Lost: Beware of the beard

Wow. After Monday night and this, I really feel like I'm going to have to take back a lot of those "'Lost' could learn a lesson or two from 'Heroes'" columns, you know. Season finale spoilers coming up just as soon as I pick up some good vibrations... Oh, and if you're visiting this blog via an RSS or XML reader (which doesn't have spoiler-protection, since I publish entries in their entirety), I'm warning you right now that I'm getting into some hardcore wackiness right from the jump.

Obvious first question: when did you figure out that the flashback was not, in fact, a flashback, and why? The beard alone had me raising an eyebrow, and once Jack's ex-wife turned up alive and well, my wheels started spinning about whose death in the newspaper story could have Jack this upset (we know how Jack found out about Christian's death, and his mom was still alive when he went to Sydney, and I don't think Bai Ling was a candidate), but the tipping point was the cell phone, which looked far too sleek for Jack to be using pre-2003. By the time the car pulled up at the airport, I knew it would be Kate.

Which isn't to say I was unsatisfied with that portion of the episode, or the episode as a whole, which was packed with the kind of bing-bang-boom payoffs to elements from earlier in the season that the "Heroes" finale was sorely lacking. (And I'm going to stop making the comparisons right now. Or not. I'm writing as I go, a little too keyed-up for bed just yet.)

Hurley's magic bus turned out to be there for more than comic relief and a piece of Ben's biography. Charlie sacrificed himself as Desmond predicted. (And how frikking scary was it to see Bakunin smiling in the porthole as he pulled the grenade pin? Was he blowing himself up because Desmond's spear shot had already killed him, or will he return next season to continue his role as the island's Rasputin?) Alex found out that Rousseau was her mother -- from Ben, of all people, who occasionally does the decent thing, even if it's for a manipulative reason -- and Sawyer finally got his revenge for Walt's abduction on his watch.

(Speaking of which, Malcolm David Kelley's appearance was a good reminder of why Cuselof had to get him the hell off the island. What was he, eight feet tall? On the downside, boo to ABC or Cuselof or whoever for putting his name, and Sonya Walger's, in the guest credits, the same way that the big surprise of the "Veronica Mars" finale got spoiled by that. As "Battlestar Galactica" proved this season, you can shock people a hell of a lot more if you save a name or two to run after the episode's over, contractual obligations be damned.)

But while it's fun to dwell on all the big action beats of the finale (also including a trussed-up Sayid letting his feet do the talking to that dude's neck), what we obviously have to spend the next eight months analyzing is where the hell the show goes next season. Does the flashforward come true -- and, if so, does rescue happen immediately, or is there somehow a way to stall it? Or is this something like the "Five Years Gone" scenario from "Heroes" (there I go with the comparisons again), where someone with time-altering powers (oh, I dunno, Desmond?) prevents it from happening? Or, to get back to "Galactica," is this a legitimate time-jump, one that will eventually have Bearded Jack gathering all the survivors together to return to the island and some kind of premise reboot?

In the here and now, is Ben right about Naomi's people, or is this just more of his paranoid ravings designed to keep anyone from leaving the island? (Naomi did, after all, know who Desmond was, and who Penny was; Penny's "I'm not on a boat" confusion doesn't automatically mean Naomi's people aren't working for her; it could just be that she thought it would be adequately conveyed to Desmond that she wasn't there.) Who's the person in the coffin? Is the "he" waiting for Kate at home Sawyer, or was he the one in the box?

I have pissed and moaned about this show an awful lot this season, and I still feel like a lot of the complaints were justified -- especially about the six fall episodes, and Jack's idiotic behavior throughout -- but I have to give Damon and Carlton credit for pulling things together in the home stretch. They gave us an original castmember flashback episode that didn't feel redundant ("D.O.C."); a great showdown between the two Sawyers'; Locke returning to crazy, when-in-doubt-blow-stuff-up form; some superb action and confrontations throughout the finale, and the massive mind(bleep) of Bearded Jack back on the mainland.

Back at the start of the season, before I had gotten burned out on The Others' torture and manipulations, I said I didn't honestly care if I ever got real answers to the show's mysteries, so long as the series kept me entertained on an episode-by-episode, or even moment-by-moment, basis, and this last batch of shows has sure done that. I refuse to waver from my "they're making it up as they go along" theory until proven otherwise, but at the moment, I don't much care. That was a lot of fun, and this hiatus is going to feel awfully long.

What did everybody else think? I'm sure everybody has their theories and analysis, so fire away. Click here to read the full post

Lost: SUB-question...

Spoilers for "Lost" coming up just as soon as I finish my list of the top five musical crimes perpetrated by Stevie Wonder in the '80s and '90s...

They're on a nice little roll right now, this show. Even when I get frustrated by it -- say, any time Jack is on screen and not getting repeatedly punched in the face -- I'm engaged on a level the show hasn't reached for me since late last season. (Just as most "Lost" episodes are structured so that all the interesting stuff happens in the final minutes, so is a "Lost" season constructed to put all the interesting stuff in the May sweeps episodes. Hopefully, only doing 16 a year from now on will fix that.)

I hate Charlie. You hate Charlie. We all hate Charlie and would like to see him dead. And yet the show did a good job of making me care about his planned sacrifice. The Top 5 flashbacks didn't erase all the bad and/or annoying crap he's done over the last three seasons (especially but not limited to the Darth Hoodie phase from last year). But the idea of one of the show's more selfish, obnoxious characters willingly going to his death to save people he cares about (even if he really only cares about Claire, Turnip-Head and maybe Hurley) was a good one, and I found myself caring more and more as the episode went on...

...even as I suspected that Charlie would survive. I'm hopeful he still gets killed in the finale, both because he's my second-least favorite character after Jack, and because it would cheapen a lot of what happened last night for him to live. (Maybe they go for some Gift of the Magi irony and Claire dies instead.) Last night, though, they got me. I was expecting one of three outcomes: 1)Desmond's vision comes true to the letter, with Charlie saving the day and dying; 2)Charlie dies in failure, because the show is just that bleak sometimes; 3)Charlie succeeds and yet somehow manages to make it back up in time. I sure as hell wasn't predicting that he'd be besieged by some underwater commandos. Are they Others/Hostiles? Dharma? Something else entirely?

The rest of the episode had its moments as well -- the triumphant "Oh, they've been here all along" return of the wonderful Rose and Bernard being a particular highlight (though I fear they brought Bernard back just to kill him, because, again, the show is just that bleak) -- but I continue to hate Jack the idiot douche. There's still no good reason for why he was acting so mysterious with everybody for the last few episodes. (As Charlie put it -- and when Charlie's making more sense than you, you know you're a complete imbecile -- "Why does everything have to be a secret? Why not some openness for a change?") Also, Jack's obsession with killing The Others -- especially at the expense of a rescue plan -- doesn't really track with his willingness to make nice with Ben and Tom and everybody in exchange for a submarine ride back the mainland. Sometimes, Jack is an obstinate jackass because it fits his character, but lately, it's been just to serve the plot, and that makes me dislike him even more.

I'm hopeful the finale's good, as Lindelof and Cuse often do their best work in finales. (Even the first season finale was pretty great until the bone-headed decision to not go inside the hatch, and they learned their lesson on that score.) What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Lost: He seems to have an invisible touch

"Lost" spoilers coming up just as soon as I enter the Frito-Lay Sweepstakes enough times to ensure I'll win thirty-two point six percent of the prizes, including the car...

This episode right here, folks, this is the reason I stick with this show through the stupid love quadrangles and tattoo flashbacks and characters stubbornly refusing to display any intellectual curiosity. Because this? This was awesome. I don't know that it made a lot of sense, but I was more engaged, more pumped up, writing more of my notes in all-caps (including several "BEN PWNED!" notations) than I have in a long time. Easily my favorite of the season, and one of my favorite "Lost" episodes ever.

Start with Locke turning Ben into his little puppet for most of the episode. It's about damn time that somebody started outthinking Ben, and our nutbar Luddite blower-upper is just the guy to do it. Sure, Ben got over on him at the end, but for the first 50 or so minutes, it was just wonderful to see Ben squirming and dancing to someone else's tune -- and to see all The Others completely afraid of getting on this crazy bald guy's bad side. The Bakunin beatdown was lovely, especially since the explanation for his survival was less interesting than expected (and suggests Kate doesn't know how to take a pulse).

Now, I'm going to be really disappointed if Locke is actually dead, both because Terry O'Quinn rules and because the character is so central to the island's mystique, but I'll believe he's dead when we've gone a whole other season without him popping up again. Yes, Libby died of a similar wound, but we've been told before that Locke is "special" (in the same way that Rose is), and the writers didn't dump him in an open grave for nothing.

I'm really annoyed with myself for having, in my jet-lagged state, hit the delete button on my DVR as soon as I finished the episode, because I had intended to go straight back to the cabin scene to see if a high-def image on pause would be able to reveal what "Jacob" looks like. Because there was definitely one split-second where you could see someone in the rocking chair (right after Ben says "You've had your fun" and gets shoved away), and the picture on ABC.com's streaming video isn't nearly good enough. The idea that the only person on the island capable of giving real answers is a ghostly figure most of us will never be able to see or hear seems an appropriate metaphor for the "Lost" viewing experience, and that entire sequence was so nuts that it worked.

So much going on in this episode that I feel like I have to move to bullet points quickly to get this thing posted at a reasonable time:

• For those who didn't get the reference at the top of this post, run, do not walk, to your nearest video retailer (or Netflix queue) and get ahold of "Real Genius," one of the most quotable comedies of the '80s, featuring Ben's dad as Lazlo Hollyfeld, a damaged genius who lives in the steam tunnels underneath his old college dorm.
• Speaking of poor Roger, I didn't make the connection between Ben's dad and the skeleton in Hurley's magic bus at first, but it finally clicked for me when I saw him drunk on the Dharma beer on his couch. "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead" takes on some new meaning now, as does Ben's insistence that Locke had to kill his father to join their group, just as Ben himself did years before.
• Biggest WTF moment of the episode: Young Ben meeting Richard, not looking a day younger than he does now, in the jungle. Are all the Hostiles immortal, and that's why Richard thinks fertility experiments are a waste of time? What percentage of the Others are from Richard's native group and what percentage were brought to the island later like Juliet?
• And do animals on the island age? Is young Ben's bunny the same one he used to run the defribilator con on Sawyer? Clearly, he has no problem with animal experimentation.
• I don't think we've seen the last of Mr. and Mrs. Goodspeed, as I can't imagine the producers hiring Doug Hutchison and Samantha Mathis for such small parts without more plans down the line.
• I have to say, I'm kind of annoyed that Jack has been secretly plotting with Juliet to beat Ben. I was really hoping the writers had finally recognized what a liability their "hero" was and were planning to have the other characters shun him, or else kill him outright. Instead, just at the moment he's being doubted the most, he comes up with some stupid plan that will no doubt save everyone's hash and make him their unquestioned savior for the rest of the series. And Jack's reason for not cluing in everyone sooner? Pure writers' contrivance to set up this false tension.
• Was Richard more impressed that young Ben saw his mother, or that he heard her? And which of our past apparitions have spoken? Dave doesn't count, as he was always a figment of Hurley's imagination, and Kate's horse is obviously out. But what about Eko's brother or Jack's dad? Is there a hierarchy of specialness on the island?

I'm just happy to have an episode that allows me to ask so many questions, even if I doubt we'll get adequate answers to many of them, 48 final episodes plan or no 48 final episodes plan. For too much of this season, there hasn't even been anything worth speculating about.

What did everybody else think?

Click here to read the full post

Lost: Hello. My name is James Ford. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

"Lost" spoilers coming up just as soon as I go to the store to pick up some dynamite...

Last night's episode had a very large problem at the center of it: to anyone who had figured out a long time ago that Locke's dad and the real Sawyer were the same guy, the first two-thirds of the episode were an incredible drag. It was obvious to me that Locke's prisoner was Anthony Cooper and not Ben, else they would have shown us a trussed-up Ben in the first scene, and also because of his choice of Sawyer as his instrument of death.

Back when the producers did Claire's flashback episode this season, I gave them credit for not treating the Christian revelation as a big shock. Clearly, they didn't expect the audience to put these particular pieces together, which led to a lot of wasted time as they set up an A-Ha! moment that really wasn't. I mean, I'm sure there were a lot of viewers who hadn't figured this out, but that's the challenge when you're making a big puzzle show like "Lost." Better that they had gotten this out of the way much earlier in the hour but still made it a big act-break reveal, then spent more time in that locked room with both Sawyers...

...because once it was just Holloway and Kevin Tighe, this was something very cool, with just enough "Princess Bride" to it that I wouldn't have been surprised (and even a little pleased) if Cooper had told James, "You've been chasing me your whole life? I think that's about the worst thing I've ever heard." James had been dreaming of this moment since his childhood, and of course it wasn't going to be as perfect as he hoped, of course Cooper wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of begging or apologizing or even reading the damn letter all the way through. Spending the entire hour working opposite Tigh and Terry O'Quinn really made Holloway elevate his game.

While we were waiting for the non-reveal, there were some interesting diversions along the way, whether it was the hilarious Rousseau/Locke dynamite scene on the Black Rock, Sayid's interview with the chopper pilot and her rebuke of him, and the debate over what, if anything, to tell Jack. One of the commenters at Throwing Things believes Kate was acting on Sayid's orders when she blabbed to Jack, but I genuinely believe she's just that stubborn and stupid. (Also, as usual, I don't really care what Juliet's latest big secret is, because the character exists entirely as a tool the writers can use to pull the rug out from under the audience's feet.)

Once James (and, as the Throwing Things people say, I don't think we can call him Sawyer anymore, can we?) gets back to the beach with the tape recorder, a lot of hell is going to break loose. But as with last season, I feel like there's too much stuff that has to happen over the last few episodes, while the season as a whole dragged a lot. In that way, I suppose, a "Lost" season is like a "Lost" episode, where the writers screw around for the middle section and then spring some big razzle-dazzle at the finish to make you want to come back for the next episode/season. If they had learned to pace themselves better, macro and micro, I don't know that the audience erosion would be nearly this bad.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Lost: Who's your daddy?

Spoilers for last night's "Lost" coming up just as soon as I apologize for using the tritest subject line possible...

Who woulda thunk it? Nearly three years in, and there's still the occasional surprise to be found in a flashback for one of the original characters. Until now, we thought that Jin became a legbreaker as a misguided way to provide for Sun; now we know that he was unknowingly paying off a debt Sun owed to her father. Puts a whole new spin on much of what we know about these two, without rendering invalid anything that came before. Plus, we got the usual sterling performances by the underused Daniel Dae Kim (now with spin kicks!) and Yunjin Kim (who, like Elizabeth Mitchell, could stand a sandwich).

In the present day, we have a bunch of mind-bending stuff, from the magically resurrecting Mikahil (are we sure his last name's not Rasputin?) to Parachute Lady's assertion that the wreck of Oceanic 815 was found, with no survivors. So which of the pre-existing Grand Unified Theories of "Lost" does that news fit into? Purgatory? Dream? Is the Dharma Initiative so powerful they could fake both the crashed plan and corpses of the passengers? And how did Bakunin survive the Sonic Wall of Death? Is there more than one of him? Are the island's healing powers so potent that Nikki and Paulo aren't the only people who were buried alive?

As for Juliet, the writers are trying to ride the knife edge with where her loyalties lie. She's still feeding intel to Ben, but she hates him. Question: with the sub and the communications station both blown up real good, what the hell could he be promising her? And should I care?

All in all, pretty good teevee. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Lost: Sometimes when someone has a crush on you, they'll make a mix tape to give you a clue

Apologies for what I think is the longest post subject line I've ever used, but Sawyer made the "Avenue Q" shout-out obligatory. "Lost" spoilers coming up just as soon as I pack some s'mores supplies...

After I panned last week's largely-praised episode, my friend Joe suggested it was time for me to stop watching the show, that I was now too bitter to ever appreciate anything they were doing, so why bother? I started to suspect he was right when, early in last night's episode, I started laughing at the revelation that Desmond used to be a monk. "Wow," I thought. "They're devoting an entire episode to why Desmond likes to call everybody 'Brother.' Not since they kinda sorta explained about Jack's tattoos have the producers bothered to answer such a hotly-debated question."

But after that, I grew to like "Catch-22," suggesting that my unrelenting bitterness really only comes in to play when The Others are involved. Much less of consequence happened or was revealed in this episode compared to last week, yet I can enjoy the show much more when we get away from all of Ben's convoluted mind games to nowhere. Desmond's been one of the better additions to the show, and if the flashback didn't really tell us anything we didn't already know -- he's a believer who tends to run from his problems -- at least I enjoy spending time with him. And even though I suspected Charlie would live (dammit!), there was still plenty of tension as Desmond did his best to give in to fate. Important question: in the universe where Desmond didn't save Charlie, was Penny the one in the parachute rig?

There were echoes of the "Little Miss Sunshine" episode, with Desmond taking Sawyer's place in our quartet of half-drunk outdoorsmen, and Jin's Korean ghost story was comic brilliance. I knew that Hurley was going to jump out of his chair even though he didn't understand the words, and I laughed anyway. That's the mark of a good joke.

(Also in good comic form? Sawyer, with the mix tape joke, stealing a Phil Collins tape from some guy named Bernard who I don't believe exists, and the 108 minutes gag at the ping pong table. The quadrangle bores me -- even with Evangeline Lily in her skivvies -- but the no-nicknames bet has really taken away the writers' crutch about Sawyer jokes, and the show is the better for it.)

Others have already pointed out that the parachutist's copy of Catch-22 was in Portugese, the same language as the researchers working for Penny in "Live Together, Die Alone," that Fionnula Flannagan (the mysterious time-bending figure from Desmond's last flashback) was in the photo on the monk's desk (a detail I would have missed had I not been watching on my computer, as I multi-task when it's on the TV) and that the monastery specifically makes only 108 cases of wine a year, but I mention them in case you're not trolling a half-dozen different "Lost" blogs and message boards today, and in the hopes of stirring some discussion even at this relatively late hour.

So what's going on here? How do Desmond's powers work? How do you parachute out of a helicopter? Will Sayid get to fix the satellite phone before Locke conveniently blows it up? Etc. Click here to read the full post

Lost: Lameo and Juliet

Brief "Lost" spoilers coming right up...

In isolation, "One of Us" was a perfectly okay episode. The flashbacks told us new information, fit seamlessly into the teaser from the season premiere (complete with an explanation for Ben getting kicked out of the book club, still the funniest line of the season), did a good job of explaining Juliet's transformation from the woman she was in Miami to who/what she became, and was in general a good showcase for the versatile Elizabeth Mitchell.

But I'm suffering a severe case of Others Fatigue, which, coupled with Jack being his usual obtuse, gullible self, makes it hard for me to get too enthusiastic that, at its heart, is just another one of Ben's mindgames, even if it brought back Goodwin for five minutes.

Your mileage may have varied. Click here to read the full post

Lost: Welcome to the wonderful world of not knowing what the hell is going on

"Lost" spoilers coming up just as soon as I thank Kate for giving that shout-out to "Lost" fandom at large...

You know what I love? Puzzle movies and TV shows where a revelation towards the end changes the way you viewed everything that happened before, but which makes sense in the context of what everyone did. You know what I hate? Puzzles where the big revelation doesn't make a damn bit of sense if you think about it for even a second, and Juliet's entire one-act play with Kate was definitely one of those.

Maybe she's telling the truth about being left behind and feeling betrayed and wanting desperately to bond with Kate, or maybe Ben deliberately left her behind to place a spy in the Lostaways camp. Doesn't matter. Under what circumstance is her whole recreation of "The Defiant Ones" by way of a "Dynasty" mud catfight supposed to accomplish her goal of getting closer to Kate and the others? She has a handcuff key. She knows where Jack and Sayid are. She's seen the damn monster before and knows that the sonic wall will repel it. Why play dumb when there's no upside to it, not when the truth is going to have to come out eventually, not when Kate and Sayid and the people back on the beach are already going to be disinclined to trust her? What's the value in pretending you've never encountered the monster before when you're going to hide behind your defenses a few minutes later, especially when you can probably gain far more street cred with Kate by saying upfront, "We don't know what that thing is, but we know it won't go past our wall, so let's run for it"?

Again, this gets back to Ben's whole convoluted scheme to trick Jack into performing surgery on him, when all he had to do way back when was not send his people to kidnap, kill, torture and otherwise mess with the Lostaways, and instead just show up on the beach and ask for Jack's help? When I presented the "Can you help a brother out?" scenario back at press tour, Lindelof laughed and said that, with all due respect, my version wouldn't be nearly as compelling. And I know I'm not a TV writer, but if the only rationale for a character's behavior is "Because then there wouldn't be a show," something's not working right, you know?

So, more pointless mind games in the A-story, a relatively wheel-spinning flashback (albeit one that gives Kim Dickens a paycheck, and I'm always on board with that) and an amusing beach subplot that fails to ask an obvious question: Why isn't Hurley the leader in Jack's absence? Everybody likes and trusts the guy, he understands their physical and emotional needs better than anyone else, and he's been in the loop enough on the hatch and The Others and all that wackiness that he can make informed decisions about everyone's safety. Is it just because he doesn't have a washboard stomach like Jack and Sawyer?

It's kind of a moot point, since Jack's on his way back to the beach, but I think the show could have gotten some interesting mileage out of showing what life under Hurley's common sense, selfless leadership would be like.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Lost: Who are these people?

Spoilers for "Lost" coming up just as soon as I kick my nicotine gum habit...

What the hell was that? It was like the "Lost" equivalent of "The Zeppo," only if Xander had only showed up three weeks earlier and sucked, crossed with a bad parlor mystery...

...and yet it was a kind of compelling trainwreck, so strange, so agressively meta -- and, in the flashbacks, so seamlessly edited to insert Nikki and Paulo into familiar scenes -- that, if nothing else, I'll take it over the Jack tattoo episode. And, hey, it ended with those two losers buried alive, so it couldn't be all bad, could it?

Back at press tour, someone asked Carlton and Damon what the point of Nikki and Paulo was, and Carlton replied, "The point will become very clear in episode 314," and Damon said that they had a really cool idea for a standalone episode about two castaways we hadn't met before, but they felt it would pay off better if they were introduced earlier in the season so viewers wouldn't spend the entire showcase episode saying, "Wait a minute. I have never seen
those guys before."

Having watched "Expose," I have a hard time buying that version of the story, because if this was their brilliant idea that necessitated all those earlier appearances, then there be far bigger problems here than I thought. As it is, I think the episode only works on the level of the creators apologizing for Nikki and Paulo's utter uselessness by turning them into even more selfish asses than we had already thought.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Lost: It's my dad in a box!

"Lost" spoilers coming up just as soon as my wife and I work out our own code for "a man with a gun is holding my daughter in the closet"...

Curioser and curioser. I fully expect certain revelations like the truth about the island's Magic Box to be either too prolonged or too silly when they come, and I'm annoyed that Hurley's been AWOL the last two weeks (thank goodness he was in the previews), but I'm not going to complain overly much about any episode that features Kevin Tighe as Locke's terrifying dad, or one that has Locke back to his insanely selfish primitive man self from the pre-hatch days.

So let's see, John: You don't want to ever leave the island, so you blow up the only means of escape for everyone? That's not taking your ball and going home; that's taking your ball and then sealing everyone else inside the ball-free gym forever. If you don't want to leave some day if rescuers ever come, don't go with them. And if you're annoyed that The Others are cheating with their electricity and white meat chicken, just go live deep in the bowels of the jungle by your lonesome. Rousseau's shown that it can be done (though she did have a little cabin for a while).

But while Locke was being an idiot, he was doing it in the way that we all came to know and love in season one. I vastly prefer the zealot whose solution to every problem is a timed explosive to the guy who just pushes buttons all day.

I love watching Tighe work (and now that we know that one of his many aliases is Seward, which is only a hop, skip and a jump from Sawyer, is their any doubt that he's the man who destroyed our Sawyer's family?), but I'm glad that the flashbacks were kept at a minimum. Better to spend more time on the island, especially with the Michael Emerson/Terry O'Quinn acting duel, which was the first time a character has successfully matched wits with Ben. Locke may have done what Ben wanted, but he understood that the whole time and didn't let Ben's agenda interfere with his own, where Jack would have done the opposite just to be a dick about it.

So now Seward/Sawyer/Cooper is on the island, eh? (Along with Nestor Carbonell from "Not in Portland.") This raises at least three possibilities: first, that when The Others gathered intel on the Oceanic 815 survivors, Ben decided for some reason that it would be valuable to have a personal means of manipulating some of them and had his people on the mainland kidnap Cooper (and possibly others); second, that Cooper was on a plane or a boat that unexpectedly crashed her the same way that Eko's brother did; third, that he came out of the Magic Box.

A few other thoughts:

• Glad somebody finally tried to tell Alex the truth about her mom. (My wife rarely watches "Lost," but she was with me for this one, and when she asked what Sayid was talking about, I said, "Her mom's the crazy French lady who lives in the jungle," to which she replied, "Of course her mom's the crazy French lady who lives in the jungle!" Maybe you had to be there.)
  
• Ben's latest henchman, the one who was guarding Sayid at the playground, was played by Brian Goodman, who was the best thing about ABC's otherwise underwhelming mobsters 'n FBI agents show "Line of Fire."
  
• So weird to see Kate on the island sneaking into a tastefully-decorated bungalow and hearing piano music. Also, is this the first we've seen Jack can tickle the ivories, or did it come up in one of his flashbacks?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Lost: Are you ready for some football?

"Lost" spoilers coming up just as soon as I run a fade route...

Another solid but not spectacular episode that managed to balance Wacky Beachfront Hijinks with the latest adventure plot with The Others.

I remember interviewing Carlton Cuse at a press tour event in July, and when I asked about Christian Shepard being Claire's father, he about had a heart attack; it was like it had never occurred to him and Damon that the fans would be able to decipher that scene in Ana-Lucia's death episode where Christian visited a blonde, blue-eyed Aussie woman and demanded to see his daughter, when in fact everyone did. So I'm glad that they didn't try to make that revelation into this episode's big moment, instead doing it around the halfway point. They went out of their way to have Christian not tell Claire his name, so there must be some plan in place for how Jack and Claire -- who, back in the days when all the characters lived on the beach, already had a nice sibling-style bond -- to find out how they're related. They already went the "Jack drops a familiar Christian turn of phrase" route with Sawyer, so I'm guessing this time the intel will come from The Others, who know everything about our castaways, up to and including the fact that Locke was para(lyzed) before the crash.

And by getting Claire's parentage out of the way quickly, the producers were able to deliver a real surprise at the end: Jack and Tom/Zeke are now BFFs, casually tossing around the pigskin and putting the first real smile Jack's shown in the last two and a half years. For the first time in a while, I'm actually interested in seeing what's been happening with The Others, though this could just be an absence makes the heart grow fonder thing.

I'm also glad to see that Locke's recent bumbling may not be an attempt to turn him into this show's Gilligan(*), but is instead back to pursuing his own agenda no matter what that means for his friends, season one-style. Is it just that he's afraid again of the prospect of rescue? Does he want to join up with The Others? Is he going insane without a button to push?

More season one nostalgia: Kate and Sayid working together as a great team. They've barely had an screen time together in the last year and a half, and I wonder if part of that is because the producers didn't want us to notice that Evangeline Lily's chemistry with Naveen Andrews is so much better than with either of her designated fellas, but they're a good pair, even platonically. The tree climb over the sonic fence was a strong example of how much the "Lost" score adds; I didn't for a second believe that Kate was going to get fried, but those ominous strings had me feeling nervous anyway.

(*) By the way, if anyone wants to do a "Lost"/"Gilligan's Island" character comparison chart in the comments, feel free. Important questions: Is Hurley the Mr. Howell, or is Jin? Is it possible for Sayid to be both the Skipper (always getting annoyed with Gilligan) and the Professor (always fixing up impossible gadgets)? And since Kate's a dead ringer for Mary Ann, who's Ginger?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Lost: Poor cows. Poor, poor cows.

"Lost" spoilers coming up just as soon as I find my "Searching for Bobby Fischer" DVD...

Well, week two of the show's back-to-basics mission wasn't as entertaining as week one, but it advanced the plot more, so it's a wash. Things we seem to have learned:

• That the Dharma Initiative's people are long dead;
• That the undersea cable Sayid found way back in early season one leads to a sonar hub;
• That Miss Clue (or however you spell it) wasn't on Alcatraz because she was keeping Andrew Divoff (who'll always be Frenchie from "EZ Streets" to me) company;
• That there's more than one broadcast facility on the island, since Rousseau had never been to the cow farm but has previously referred to using an antenna to transmit her distress signal;
• That The Others have a source of fresh milk (albeit a smaller one than they had before the episode started);
• That Locke loves pushing computer buttons.
  

Okay, so the last few aren't exactly mind-blowing, but this was a solid example of moving the story forward and giving us some information while leaving the bigger picture still unclear. I also thought it worked on a straight action/thriller level, though it would have been even better if we didn't need to keep cutting away from Sayid and Mikhail's face-off to the flashback.

I'm not going to complain too loudly about Naveen Andrews getting an entire episode to himself after being MIA almost all season, but we know how guilty Sayid feels about his torture career. We've hit this same emotional note three or four times already, and despite good performances by him and the actress playing his victim, it's yet another flashback that felt like it was there not because the writers had anything interesting to say, but because this is the format they've established for themselves.

The ping-pong story got exactly the right amount of time, and while I thought the bet was unfairly stacked in Sawyer's favor -- a week of no nicknames versus permanent reacquisition of "his" stuff -- I'm glad the writers won't be able to lean on the nicknaming crutch for at least a couple of episodes. (The show's abandoned the strict one episode=one day timeline, but the next episode looks like it picks up shortly after this one.)

I'd be more annoyed at the destruction of The Flame if I didn't feel confident in the existence of a second broadcast place. The idea of a transmitter that didn't work but could be fixed at some point down the road is more interesting than "Gilligan's Island"-ing a potential rescue scenario by just blowing the place up.

But won't someone mourn for the cows?

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Lost: And we're just the guys to do it.

"Lost" spoilers coming up just as soon as I buy tickets to The New York Philharmonic Presents The Songs of Three Dog Night...

If you can get past the episode's complete lack of resemblance to the promos (which billed it as some kind of edge-of-your-seats thriller), this was the best episode of the season by quite a stretch, featuring many of the things the fans had been clamoring for: more of the cast in general, more Hurley in particular, more humor, absolutely zero mindgames or torture involving The Others, etc.

Back when "Dave" aired last year, Matt Seitz even argued that Jorge Garcia had become the show's "de facto star and its deepest actor (with the possible exception of O'Quinn), and I think the goodness of "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead" really speaks to that. The flashbacks retread the same ground as two previous Hurley episodes, but Garcia kept me interested in Hurley's deepening misery in a way that Matthew Fox can't with Jack's narcissism. His "Let's make our own luck" speech to Charlie was almost Belushi-esque (John, not Jim) in its conviction in a completely insane, futile and dangerous gesture.

Hurley is the hero of this show -- my hero, anyway. He's the only one who ever asks relevant questions, the only one who really seems to care about the emotional well-being of his fellow castaways, the only one concerned with improving everyone's quality of life. By the episode's climax, I really cared about whether they could get that damn Microbus to start, even if it would only be useful for going around in circles. (In that way, it's a perfect symbol for what the writers have allowed "Lost" to become.)

I could do without Hurley becoming the latest Lostaway with daddy issues (is there any character -- or, for that matter, TV drama writer -- who doesn't have them?), and without Cheech's distracting toupees, but the present-day stuff was spot-on. In particular, I loved Hurley's reaction to Sawyer's return, a moment where even the self-loathing con man couldn't help but enjoy someone else's affection for him. I hope that Hurley really has broken his bad luck streak thanks to the van and a little "Shambala," but even if he hasn't, this was a welcome oasis from all the bad feeling that's been strangling this season.

On the heavier side of things, we have Kate acting tough and proactive in what feels like the first time since early in season one. It always drives me nuts how the writers spent so much time establishing Kate as a bad-ass and then immediately turned her into the girl who gets tied to the train tracks. I just hope that Kate, Rousseau and company don't go to a lot of trouble invading Alcatraz, only to find it empty. Kate's desire to find The Others' village last week -- after Karl said that his people don't spend much time on Alcatraz -- gives me hope that that's her objective.

Some other thoughts:

• Did Rousseau tell Kate about her daughter in "Maternity Leave" last season, or is that a piece of information that we're supposed to assume Sayid told Kate about at some point? I'm almost hoping it's the latter, as it would imply that the castaways really do trade information in between scenes.
• Another great Hurley scene: him updating Libby on recent goings-on. The heartfelt monologue at a loved one's grave is an overused cliche, but two things sold it: Garcia's utter sincerity, and the pullback to reveal that they had built a fence around the cemetary. They've now lost so many people post-crash (Boone, Arzt, Shannon, one of Steve/Scott, Ana-Lucia, Libby, Eko, others I'm blanking on right now) that the cemetary is now the most substantial thing the castaways have built. Damn.
• Did Karl take the boat, and if not, why on earth wouldn't Sawyer and Kate have held onto the thing? Sawyer's objection last week was to navigating at night, but in the daytime they could have just hugged the coastline, and they'd still have a vehicle that would be much, much more useful than Hurley's new wheels.
• Getting back to the "are deleted scenes canon?" issue from earlier in the week, didn't I read somewhere that, in a deleted scene from "Live Together, Die Alone," Vincent joined Walt and Michael on their boat trip off the island?
• Now we know the source of all of Sawyer's '70s TV references: he had mono for two months as a kid.
• Other moments of fine Sawyer-related comedy: Hurley's failed attempt at a nickname comeback, and Sawyer teaching Jin some valuable marital phrases. That particular ESL joke's an old one, but always a good one.
• One downside to hanging with the entire beach gang: Nikki and Paulo return.
  

What did everybody else think?

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Lost: Answer me these questions three

Spoilers for "Lost" coming up just as soon as I figure out why Sawyer became a con man instead of a TV critic...

So the promos promised that three of the show's biggest mysteries would be solved last night. After sitting through the show and rolling it around in my head for a while, I think I've figured out what the silly promo people were talking about:

1. What's the story behind Jack's tattoos?
   
2. What happened to Cindy, the kids and the other abducted Tailies?
3. What happened to that fancy bungalow colony The Others were living in when Oceanic 815 crashed?

The first of those is technically a mystery, in that the show had never explained it before, but if Carlton Cuse thought the number of viewers who care about Alvar Hanso is small, someone needs to introduce him to the collected three-member Society of "Lost" Tattoo Analysis, pretty much the only people on the planet who wanted or needed this question answered.

The other two are things of actual concern to the viewership at large, I think, but "Stranger in a Strange Land" didn't so much answer them as clarify a few minor details about them. Most of us had assumed that The Others' village was somewhere on Craphole Island proper, because Ethan and Goodwin were able to run to the respective beaches, but at least it was definitively established that the Alcatraz aquarium is only a place they go on occasion to "work," whatever that means. And we at least got a glimpse of Cindy and company, just not enough to establish whether they were prisoners, brainwashed, or what.

Here's the thing: this is a show that already has major trust issues with its audience. People have been screaming that they want answers already -- and it's here that I repeat my mantra that I'm okay with no answers so long as the individual episodes are entertaining, which has rarely been the case of late -- and everyone in production and at ABC knows this. When I saw that promo last week, I thought, "Hey, they finally get it. They're going to give the people what they want." Then I saw the episode and realized that the delusion or willful ignorance remains firmly in place.

I thought this was a bad episode for a number of reasons, most of them having to do with Jack's tendency to be a pig-headed idiot who'd rather yell than actually solve a problem or listen to what people have to say to him. (That's what makes him the ideal leader for the producers' purposes.) That said, you don't promise an audience starved for answers a three-course meal and then serve them these table scraps. Bad, bad, bad move. Without those ads, it's a mediocre Flashjack episode. With them, it's a symbol of every single thing that people have been complaining about this year.

I could spend time wondering how The Others got their boat back from Michael and Walt, or where Diana Scarwid (the episode's only highlight) was keeping herself during the spine surgery drama, but I don't much care right now and would rather move on to write about "Friday Night Lights." So I open it to you. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Lost: Billy Pilgrim goes to the movies

Spoilers for "Lost" coming up, but the short version is I'm pleased...

There? How hard was that? You devote your flashback to a relatively unexamined character, you pay off a mystery that you've been dropping clues about for only a few episodes (albeit ones that aired months ago, due to the hiatus), and you end with a cliffhanger that actually means something for both the audience and the characters. I would've liked more present-day island action, but beyond that, a vast improvement over "Not in Portland."

So, questions and other random thoughts:

• Back when the show began, Lindelof used to say that everything that happened on the show could be explained by non-supernatural means, no doubt to give the writers options on their Grand Unified Theory. Now that they've definitively established Desmond as unstuck in time -- not to mention the physics-defying smoke monster -- I'm wondering at exactly what point the show abandoned that philosophy.
• So who's Fionnula Flannagan supposed to be? A hallucination? A fellow (time) traveler? Sawyer's mom?
  
• Given that the producers have said someone else is gonna die soon, and given Desmond's revelation about Charlie, will it be lame if they don't kill Charlie or lame if they do? I go with don't, largely because Charlie is the most insufferable person on the island this side of Jack, if not worse than Dr. God.
  
• What's with all the movie references? You had Desmond throwing down his tie, Jack Foley-style; the man with two red shoes suffering the fate of one of the Wicked Witches; and Desmond trying to pull a Frank Sullivan by using a sporting event on a nearby TV to prove the existence of time travel.
• Where this week's "Studio 60" beat you over the head with references to 1999, I like how this one was vague about how long ago Desmond and Penny's courtship took place, though I'm sure some music or soccer buff is going to tell me how bleeding obvious it is that she moved in with him in, like, 1997.
  
• Speaking of which, people at several sites pointed out last week that, according to the show's chronology and Juliet's explanation of how long she's been on the island, she would have had to leave for "Portland" on or around 9/11. Hasn't Desmond also been on the island roughly the same length of time? And how icky would it be if the show goes there?
  
• Because I didn't get my plasma TV until December, and because I got a screener of "Not in Portland" that I watched on my laptop in January, this was the first episode I've ever seen in HD, and the show -- particularly the beach scenes -- look amazing in high-def.
• The promo amused me. The show used to try to pull in viewers by promising a death; now they've realized that promising answers is the better way to go.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Lost: Suddenly I am run over by a truck

Spoilers for "Lost" just as soon as I figure out who bathed Calamity Jane...

Okay, I addressed some of my problems with this episode in vaguer terms in my column, so let's get down to specifics.

When Jack asked Juliet what Ben told her, I nearly screamed. This is what you ask her, Jack? Really? This is the best you can come up with in a moment where you could conceivably ask her anything? When I complained about this at TCA, Lindelof and Cuse defended it by saying that Jack doesn't expect The Others to give him honest answers to the bigger questions, so he contents himself on smaller issues. First of all, I don't buy that, as Tom was more than willing to explain the recent issues with contacting the outside world, only to be conveniently interrupted by a downturn in Ben's condition. (On this one, I give the writers a pass, as it's a standard writers' stall, ala Mrs. Bennet's non-disclosure of HRG's first name on this week's "Heroes.") Second, even if Jack believes this, what value does this particular answer serve him, nevermind what it does for us?

I'll grant you that the knowledge of how long Juliet's been on the island and the fact that she's being held against her will is a (very) small piece of the puzzle, but here my issue is more with the question than the answer. Cuse has said that a show where the characters all asked the right questions and shared information would be incredibly dull, and I'm sure he's right to a degree, but they consistently go so far in the other direction, having their characters act willfully, mulishly ignorant and non-inquisitive that it drives me up a damn wall. Is Jack really the best the castaways can do for a leader? Because you put Hurley in a room with Juliet and Ben, and he's going to at least try to figure out why things are the way they are on these wacky islands.

And speaking of Hugo, his absence -- and the absence of Locke, and Sayid, and Desmond and company -- continues to be felt. I know the rest of the cast will start popping up as early as next week, and the producers have promised to have virtually all of the good guys (assuming the castaways are the good guys, but whatever) back on the original beach together shortly. But after three months off, it was frustrating for the return episode to be devoted exclusively to the same boring love triangle and the same dumb kidnapping plot -- especially since, with Jack still a prisoner, the damn thing ain't over yet.

But before I marinate too much in the juices of bitterness, let's look at the parts of the episode I liked, starting with the Stanley Kubrick/Alan J. Pakula Memorial Rave/Interrogation Room. (The "Clockwork Orange" parallel is the obvious one, but I thought the imagery more closely resembled the assassination school qualifying test Warren Beatty took in "The Parallax View.") I'm not the type to spend time doing freeze-frame analysis of scenes like this or smoke monster appearances, nor do I believe that any of this will wind up being very meaningful, but in the moment, it was cool, in the same way the four-toed foot was cool, or the pile of pneumatic tubes, or the pirate ship in the middle of the jungle. As I've often said, what these guys lack in terms of coherent narrative abilities, they often make up for in crafting compellingly random images.

It was also a tremendous relief to have a new character flashback, even if I don't feel that I understand Juliet substantially more than before, and even though I laughed far more than I should have at the death of her ex-husband. In watching this one a few weeks ago in a roomful of critics, someone -- I want to say Melanie McFarland from Seattle, but I'm not 100% sure -- pointed out the "Felicity" episode where Felicity's stalker also got hit by a bus. J.J. still isn't involved on a regular basis anymore, so either this was Damon and Carlton's tribute to him, or he just showed up in the office one day and said, "Hey guys, you know what's always cool? Hitting guys with buses."

A few other random thoughts:

• Did Sawyer set some kind of personal nicknaming record in this one? In the span of, like, five minutes, he hung three different ones on Alex, with "Underdog" being my favorite. And speaking of which...
• Do we know how long ago Rousseau's expedition crashed on Craphole Island? Everyone has assumed Alex is her daughter, but if Ben is her father and Ben has lived on the island his entire life, Alex would have to have been conceived here.
  
• As I commented in the column, this was one weird-ass (albeit good) collection of guest stars, particularly Mac from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" getting pistol-whipped. Nestor Carbonell also had a very nice delivery on the line about them not being exactly in Portland.
• And on the subject of guest stars, Ethan returns, though I think the scene of him passing Juliet in a corridor at the very beginning of the episode wasn't part of the mainland flashback, but some separate, Soderbergh/Roeg-style jump-cut flashback.
  

So that's that. I'm not going to jump off any cliffs yet, since I know the other regulars are coming back, and since Cuse and Lindelof, for all their evasiveness and doubletalk on a lot of issues, seemed fairly candid about recognizing the shortfalls of this first batch of episodes and about their desire to get back to what the audience wants to see (answers aside) going forward. But this certainly wasn't the ideal triumphant return.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Lost: So, um, who's your favorite New Kid?

Today's column previews the return of "Lost," which I found underwhelming:

It's "Lost" guide time again, but instead of a who's-who on the island primer like the one I wrote back in October, now I feel like I need to write a guide for managing expectations about the show's return.

I've been on record as being a fan of "Lost," in spite of its many obvious flaws, because I accepted a long time ago that its writers are making things up as they go along and that any answers we get about the island's mysteries will be non-existent or unsatisfying. So long as the show entertains me on an episode-by-episode basis, I don't care about what the master plan is -- or whether it even exists.

But the six episodes that aired in the fall failed that simple test for me, and for lots of other viewers. People complained about all the torture scenes, the absence of the supporting cast, the repetitive flashbacks, the death of Mr. Eko -- pretty much everything but Paulo's golf swing. (And that's only because there were so many other things to complain about with Paulo and his equally pointless pal Nikki.)

Watching "Lost" is like being in a bad relationship -- the really good episodes are like the times your significant other remembers to do something nice for your birthday, and they make you ignore all the times s/he treated you like garbage. So after three months of being off the air, it probably wouldn't take much for "Lost" to win you back.

Having seen tonight's episode, titled "Not in Portland," I'm sorry to say that not much is exactly what you'll get. Almost every flaw that plagued those first six episodes is still present. Hopefully, better days are coming, but, while trying to be as vague as possible about anything spoiler-related, here's what you need to know to steel yourself for what's coming immediately:

To read the rest, click here. Obviously, I'll have a more spoiler-y review tonight. Click here to read the full post

Lost: See ya in 13 weeks, suckers!

Some very brief, disinterested thoughts on "Lost" coming right up...

So here we have an episode in which Kate and Sawyer finally get it on -- and, hopefully, bring an end to the lamest love triangle in primetime -- and that ends with Sawyer being held at gunpoint while Jack holds Ben at scalpel-point, and the entire thing bored me out of my mind.

Am I the only one not feeling the least bit eager for the next three months to end so we can find out what happens next? Click here to read the full post

Lost: Producers Against Drunk Driving?

"Lost" spoilers coming up just as soon as I go and have a good cry...

Okay, this is getting ridiculous. You wanna kill off Ana-Lucia and Libby for driving drunk, go right ahead. But capping Mr. Eko because Adewale was driving without a license? On top of Boone dying not long after Ian Somerhalder racked up over $200 in speeding tickets? Won't someone please think of the unsafe drivers? If I was Josh Holloway or Naveen Andrews (both of whom have committed moving violations in the greater Honolulu area), I'd have my agent on speed-dial.

More to the point, DAMN YOU DAMON LINDELOF AND CARLTON CUSE for killing off the ass-kickingest character on the show! Damn you to H-E-double-hockey-sticks!

What drives me nuts is that this was easily the best episode of the season, a good blend of the island regulars and The Others, a flashback that didn't have me reaching to hit fast-forward on the DVR, some kewl hints of the smoke monster several times before we saw it and the rare case of a character dying on something resembling their own terms.

But what a waste of one of the most compelling, original characters this show has ever introduced (and, as Triple-A showed throughout, one of the two or three best actors in the ensemble). As if I wasn't already sick of the two new Lostaways, now they get to live and bore me while Eko is gone? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

And yet, again, damn good episode, outside of the apparent revelation that The Others' entire plan is about getting Jack to operate on Benry. If that's all they want, these people are colossal morons. Instead of terrorizing, abducting and killing these people for months and then having to resort to convoluted head games to get what you need, why not just make nice from the start and say, "Hey, if you do this surgery, we'll let you come over and watch movies sometimes"?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Lost: A tale of two islands

"Lost" spoilers coming up just as soon as I drop one of my two or three favorite "Used Cars" quotes: "If I can build and install a pacemaker in this man's chest, well I can damn well bounce a microwave off a satellite!"

So, the big mind-blowing revelation that the ads were promising is... what? That The Others Goodtime Family Aquarium Solution is on an entirely different island? That Sawyer is only slightly less guillible than Locke? (Not that we didn't already know this.) That New Guy Paulo is such a dick that, not only does he not want to help anybody ever, but he likes to pass the time hitting the castaways' limited supply of golf balls into the ocean? Help me out here, folks, because my mind remains thoroughly unblown.

These extended visits with The Others are starting to bother me, and not just because it means we've spent about 70% of the season so far away from Hurley, Locke, Eko and Desmond. It's just getting too repetitive, and we're only a month in. The Others have the ultimate home court advantage, can do anything to their three prisoners, can play random mindgames, etc., without giving so much as a hint of what they're about. As I've said a million times before, I don't care about getting answers, but in this particular case, the answers are quickly becoming the only potentially intersting thing about The Others. (Save Ben, since I could probably spend an hour a week watching Michael Emerson get mad and beat up Sawyer, torture bunnies, etc., etc.)

A decent enough flashback, especially since I'm always in favor of seeing Kim Dickens get a paycheck, but did anyone not see that Sawyer was playing Mr. Nia Vardalos?

Anyway, after enjoying most of the first two episodes, I've been checking my watch a lot the last two weeks. Not a good trend, especially since there are only two more episodes before the show goes away until February.

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