Category: On TV

Things on TV

A Lost Sign of Spring

It’s around this time of year that the signs of spring start popping up, making winter in central Ohio a little less dreary.

Spring training means baseball (yes, even pre-season baseball) is here.  The days getting longer sets the stage for grill season.  And for the past few years, the new season of Lost has always started right around the first week of February, carrying through right up to the beginning of summer (which in addition to giving me something to watch, has given me something to write about).

Well, the past few days, I’ve been looking forward to the beginning of baseball season and have noticed the days getting longer.  While I’ve thought about Lost, I haven’t really felt like I was missing anything until I read an essay on the New York Times’ Website written by Carlton Cuse, one of the head writers of Lost:

After “Lost” ended last May, the first thing I wanted to do was go someplace far away and clear my brain. But I quickly discovered there was a big difference between getting away and leaving the show behind…Right around now a new season of “Lost” should be making its heavily promoted debut. Instead, three years into the show my partner, Damon Lindelof, and I did something that had never been done before in network TV: We negotiated an end date.

After reading the article, I haven’t been able to stop thinking: Shouldn’t we be getting a new episode of Lost next week or so?  And then reality hits me: the show is over.  So no, winter is going to last a while longer and there won’t be any new episodes of Lost to lead us into summer.

On the show, mostly everyone got a happy ending.  A large percentage of the questions were answered.  And I’m still (obviously) a fan of the show.  But it was such a huge event for the last six years that it’s odd not to have it anymore, yet it’s still around.  A few weeks back, a number of people won  money in the lottery by playing Hurley’s numbers. Apparently, last night on TV there was a Lost reference on 30 Rock.   Also, yesterday, I found a rather odd tie to Lost: if I worked at my current place of employment 80 years ago, Kelvin’s grandfather would have been my boss.

Back in December, I finished watching the whole series (it took a few months to do it).  It was enjoyable watching it again without the mysteries hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles.  To be able to concentrate on the characters again (even Kate), even knowing what would happen to them, was fun.

It feels like this time of year is missing something without new episodes of Lost.  I could always pop in a DVD and watch an old episode any time I want.  At the same time, not having the show continue frees up parts of my life.  And with a baby, there’s plenty to do.  New signs of life and all.  Isn’t that what spring is about?

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Will Weezer on the Simpsons be Perfectly Cromulent or Utterly Craptacular?

If you were to have told me ten years ago that Weezer would be guest starring on The Simpsons, I would have set my VCR months in advance and cleared my schedule for whatever Sunday night the episode aired.

This week, upon hearing the news that Weezer will be guest starring on a future episode of the Simpsons, I’m thinking that since The Simpsons airs during Hope’s bedtime routine, if I miss the initial broadcast, I can always catch it later on Hulu or somewhere else online.

My changed attitude reflects three things. First, (obviously) technology has totally changed the way most of us watch TV. Secondly, having a daughter has changed my priorities (as I type this with one hand, I’m feeding her with the other). And finally, I just don’t feel the way about new Simpsons as I did about the old Simpsons.

I think that Simpsons seasons four through eight are some of the best seasons of television ever produced.  There are whole episodes I can do line-by-line.  But after that, the show started getting full of itself.  Random guest starts (just for the sake of having guest stars), pointless storylines and a list of producers, co-producers, assistant producers and executive producers that lasted the whole first block turned the show from must see TV (for me) to well, I guess I’ll watch it if I have nothing better to do.  The last season in which I went out of my way to watch involved the family going to London, where Tony Blair greeted them at an airport, only to jet off on a rocket pack.  I’ve watched a few episodes since, and while I’ve enjoyed them, it hasn’t been enough to get me back every week.

Well, according to some tweets by band members, the members of Weezer are among the newest random guest stars.  If anything, their appearance will probably be more along the lines of each member gets one line rather than guest stars who are integrated into the episode.  I wouldn’t call Weezer a group of fringe musicians and while they don’t need an appearance on The Simpsons to embiggen their exposure, something like this can only help them.  Sure, I’ll watch, but I’m not sure that a Weezer appearance will get me to watch The Simpsons every week again.

Besides, 8:00 every night is Hope’s bedtime.

King Tom

Break A Leg, Coco

The day is finally here for fans of Conan O’Brien: the whiskey snortin’ leprechaun cavortin’ wizard of late night returns to television.

Unfortunately, I won’t be watching.

It’s not that I don’t want to.  I watched (through the miracle of DVR) pretty much every Tonight Show he hosted (yeah, I know there were seven months worth of them, so that’s not saying much).  And as someone whose bedtime falls between 11:00 and midnight, his show is on at a great time for me.

But when The Civee and I moved back in March, we chose not to subscribe to cable.  In the past seven months, this is the first time I’ve missed having a few hundreds of channels.

Luckily, I’ll be able to catch up with Conan eventually.  His Website (or TBS’) will stream each show the following day.  So it’s not like Conan will go unwatched (but if things keep going the way they are, the talentless Jay Leno’s show may well go unwatched).

Even though I won’t be able to watch live, I’ve gotten caught up in the buzz around Conan’s new show.  Last week, the show hosted a contest giving away 10,000 t-shirts (1,000 each day, with a new shirt every day) to Web users who followed the Team Coco Twitter.  Each day, you had to be one of the first 1,000 people to go to a Web site and enter a code that was tweeted.  The first day, I won a shirt.  For the rest of the week, I didn’t schedule my life around the contest, but I was often around a computer when they would tweet the secret code.  Three of those days I entered the code within 30 seconds, but was not one of the lucky thousand.  And another day, I misspelled the code. But at least I won one t-shirt. And it has a blimp on it.

Thanks, Conan!

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Not Quite the Adventures of Ben and Locke, But Close

A few years back….back during March of aught-seven in my ‘recap’ of the LOST Episode The Man from Tallahassee, I made a simple request:

Dear Lost Producers:
Can we have a whole season of Locke and Ben? Thanks.
Stay Classy,
King Tom

Well, it looks like my wish is their command.  Or something close to it.  It’s being reported in various places that NBC has ordered a pilot for a J.J. Abrams-produced show starring Terry O’Quinn (Locke) and Michael Emerson (Ben) as former black ops agents.

It’s nothing close to a LOST sequel. And while my comment was based around the (incredible) characters of Locke and Ben, we saw through the episodes since then that any scene featuring those two was golden–not only because of the characters, but also because of the actors.  There will never be another LOST.  And I’m not sure I’d even want a LOST sequel.  But even if the characters in the new show are one half as compelling as their LOST counterparts, I’ll be watching.

Michael Emerson told EW that he can’t believe his luck:

I really am AMAZED that what started out as some kidding-around on the set of LOST has turned into a network TV reality! I’m still reeling from this sudden turn of events. I’m an actor who has never even succeeded in testing for a pilot and here I find myself involved in a project custom-built for Terry and me!

This won’t totally buy forgiveness for NBC for what they did last winter, but this may get me to say good things about them again.

On a related note, I probably didn’t say it on here, but I’ve told people that once Lost and 24 were over, I wasn’t going to blog about TV shows on an episode-by-episode basis anymore.  This news has me reconsidering that.

King Tom

Getting Lost All Over Again

I got an early birthday present: the complete Lost series on Blu-Ray.

I have to admit, while the packaging and extras are nice, the best part is having every episode of Lost in glorious high definition. Last week, I started watching the series from the beginning. I’m about halfway through the first season (finished “Hearts and Minds” last night) and it’s like watching a whole new series for a few reasons:

-The TV I watched the first few seasons on wasn’t a particularly good one. It feels like I’m seeing whole new levels of visual detail.

-I don’t have the burden of trying to solve the mysteries. I know how things turn out and I know many of the answers. Instead, I get to focus on putting the pieces together and watching characters grow. I’m not saying that my feelings for Kate’s character have changed, but now knowing about her past and her history with the marshal, her early flashbacks were interesting if only because I knew how it turned out. Similarly, knowing that Locke was in a wheelchair throughout “Walkabout” and everything else he encountered in his story gave me a new level of appreciation for what he went through throughout the episode.

The characters are a lot different early on- they have a lot of growing to do (something that we learn later on in the series).  I actually feel bad for Michael- that he wasn’t brought back as part of Season Six (outside of answering the “what are the voices?” question).  He was a big part of the series early on, and sure, he got annoying during Season Two, but the main reason he wasn’t brought back for the show’s final sideways storyline (even in a Shannon- or Boone-style cameo) was because of the growth of Malcom David Kelley, who played Walt.

Another thing I’ve noticed is early on, the show sure took its time. There are a lot of scenery shots. And for a show that is recorded in Hawaii, it’s natural that the makers would want to capitalize in their surroundings. But in the last few seasons, scenery took a backseat to storytelling (and for good reason). But it’s fun watching this show have some room to breathe. And it’s enjoyable to watch it without worrying about the mysteries. Who knows, I may even enjoy the episode about Jack’s tatoos. Ummm…now that I think about it, that’s not gonna happen.

So there won’t be any more episodes of Lost on TV anymore. But thanks to the set, that doesn’t mean I won’t be watching Lost.

King Tom

Weezer’s Hurley: Not A Concept Album, But It Could Be

So it’s official- Weezer’s upcoming eighth album, Hurley (due September 14) is named after the character from Lost and will have actor Jorge Garcia on the cover.

The cover news came out today, courtesy of Spinner, and lends credence to an item posted on the alt.music.weezer newsgroup back on July 30.  That item, posted by someone who claimed to have seen the cover, noted that Garcia would be on the cover (proven to be true as of today), also reported the album would be released on Epitaph records (confirmed last week) and had a tracklist, with several of the song titles being confirmed (also last week) by a Rolling Stone article.  The newsgroup post claims Hurley‘s tracklist is:

    1. Memories
    2. Ruling Me
    3. Trainwrecks
    4. Unspoken
    5. Where’s My Sex?
    6. Run Away
    7. Hang On
    8. Smart Girls
    9. Brave New World
    10. Time Flies

Nevermind the fact that these days, leaking news on a newsgroup is like the nations of the world coordinating the attack against the alien invaders by using Morse Code in Independence Day.  But enough of the other information in the post has ended up being correct, I’m willing to say this may be the tracklist too.

Over the weekend, Weezer released the first single off the album, Memories, a fast-paced, quasi-punk tune about what the band’s life was like when they were just starting out.  It’s a decent catchy tune, not their best single, but far from their worst.  The chorus, which goes “Memories make me want to go back there (back there)/(All the) memories make me want to go back there (back there)/(All the) memories, how can we make it back there (back there)/I want to be there again” got me thinking about a possible link to Lost.  The chorus sounds kind of like (Rivers, if you’re reading this, skip this next bit) Jack at the end of Season 3.

For a while, I was hoping that Hurley was a Lost-related concept album.  If Memories was about Jack, the other songs could be about other Lost characters and events.  Ruling Me could be about Juliet’s relationship with Ben.  Unspoken could be about all the questions the characters had that were never asked.  Time Flies could be about Faraday.  Smart Girls could be about….um…nevermind.

But unfortunately, Hurley‘s ties to Weezer end with the album title and cover.  Rivers told Spinner that he met Garcia recently and has only watched Lost through season two.  The band went with Hurley because, as Rivers told Spinner,

“Ultimately, we just went with some random word that doesn’t really have anything to do with anything. I just loved this photo of Jorge Garcia — it just had this amazing vibe. We didn’t want to do a fourth self-titled record and we knew people would refer to it as ‘the Hurley record’ even if left it without that title, so we just called it ‘Hurley.’ No words are on the cover because all we wanted was his amazing face.”

Even if it’s not about Lost, it’s a great album cover.

King Tom4 Comments

The New Man in Charge Will Only Answer One of Your Questions

For the past five years, after each new episode of Lost, I’ve written a little something about what went down on the Island.

Well, the series is over, but today, an official epilogue, The New Man in Charge, set for release on the official DVD set later this month, leaked.  You can find it online (and may want to start looking at Dark UFO’s spoilers section) and skip a few more weeks of waiting.

While not really taking place on the Island, you get an idea of what happens during Hurley’s time in charge: shutting down the DHARMA stations and bringing an old friend back to the Island.  Despite the fact that Hurley is the one in charge, the star is Ben.  And Lost never goes wrong when Ben is the center of attention.

While shutting down a DHARMA facility, Ben offers to answer one question each for the confused workers.  He shares a previously unseen orientation film (converted to video).  Ben and the film answer some of the lingering questions (but not all of them) about the Island and DHARMA.

Ben is surprisingly honest with his answers, even addressing more than one question from each worker.  From the facility, he visits an old friend at Hurley’s former mental institution.  This contains more character wrap-up (and also addresses one of the things I asked in “I Want Some Freakin’ Answers“) and gives a hint at who Hurley’s successor would be.

While The New Man in Charge is a nice little wrap up to the series, it would have been totally out of place in The End.  The series was about the Island and what happened once the survivors of Oceanic 815 arrived.  While I wouldn’t blame Disney/ABC for trying to milk the series for more cash and release expanded universe-type material in the future, the Lost story ended with the death of Jack Shepard.   The New Man in Charge is an official post script.

And for what it is, it’s pretty good.

King Tom2 Comments

Weezer Pays Homage To The New Dude In Charge

It’s looking like it will be a good fall for Weezer fans. Even with the Pinkerton Deluxe (no tracklist yet) retrospective, unreleased tunes compilation Odds and Ends (same here) and possibly another installment in the Alone Series (your guess is as good as mine) coming this fall, Weezer is releasing their eighth studio album on September 14.

Rolling Stone had some details about the upcoming album, entitled Hurley, hinting that its title may be inspired by one our favorite characters here at the Kingdom:

After parting ways with their longtime label Geffen/Interscope, Weezer will release Hurley — which may be named after the portly Lost character — through California-based punk label Epitaph.

Seems that like Raditude, this album will feature a few collaborations, but unlike Raditude, these collaborations will be with more rock-influenced artists, like Mac Davis, who wrote In The Ghetto for Elvis Presley (the other King).

As revealed on the Alone II album, much of Rivers’ early material was influenced by the pop sounds of the Beach Boys.  In a way, Hurley could represent a return to Rivers’ roots.  From RS:

Instead, Hurley will focus on the melodies and major chords of traditional ’60s pop. In addition to the planned first single “Memories,” other new tracks include “Ruling Me” and “Hang On,” another pop-rock track that “sounds like Frankie Valli but mixed with Metallica guitars.” There’s also “Smart Girls,” Cuomo’s ode to all the girls that proposition on him on Twitter. … “Smart Girls,” which Cuomo compares to the Beatles’ “Back in the U.S.S.R.” in the sense that it sounds like someone else writing a “cheesy Beach Boys type of song.”

In case you have to ask, yes, I’m looking forward to this.  Speaking of things I’m looking forward to, the Lost DVD set coming out later this month will have a look at what Island life is like under the Hugo Reyes regime.

King Tom

Goodbye Jack Bauer, A Nation Turns Its Back on You

Back during Season 1 of 24, each episode would start with a voiceover by Jack in which he declared the events of that day to be the longest day of his life.

Nine years (our time, not his) and eight seasons of 24 later, Jack might dispute that assertion (or at least say he had eight really long, bad days).  Despite the changes in presidential administrations, CTU staff and nefarious villains, one constant has remained: Jack Bauer will put himself on the line for what is right.

And here he is today, at the end of his eighth longest (and final) day.  The U.S. government is in turmoil, a foreign government he nearly decapitated will be gunning for him and Jack Bauer is a man without a country.  Hardly the thanks one would get for putting ones life on the line.

But Jack Bauer would have it no other way.

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Lost: One Last Time

Way back when I first started watching Lost, I was drawn to the show because of all the mysteries.  While the characters were somewhat interesting, I watched because I wanted to find out more about the Island.  As the seasons progressed, sure, I liked the characters, but I wanted to learn more about things like the DHARMA Initiative, the smoke monster and the frozen donkey wheel.

Well, tonight was Lost’s final episode.  And not all of my questions have been answered.  But the finale was so emotionally satisfying, especially for the show’s characters that I find myself not caring about the mysteries.

Funny how these things work.

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King Tom5 Comments