Scheduling a viewing tonight? This week's episode, beginning at 8 p.m., runs a few minutes long if you're setting a recorder. It's preceded at 7 p.m. by a recap show.

TV PREVIEW: 'LOST'

'Lost' returns — with the mysteries that make it good

"Lost" comes roaring back tonight with the start of a new, if slimmed down, season, and life on that freaky little island just keeps getting more and more wild.

All the better for us, because to fans, it seems like it's been an endless wait for new episodes of "Lost" (or, really, for almost anything, with the writers' strike in its third month), although ABC is actually bringing the series back earlier than it first planned.

In a pre-strike schedule, "Lost" was set to return in February with a 16-episode season. Instead, we're getting tonight's 8 p.m. start and an eight-episode run.

After seeing the first two of those, it looks like we're headed for a bracing, exhilarating and, of course, mystifying ride.

Tonight's hour doesn't have any barn-burning shocks like the season finale's flash-forward to a depressed, addicted Jack and his grungy beard, but it is full of solid action, more ambiguity and, as always, loads of portent.

Since producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse announced last season that "Lost" would end in 2010 after just 48 more episodes split over three 16-episode seasons, the show has been rocket-powered, moving with force and electricity toward whatever it is that it's moving toward.

(Again, that three-season thing was the pre-strike plan; now, no one knows exactly when or how the episodes will run, but Lindelof and Cuse say there's a cliffhanger at the end of episode eight that can serve as a season finale if need be.)

Here's a reminder of where things stand with the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815, and there are no spoilers ahead.

The gang was eagerly awaiting a rescue party from a freighter 80 miles offshore, until Ben (Michael Emerson), the master manipulator, told Jack (Matthew Fox) and company that those "rescuers" could really be coming to kill everyone. Why he thinks that, we don't know.

Remember, this was after Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) dove down to the underwater station, turned off a jamming device, then, as he was drowning, wrote on his hand to Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) "not Penny's boat." That meant the people talking to Jack on the satellite phone were lying. Why, we don't know.

Meanwhile, Locke (Terry O'Quinn), who was shot by Ben — that Ben is one dangerous guy — has risen from a mass grave after Walt, or a vision of Walt, told him he still had work to do. Locke's the kind of person who listens to visions. The first bit of work, it turned out, was killing Naomi, the woman who parachuted in from the freighter. Why? Say it with me: We don't know.

And then there were the flash-forwards that shifted the whole foundation of the show. We saw that Jack and Kate (Evangeline Lily) had gotten off the island, that someone they know was in a casket, and that they share a secret that, apparently, is very not good. And we watched Jack tell Kate, "We have to go back." That Jack. He wants off, he wants back — he's never happy, is he?

Those are only some of the pending mysteries. There are a few more things we don't know, including what the deal is with Locke's legs; the smoke monster; the polar bears; the electro-magnetic/seismic pulse that nearly destroyed the island and maybe the planet; Hurley's numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42); Desmond seeing the future; the spooky Jacob dude in the cabin; the visions; Claire's baby; Jin and Sun's baby; Michael's boat trip; Walt's advice; the four-toed statue; the French woman Rousseau; the links between everyone before the flight; Locke's connection to the island, and the island itself.

Oh, and how is it that divers found the wreckage of Oceanic Flight 815 and there were no survivors?