"Lost" Gives All Fanboys a Collective Woody

If you haven't seen last night's episode, it's probably good if you don't read this.

My review is incomplete, thanks to the DVR that screwed up my recording of Lost. Basically, it didn't record the first hour, and seconded the second hour instead. I didn't think anything was awry until I was in the shower this morning. It's like, wait, we didn't see the three guys get captured at all, one-eyed unkillable psycho sort of appears out of nowhere, and Desmond appeared out of nowhere. Hmmm. So I can't watch the first hour till my wife gets home tonight. I love the internet for this.

Anyway, I did catch the crucial second hour, which finds Desmond's prophecy of Charlie's death fulfilled. Fanboys online kept saying why didn't he just shut the door from the other side and save them both, etc. Fact of the matter is, until he dies, Claire won't be saved. And also, I think it would peeve a lot of people if Charlie cheated death until. After all, he's been cheating death all this time, and to deny a tease for an extended period of time would simply be cheating. The producers did a damn good job gaining the faith back from its viewers, and it would be a shame to lose that just to save Charlie from something they've foretold all season.

Of course, the biggest twist of it all is that the "flashback" sequences that are a trademark of the show was revealed at the end to be a "flashforward" after all. Meaning that we know at the very else, Kate and Jack will get off the island. More than that though, it gives the show a whole new life - that the island is real, the castaways are real, and my theory of it being a mind experiment or something, or the popular purgatory theory, are shot down. That revelation just brings the series back down to earth - that despite the supernatural things going on on the island and the unexplained phenonema, it's all pretty much a real thing. And that's a big deal.

Of course, there's that question of who's in the coffin, who Kate is really with, and what the lies are about. It's all very fascinating to me especially because Jack is a total mess, which is something that can be very real. The story of Baby Jessica stuck in the well was interesting because one of the rescuers was thrust into the limelight out of obsurity, made into a hero, but when the media subsided, he got depressed and eventually committed suicide. And the notion that Jack was his best when he was on the island, but on the mainland, he's just another man. No longer a leader, and no longer a higher purpose of survival. Jack's dark turn is certainly something that'll make the drama so good.

Locke though, turned totally nutso, which was a bit weird. Killing an unarmed, albeit stranger carrying a satellite phone seemed a bit extreme for the guy, but I guess he's just pissed as hell for being shot and left in a ditch. He's also taken a dark turn, slowly emerging as the new possible villian in the whole saga.

But man, the moment in the "flashback" when Jack is waiting for the other car, I thought it was going to be Penny, since Des and Penny had previously met in a similar fashion, plus Penny never revealed who she was with (but I was misremembering - it was Jack's wife who had another man, not Penny). But Kate walked out, and my mind was just going, "UH!?" It took me seconds to piece it together, (I had read in an interview that "flashbacks" might change into another direction, but I thought it was more a next season thing) but it was a great moment in TV history. It's one of those TV moments when your perception and reality of a show is turned upside down, and you don't feel cheated. It just gets you more hyped up.

And no, I won't have to reedit anything from last night's finale to make it any better.

Heroes Season 1 Finale

I guess you could say that I'm a fan of the show, and usually I don't have very high expectations of the show - I guess as high as Lost. I'm not fanatical about it to the point of going to forums and speculating future plot points, but the season finale did leave me feeling empty and slightly used. If you're not a fan of the show, beware as this post will begin to dive into geek territory.

Okay, there may have been a lot of things I was hoping to see in the season finale - the show had been tauting New York exploding and millions killed for the whole season. All the episodes had been revolving around who would explode, how to stop it, and the face off between Sylar and Peter, and Hiro and Sylar.

None of that really happened. There was a face-off, but there was no tension and the action was just a fraction of some of the better scenes that had happened earlier in the season. There was an explosion of sorts, and there was a fight of sorts, but they were all interrupted frequently by posturing, one-liners, and a lackluster spectacle of superpowers.

All grumblings aside, say I had this script and this was supposed to have gone down this way, and the effects budget and location feasibility of shooting in NY was considered, this are a few things I might have changed about the finale:

Molly needs to shut up. Seriously. The little girl who's a radar of supers, has the worst "Dah dah DAHHHHH!" lines. She's like a little Haley Joel Osment. Her lines are hammy as hell and too over-dramatic. I'll add them once I review the episode for the exact lines.

Peter needs to like, leak. Seriously. His hands were glowing and his nuclear power couldn't be controlled any longer, and he was losing it. Yeah, but it didn't seem any different from the last few times he's almost lost it. When Ted lost it, people were burning up. A house was destroyed. Claire was burned alive. Peter's hands just glow. There's no sense of impending danger. A little bit of environment danger, like windows blowing out, the water in the fountain to begin boiling, the actors having to move away because of the intense heat... something. But no, his hands just glow, like they always have. Whoop De Doo.

Hiro and Sylar need to learn the Art of War. Lesson 1 would be - STOP ANNOUNCING THAT YOU'RE GOING TO HURT SOMEONE. SERIOUSLY. Everytime there's a confrontation, there's so much pause and one-liners before there's a punch or a slice thrown. Sylar's proven to be a dangerous person, and the theatrics are just old after a whole season of it. Just kick ass, and stop yapping. The reaction time of all the characters can be incredibly delayed. Just like the Incredibles have taught us, just stop monologuing.

The pacing was so off for me that I recut the finale fight - starting with the commercial break that was inserted at the beginning of the fight. Please! Talk about a momentum killer. Then shots of Parkman being tended to after being shot were taken out because Parkman is fine - that scene at the end when Molly cheeses it up with "Don't die, Officer Parkman!" sums up that he's hurt, but will likely live. Micah saying, "Mom, Dad needs your help!" is stupid - Dad's been bleeding for the last half hour, and he's not going to die any faster if Nikki isn't around. In fact, Bennett should've been thrown against the wall and passed out right there, instead of laying around, then passing out.

Finally, a scene that's not in my recut, and is disputed on the boards, is why Peter couldn't just fly his own ass into the stratosphere, and needed Nathan, who apparently has really great hearing and sight to be able to finish a conversation from hundreds of feet in the air and seeing the right people from that high up, to save him. I know it's to show that Nathan does indeed have a heart, but the plotting seems a bit loose.

All and all, a blah season finale isn't going to curb me from checking out the show the following season, it's still a great show overall. But I think the Tim Kring will have a lot to go off on when he hears that collective shrug of indifference from all the fans that's been let down. Oh well.

Heroes Season 1 Finale Fight Recut

This is what I did this evening after the idea hatched and nagged at me.

Watch it before they take it down!

Hi, I'm... um... er... Shit.

That pretty much sums up my demeanor at the job seminar. I'm no good in groups, and in no good, I mean absolute twat. I stammer extensively, turn beet red, and verbal vomit pours out of my piehole. It was a tricky situation - it wasn't exactly a job interview, but it wasn't completely an informational session - so everyone was trying to stand out by being interesting. Whenever I try too hard, I usually self destruct, starting with my bad attempts at jokes, my nonsensical blathering, and then I sometimes, like today, I will stop talking mid-sentence, picturing myself standing next to me, shaking my sad little head.

I don't think it's really as bad as I think, gotta wait till the end of the week to see if its a yay or nay. I'll be getting an answer either way, I just hope I get another, more personal swing at it.

Sigh.

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Watching Mulan now, to try to make up for the demeaning visions of women in Peter Pan. The film is pretty good, though it gets a bit more serious than the usual kid fare.

AHHHH!

Just shaved after I got out of the shower. I feel as if I'm missing a nose or something. And I have nothing bristly to play with on my face now. Time to find another tuff of hair to play with.

That's not obsence.

Pan, Interview, Alaska

Watching Disney's "Peter Pan" with the kids right now and I think my PC radar is going off the freakin' charts. They're at the "injuns" camps singing "What makes the Red Man red?" and Peter is hussing it up with the Chief's daughter. Other than the injuns/cultural shock, there's that ever present sexist undertone. The mermaids, Tinkerbell, and all the other lasses in the movie get jealous and clamor over Peter, a scoundrel who is on the sadistic side. Right now Hook is trying to persuade Tink by playing on her jealousy. Not to mention some of the Piratey behavior, like Hook shooting a sailor for singing, talks about hanging, slitting throats... My brain's freaking out.

I guess in a way it's slightly better than Pirates of the Carribean, which has managed to glorify pirates to some unholy cultural phenomenon. It's become family friendly so much so that last year (or the year before) Seafair adopted it as a theme. Maybe in the next century or so they'll be having terrorist themed events if the right movie is made about it. I don't personally dislike pirates, I just think people going absolutely gaga about it is a little silly. They've just taken the raping and pillaging and murder out of pirating and made it into some kind of rock star profession. Odd.

But anyway, I may not be recommending this 50 year old movie to the kids again. It's a bit disheartening because all the kids movies I used to watch are now so... wrong. Peter Pan, meet Little Mermaid in the seldomly watched movie pile.

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I'm nervous about the interview tomorrow, and in all likelihood my moustache (I spelt it correctly today) is going because I don't want to chance it. Oh well, I'll miss playing with it more than the look of having one. It made me look a bit different, though I don't know if it improved my looks. Some of the photos I took today with my short hair makes me look almost like a short sighted sausage.

I have to reprint the resume that I submitted in to the company, and I am not kidding, but the date on that resume was last January. That would either mean that they haven't had an opening for my coveted position since then, or that it might be based on my second resume, which was for another position. I dunno which I prefer it be.

Oh boy, I hope everything goes well.

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I drove my mom to the pier this afternoon, where she'll be taking a cruise ship to Alaska for the next week or so. She might stop by to see Dave. Maybe not. But it does feel a bit odd to know that she won't be around. I've kinda gotten used to having her around, even if some days I don't really have much to say to her. But I hope she'll have fun on the cruise. She's never been.

Well, the movie's ending, and the kids have to go to bed, and I have to go about the resume. Bloop.