"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.

Cold, Lost, and Waiting

Boy, that sounds so sad.

So I'm sick as a dog, although I myself have never met any sick dogs. What is up with that phrase? Why not sick as a leper? But yeah, I'm oozing all kinds of thick yellow goodness and I've got this constant headache that only goes away when I play with myself. Ha ha. Cheap attempt at juvenile comedy there.

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I don't think any of my friends watch "Lost", but I do and I don't have much else to talk about, so here it is. My theory about Lost. I think this is the second last season - they met a while ago to plan out the rest of the show, and I believe that next year will be its last. Along with the lower than desired ratings, and the quickly evolving plotlines, I don't think they're going to try to stretch it out.

A popular theory about Lost is that it's redemption, and that it's hell. Recently, the past two episodes have given them outside insight that it is hell, and that everyone on that plane is dead. It's been thrown out there that it's a parallel timeline or universe, but I don't think that's plausible, only because it's never really been hinted before. At least not blantantly. My theory is that everyone is indeed alive, and are actually part of the Dharma Initiative. They signed on to resolve the big conflicts in their lives, and all voluntarily underwent something that puts them in a controlled mind state. I don't know, I'm taking "The Village" route, whereby a group of individuals have put themselves in a situation so that they could try to solve their issues. But I'm still curious as to how the series will wrap up. A lot of the characters are starting to resolve their haunted past, so that's why I'm thinking what I'm thinking.

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Although this isn't in the title, but I'm really looking forward to the rest of Studio 60 coming back and finishing up the rest of the first season. It'll only be four episodes, and the likelihood of a second season is very slim. But it'll be nice to have the closure. Too bad the series cost so much to produce. Otherwise it might have stood a chance.

Another show has caught my eye, and so far I've managed to miss most of it during broadcast. I've caught the rest either on iTunes or NBC.com, and that is "Raines". I've always like Jeff Goldblum - he is just a little off, a little ticky, a little weird, which makes him interesting to watch. But the show is great. I would suggest watching them in order - the last episode for the season was more procedural and less about Raines. But the first two so far has been surprisingly heart-wrenching - Usually on crime shows and police shows, it's all about how the cops and CSI solve the murders, and how smart and cool those cops are. The victims and their mourning families are usually cannon fodder - story devices that give our main characters something to do. Raines manages to incorporate the victims into the story, along with the people who are affected by the deaths, in a non-flashy, non-spiritual way. These aren't ghosts - they are pure figments of his imagination. The interesting thing about Raines is that he is quite damaged from the get-go, and he only seems to be getting slightly worse because people around him are questioning his constant conversations with himself.

I hope that it returns for the next season, because we need shows that are more like that. And something that I'm trying to explore. That after so many cop shows and lores about justice, we forget about the victims and focus entirely too much on the heroes.

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My weddings are in a bit of a slum. I'm waiting for a reply from one so I can finish up their wedding, and really mad at the next one I'm starting because it's got so many camera dropouts that I can't even import the friggin' footage onto the computer. Sigh.