Lost

Gotta give ABC and the "Lost" producers credit for the best viral marketing of a TV show ever. In addition to the official site (complete with streaming video of the last few episodes, including the season finale), the creative team has also come up with a site for The Hanso Foundation, complete with bios and background on all the fictional characters who created the Dharma Initiative, some of whom haven't been introduced on the TV show yet. There's also a separate Monster.com tie-in for job opportunities at Hanso.

They started a phone line that supposedly contained the automated voicemail system for Hanso. Hanso even showed up in "Mission Impossible 3," which was directed by "Lost" creator JJ Abrams. And don't forget the interactive "Lost Experience" game and the Oceanic Flight 815 site.

Then there's the "Bad Twin" book, which showed up in print for real after Sawyer was seen reading the manuscript a few episodes ago.

And that doesn't even begin to include all the unofficial fan sites and blogs where fans are adding their theories of what the hell is going on.

The one thing they're not very good at is providing answers. It seems they take great joy in provoking ten more questions for each one they answer, and even that is usually incomplete. Here are some questions of my own:Listener John Koester's theories and questions:A friend reminded me of some connections to Widmore, the ultra-rich businessman who may be behind the whole deal (his daughter was Desmond's girlfriend and appeared in last night's final scene):The best news about "Lost" this week is that next season will be practically rerun-free. They'll air 7 episodes in October and November, then break until late January, when ABC will air 16 straight weeks of new episodes, which will take them through May sweeps again. Of course, that gives us less than five months to muse about where the season finale left us.

Labels: