There was a year, probably the year that Return Of The King and the third Matrix movie came out, where I kept hearing the same tagline: “Everything that has a beginning has an ending.” Talk about pompous and wanting to be epic (and falling short, especially that year). And yet, sadly, this phrase works for Lost, but maybe with some modifications: Everything that has a beginning, a middle, and an ending will end, but not necessarily in that order.

Fuck me, this has been a long time coming. It feels like those last few moments of “The Incident” ended a forever ago and we’re so close, and I’m freakishly excited. You know how you finally go on that date with that hot person and you’re nervous and you’re worried about having shit in your teeth or how your hair looks and are you funny enough? And you’re freaking out this date is just tanking (this is obviously a very cliched date, I know), but then that hot, amazing guy/girl says, “Hey, why don’t you come back to my place for a drinky drink?” I’m like that excited. That kind of excited with a mixture of a 100 Hiroshimas. So, you know, the return of this show on Tuesday night is serious business.

And let’s start looking back at how we got here, and how I could possibly be this excited as we begin looking at…

The 100 Greatest Moments of Lost!

PART ONE

100. Workman: “So are going to go back and kill Hitler or some crazy shit like that?” Marvin Candle/Edgar Halliwax/Mark Wickmund/Pierre Chang: “Don’t be absurd! There are rules!” From the season 5 opener, “Because You Left,” this is quite the meta statement. And I think it’s safe to say that Miles’ dad is one of Counterforce’s favorite characters.

99. Ben ditches the sling after the Ajira 316 crash in “Namaste.” This is a personal favorite of Benjamin Light and Occam Razor, and makes you wonder if Ben’s broken arm could be fixed after such a short time back on the Island or were his injuries just another ruse?

98. Jack shoots the oil cans in “The Variable,” while loading up on guns with Faraday and Kate before heading out to see the Others. Jack in 1977, when not making sandwiches and doing janitorial duties, is pretty nuts, man.

97. Regina (stunt woman Zoe Bell) kills herself on the Galaga. (Sea madness!)(Or, is it… time madness?)

96. Locke breaks his leg on his fall towards the frozen donkey wheel/meets with Christian/Smokey down there in “This Place Is Death.” The sound is so visceral and you feel Locke’s pain as he struggles to get up and move to that wheel, to pull it, and then… “Say hello to my son!”

95. “WAAALLLTTTTT!!!” from “Adrift.” I remember this annoying the shit out of me all 700 times that Michael screamed it out, but it clung to the inner walls of my memory like a tattoo.

94. Locke meets young Charles Widmore in “Jughead.” This moment, to me, is classic Locke, the man who deals with obstacles, but considers no one his enemy. Has any of the other characters met this 17 year old piece of snot who would cause them so many troubles in the future, they’d probably kill him. But not Locke. Once he learns the young man’s identity, he unleashes that trademark smirk. When asked what the name means to him, Locke merely replies, “Nothing. Nice to meet you.”

93. Jack and Sawyer’s poker game in “Lockdown.” It doesn’t take long before Kate, who’s watching the whole game, appropriately adds, “Should I get a ruler?”

92. “I screwed her, man.” From seeing who has a bigger dick to this, this touching confession that Sawyer makes to Jack about Ana Lucia in “Three Minutes” is some damn near heartwarming potential bromancery, right?

91. Rose and Bernard re-united in season 2’s “Collision” after 50 days apart.

90. Kate and Jack’s hate sex encounter the night before Ajira 316.

89. Jack’s “I married her!” line to Desmond in “Orientation.”

88. Jack and Kate get caught in a net. Why is this one of our favorite moments? Because of the SEXUAL TENSION! Duh. And it’s kinky.

Also, I’m gonna cheat here a bit and declare lucky #88 a TIE with another of my favorite moments: the scenes between Jack and the then (and still, as a lady sometimes should be) Juliet in the aquarium in “A Tale Of Two Cities.” Jack is held captive, at his wit’s end, his entire being frayed and stressed to the limits, and there’s Juliet, with the face of an angel, pushing him just a little further. It’s an amazing mash up of smoldering and vulnerability and one of several examples I would provide to anyone foolish enough to tell me this show isn’t sexy. (Another example would be #90, obviously.)

87. Sayid, in the rain, with a gun, from season 1’s “Homecoming.” Ethan is back and he’s threatened to kill someone every day until Claire is returned to him, so our 815ers form a posse to take him down. And of course Sayid is the badass Angel of Death.

86. Phil gets killed during “The Incident.” This guy was a serious itch in second half of season 5 and then they scratched it.

85. Karl and Rousseau are killed by Keamy and the mercenaries at the end of “Meet Kevin Johnson.”

84. Ana Lucia and Goodwin face off in “The Other 48 Days.”

83. Jin and Mr. Eko hiding from the Others, in season 2’s “…And Found,” and those bizarre glimpses of dirty bare feet, and teddy bears being dragged along, further tantalizing the mysterious of who the fuck are these people?

82. Hurley is writing The Empire Strikes Back in in “Some Like It Hoth.”

from here.

81. “He walks among us, but he is not one of us.” It’s what it says, but it’s not what it means,” Jack, from “Stranger In A Strange Land.”

80. Sayid hears the mysterious whispers while escaping Rousseau in “Solitary.”

79. Jack and Kate’s conversation in the Others’ rec room in “The Man From Tallahassee.” Just another link in the long chain that has been the Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Juliet/Ana Lucia love “triangle.”

78. Faraday sends the message to the future via Desmond’s head and his being an exception to “the rules” referred to at#100 at the end of “Because You Left.”

77. Jack gets to see the Red Sox win the world series in “The Glass Ballerina.” This is a simple but powerful moment that shows why Lost is more than just some gimmicky show, taking a simple line of dialogue from season 1 about Jack’s dad’s baseball team, the Red Sox, always  the team of losers, and showing that sometimes losers can win. Emotional resonance!

76. Nadia the cat silently judges Sayid at the end of “Enter 77.”

See you tomorrow with PART 2!