Preparing for a winter wasteland without the comforting presence of Lost by my side is a prospect that I'm not looking forward to. As far as I know, this 13-week break in the middle of the season is unprecedented; I can't think of any other show whose attempted such a manuever. Thirteen weeks is an entire season, exactly one quarter of a year, and is more than just a “break”. We're really looking at two entirely different seasons. Which is why I expect tonight's episode of Lost to be absolutely spectacular. If you've seen the previews, you know it's possible that tonight may go down as a classic. Something surprising and out of the blue and drastic will occur tonight. It's Lost, after all.
Will someone die? Will true motivations of The Others be revealed? Will Jack actually perform surgery on Ben? There are a myriad of other questions worth asking, but the point remains the same: tonight's episode will have a lot of options in terms of where the story will go. Unfortunately, there just isn't enough time to pack everything that needs to eventually be covered into one episode, so I think it's reasonable to expect a massive cliffhanger along the lines of a typical season finale. This is what has me worried. To have a whole summer off to ponder what will happen on the island, followed by six (what I consider to be great) episodes, then to have another long break might be enough to make rabid fans go crazy. DocArzt has already discussed his Lost withdrawal and, although I may not be the craziest fan out there, 13 weeks is a long time. Anyway, I'll end with some fearless, possibly misguided predictions for tonight:

• Jack will perform a successful surgery on Ben.
• Locke will find eye-patch guy.
• Sawyer will kill an Other.

-Oscar Dahl, BuddyTV Senior Writer