[This Place is] Death on a Redheaded Perm

So Charlotte, Lost’s most annoying on-island (for Season 5) character is dead, and I’m supposed to care.

I don’t mean to sound callow, but ever since she showed up on the island (“Don’t you people want to be rescued?”), she annoyed me, and I’m just not sad to see she’s gone.  Or, as The Civee put it, “I’m glad Charlotte’s dead, because this plot is boring.”

I wouldn’t entirely put it that way–her last few minutes established that Faraday tried to break his “don’t do it, because you can’t change it anyway” rule, which should mean he gets into some interesting situations during his next jump.  Speaking of which, if he meets Charlotte back in the day, then shouldn’t he be, like, her Constant?

Perhaps the most interesting revelation in tonight’s episode comes from a different story thread: John Locke can’t follow orders.  When he meets Christian at the bottom of the well, Christian emphasizes the fact that Locke was supposed to move the island.  But Ben moved it instead, causing the whole mess the island has gotten itself into.  Well, a few seconds later, Christian tells Locke he has to push the frozen donkey wheel.  And what does Locke do? Well, permit me to illustrate:

In the above screen capture, we see Locke with the wheel.  The blue arrow represents the direction Locke would have had to go to push the wheel.  However, Locke moves in the direction of the yellow arrow, pulling the wheel.  

And this is the guy they expect to save the island?

A few other thoughts:

Continue reading “[This Place is] Death on a Redheaded Perm”

Male Bonding

So the people on the island are flashing forward and backwards through time.  The Oceanic 6 are stuck in 2007 (or 2008).  And I’m watching the show, wondering how an hour can feel like it passed by in 15 minutes.

Tonight’s episode of Lost, The Little Prince, didn’t have a lot of action, but it made up for that with answers and more riddles.  Most of this show seemed to be about groups of people doing things.  More specifically, groups of men.  Locke and Sawyer had their little bonding moment.  Sayid and Ben (and somewhat Jack, when he wasn’t trying to help Kate out) also spent some quality time together.  The most surprising thing in this episode was the transformation of Sawyer into Mr. Emotion.  

First he’s pining over Kate. Then he sees her, but can’t do anything about it. Then he has a heart to heart with Locke.  Then he shares a special moment with Juliet, is shot at, travels through time, and picks up where he left off.  Because he’s an everyman stuck on a journey with a scientist who specializes in time travel and a man of faith, I can actually sympathize with his point of view.  I just hope they don’t make him cry anytime soon.

Continue reading “Male Bonding”

If That's Jughead, Is Locke Mr. Weatherbee?

So this is Season Five of Lost–minor action off-island with major exposition on the island, with the audience left to figure out what time it is.

I like it.

Jughead was like a history lesson about the Lost island.  However, this lesson just tells us what happened, leaving out all the names and dates.  The when becomes pretty easy to figure out.  But the who, that’s for us to determine.  The why, I’m sure will be answered later.  But if the who turns out to be who we think they are, then my mind is blown.

Continue reading “If That's Jughead, Is Locke Mr. Weatherbee?”

Lost Geeks Are Everywhere

Al Trautwig: Lost fanBack in the day when Yankees games were telecast over the MSG network, my favorite broadcaster who covered the Yankees was Al Trautwig.  Al didn’t specialize in baseball, but covered every sport–he’s done hockey, he’s done the Olympics, he even covered the Jamaican Bobsledding Team.  

Al is a damn good broadcaster.  When he did the Yankees games, he’d appear throughout the game and on the MSG pre and post game shows.  Then the Yankees went to YES, and other than the Olympics (and the fact that I moved out of MSG’s viewing area), I haven’t had much of a chance to listen to Al–until now.

It turns out Al is a Lost geek.  Al has started what looks to be a weekly video blog on the MSG Network Web site where he talks about Lost.  And boy, does he talk–he goes on for seven minutes.  I can’t say I agree with all of his analysis, but it’s solid.  He makes a lot of good points, and isn’t ashamed to hide his fanaticism.  He even plugs Lostpedia, which makes me wonder if he’s an active member of the online Lost community.  If you’re out there Al, you’re always welcome at the Kingdom.

If you’re a fan of Lost, give Al’s podcast a view–hopefully, it’ll show you that we’re everywhere.

I Wish I'd Read That Book By That Wheelchair Guy

After eight months, Lost picks right up from where it left off with two new episodes, Because You Left and The Lie.  The show which seemingly juggles genres finally started probing two issues that it had hinted at in earlier years–time travel and (well, for the first scene at lease) the workings of the DHARMA Initiative.

It’s great to have Lost back, and it was great to end the hiatus with two episodes.  The shows were good, but a little disjointed.  The one drawback to having characters in different locales is that it’s hard to get a good narrative going when you’re skipping story tracks like a record (or the inhabitants of the island tripping through time).   I like what’s happening on the island.  Ben’s attempts at getting everyone together is interesting.  Sun and Kate on the other hand, are kinda boring.  The only possible redeeming quality of that storyline is that I don’t trust Sun at all, so Kate deserves what’s coming for putting her trust in Sun.  

And Ben has 70 hours to get everyone back to the island.  What is this, 24?

Continue reading “I Wish I'd Read That Book By That Wheelchair Guy”

The Show With A Plan

Trust me, this will eventually be about Lost.

Over the past few weeks, The Civee and I have been re-watching Alias, a show that we would watch “together” during our dating days (since we were cities away, we’d talk on the phone during commercial breaks than hang up on each other as soon as the show came back on).  It was a fun show, one we both enjoyed.  It had moments of greatness, but overall, the show was frustrating for fans because of three things that had to do more with the creator (J.J. Abrams, who would go on to help create Lost) and backstage happenings than the stories told on the show.  Alias was a let down because of:

– There not being an end-point for the story from Day 1.
– The failure of the network to get a key actress to commit to a second season, leading to storylines being scrapped and hastily re-written to accomodate her disappearance (not to mention other cast changes brought about by the interpersonal relationships of actors).
 -J.J.’s short attention span and abandonment of Alias (for Lost) in seasons four and five.

If there had been a clear path and had storylines played out like they were supposed to, then the fate of Alias would have been different.  Thankfully, both the creators of Lost (which returns tomorrow) and the network seemed to have learned their lesson.  

Alan Sepinwall, TV critic for New Jersey’s Star Ledger has (in what has seemingly become an annual tradition) published an interview with Lost Co-Creator Damon Lindelof, who explains that these things don’t happen by accident:

But more importantly, if “Stranger in a Strange Land” — which, universally, is (considered) the worst episode we ever produced — had not been produced, we would not have been able to convince the network that, “This is the future of the show: how Jack got his tattoos. Everything we’ve been saying for two years about what’s to come, is now all here on the screen. You argued that an hour of Matthew Fox in emotionally-based conflicts, it doesn’t matter what the flashback story is, it’ll be fine. But now that we’re doing his ninth flashback story, you just don’t care.” 

We can’t go back and apologize for the creative mistakes that we made, because we had to make them. If that episode hadn’t been made, we weren’t able to get a notes call that said, “We don’t like this episode,” and where we could then say, “We don’t like it, either, but it’s the best we can do if we’re not moving the story forward. And we’re now at a point, guys, where we can’t move the story forward.” And they asked, “Well, what would you do if we allowed you an end date?” And we said, “Give us an end date, and we’ll tell you what we’ll do.” And the conversations then reached a new pitch.

Everything has to happen the way it happened. 

It’s a great interview with not only hints of things to come, but some explanations as to why some things ended up the way they did.  

It seems as if they’re avoiding the pitfalls that sunk J.J.’s earlier brainchild.  And as someone who has followed both shows, I’m glad they have both a committed cast and crew and an endgame in sight.

As for me, I’ll be on the couch between the hours of eight and 11 tomorrow evening.  I pity the fool who tries to interrupt the return.

By the way, if you want something to look forward to, check out the first clip on this page. It’s only quasi spoilerish.

Time Is Not Of The Essence, It Is The Essence

If Lost fans were fans of any other show, by this point in the season, we’d be whining about how the show isn’t going anywhere, coming up with nicknames for new characters we hate and would be frustrated with the will-they-won’t-they nature of the show’s relationships.

But we don’t have to do that. Instead, we wait and pine for the network to throw us some scraps or hints of the upcoming season.

And here it is. The Lost Season 5 promo (thanks Dark UFO) (you may not want to watch if you’re not all caught up):

 

 
(and if you’re unsure about the title of the blog post, it comes from an official Lost video premiered over the summer, available here)

How To Use A Magical Island

Ben in the desertFor the past four TV seasons, the survivors of the crash of Oceanic 815 have been stranded on an island.

We don’t know much about the island. But we know it’s a special place. It was home to some culture which built a statue honoring a being with four toes. A nineteenth-century slaving ship somehow landed in the middle of the island. People with life-threatening diseases and disabilities have been healed once they’ve stepped foot on the island. And sometimes around 40 years ago, the DHARMA initiative built a series of stations to harness the powers of the island to conduct “silly experiments.”

Continue reading “How To Use A Magical Island”

A "Lost" Episode

I’m an idiot.

Last night The Civee started and I started up the ol’ DVR to watch parts 2 & 3 of  ‘There’s No Place Like Home,’ as she wasn’t around Thursday night.  We were watching the episode in glorious HD, when we decided to get some ice cream at the next commercial break. I hit stop, then hit another button and the next thing I knew, the episode was erased.

– – – – .

Our cable provider recently changed the software on our cable box, so some of the buttons I had gotten used to in the past year have changed.  If it was a mistake she had made, I would have been fine with it, but because it was me, I’m a bit pissed at myself.

We finished part 2 on ABC’s Web site, but it wasn’t just the same.

Maybe I should review the instructions the cable company sent along when the system changed.