to lie about the survivors' plane crash experience to protect those left behind. Now fast-forward toward the scene in the life boat and Jack as always is scoffing at the notion of miracles, but, the minute he steps into what turns out to be Penny's boat (Penny's boat!), what's the first thing he cooks up? The Big Lie, for their own protection. For his own protection, as Locke warned him in the greenhouse: "the knowledge (Jack has) will eat you alive from the inside out. You're going to have to lie." Oh boy.

"Do you believe in God, Jack?"

"Do you?"

"Two days after I found out that I had a fatal tumor on my spine, a spinal surgeon fell out of the sky...If that's not proof of God, I don't know what is."

This exchange between Ben and Jack in "Lost" episode "The Cost of Living," while Jack's imprisoned in the bowels of the Hydra station is more than just an epistemological debate -- it's a heck of a bit of writing that, to my way of thinking, helps prove that the first half of "Lost's" third season has been unfairly maligned as being weak. In preparation for tonight's two-hour, season four closer, I dove into the season three DVD set again.

Time has softened some of the harsher criticism, but in the fall of 2006 it seemed that even some of the show's most devoted fans felt the show was off the rails in the first six segs that aired in October and early November, before taking a two-month break. That skedding pattern didn't work well for the peculiar storytelling pattern of "Lost" -- live and learn, and to ABC's credit, they surely did.

Season three also carries the stigma of having the dreaded Nikki and Paolo storyline, which enough fans   yelped about to get the poor misguided characters buried alive before the end of the season.

But my goodness, let us not forget that the first few segs of season three are the ones that truly introduce us to Evil Sadistic Madman Ben -- beating Sawyer to a pulp, making Kate break rocks in the hot sun in an itty bitty sun dress and keeping them in cages while he plays  major head trips with Jack in the underground glass-walled cage. He's so bad ass he's not afraid to stroll around in tan pans and white shoes well after Labor Day.

Some highlights from this morning's Q&A at the National Assn. of Broadcasters confab with "Lost" stewards Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.

We will find out more back story as to why the late Libby was in the same mental hospital with Hurley, prior to the plane crash, and presumably after she gave her boat to Desmond for the race.

Will we at some point catch up with Emma and Zack, the two kids from the tail section group of survivors who were kidnapped by the Others in season 2's "The Other 48 Days."

To the question of whether we'll ever see Katey Sagal's Helen character (Locke's former flame) again, Darlton indicated that they hoped so.

To the question of whether the DeGroots, the hirsute couple who founded the Dharma Initiative, are still alive, Cuse and Lindelof paused a bit and then pressed for more specificity on the time frame of the question. As of where the time line of "Lost" will be when the series returns on April 24, Darlton would only say: "One of them is."

Lindelof let it be known that in a recent episode when one of the castaways (Locke? Hurley? Sawyer? I can't remember offhand) asked Ben if he knew what the island's smoke monster really was and Ben responded that he didn't know -- big lie. "Ben was lying about the smoke monster," Lindelof said.

And once again, Darlton made it clear that they do in fact have a blueprint for the series, stem to stern, and that "the last scene has been in our heads for a long period of time."

More to come from the sesh, which mostly focused on big-picture business issues and production processes, once I transcribe the tape.

In the meantime, above and below are some pics from the upcoming April 24 seg "The Shape of Things to Come."

A show that did not disappoint on its post-strike return last week was NBC's "The Office" with seg "The Dinner Party."

Special commendation is owed to Melora Hardin, who is turning beyond-bizarro Jan into the show's most explosively funny character. Considering that she's playing opposite Steve Carell's Michael Scott, that's saying something.

Plot of this episode was particularly funny because it is something we've all endured -- an evening with a couple who are obviously not getting along. Of course, Rainn Wilson's Dwight Schrute took the laughs up a notch by crashing Michael and Jan's dinner party with his one-time babysitter ("Strictly carnal," he assures them) and his own food and wine in tow. I didn't catch the actress' name but she gave a great deadpan perf. Thank goodness ABC's "Lost" is moving from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. hour when it returns April 24 -- no tough choices on whether to check in first with the "Office" or the island....

Speaking of "Lost," ABC this ayem put out the good word -- strike be damned, "Lost" is getting a two-hour  finale after all on May 29. (And yes, confirmed with ABC that it is two original hours, not a recap show leading into a finale.) That translates to six post-strike segs instead of the five that Darlton previously forecast. (Only downside: "Lost" will be preempted on May 22 to make room for a two-hour "Grey's Anatomy" finale that night.)

I hope to pry a few details about the next run of "Lost" adventures out of exec producers Damon Lindelof (pictured left) and Carlton Cuse (pictured right) Tuesday morning when I have the pleasure of moderating a Q&A with them as part of  this week's National Assn. of Broadcasters confab in Las Vegas.

If anything goes wrong, my confusion will be my constant. Let's just scrawl that right now in this e-journal, for my own safety.

I think you need a degree in physics to keep up with tonight's installment of "Lost." Near as I can tell, we've learned that the island and its immediate environs are big hunks of 3-D swiss cheese, full of all kinds of holes your consciousness can fall into and out of on its way to goodness knows where, or when. I just know there's a wrinkle coming up soon with a character named Madeleine. Or L'Engle.

Our intrepid traveler in this episode, "The Constant," was Desmond Hume. This we should've been able to predict. As usual, nice work from Henry Ian Cusick, who is underrated as a "Lost" hero, in my book. It takes a good actor to be convincingly nutso. I was surely convinced by the end of the seg, penned by Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof and directed by Jack Bender.

I'm guessing I'm not the only one who spent the first 20 minutes or so of the seg trying to figure out if Des' scenes in the military boot-camp setting were flash-forwards or flashbacks. Des loses his mind and his memory while he and Sayid and pilot Frank are helicoptering in to the boat and hit a rough patch, weather and otherwise.

"This is wrong," Desmond tells his fellow grunts. "I'm not supposed to be here." Bet he's not the first recruit to the Royal Scots Regiment to utter those words.

Back on the island, we get a flash of Juliet's steely charm as she forcefully gets Faraday and Rebecca to spill a little of what they know about the problems of time-perceptions and the unfortunate side effects that some folks experience when traveling to and from the island. I was utterly confused at 9:30 about what they were trying to say, but by 9:55 the explanation seemed to be that because of the turbulence in the copter, Desmond's consciouness was traveling back and forth between 1996 and 2004.

As if those kind of frequent flier miles aren't hard enough on a guy, it turns out he can be prompted to do certain things in the earlier or later time frame by Faraday, who seems to think it's 1976, by the looks of his hair in the flashback scenes.

"Are you Jack?"

Oh, joyful night, "Lost" has returned. Let's rewind from the above quote that ends the fabulous season preem, "The Beginning of the End," written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and helmed by Jack Bender.

The seg dives right back into the flash-foward storyline that was so tantalizing in the third season closer. Oblique references, clues, hints and undoubtedly, red herrings, are dropped all over the place. Once again, Messrs. Lindelof and Cuse give us credit for brains and having the dexterity to roll with story developments that we don't have full context for -- yet. "Lost" fans live for the euphoria of discovery, analysis and interpretation, of piecing together the threads and tidbits that the scribes so carefully lay out. None of us are bozos on this bus.

(Other "Lost" addicts are talking about the firecracker of a season premiere over at the Variety Season Pass blog. Head on over.)

After the long drought of the summer, fall and first half of winter, it was absolutely phenomenally cool to see Hurley emerging from the Dukes of Hazzard-looking Camaro after the car-chase sequence. My first guess was that Sawyer was behind the wheel, just because it looked like his kind of car, and his kind of reckless driving. Is there symbolism to the big pile of lemons (note: an eagle-eyed viewer and On the Air reader reports they were actually papayas) in the opening shot that Hurley drives through? Maybe it's like oranges in the "Godfather" movies, a sign of trouble ahead.

First big clue, of course, comes as Hurley hollers "Don't you know who I am? I'm one of the Oceanic 6" as he's being taken into custody after his romp in the Camaro. Then the cop who's interrogating him mentions that he knew Ana Lucia, that she was his partner. Forgive me, "Lost" fanatics, but did we know she was a  cop? I honestly can't remember.

As we segue to the island, our heroes look great, in their own sweaty, stubbly, dirty-raggedy way. But here's a "Gilligan's Island" issue: How come the women in the group have a never-ending supply of form-fitting undershirts, and how come they never have a hint of underarm hair? Did they find a stash of Daisy razors somewhere in season one?

Call it a post-holiday treat. More "Lost" goodies have shown up on ABC.com, and at long last, some fresh images from the new season have been posted on ABC's press site. No obvious spoilers, natch, but intriguing all the same.

ABC.com has posted a longer trailer for season four, which bows Jan. 31 with a two-hour opening salvo. The trailer drops some big hints and makes it very clear that the cavalry that Jack, Kate et al think are coming for them are not on their side. (Ben may be rotten to the core but he's usually truthful in his malevolence.)

There's also a very good eight-minute "Lost" series recap vid that just popped up. It's a good primer for anyone who hasn't been infected with island fever yet, and it's a nice refresher course even for us maniacs. After all, this show has laid a lotta story threads during the past three and a half years. In parts the recap vid plays like a "Saturday Night Live" parody of a "Lost" recap vid, but on the whole it works really well.

Once again, the only bittersweet part of indulging in all the pre-premiere hype is knowing that A) "Lost" gurus Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are, like every other WGA member, on strike against the studio and thus not eager to help ABC/ABC Studios prosper on the back of their labors; and B) barring a significant, immediate breakthrough in the WGA-major studios standoff, we're going to get eight or so episodes in and wham! by late March-early April, our run of fresh segs will be cut off artificially by the real-world drama that has engulfed this town. Even Jacob couldn't have plotted a scenario this cruel.

(More pics are posted below.)

It happened about a week ago. I was on duty, sifting through a stack of screeners of second and third episodes of fall series, not feeling particularly eager to view any of them, and as my thoughts wandered I felt a pang of "Hey, wait a minute..." excitement.

The new season is underway, I thought, and that means fresh segs of "Lost" are coming soon...

For a split second, my mind raced, my heart soared and I lunged toward my computer to look up the premiere date. And then it hit me. Four. More. Months. Or at least three and a half. "Lost" won't be back until early February. (I knew that already, of course, but after watching too many screeners in a row you often have to smack yourself upside the head to get the synapses firing properly again.)

It's going to be worth the wait, no doubt. Our heroes -- "Lost" exec producer/co-creator Damon Lindelof and exec producer Carlton Cuse -- are using the time to painstakingly map out the flight plan for "Lost's" remaining 48 episodes. "Lost's" chief creative stewards and ABC announced an agreement back in May to bring the show to an end in 2010 end  after three more seasons of 16 episodes apiece.

ABC's decision to sked the show "24"-style without repeats over consecutive weeks makes perfect sense -- ergo, the February preem date. It's all very logical and forward-thinking, but when we were applauding these decisions a few months ago, I don't think any of us rabid fans had a clue how tortuous it would be to have to wait so long. Drat and Deuteronomy!

But it's just my luck that Lindelof (pictured above left) and Cuse (pictured right) were cool and kind enough to respond to a pleading email from a jones-ing fan. The two got on the horn last week to discuss how their work process has changed in the new 48-episode world order.