Oh, Look... It's My Favourite TV Reviewer Again...
Ah yes. Robert Cushman of the National Post is at it again. Reviewing television as if he actually knew anything about it (thanks for the link, K!) I mentioned him a few weeks ago when he reviewed The Wire and referred to it as a show where the plot overshadows the character development, meaning we don't really care about the characters. Anyone who knows The Wire AT ALL knows that's akin to saying, "The Simpsons is a great show, but if it were animated they'd be able to do SO much more with it!" Cushman is the Post's theatre critic, and occasionally he descends from on high, leaving his grey poupon behind, to dabble with the unwashed masses of television viewers and our mediocre entertainment.

In today's column, he bitches about Lost, which he pretentiously refers to as "decadent." He calls Naomi a "chick," then mentions offhandedly that he used to say "bird," in his old British days... Thanks, dude. Thank you for establishing at the beginning of your column that you're British, and therefore seemingly above all this American claptrap. Cushman states unequivocally, "I don't like Lost." His column should end there, but it doesn't. Check out some of these awesome statements:

[The flashforward is] meant, obviously, to add depth to [Jack's] character. But it doesn't work, just as the flashbacks don't work for him or any of the others. In their marooned state, the characters are as miserable a bunch as have ever threatened to go into indefinite syndication, but at least they have some action to sustain them. In their previous lives, they sit around feeling sorry for themselves. And they do it in the same glossy, airless television-land inhabited by the characters of all television soaps with aspirations to seriousness.

Huh? I'm sorry... is he watching the same show I am? Apparently someone lent him a couple of episodes and he watched them disconnected from the rest of the series, unaware of the real depths of these flashbacks.

Another gem:

Well, all right, there are some people I like. I cheered when Hugo a.k.a.
Hurley, the fat fellow whose help is spurned by the tough guys, came to their
rescue by driving his van right through the ranks of the opposition.

I'm sorry... "the fat fellow"?? Nice. His help was not spurned by the "tough guys," by the way: Charlie knew he was going to die and wanted to spare Hurley seeing it, and Sawyer didn't want Hurley to get hurt, so he talked him out of following him. But you'd have to understand what subtlety is to understand that.

Then there's Desmond, the ex-monk who was also a designer for the Royal Shakespeare Company. You have to love the details; I suspect that one was dreamed up by some studio-bound American scribe with fantasies about the British classical theatre. (I've met some RSC designers, and none of them struck me as possible action-heroes. Still, you never know till you're tested.) Desmond has also read all of Dickens except Our Mutual Friend: Shame he missed that one, it's almost the best, but at least he has something to look forward to.

Ha! The "detail" was dreamed up because Henry Ian Cusick used to be in the RSC. You can just hear the feigned British accent saying, "Ah! Look at the funny little people pretending to know something about thee-ah-tah." Oh, and I've read Our Mutual Friend, along with a lot of Dickens' works... it is NOT the best one. Only a pretentious wank who knows most of the human race has not read that book would suggest that, just to say HE has read it.

You can read the entire column here, where he says it'll probably turn out to all be a dream, and calls up The Prisoner as one of the inspirations for the show as if he's the first person to have come up with it. I think Mr. Cushman should stick to writing about theatre, where subtlety usually isn't its strong suit, and most of life's problems can be solved through a song.