In case you were reviewing the previous four seasons of Lost and thinking to yourself, "This show is pretty good, but I could really use more lingering questions to keep me up at night," ABC has released two! Entire! Minutes! of the season premiere for us interwebbed folks to watch. I know you're going to watch it (after the jump) anyway, but here's what happens in the clip and what it made me think about (we are in the business of recapping, after all):

Yesterday I watched the Battlestar Galactica trailer and started counting down the days until this show returns on January 16th. Today NBC unveiled their winter schedule, and while there was some other information in there that I'm sure I'll examine more closely later on, one bit stuck out like a bright beacon of hope. Friday Night Lights is returning to network TV on that very same evening. My cup and DVR runneth over.

So after watching the trailer for the last half of the (final) season of Battlestar Galactica, I'm starting an official countdown to the January 16 premiere. That's 51 more days of not-so patiently waiting. It looks really good. I know these jump cuts with snippets of dialogue make it a bit hard to tell what the hell is going on, but when Saul whispers "There must be some kind of way out of here" and they start playing the Watchtower/Cylon theme, I got giddy goosebumps.

Growing up in the 1980s, I didn't watch a lot of traditional "holiday specials." No special guests coming over, no singing songs by the fire, nothing like that -- just Charlie Brown, the Grinch and little Ralphie for me. So all I know about the golden age of holiday specials is what I've seen parodied on Saturday Night Live ("I'm Gumby, dammit!"). But from what I've seen, Stephen Colbert really nailed it in A Colbert Christmas, his Comedy Central Christmas special, which aired last night, although I can only imagine that his was a million times funnier, and that this time the humor was intentional. I would even go out on a limb and call it a new holiday staple, like A Christmas Story, although I don't know if I'd want it to play 24 hours in a row. Here are the five funniest moments from last night's airing.

And hopefully her character won't get treated like crap this time! Word comes from Variety that Jones will be playing a nurse whose boyfriend has "a strange injury" on the new Greg Daniels/Mike Schur series starring Amy Poehler and Aziz Ansari, due out on NBC next year. We know now that the show is not, as previously reported, an Office spinoff (oh, how no one will let anyone forget it!), but since they haven't given the damn thing a name yet, I'm just calling it The Amy Poehler Show from now on because there's only so much I can take, people.

Wondering how Office/Extras creator Ricky Gervais, one of the comedy world's most brilliant actor-writer-directors, will translate his genius to the stage in his first HBO stand-up special, Out of England? We have part of the answer: penis jokes. But perfectly articulated, self-deprecatingly hilarious penis jokes, mind you - the kind David Brent might appreciate but Michael Scott would find too erudite. Yes, Ricky's a real pisser in person, as you can see in this exclusive video from his upcoming appearance on Bravo's Inside the Actors Studio, which contains almost-verbatim excerpts from his live act. (Hey, if you wrote jokes as well as he does, you'd recycle your material, too.) And incidentally, check out how host James Lipton almost steals the bit with his own improv. Where's his HBO special?

What has country music come to? All the ladies last night had criminally normal hair! Hell, even Kid Rock's backup dancers looked like they'd managed to avoid draining six bottles of Aquanet and/or a visit to Dolly's wigmaker when putting together their look. We watch these things for giant hair, Nashville! Get your sides out! And speaking of things that were missing from the country music industry spectacle, the following crowd-pleasers did not take the stage and I'm steamin' mad: Tim and Faith, Dolly Parton, Dierks Bentley, Gretchen Wilson, Little Big Town, and Toby Keith (OK, maybe I didn't miss Toby Keith, per se, but for being the BMOC of Nashville, he was glaringly absent). On the upside, there was no Jessica Simpson! Ahh, that one almost makes up for the lack of Tim and Faith. Except not at all, because they are amazing shining lights of hope and everlasting love that make Brangelina look like Speidi. Anyway.

The angels are singing! The new season of Top Chef kicks off tonight, and I got to chat with host/judges Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio about what to expect. Over the course of the (very) long conference call, P and T discussed their new judge, writer Toby Young, a pretty rad line-up of guest judges, their own guilty pleasures and the ingredient they're most sick of. They mentioned only one of the new contestants -- Fabio -- by name, so do with that info what you will. They also took on haters who have implied that Top Chef is an easy ticket to success for lazy chefs, and if you're so inclined you can read about what they had to say at NY Mag's Grub Street blog. Otherwise, read on for the highlights.

So there I was, just sitting there, minding my own business and watching an alternately hilarious and syrupy-sweet episode of How I Met Your Mother, when who should walk into Marshall's office but Jack Arnold-- I'm sorry, I mean Dan Lauria! I hadn't seen him in anything since he gruffly tolerated his son Fred Savage on The Wonder Years, so his appearance as Marshall's supervisor at Barney's corporation was a bit of a shock. To be honest, I didn't realize that he was still alive. However, looking at his resume, I realize that I've been missing him left and right. The man stays busy. I haven't seen any of his guest appearances on Psych and SVU, although I vaguely remember him as the football coach on Smallville, and I'm definitely going to see him as Commissioner Dolan in the Spirit movie. So bravo, Dan Lauria, for staying busy. And bravo, HIMYM, for hiring him. Here's hoping he's a recurring character.

I love Ruby Gettinger. I'll admit it. I was totally skeptical when I got the screener for this new Style channel show (which starts on Sunday). It's a docudrama series about Ruby, a 500ish pound woman, with a love of southern food, trying to lose weight the good old-fashioned way -- by diet and exercise. As a plus-size gal myself, I know this is quite a challenge, but I also wasn't quite sure what to expect from a person who weighs more than 500 pounds. See, all my judging of that size is from that Nip/Tuck episode where the woman was stuck to the couch, the contestants on The Biggest Loser and Celebrity Fit Club, and the recent reports about the world's fattest man getting married and having to be transported in a flatbed. It's no wonder that my perception of weight is so skewed.