TV

I have pages and pages of notes from the roughly 90 minutes of Lost broadcast tonight, in the Season 4 finale, "There's No Place Like Home." So I'll recap what I can at this late hour, will add more in the morning, and we can continue the discussion as details surface.

Where to begin? Well, for the sake of those who may not have seen the finale yet and don't wish to be spoiled before they can get to their DVRs, we will begin...after the jump.

It shouldn't come as any surprise that a documentary about capital punishment in America is set in Texas. At the Death House Door, the new documentary from Steve James and Peter Gilbert, the same team behind Hoop Dreams, focuses on -- where else? -- Huntsville. The center of the movie is Pastor Carroll Pickett who served as the death house chaplain overseeing the executions of 95 executions.

AMC announced today that its great and much-praised original series, Mad Men, is returning for its second season on Sunday, July 27 at 9 p.m. Central. No word on what happens or where the second season picks up. But its premiere will be one of the big events of the new summer TV season that cable networks like AMC and TNT have transformed the former dead zone of reruns and reality shows into. You have to wonder how long the old-world broadcast networks are going to let their cable competitors steal the thunder of their big fall premieres without a fight. If this year is anything like last year, a lot of viewers are going to be remarking that all their favorite shows on television are ending just as the old-guard networks are sounding the trumpets for their "new" seasons.

Tonight is it, Lost fans -- the Season 4 finale, the last two hours of 14 that marked a return to the excitement of Season 1.

Writer-producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof say tonight will give us the answer to at least one big mystery. We will finally see who was in the coffin at that unattended funeral in LA, the one FutureJack checked out during the Season 3 finale ("Through the Looking Glass").

The news of that person's apparent suicide sent Jack into his own self-destructive tizzy and had him trying to persuade FutureKate that they had to go back to the Island. From all the hints we were given -- especially from what could be gleaned in brief, incomplete glimpses of the Los Angeles Times story reporting that death -- it seemed most likely to me that the coffin's occupant was Michael... albeit Michael under yet another assumed name, disguising the fact that he was an Oceanic 815 survivor.

But was the news clipping just a red herring? The producers recently have admitted as much, saying the clipping was essentially just a mock-up prop, and the clues in it weren't real clues to the identity of the victim.

For speculation and possible spoilers on "There's No Place Like Home," go to the jump...