Is Veronica Going Crazy?
Dear Rob Thomas,
First of all, I want to thank you for bringing Veronica Mars into my life. She’s become my new Buffy, in a world where Buffy no longer exists except in reruns (and, presumably, on Halloween). Logan is my new Spike; Mac my new Willow; Keith Mars has become the Giles/father figure that we all watch and sigh at with deep filial love.

In season 4 of Buffy, she went to college. I worried about what might happen, but I liked the first episode. It was funny, had some great zingers, and a great huge book conked Riley in the head. (Unfortunately, it didn’t put him into a lifelong coma.) Then the second episode had the roommate, and it was funny as hell. And then… well, we all know what happened next. Military, X-Filesish crap. Hostile 17. Adam. Craziness.

But at its heart, Joss Whedon stayed true to the premise. This was a show about a woman, and it never, ever felt like a show that had been written by a man. Joss knew how to write women.

But Rob… that’s not happening in season 3 of Veronica. She went to college, and I loved the first episode. The second one was pretty good, too. But the show is becoming as strange and offputting as this picture of Kristen Bell that I'm using to illustrate my letter to you. I’m starting to get uncomfortable with this whole underlying mystery involving the “feminists.” First, you’re turning them into the loud-mouthed, abrasive, hairy-legged stereotype that jocks all make them out to be. One has a bolt through her nose and is about as cuddly as sandpaper, and the other one is just rude and obnoxious and doesn’t have a sentimental bone in her body. Secondly, the word “feminist” is pretty outmoded – most women would probably consider themselves feminists. You’re turning them into FemiNazis. My buddy Crissy and I watch this show religiously and last week she said to me, “You don’t think it’s going to turn out that the feminists are the ones orchestrating the rapes to shed more light on their cause, do you?” And we both thought about it for a minute, and then shuddered. We thought, no. The man who created Veronica Mars could NOT do that to us.

And then, in last night’s episode, the feminists were sparring with the loony National Lampoon type geeks, and the geeks made a joke about raping the “blonde in the middle” and ohmigod, don’t you know it, the blonde in the middle gets raped by the end of the episode. And suddenly our worst fears seem to be coming true.

And then there’s that whole plotline with Logan. He lies to Veronica, he looks shady when she follows him to a casino, he’s doing things behind her back, he’s flirty with his “weightlifting” buddies… and in the end Veronica says SHE is the one who is being bad and should stop being suspicious of her boyfriend? Not only did this particular episode make it look like women should accept it if their boyfriends are flirty with other girls and evasive with them, and that feminists are all bullheaded loonybins, but THEN Logan delivers the line, “This would be the first time a woman has been misled by Dick.” Nice little double entendre there.

Seriously, Rob, for the first time ever, this show feels like it’s being written by a man. A man who only knows women insofar as he’s read about them in comic books.

Weevil is back, but he’s super-puffy (think Xander in season 6), and his storyline is just… unbelievable. A college would not allow a criminal of Weevil’s caliber anywhere near the school records like that. It just wouldn’t happen. Is this your way of writing him out of the show? Just make him a janitor in the background? We had so much hope for Eli in season 1, and now it’s just gone. And Keith… what the hell is with Keith? He’s chasing mysteries we can’t figure out, and the way you left that whole Kendall scenario from the first episode is just wrong.

Look, Rob, we know this isn’t like you. We know you’ve been under a lot of pressure from the CW to make this show more user-friendly. Make the Nancy Drew mysteries shorter, more palatable, and easier to follow for those who like their dramas more CSIable. But for the rest of us, who love our cult television shows, who love the uniqueness of this show, and who care about these characters as if they were family, PLEASE don’t do this. Let’s go back to being who Veronica was last year. I can’t leave this show, no matter how bad it becomes – I just love Kristen Bell too much to ever leave. But don’t make my Tuesday nights painful ones, as I sit alone watching a show that everyone else has dropped.

And besides, with only 13 episodes ordered, you have to buck up and KEEP your original audience, or CW will give you the ax. Don’t let that happen, Rob. I’ve already lost Buffy and Angel, and I can’t handle losing Veronica, too.

Thanks for listening.

We can be Heroes....
...just for one day. See, I love anything that puts David Bowie songs in my head...

So I just watched this week's Heroes (one day late) and wow, it just gets better and better! Claire has risen from the dead, and I agree with her friend; it's like the removal of the tree branch from her head was what made her wake up. The only unrealistic thing about her plotline is the fact that Brody wasn't more freaked out when she wandered back into the school. He KILLED her, presumably checked for a pulse, dragged the body into the woods and dumped it near a stream... I mean, if anyone thought that girl was dead, it was him, no matter how liquored up he might have been. But otherwise, her revenge on him was AWESOME. (Personally, I thought she was going to drive the car off a cliff, but it might have lodged something in her and killed her again, only to make her wake up on ANOTHER morgue slab and have to escape again.) Oh, and by the way, why didn't the coroner contact the parents with a big WHA???

We finally saw the other side of Niki, another totally amazing scene. So, it turns out, when her other side comes out, it's none other than Buffy!! I squealed with absolute delight when she kicked the crap out of the guy in the elevator. And rather than use a cute little pun like Buffy might have done, "I think you're...going down" she put her stiletto on his head and threatened him if he ever came near "our" son again. LOVED it. Presumably, it was Buffiki who went back into the politician's room, and not Niki herself. Where will she wake up?

Hiro and Ando were hilarious, as usual. What made that scene even funnier is how people always say, "Hey, if I had a superpower, I'd use it to win the lottery" and we wonder why the superheroes never do anything like that. Well, Hiro is here to fulfill that. Let's hope he plays the Super 7 next. Now that Hiro's been knocked out and is unable to stop time, how will Ando get out of THAT one?

We now know that Peter's power is that he takes on the power of the superhero around him, which makes him far more interesting than originally thought. He flies because his brother does. He sees the future because he's around Isaac. As soon as everything stopped on the subway, I immediately thought wait, that's Hiro's power, but Hiro's in Las Vegas.... and then Future Hiro showed up. I LOVED that ending.

So is the black guy who hangs out with Claire's dad Sylar? Or is Claire's dad Sylar? Is Claire's dad a bad guy? My husband said at one point, what if he's not a bad guy, and is actually a good person trying to put the gang together? The thing is, they've made him far too creepy for that; if he turns out to be a really good person, it'll have been a really over-the-top mislead for us. And why did Claire's dad tell Maybe-Sylar to clean out Matt's head completely?

Have you been noticing the S symbol? The Maybe-Sylar dude had one on the pendant around his neck. Niki has the same tattoo on her back. And at the end, when Future Hiro showed up, he had a sword of some kind on his back with that symbol on the blade. I'm sure it's been elsewhere, and I've missed it until now, but it might be the 4 8 15 16 23 42 of this show, and is what connects these characters.

I've got lots more to say about this, but my husband tells me my blogs are far too long and I need to cut them down to 3 paragraphs or people won't read them. So I assume at this point I'm already talking to myself. ;)

Why I hate Bell ExpressVu... and other gripes
So, as usual, I’m behind on my blogging. Ugh. So instead of talking about shows I’m watching, I’m going to talk about things that annoy me about television networks and providers.

Weeds continues to be hilarious, though I really, really miss Malvina Reynolds and her shaky voice singing the theme song. Now that they’re playing the ol’ “who’s singing the theme song this week” game, it’s lost its charm there. That said, it’s pretty cool to hear Elvis Costello doing it one week, and some indie band doing it the next. By the way, I want to express my fury at sites in the U.S. that are currently closing their doors to their Canadian viewers. I went to the Showtime site to check out bands who were performing the theme song, and instead of accessing it, there’s a blank page with this on it: We at Showtime Online express our apologies; however, these pages are intended for access only from within the United States. Oh. Well. Excuse me for being a fan of your show. Maybe I’ll stop. I wish Showcase in Canada would get a better site. And when they put up shows to watch online after they’ve aired? Only accessible to Americans. We couldn’t watch Veronica Mars up here in advance of the first ep the way the Americans could, because, you know, we’re a terrorist country or something.

I missed the Amazing Race last week, which sucked. My PVR also didn’t tape The Wire. I set it up to tape both, but I was away on the weekend. So I called Bell ExpressVu, my carrier, which is one of the WORST customer service places on the planet. I also have my phone and Internet with them. Once our phone was knocked out in a storm so the Bell guy came by to fix it. But he drilled through something where our Internet connection was, and when he left our Net didn’t work. My husband called Bell, and they said no, you have to call Sympatico, because they deal with your Internet. So he called Sympatico (sitting on hold for 15 minutes each time, I should add) and they said no, if a Bell technician went through the line, then you call Bell, it’s a phone line thing. So he called Bell, and etc. etc. It was insane. Luckily, he knew the VP of customer service, so he launched a complaint and we got something done. But what if he didn’t know that person? Would they have just yanked our chain for the next 2 years over this? So then we get ExpressVu, and a few months later decided to upgrade to the PVR. I called them to get some info because we considered going to Rogers instead. The woman said to be honest, she knew nothing about the PVR and how it worked or its features, and couldn’t pass me on to anyone who did. Sigh. So I called some friends who had it, and they told me. We ordered the PVR, which was $22 a month, instead of the $2 we’d been paying for the other tuner. They began charging us for both tuners. We called them and they said we’d bought into a 2-year contract for the original tuner, and if we get out of that they’ll charge us $200. ???? We explained to them and their tiny brains that we weren’t LEAVING Bell, we were UPGRADING, and if they knew what they were doing, they should be encouraging their customers to go with the more expensive option, not forcing them to stay with the less expensive one. They wouldn’t listen. Eventually my husband, again, had to go to higher-ups and got it resolved with an apology. They picked up the original tuner. And then charged us for it for the next 4 months until I finally got someone to take it off and credit us the amount.

SO… if you phone, you get nowhere. After my PVR didn’t tape anything last week, I decided to go onto their website to get some information on the PVR to see why it didn’t tape stuff for me. Hahahahahahahaha…. Ahem. Their site is worse than their customer service department. I began to dread that I would have to speak to some dimwit on the phone. And then I saw something on the bottom. “Click here to be connected to a live person for customer support.” I thought hey, I’m working online anyway, let’s do that. So I clicked, it said my wait time was 2 minutes. Five minutes later someone came on and said, “Hello, my name is Alpha D. Can I have your name and phone number please?” So I gave it to them, and while I waited for the response, typed up my concern in Word so I’d be able to instantly cut and paste it. And I waited. About six minutes later he (it could have been a she, it could have been a computer, who knows, but for the sake of ease I’ll say he) came back on and said, “Thank you. What is the problem?” So I cut and pasted it. And waited. He said after 3 minutes, “I am sorry to hear you’re having problems with your PVR. I’ll have to connect you to the specialist, Jean Robert. Please wait a moment.” So I waited and went to do something else. After about 3 minutes he said, “Thank you for your patience. Please wait to be connected to Jean Robert.” Another 2 minutes, and then, “Hello, my name is Alpha D. Can I have your name and phone number please?” Huh? I gave both to him and said, “I’ve already told you my problem and I’m waiting for Jean Robert? I’ve been trying to get an answer for about 25 minutes at this point.” After 3 minutes, “Thank you for waiting. I’ll connect you to Jean Robert right now.” I waited. Five minutes passed. Then, “Hello, my name is Alpha D. Can I have your name and telephone number please?” ARGH. I said, “I’ve given you my name and phone number twice now, and I’ve been told three times I’m being connected to Jean Robert. Is there a Jean Robert? Are you a real live person or a computer? All I want is an answer to my question, and I’m getting very frustrated. Can you help me?” I waited. Two minutes later, I get, “Thank you for your patience.” And waited. I went off to work on something else while I continued to wait, and got caught up in work, and then half an hour later went back to check and it was still sitting on ‘Thank you for your patience.” Which means the person typed that, and disconnected me.

Awesome. Thank you, Bell ExpressVu! Your phone service is terrible because you hire people who know nothing about your product. Your online service is apparently automated, with some evil customer service rep tired of people griping at him who can just disconnect customers at will. Our phone line crackles, our Internet disconnects all the time, and if one tree outside sways in the wind, we lose our satellite service.

And the problem is, I have 100 hours of saved programming on my PVR, and so I’m stuck with this place. And the other option is Rogers, which doesn't have the skip commercials option on the remote, and it's... Rogers. Possibly the only place on earth to rival Bell in horrifying customer service. I used to have Look TV, and I LOVED it, but their channel lineup is so limited. So I just might be stuck here.

OK, enough griping from me for one day.

Lost ep 2: The Glass Ballerina
Just finished watching this week's ep of Lost, and CTV cut into the end of the ABC feed and cut it off completely (argh) as Jack was staring at the television playing the Red Sox's victory so I had to watch the CTV feed that came on at 11 to find out what I'd missed. But that said, I thought this episode was even better than last week's.

As I thought, we didn't get to see anything about Locke et al, but instead focused on Jin and Sun. The episode was called "The Glass Ballerina," which puts more emphasis on the small incident at the beginning. Sun breaks a glass ballerina, but rather than admit to her father what she'd done, she lets him fire the maid, insisting that she was the one who'd broken it. Twenty-odd years later, Jae Lee kills himself because Sun won't 'fess up and be with him instead of Jin.

Highlights for me:
-Sawyer kissing Kate
-Danny saying if they step out of line, they'll get shocked, and Sawyer saying, "We'll be shot?!"
-Alex!!
-Sawyer telling Kate she tastes like strawberries. That was TOTALLY a Buffy line for all of us Buffy fans out there -- in a season 6 ep of Buffy, Rack is this "magic dealer" who is dealing serious dark magics to Willow, and he reaches into her aura and tells her that she tastes of strawberries. This episode was co-written by Drew Goddard, who was one of the major writers on Buffy in seasons 6 and 7. Yay, Drew! (BTW, Rack nicknames Willow "Strawberry" after that so let's see if Sawyer does the same... I do love that he immediately calls her Shortcake.)
-Jack laughing when Benry tells him the Red Sox won the World Series. Since his father's favourite saying to comment on truth and fate is, "Well, that's why the Red Sox will never win the World Series," we know that him seeing that clip on the television has changed his entire world view.
-Sun shooting Colleen after she says you're not a killer and you won't shoot me.
-Sawyer finally telling Kate that his name is James.
-we get a real time of how long they've been on the island, and a connection to the outside world, which is awesome. November 29th. To give some perspective of how long ago that was, "Raised by Another" aired on December 1, 2004.

Did you notice:
-when we see Sun as a little girl, they use the same house that Walt grew up in in Sydney (you can see that same wooden octagon beam structure on the ceiling)
-Benry's got his own Pearl station in the Hydra -- he's watching 6 televisions, and one is on Jack, one on Kate's cage, one on Sawyer's, one on the hallway outside Jack's room, and the two others aren't clear. One of them is obscured by his head, and one of them appears to be alternating between a bed and a jungle. Could it be looking at somewhere else further away on the island?
-Benry didn't know about the boat!!! What's with something going on on the island and Benry not knowing about it?? Have we ever seen him genuinely baffled about something?
-the new chick, Colleen (one of the prostitutes on Deadwood) seems to be very jealous to see Juliet and Benry having a private conversation, and then she turns around and acts intimately toward Danny (who we've known until now to be Pickett)
-Sayid tells Jin and Sun that the important thing is to kidnap two of the Others, because you can use them against each other to make them do things. It's exactly what the Others are doing with Kate and Sawyer. If Kate steps out of line, Sawyer gets zapped, and if he steps out of line, they hold a gun to her head. What's most interesting about that is that Sawyer gets zapped when Kate asks about Jack; the thing is, they didn't need a stun gun to send volts through him when she asks about Jack.
-Sawyer calls Danny "Boss" all the time, like he's done hard time before and is used to referring to the guards that way
-Juliet seems to have been put there to make both Jack and Sawyer trust her. Neither one does.
-Kate still has a look on her face like she sorta knows what's going on, and feels terrible about what is happening to Sawyer. I'm still convinced they've asked her to be part of some scheme against Sawyer. She's not acting like herself.

Questions:
-it appeared that Sun slept with Jae Lee, but did she? She was saying no to him, but personally, it looked to me like she was saying no to the affair continuing. I think she really did sleep with him. And if she did, does that mean that she's carrying his baby, or is there still a possibility that it's Jin's?
-did Jae Lee really kill himself, or did Paik know that Jin wouldn't go through with it? Did he have a henchman in there to finish the job that Jin wouldn't?
-what sort of labor are the Others doing? is it all a front?
-what was Alex talking about? Is she involved with Carl? What did she mean when she mumbled something about "not supposed to be in the cage"? Who wasn't, Carl? Kate? Sawyer?
-Is Alex in on what the Others are doing, or is she a victim, too? Since the dress Kate is wearing was Alex's, did they do some social experiment to push Carl and Alex together in the same way they're trying to push Kate and Sawyer together?
-how much English does Jin understand?
-Benry says that he's always lived on the island. Is that true?
-Considering Steve was killed when the Others came from the water, why didn't Sayid think of that instead of leaving Sun alone on the boat??
-what will happen to Sun now that she's shot Colleen?
-why was Sun suddenly so subservient to Jin again? These two swing a little wildly sometimes, and there's an inconsistency to their characters that can be annoying at times. One minute Jin is the world's sweetest man, the next he is telling her to NEVER question him. One minute Sun seems to be this strong, independent woman, the next she's saying, "Only if my husband says I can."

Ze numbers:
-Jin is staying in room 1516... blooper: when Jin gets off the elevator, you can see the 2 by the numbers, as if he's on the second floor. Not only would 1516 not be on the second floor, but a jump from a 2nd floor balcony probably wouldn't do much damage to a person.
-when Sun is playing piano as a little girl, the metronome is set to 116

Linus:
Benry tells Jack that his full name is Benjamin Linus. Linus was one of the three sons of Apollo (think Apollo bars on the island). All 3 of the sons were named Linus, and they all ended their lives badly. (One killed by Apollo, one killed by wild dogs, and one, a musician, was killed by Hercules by his own instrument.)
More importantly, Linus Pauling was a chemist who won the Nobel Prize twice, once for chemistry, once for peace. Perhaps this Linus is aiming for a similar thing?

Next week on Lost: John Locke has lost his ability to speak! I hope it's not permanent; I love listening to his preaching. I've heard a spoiler about Eko that is similar to this, so it's interesting to me how they'll be dealing with different outcomes of the blast. I cannot WAIT!!

The wait isn't over yet...
Just a warning to Lost fans thinking this week's episode will finally reveal how Hurley got back to the beach and if Locke, Eko, and Desmond are OK and what happened after Charlie and Claire kissed, etc. etc. The backstory tonight is on Sun and Jin, and the island story will focus on the two of them and Sayid on the boat. In fact, next week's ep, where the backstory will focus on Locke, was originally slated to be the second episode, and they switched these two around. There's only one way a show as tight and complicated as this would be able to actually SWITCH the order of two episodes, and that's if there's no crossover at all between them. We'll still see some of Kate, Jack, and Sawyer, presumably (I mean... there's only so much we can watch on a boat), but no Locke, et al.

Last night's Veronica Mars was still fun, though I'm a little worried about how militant they're making the feminists on the show. We all had those ones at our universities -- at mine, the militant lesbian who fronted the on-campus gay/lesbian group was SO aggressive she marched into the student newspaper, grabbed a reporter whom she didn't like, dragged him into the hallway by his tape recorder, and proceeded to beat the crap out of him. But she was an unfortunate example of the activists. I hope, as my friend Crissy said to me today, that it doesn't come out that the feminists are somehow behind the rapes in an attempt to shed more light on their Take Back the Night campaign.

I watched the October 1st ep of Studio 60 (yes, I'm behind already) and it was good, but I'm starting to think more and more that this show is pretty contrived. Couldn't Sorkin have tried to mix things up even a little bit? Someone told me about Amanda Peet's character's DUI and that after that, she gets much better on the show, but... nope. Not for me. She's still dull. And honestly, I'm not too crazy about the Bible-thumper, either. They're all just watered-down people to me. I'll still watch. Occasionally the show makes me laugh out loud.

Finally, a shout-out to my friends Jeremy and Gill, whose son Tristan was born last week (two days after a huge party they held with over 200 people... does that kid have perfect timing or what?!). I went over to see him last night and he's ADORABLE. I couldn't believe my daughter was ever that small... and then I realized he's about 6lbs10, and when my daughter was born she was 8lbs4. So, in fact, she wasn't ever that small. Go over to Jer's blog where he's turned from Mr. Pop Culture to a full-on daddy. It's so cute. :)

I'm So Rone-ry
On the weekend Kim Jong Il announced that North Korea had tested a nuclear bomb in an underground explosion. Is it just me, or is it like the new television season predicted it? In the 1950s kids were scared of an atom bomb attack, and were taught to hide under their chairs in school, like somehow hiding under a small wooden desk would protect them from a full-on holocaust. The threat was on, and it was mirrored in TV shows and movies. In the 1980s, when I was a kid, the Cold War was still raging, and the movie The Day After scared the bejesus out of any kid who watched it. (I was always worried that my family didn't have a bomb shelter.) The much BETTER movie, When the Wind Blows, which featured music by David Bowie, came out a few years later, and it was still a frightening and sad film, but it was after I'd stopped being scared of any nuclear threat.

Now, rather than art imitating life, it seems things are moving the other way around. Jericho is about a town in Kansas that believes it's the only place still standing after nuclear bombs have gone off around the world. We've learned what radiation poisoning can do to us, how inadequate old fallout shelters are, and that crows will plop onto the road in hordes if they've been flying in the area of the explosion.

On Heroes, Hiro zips forward 5 weeks to witness a nuclear explosion that completely levels Manhattan, one that was predicted by Isaac. Since he immediately time-travelled back to the present, there were little details about why or how such a bomb could have gone off.

Kim Jong Il has admitted he's a massive film buff... maybe he's been watching too much American TV as well? What's next? Will Chris Rock begin talking about watching The Day After: Julius: "I can't believe they'd just blow up 90 million dollars and 47 cent worth of materials like that!" Will we find out the rest of the world really WAS zapped by some bomb on Lost? Will Aaron Sorkin begin writing bomb jokes on Studio 60? Time will tell...

The Plot Thickens...
Last week on the abc.com site, a strange thing happened. This photo suddenly appeared in the slide show of screen captures from Lost's season premiere. And a couple of hours later, after fans madly rushed back to their recorded episodes and emailed each other to see if they'd missed something, the photo was gone.

This is not a scene from the episode, so you didn't miss anything. It appears to be one from an upcoming ep, and ABC accidentally included it with the photos for "A Tale of Two Cities." But the speculation has already begun: Who is that little girl? Is Jack hallucinating Sarah as a little girl? Or Juliet as a child? Or imagining the child he could have had with Sarah had things worked out? Or is it less mysterious? Could this little girl be Emma, the girl who was in the tail section of the plane with her brother whom Ana Lucia promised to get home to her mom in L.A.? The Others took her, her brother, and 7 other people the second or third night they were on the island. She was wearing a striped shirt (different from the one in the picture, but striped nonetheless) and carrying a teddy bear when she was kidnapped. Six weeks later, Eko and Jin hid in the bushes as they watched the Others walk silently by, and near the back of the pack was a pair of little dirty feet, dragging a teddy bear tied to a string. Could it have been Emma? Or was she being kept somewhere else and the teddy bear was a ruse to make Eko think it was her? Have they pulled her out, made her one of them (a la Alex) and now she's being put to work?

Also, I'd said I couldn't find Miss Klugh in the episode, but a friend of mine pointed out a photo on the same site where you see her sitting at the book club. I didn't see Alex, though.

I appeared on G4TV in L.A. on Thursday night on their Attack of the Show, and a Variety reporter was the other guy being shown via satellite (which is sort of set up, since he's right there in L.A., presumably). He didn't like the premiere as much as I did, and said the numbers were down and maybe ABC should be worried. Just this morning I saw the report that the episode drew more than 18 million viewers, and was the #1 show of the night. Woohoo! Take THAT! Our Losties are not in any ratings danger.

Smith and Kidnapped, on the other hand, are the season's first two casualties. I blogged earlier that I thought Smith was pretty good, but probably not one to hold my attention. It had a really good cast, and frankly, it surprised me to hear the news. Kidnapped is one that people I know are watching, but I had a bad feeling about it from the start. It sounded like Reunion, and we all know how THAT turned out. However, the producers of Kidnapped -- UNLIKE those of Reunion -- will allow them to finish off the story in 13 episodes. Good news for those who watch that.

Heroes has been picked up for a full season, yay! I loved the second episode even more than the first. The porn mom is very intriguing -- her power still isn't clear, but it seems to have something to do with splitting herself and her unconscious side takes care of business, while her conscious side seems to go to sleep and not realize what has happened. She's the most intriguing one. Greg Grunberg finally appeared in the second ep, with the same power Buffy had in "Earshot" -- hearing people's thoughts. (Let's hope it's more honed than Buffy's was, and that he doesn't begin to go mad.) In a second Buffy nod, Clea Duvall (who was Invisible Girl in season 1) plays the detective who puts him under arrest.

The Office ROCKS this season. Of course, I'd love to have Pam and Jim back together, but the fun is in the anticipation. The scene in the second episode where Michael is asking Pam to look into getting him "one of those Chinese babies" for adoption was absolutely hysterical. Dwight has turned on Michael, incurring Michael's wrath and forcing Dwight's complete subservience to him. Jim is stuck in an office hell where everything shuts down several times a day so they can play war games on their computers. I love it.

I watched the second ep of Jericho and it's still intriguing me. I have no idea what the numbers on that one are, or if it's being looked at for cancellation yet... every episode contains suspense, intrigue, and terror, but it always seems to wrap up in a neat bow by the end of the ep. So it might be the very show Middle America loves. The dialogue is dull, the acting is good but sometimes overdone, so it won't be winning any awards or anything, but it's a good show nonetheless.

I have way too much still sitting on the PVR, and need a serious catch-up night. Or five.

Why is the Lost season 2 premiere called A Tale of Two Cities?
I found out about a month ago that the season premiere of Lost would be named after a Dickens novel so I started looking into it then. After we saw Our Mutual Friend flash by our screen in a very big way during the season 2 finale, it's not a coincidence that they're giving their season premiere episode this title. I don't think the significance of it is necessarily in the title itself (though there's a suggestion that we've already watched the one "city" on the beach for two seasons, and now we're discovering another one) but in the plot of the novel.

I will admit outright I haven't yet read this book. It opens with one of the most famous lines in English lit: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," an appropriate tagline for the show if ever there was one. And the novel had other details in it that link it to Lost (plot spoilers for the Dickens novel ahead):

-the novel takes place during the French Revolution. One of the biggest influences on the Revolution was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose namesake on Lost is hidden somewhere in the jungle, with a rifle slung over her shoulder and looking for her daughter, Alex
-the main plot of the novel involves two men in love with the same woman -- one is a respectable man of society, the other is an alcoholic who wants to be a good man, but can't seem to manage it (sound familiar?)
-Lucie, the woman with two suitors, discovers her father is alive (she thought he'd died years earlier) and going crazy in a jail where he's been sitting for 18 years. Kate, Sawyer, and Jack are all in jails in this episode, and Jack is thinking about his father, who is dead (as far as he or any of us know)
-when Lucie chooses the more respectable man (Darnay) and marries him, he is charged with treason, and is sentenced to death. The other man (Carton), the alcoholic, visits him in the prison and offers to switch places. He loves Lucie so much that he knows she would be happiest if Darnay lived. Darnay refuses, so Carton drugs him, frees him, and takes his place. The novel ends with his execution, and the other famous line: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known." Does this mean Sawyer will make a similar sacrifice in the future?

I'm sure anyone who's read the book could talk about it at far greater length. One of the biggest scenes in the book is the description of the storming of the Bastille, and maybe that is foreshadowing the rest of the Losties trying to save our trio?

LOST -- A Tale of Two Cities
I've been waiting for this moment since May 23rd... and WOW, what an opening of an episode. In much the same way the second season opened in a completely unfamiliar place, with a 1960s tune playing on the stereo and a person we'd never seen before walking around their home alone, season 3 opened with Juliet's house, her book club, and then... the plane crash. It seems the Others had their own little Pleasantville on the island before Jack and co. arrived. What a GREAT opening.

The rest of the episode -- again, like season 2's premiere -- focused on Jack, Kate, and Sawyer, while leaving the rest of the fates unmentioned (we still don't know what's happened to Locke, Eko, or Des). I've only watched it twice at this point, so these are my initial thoughts.

At times the flashback seemed a little contrived, like they were trying to shoehorn it into an episode that was more island-centric. That said, by seeing Jack's frustration in the past, it certainly made us feel his frustrations now. In "Two for the Road," when Christian called Ana-Lucia "Sarah," I was convinced he had something to do with their breakup (and to be honest, I'm still not convinced he didn't have some affections for her that went beyond what we saw in this ep). What I did like about the flashback was that Jack was obsessed with the name of the man who was with Sarah. All he wanted was a name, like to know that is to know everything. Meanwhile, last season he and everyone else spent a lot of their time with Henry Gale, a man who was using a fake name to get them to listen to him. I think this episode boasts the best performance we've seen from Matthew Fox.

Questions:
-Who do we trust? Juliet's vulnerability shows in the opening moments of the episode, where she's clearly distraught, and looks like she's completely on edge. Yet she also appears to be a willing participant in what is going on with the prisoners.
-Juliet looks exactly like Penelope
-How did the Others end up on the island in the first place, and how did they find those amenities?
-If they can have something as sophisticated as a book club, where the heck are they getting that many copies of the same book? Is there some island Barnes and Noble that we can't see? Does Amazon deliver to an island in the middle of nowhere?
-Is Sarah banging more than one guy? We saw her with two potential love interests. Or is she just a REALLY flirty gal? (And GEEZ, does she have to be SO frickin' harsh?)
-who is Gary? Is he one of the Others, and convincing Sawyer to leave was just another part of their mind game thang?
-is Mr. Friendly gay? I would think that's the only explanation as to why Kate wouldn't be his "type"
-does Kate really love caffeine so much that the "then you don't get any coffee" threat would actually make her put the cuffs on?
***What did Not-Henry/Ben say to Kate after we cut away from the beach scene? Has she been instructed to trick Sawyer into something? Have they put a sexy little number on her and sent her back to Sawyer to sidle up to him, let him think she's chosen him, and then they're going to yank her out of the situation and point to him in a mocking fashion and say, "HA! GOTCHA!" She looks SO upset when she returns to him, when you'd think she'd be comforted to see someone she knows and cares about. Kate looks ravenous and takes Sawyer's only food, but didn't she just eat an entire lush breakfast? Why is she letting on to him she hasn't eaten?
-did Jack really hallucinate Christian saying "let it go, Jack" through the intercom, or were the Others manipulating him?
-now that we know Dharma had an underwater station of some kind, does that explain the shark in season 2 that had the Dharma symbol on its belly? Is it a former test subject of this aquarium?
-what are the fish biscuits made of?
-how do the Others know everything about Jack?
-how did they get Christian's autopsy report when Jack didn't even have it when he got on the plane? I still think Christian might not be dead...
-will we ever be able to think of Henry as "Ben"?

Hurley's numbers:
-4 muffins rolled into the living room
-there were 12 on the tray (4 + 8)
-when Jack is sitting in the car stalking Sarah outside the school, he looks down at his pager, and the time on it is 7:15:23
-Kate's dress was hanging in locker 811
-when Juliet brings Jack the grilled cheese sandwich, she's cut it into 4 pieces
-Christian has been sober for 50 days (42 + 8)
-when Jack leaves the jail cell, there's a 64 on a box behind him (32, a reverse 23, times 2)
-when Sarah leaves Jack standing on the street and goes to the guy at the car, we see the first two letters of his license plate, which is 2F (F is the 6th letter of the alphabet, 6 + 2 = 8)

Did You Notice?
-the book club book was Stephen King's Carrie, which is about a woman with telekinetic powers. Does that mean someone on the island has the same power? Is that why everyone was so interested in Walt?
-we found out Not-Henry's real name was Ben at the end, but at the beginning at the book club, there's also a mention of it, when someone mentions that "Ben" isn't at book club
-Jack sitting in car watching Sarah: You can see a crossword puzzle he's been working on, and he's filled in interesting words that have to do with the island, like "raft," "necessary evils," "prenatal," "ensemble," "essential facts," "heroes," "area," etc. yet if you look at the words reading down, they don't make any sense at all, like he was just filling in words that fit without paying any attention to the clues
-Sawyer being in the cage is almost the exact research experiment that BF Skinner conducted on rats (see page 187 of my book)
-Goodwin, the guy Not-Henry sent to the tail section of the island, is the one that Ana-Lucia later impaled with a spear
-all of the shampoo products that Kate was using had the big Dharma symbol on them. So what is their connection to the Others?
-the station Jack is located in was called the Hydra station. The Hydra was a many-headed serpent from Greek mythology, which may be a comment on the fact that Juliet is being two-faced in her dealings with Jack.
-when Jack is dealing with a patient and he sees Christian take a cellphone call, the patient looked a LOT like Mr. Friendly. Was it him?
-when Jack walks out of his cell to see Sarah, there's a Wanted poster on the wall and it looks a LOT like Hurley on the poster

Let me know what I've missed. I know there's a ton of stuff (I wish I could see the books on the shelf of Jack's office in the hospital better, for example).

"What goes on in that pretty little head of yours..."
Last night (Tuesday, October 3rd), was the launch of my new book, Finding Lost, and the launch had a great turnout, a panel discussion on the show, and was a ton of fun. I was on a national entertainment show that aired in the evening, and had articles about the book appearing in newspapers across North America.

But for me, the real event of the day was the return of Veronica Mars to my television set. Oh, Veronica. How I have missed you... The season premiere did NOT disappoint. Veronica was funny, charming, and adorable every moment she was on the screen. There were tons of little pop culture references, as usual (she goes to an RA at the college to tell him a student's worldly possessions had been stolen and the guy stands there for a minute, then says, "Frak," which had me in stitches. Later in the episode, Veronica ends up using the term, too). She shows up a teaching assistant in her first 15 minutes in a classroom (and seems to garner the respect and admiration of the very cute prof) and she's still with Logan. Le sigh.

Meanwhile, Daddy Mars (my favourite character) is off doing something very mysterious that wasn't immediately clear to me, and it built up to the end of the episode, which was fast-paced, suspenseful, and downright frightening. Keith, PLEASE tell me you have a back-up weapon somewhere. The very end of the episode set up this season's mystery (which will probably be a smaller five-episode mystery, as the writers have said the mysteries this season will not last the entire season) when Mac's roommate is raped by a mysterious on-campus serial rapist (one whom Veronica may have seen, since she sneaked into the room when the roommate was doing the deed), whose m.o. is shaving his victims' heads after he's done with them. I hope Veronica hurts the guy. Badly.

There was some concern over what would happen to the show after Veronica left high school and went to university. When it happened on Buffy, the fourth season seriously lagged. Xander couldn't get in to college, so he was no longer part of the daily group. Willow joined the Wiccans, Cordy left the show for Angel, Oz left altogether, and Buffy began feeling alone, and the season devolved into a weird government conspiracy show. But things feel different over in Neptune. Logan, like Xander, isn't in the school, but that doesn't mean he can't still be relationship boy.

Dick (what a perfect name for this guy) has become an alcoholic, and I think the writers have actually handled him surprisingly well. His brother committed suicide at the end of the previous season, after having done some terrible things, and they could have just made Dick and even bigger illustration of his name, but instead, while at first he seemed to be the old, sexist, idiotic Dick, deep inside he's a bit of a smoldering volcano, about to go off. By the end of the episode we find out just how broken he really is.

Veronica still lives at home, and of course adores her father (who adores her even more) but there's a separation now. Yet the separation didn't feel like the one on Buffy; instead it was more like something the writers had been slowly building to, and they still connect via cellphone or at the end of the day in front of V's computer. It's going to be an interesting season, watching them do things separately, yet stay together emotionally.

The Logan/Veronica relationship has the potential to become problematic (as it always does) but in a way that will entertain the audience, not bore us. She's already thinking of him as that high school romance she carried to university, and if he finds out that's what she's thinking, what will that do to him? I love watching these two, and as much as I delight in seeing them together, they're almost more exciting apart, wanting to be together (think Buffy and Angel vs. Buffy and Angelus...).

Wallace was getting seriously tired last season, but with the new addition of his roommate, Piz (who looks like a slightly older Zac Efron...for a moment I thought, Oh god, please don't let these two break into "Getcha Head in the Game"), his character has seriously come to life again. And his obvious crush on Veronica could make for some great sparks this season. Mac is back (YAY!) and is as funny as ever. She's having a bit of a Buffy experience over in her dorm with her super perky roommate who has a tendency to go braless and constantly change tops in front of her, which adds a squirminess that is hilarious.

Charisma is back... but for how long? The end of the episode made it look like she was being offed, but it's never clear if that's the case (and the fact that she was off-screen leads me to believe it's all an act). Why was Keith helping her? What is going on? Will Vinnie come to Keith's aid? (Vinnie? Being HELPFUL? Could happen...)

And I can't sign off without mentioning the lack of Duncan. Thank Christ. This guy was duller than wood, and having him GONE is one of the best ideas the writers have come up with (he should have been gone at the end of season 2).

Finally, the new theme song! It wasn't clear if the Dandy Warhols went back and re-recorded the song, or if it was just a remix. Apparently the producers believed if Veronica was "all growed up" and no longer in high school, she needed a more mature song. Unlike the changes to the Buffy song that happened partway through, I didn't dislike this change. The opening was super-slick, and I really liked it. I HATE change, but I liked this.

So I urge you to watch Veronica Mars. The CW has only ordered 13 episodes, and whether it gets picked up for a full season will depend entirely on numbers and viewership. Watch it. For the love of all that is good on television, watch it. You won't be disappointed.

Lost in Heroes -- The New Season
One thing is clear about the new television season: Lost has had a huge impact on it. Six Degrees is about people who are connected in various ways but don't know it. The Nine involves a group of people involved in a trauma, and their lives are shown through a series of flashbacks. Heroes also has a story about a group of people connected in some way, who are located in different parts of the world, all linked by what seems to be a sort of genetic experiment. And it's my favourite of the new shows.

Heroes had a very complicated first episode. You had to watch it twice to really follow what was going on. It was something about an Indian professor who was doing research on using genetics to take human evolution to the next level, and he may or may not have been experimenting on people. There are people all over the world who have superhero powers, but don't know it -- except for one, the lovable Hiro from Tokyo, who reads comic books voraciously and has wanted to be a superhero since he was a child. Throughout the ep, I thought maybe his powers were in his mind, and he would turn out to be the only one who WASN'T a hero, but then he did something remarkable by the end of the episode. Heroes had extraordinary ratings for the premiere (I heard 25 million people... is that true?) and if that's really the case, it has a good chance of not being cancelled after 6 episodes.

And therein lies my major concern about investing any time in the new shows. I LOVED Reunion on FOX, and they cancelled it. I adored Miracles on ABC a few years ago. Cancelled. Arrested Development (which, granted, had two and a half seasons, and wasn't axed after a couple of smart half-hours), Firefly, Wonderfalls... so many good shows are left unfinished because some exec didn't have the time to let it flourish. Considering the box office numbers on Serenity, the movie based on Joss Whedon's Firefly, and the sales of the Firefly guidebooks out there, I hope someone got fired over THAT particular idiotic move.

So what do we do? Do we not watch anything? Do we just decide to keep to our shows that are on the air now (Lost, Veronica Mars, Prison Break, etc.) and if a show from the 2006-2007 season does well, we buy the DVDs in fall 2007? It's a toughie. I'd like to say I'm holding out and just waiting, but I'm a sucker for television (obviously). So I've already watched a ton.

Heroes -- as I said, hands down the most exciting new show of the season.

Ugly Betty -- I LOVED this show because I loved America Ferrera, who plays Betty (I saw her at the film festival a few years ago starring in a movie called Real Women Have Curves, and it was a ton of fun). When she walked into the offices of Mode Magazine wearing the fire engine red poncho with GUADALAJARA emblazoned on it, I nearly fell off the couch laughing. But it's laughing in a sad way -- you just want to reach out and hug her, and not let those leeches break her down. Can't wait for the second ep.

Smith -- Felt like a movie, good acting, nice premise, a few surprises... but I'm just not sure it's got what will keep me coming back for more. This might be one of those shows my husband ends up watching and I give up on.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip -- Definitely one of the most clever shows of the new season. The dialogue is crisp, the acting is superb, and it's SUCH a good idea I'm surprised no one had it sooner (unfortunately, two shows had it in the same season). BUT... I can't help thinking it's West Wing in a TV studio. Josh... I mean, Bradley Whitford, is the guy running things, though Amanda Peet is the president of the network. Personally, I think Amanda Peet was grossly miscast -- she feels out of place, her speeches lack the oomph of a good Aaron Sorkin speech. Matthew Perry is funny, but whenever he delivers a zinger of a line, I can't help but think he KNOWS he just delivered a zinger of a line. This is a clever show that KNOWS it's clever, and that can spell trouble. I hope it can keep away from the contrived dialogue -- there was a scene in the second episode where Perry's character is trying to write the opening scene, and they come up with this Gilbert and Sullivan parody and seriously, not only is everyone in the room on the EXACT same page of the thought process, but one of them says the first line, and the second one comes up with this hilarious second line that not only has the perfect meter, but rhymes. Come ON. (But then they show you the opening number and you think, Oh my GOD... someone let Aaron Sorkin write SNL ... PLEASE.) So I'm going to hang in there, because this show has a ton of potential, and I look forward to it every week.

Jericho -- Dark, it has Skeet Ulrich (who starred in Miracles) though these days he's looking less and less like Johnny Depp (one of my friends compared him more to K-Fed... ACK!) It also has Gerald McRaney, who viewers will either think of as half of Simon & Simon, or Major Dad, or Hearst, depending on your TV viewing and generation you're from. It's a very dark premise -- a nuclear bomb has gone off near Jericho, and through various reports they're discovering it wasn't the only one, and they're beginning to suspect they might be the last people on Earth. It's an interesting premise, and it's frightening, but by the end of the first episode, I thought some of it was pretty cheesy. Ulrich's character is the black sheep of the family (what he did is unclear) and his father has spurned him, but he's involved in one heroic act, and by the final moments of the pilot you can just see the badness on screen... "Oh, SON!" "Oh, DADDY! I LUV YOOOOO!" Yeah... let's just say I have the next few episodes on the PVR, and haven't really had the inclination to watch them yet. I will, though, because I might as well get them in before it's cancelled.

Dexter -- The darkest, weirdest, and certainly most psychotic of the new shows. I don't know if I love it or if it just creeps me out too much yet. The first ep aired last night (on TMN in Canada, ShowTime in the U.S.). The premise of the show is that Dexter (played by Michael C. Hall, who was David on Six Feet Under) is a sociopath. He's a forensics investigator by day, working on crime scenes and helping police find a killer. But he has access to cold case files, and he looks through them, tracks down the suspected killers the police were unable to convict, and follows them until he's sure they really did it. Then he traps them, tortures a confession out of them, and kills them in grotesque ways (the first guy we see him do this to, he hacks off his limbs while the guy is alive and conscious). We find out through flashbacks (there are the flashbacks again!!) that his foster father figured out his son was a sociopath when he began finding little graves of animal bones, and he knew his son would grow up to be a murderer, so he taught him to funnel that rage and focus it on the people who "deserved" it. And you can't help but... kinda... agree. (My brother is a lawyer who believes strongly in rehabilitation of even the worst criminals, so let's just say this show ain't for him.) It's a tough one to watch, and the writers make it that way. (There's a scene where the wife of one of the men Dexter's killed is crying in the captain's office, demanding the department find her husband... for a moment you feel sad, then you realize her husband first molested, then killed, several little boys.) Dexter is charming to people, but he has a coldness and oddness about him that makes you wonder why more people aren't completely weirded out by him. He's just discovered another serial killer in Miami, and instead of putting his head into the case to try to find the guy to convict him, he studies the victims and becomes intensely jealous, because he believes this man has an artistry that he lacks (the man drains the victims of every last drop of blood, then slices the body into several parts and reassembles the parts in public areas). By the end of the first episode, the killer has made contact with Dexter, and Dexter is THRILLED. His girlfriend, played by Julie Benz (Darla from Angel and Buffy) is another emotionally fractured individual who also doesn't seem to realize there's something wrong with a guy who has no interest in sex, and when she tells him she loves him he says, "Oh... OK! Thanks!" I'm going to keep watching this one, but it just might be too dark. What is with Michael C. Hall and dead bodies?

And now my other viewing:

Amazing Race 10 -- I love Amazing Race. I just do. Every season they have some bitchy gay guys, some person with a physical difficulty of some kind, bartenders, twins, cheerleaders, etc. This year we have a father who is "disappointed" in his lesbian daughter, when I believe he should be owning up to his own homosexuality. There's a woman with a prosthetic leg who is absolutely amazing, but her partner... GAH! I just want someone to hold his head in a toilet and flush it about 87 times. He's AWFUL. She seriously wants a relationship with this guy? Really? Then you've got the two rehab guys who are so far just annoying. There's no older couple on this season, which is strange, but you do have two Southerners who, granted, are super sweet and I love them, but if they win the money I hope they use it for dental work. I really like the two Korean brothers. My favourite moment with them was in the premiere, when they learned they were all going to China, and the one guy goes, "All RIGHT! We're going to the homeland!" Pause. Other brother: "Dude, we are KOREAN." Hahahahahaha... this week they all went to Vietnam and visited a POW camp, and while the others were falling all over themselves to grab the clue, the only people who stopped to actually give reverence to it were these brothers. They're probably my favourite team.

America's Next Top Model -- GO TYRA! But WHY oh WHY did you get rid of my favourite one in WEEK TWO?! Sheesh...

Lost -- Can't wait can't wait can't wait can't wait....

Veronica Mars -- Can't wait can't wait can't wait can't wait...

The Office -- How much do I love this show? It's the only show that has me doubled over laughing, even when I'm completely alone in the room. Last week's opening bit with Pam and Michael talking about Michael adopting a child had me in stitches.

My Name Is Earl -- Got the eps on the PVR, haven't watched them yet, but this show is truly brilliant.

Everybody Hates Chris -- see "My Name Is Earl"

Prison Break -- watched the premiere and it seemed so predictable and derivative of season 1 I kept thinking man, they'd better change it up a bit, or they're gonna lose me. So I have something like 6 eps sitting on the PVR and I'll watch it when other things are on hiatus.

Weeds -- still one of my favourite shows, season 2 is just as funny as season 1. The scene where the uncle explains to his nephew how to masturbate without clogging up the plumbing was CLASSIC.

The Wire -- one of the best television shows EVER, this show is far too complicated to watch once a week, so I'm letting it sit on the PVR until they all air, and then we'll watch them back to back.

Life on Mars -- another show sitting on the PVR right now. Only 6 eps, so it's not the commitment the others are.

EastEnders -- yes. I watch EastEnders. It's a British soap opera, it's over the top, and I only started watching in 2003, and BBC Canada is TWO YEARS behind. But hey, it's my thing, and I love it.

Then there are the shows I have on DVD that I want to get through -- Battlestar Galactica (LOVE IT), Profit, Deadwood...

Um. I think I watch too much TV.

But let me know if I'm missing something.

It's coming, it's coming!!
Yes, folks, we're less than a week away from the season 3 premiere of Lost, and could the poster for it be any more amazing? Charlie looks evil, Hurley looks stoned, Henry is peeking out from the shadows, Sayid looks confident, Desmond is ALIVE, Sawyer/Kate/Jack look possessed, Eko's half hidden, and Locke's eye is peering out at us. Claire and Jin are off to the side; I wonder if that means their characters will be, too?

In case you haven't heard, they've announced who the first 5 flashbacks will be, and I'll put it at the end of this post with a spoiler warning, so you can keep reading if you don't want to know, and stop when I warn you to.

My book, Finding Lost, came out in stores last week and my publicist has been getting me interviews everywhere. I've done nooner and drive-home radio shows; print interviews in Canada and the U.S.; and next week I'm doing TV, which should be fun.

David Kronke from the L.A. Daily News did an interview with me that was a lot of fun, and he had some inside scoop on stuff that was upcoming on the show. I told him at the outset that I didn't like spoilers, and when he started to tell me some of them, I'll admit I held the phone away from my ear for some of it. But the stuff he told that I did listen to was pretty cool stuff, and he was definitely a knowledgeable fan of the show.

I did a radio show in Kentucky run by a husband and wife team who bickered through part of it, and I loved them to death. They were HILARIOUS ("Tom's been keeping this book all to himself and won't let me look at it" "That's not true!"). They pushed the book a lot, talked about the show (they both watch it pretty faithfully but had missed a couple of episodes, so I filled them in on what they missed) and allowed me to go a lot more indepth on some answers than just, "Who is your favourite character"-type stuff.

Yesterday I did CFRB Radio in Toronto and it was a call-in show, and it was a lot of fun to answer the pretty tough questions some of the fans had (a lot wanted to know about the numbers, and one asked an interesting question about the Eastern philosophical influence on the show through things like Dharma).

I was interviewed by a guy in New Jersey who was very funny and a HUGE fan of the show. Bill Ervelino writes for The Record, and he also blogs specifically on Lost, and his interview with me ran in today's blog. I'm looking forward to checking in with his blog on a regular basis, especially when the show begins.

One of my favourite interviews was with a woman at the Connecticut Post, because she'd spent the summer reading all of the books related to Lost, so she was a woman after my own heart, since I'd spent months doing exactly the same thing. (Unfortunately, the article was taken down so I can't link to it.)

The LOW point of the interviewing has no doubt been doing the Mancow show. Think Howard Stern, minus the brain cells and sense of humour. Then you've pretty much got Mancow. His producer told my publicist they were all huge fans of the show, and that Mancow had specifically requested me because he wanted to talk about it. My publicist knew he was a shock jock sort of thing and told me to be prepared. I'd dealt with obnoxious morning hosts before, and I knew what this guy was like, so I was prepared for the rudeness. What I wasn't prepared for was the downright idiocy. He was ranting about how some gov't official had called his show stupid and anyone who listened to it stupid (well, duh), and then proved how WRONG that person was by... being... stupid. Turns out the producer wasn't being very truthful -- Mancow doesn't watch Lost, has very little interest in Lost, and frankly, I think the show's concepts would be too far over his head, so it's a good thing. He kept me on hold for 15 minutes ranting about one thing after another, then jumped me on the air, asked me if he could watch the S3 premiere if I'd never seen the show before, I said no, you should watch the first two seasons, and he said, "So I gotta watch 2 seasons of a show AND read a book? No thanks. What's in the hatch?" I said, "I'm sorry?" "What's in the hatch?" "That was a season 2 mystery, and it was an experimental station that's being researched by another station, and..." "All right, enough of that" and boom, I was gone.

If you want to watch a great sneak preview that lasts about 3 minutes, from the show's season 3 premiere, check it out at YouTube. It's very exciting, not only to see something new, but it looks like they've put Sawyer in a cage VERY akin to a B.F. Skinner experiment that I talked about at length in the book (see page 187). So that was awesome for me to see.

And finally, the Spoiler about who the first five flashbacks will be (stop reading here if you don't want to know):
Ep 1 -- Jack; Ep 2 -- Sun/Jin; Ep 3 -- Locke; Ep 4 -- Desmond; Ep 5 -- Eko
I don't know about you, but I am super excited about all five of those! I've heard some speculation that the 4th ep is actually Sawyer, not Des, but I think it'll be more fun if it's Des.

That's it for me. For now. Watch next week when I'll be on eTalk Daily in Canada and G4TV in the U.S.!

Forget The Donald, Give me The Tyra
I'm usually one of the first people to rail against the evils of reality television, but I have my supreme reality pleasures -- Amazing Race, Rock Star: Supernova, and anything starring Gordon Ramsay. But my biggest squeeee comes from the premiere of America's Next Top Model. I don't know what it is about this show that makes me happy, but somehow, having Tyra Banks back on my television (even if I hate her most of the time and just want to reach into the set and throttle her) just makes me a happy person.

The new season began last night on the brand-spankin-new CW network and Tyra was in fine form. There was a bunch of the usual stuff:
-some girl decided to just say no to "takin' her clothes off just because some cotton-pickin' guy told me to, no way, that's not what Jaysus would want of me" and then got booted for it
-they had the MOST CONTROVERSIAL PHOTO SHOOT EVER
-Miss Jay (a.k.a. Mushmouth) pranced around looking like a 7-foot-tall moron and wanting people to call him "she." Um, yeah. Please don't do that, Miss Jay. We women don't want you in our club.
-Mister Jay was awesome
-Tyra tried to "debunk" stereotypes while upholding them simultaneously, something she magically does every episode, and we love her for it
-someone broke down in the audition crying because "no one thought I was beautiful (sniff) growing up [sad music begins playing], and... and... my sisters (snort) were all prettier than I was, and... and... people at school laughed at me (SNOORRRRT) and... [music swells]
"... I wear contacts because... oh god, I'm going to cry, I'm so sorry... (sniff)... but in India they believe lighter eyes are prettier, and (snort) and... I'm here to debunk that myth. Dark eyes are beautiful." Uh... and the contacts were for what, to just raise the issue?
-some girl has "stripper" on her resume and Tyra goes into a long rant about how stripping and modelling are VERY DIFFERENT THINGS and the girl ends up being booted even though she was far more model-like than many of the women who made it. And then... the first photo shoot is naked. Tyra, do you listen to yourself talk??

My personal fave going into this competition is whatshername (I never know names the first week) with the really short hair, Megan or Maggie or Minnie or something, who got up, told a story of being in a plane crash when she was 9, and her mom threw her body over her to keep her warm and died of hypothermia... and not one sniffle. Not a single snort. Yet, she's not stone; she cares about her mom, she knows she's standing behind her (Tyra tried to get her to cry by saying, "I bet your momma is in this room RIGHT NOW" and the girl still didn't break, she just smiled). I love her. She's not going to use the sympathy vote, she thinks she can do it on her own. FINALLY.

Twins: They're emaciated, but it also could be a genetic thing, so we're not here to judge. I thought their pictures both rocked. Nigel -- lovely, lovely Nigel -- commented on how his wife is a twin [cut to shots of this gorgeous woman and her gorgeous twin] and said if they're competitive, they'll never make it. Um... Nigel? This is a COMPETITION! If they both stand at the photo shoots and say, "No, you go first" "No YOU go first" "oh you're way more beautiful," "No, YOU are".... they'll never get anywhere, and you'll be bitching next week that they're not competitive enough.

I loved that the MOST CONTROVERSIAL PHOTO SHOOT EVER consisted of stereotypes of models. O...kay. If you'd done a religious or political theme, I could see that generating some controversy. But first Tyra swoops in dressed as a she-devil and shrieking like a banshee to show them what the real stereotype is, and then asks them all to pose in those stereotypes. And in doing so, they uphold them -- they choose the anorexic twins to play an anorexic and a bulimic. They send one girl out for a diva treatment, get her back to the set 10 seconds before she's supposed to perform and then they all yell at her for being late and say she's being a diva, yet also complain she's a bad actress. Jay tells her to NOT act like a diva on his set, so she gets into her pose and refuses to act like a diva, and he complains to Tyra that she wasn't acting like a diva enough... argh. And the person they voted off -- whose name escapes me -- was asked to do a moronic picture of the "model who acts" (which is apparently a stereotype... ok... could someone tell Tyra that??) and of COURSE she couldn't nail it, because it was a silly picture to have taken, and she had almost no direction.

Unfortch, they've kept on Twiggy, who is lovely, but vapid and she seriously went, "Oh I love that picture" when one photo went up, and afterwards during the voting, said, "I really don't like this picture." And I've heard Janice 'the freak' Dickinson is coming back for MORE damn cameos (someone get this woman her own show so she can stay off THIS ONE).

But my favourite line stayed in the show, and I was thrilled. "So now, the judges are going to debilerate... debilitate... debooberate.... uh.... we're going to think about it and make a choice." Tyra trying out her polysyllabic words... it's what I live for.

Ah, Tyra, thank you for coming back to my TV. It's going to be a very quick 12 weeks, but I will love every minute of it.

My Book is Here!!
I haven't posted in about a week because I've been at the Toronto International Film Festival (more on that in the next post) but just before I left for it, my book arrived from the printers! You know, it doesn't matter how many books you work on; when you hold something in your hand that you've been working on for so many months, it finally feels real. Kinda like motherhood. No wonder so many editors refer to themselves as midwives. :)

I am thrilled thrilled thrilled, and so far haven't found a mistake. Gulp. So far... ;) And now my baby ventures out into the world...

Apology is Lost on Me
Last Sunday Conan O'Brien hosted the 2006 Emmy Awards, in which Lost wasn't nominated, so I didn't bother watching. (For years I watched my favorite shows -- most notably, Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- be constantly overlooked at the Emmys when anyone who knows television could tell you that it was by far the best thing on. Then Lost came along, and it WON the major award last year, and I thought finally, someone at the Emmys has finally woken up and thought, "Hey, let's not give awards to shows just for longevity; let's actually base it on how good it is!" And then they went and overlooked it entirely, despite Lost turning in a killer second season. So... whatever.

That's not actually what I'm blogging about today, though. What has overshadowed the awards show is not who won or lost, but a skit that Conan O'Brien did that opened the show. I've since watched the skit on YouTube (I tried to post the actual video here, but after 10 minutes of listening to it clicking while it tried to find my blog, I realized on a Saturday this site will be slow as molasses) and it's brilliant. It opens with Conan on a plane, sipping champagne and saying, "What could possibly go wrong?" before the plane hits some major turbulence, throwing Conan around the cabin before he hides in the overhead luggage compartment. He crashes to an island, where Hurley is standing, and they run through the jungle to get back to the Emmys. Conan finds a hatch and says he's going in. (He invites Hurley to come along, but Hurley hilarious retorts, "We weren't exactly invited.") In the hatch is . . . The Office, where Conan lands on Dwight Schrute's desk. From there we watch sendups of 24, House, South Park, and DateLine, all using the actual cast and filming techniques unique to each program. It was brilliantly done.

But the only thing that mattered to the people out there who need something to bitch and complain about every day was the segment devoted to Lost. Why? Because a commuter plane had tragically gone down earlier that same day in Lexington, Kentucky, killing all but one of the 50 people on board. Almost immediately, people were yammering about how insulting and disgusting and immoral and thoughtless it was that NBC had run a sequence where a plane went down on the SAME DAY FOR GOD'S SAKES that this tragedy occurred. Tim Gilbert, the manager of the Lexington, Kentucky, NBC affiliate, was SHOCKED by the Emmys opening like this, and said he couldn't believe NBC had done it, and had no time to actually censor it from the Lexington broadcast: “It was a live telecast — we were completely helpless. By the time we began to react, it was over. At the station, we were as horrified as they were at home.”

The following day, the media reported on NBC issuing an apology, saying they'd never meant to hurt anyone, and that it was meant to spoof a television show, not hurt people.

Exactly. They were doing a send-up of a fictional television show. Not only that, but it was LIVE. How could they have possibly pulled that opening, especially when they probably only heard about the crash a couple of hours before it aired? Maybe they gave people a little more credit, and assumed their skins were paper-thin.

If the Emmys had aired the following day, and they'd still run the footage, I would understand people being upset. Twenty-four hours would have given the station enough time to have re-edited the thing, removed the actual crash, and started the opening with Conan falling off a boat or something and crawling out of the water. But they didn't have that kind of time. A few days after Columbine happened, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was about to air an episode where a student was about a shoot up the school (or so she thought), and they made the wise decision to pull it, and air it several months later. The episode actually would have been better had it aired -- when Buffy realizes that the student wasn't going to kill anyone, but was going to kill himself because he felt like an invisible loser to the world, so she tells him everyone feels pain, it's just a different kind, whether it's a jock or a beauty queen or the school geek, and everyone's pain will feel like the worst pain in the world. Isn't that the sort of show people NEEDED to see right after a horrific event such as Columbine? But the WB's decision was the right one, because they knew 90% of the people would have a knee-jerk reaction to the subject matter, not taking into account what was being discussed. Of that 90%, 2% would have actually watched the show, while the other 88 would have just argued endlessly about a show they'd never heard of prior to it. The WB knew that, and pulled it, thereby avoiding major controversy.

But what if the episode had been slated to air two hours after Columbine? Would they have been able to pull it? Could they have contacted all of the affiliates in time? Probably not, and then there would have been hell to pay from the public that would have roared, I DON'T CARE IF THERE WAS NOTHING YOU COULD HAVE DONE, I NEED TO BLAME SOMEONE, SO I'LL BLAME YOU.

The same thing is happening here. What happened in Lexington was a terrible, terrible thing. But NBC is not the entity to blame. What's next, should we pull Lost from the schedule altogether because they keep referring to a plane crash?

Smug SMUMs
Today, a non-TV topic. In this past Saturday's Globe and Mail, the ever-original Rebecca Eckler decided to write a feature on SMUMs, or "smart, middle-class, uninvolved mothers." Becks didn't mention that the piece had already been written by someone else for the L.A. Times on August 5th. Both articles were influenced by Helen Kirwan-Taylor's confession in Britain at the end of July. (Good to see Ecky is coming up with unique topics, as always.) All of these articles were written to one end: to see how many angry mothers could fill the letters to the editor pages with their anger and fury. And, as I roll my eyes, I shall now weigh in. ;)

Several things bother me about the attitudes brought forth in these articles. First, you have these "moms" coming forward saying, "Hey, motherhood is BORING and EXCUUUUUSE ME if I don't find every waking moment of my child's existence completely exhilarating." What? Not every waking moment of motherhood is full of happiness and light?

Duh. And guess what: not every moment of marriage is full of kisses and roses. If these women think they're offering the revelation of the century, they haven't been hanging around enough mothers. Of COURSE parenthood has its moments of boredom. But my problem with these articles is that the women are suggesting EVERY moment of parenthood is boring, and they're snubbing any woman who thinks differently. My response to that is, Then maybe you should go out and find an imagination. Sure, sometimes I'm standing in the playground with my daughter while she's climbing the slide for the umpteenth time and wants to go down and I'm thinking of other things I'd rather be doing, but A) her face as she goes down the slide makes it all worth it, and B) I can't stop thinking that some day she'll look at me and go, "Playground? Are you KIDDING ME?" and I'll long for the days when something as small as going down a slide was endlessly fascinating to her.

But these moms don't stop there. They dub themselves SMUMs, and take pride in the fact that they have nannies raise their children (their claim, not mine), that they've bowed out of their child's milestone moments to go get highlights put in their hair, and that they'd rather be with their friends than with their children. The real jaw-dropper is the woman who says that she took three months of maternity leave for each of her children, and then stuck them with a nanny to do the rest of the job. The question is, Why did you have more than one child?! As my husband put it when he read these stories, clearly these women see their children as accessories, as little trophies of privilege. They believe in some insane notion that if you get married, you have to have the kids, even if they bore you to tears (their phrase, not mine).

These women are parading their "uninvolved" status in their children's lives as feminism, as if being a loving, caring, involved mother is somehow anti-feminist. Those women who spent years in university only to become a stay-at-home mom are clearly just giving in to a paternalistic society who forces them to stay barefoot and pregnant in a kitchen.

But it's these self-proclaimed SMUMs who are the anti-feminists. Rather than just stating, "Hey, I'm bored by my kids, and that's that," they have to make a pre-emptive strike, lashing out at the moms who might have a problem with what they're saying. They've deemed mothers who might have a problem with their statements SCAMs (the statement is obvious), or "smart, child-centred, active moms" whom one SMUM defines as "the superachieving moms who hand-letter birthday invitations, spend their days in imaginative play with their toddlers, bake from scratch and joyfully embrace each moment spent with their supergifted offspring."

So either you're completely uninvolved in your child's life completely, and would rather be partying it up with your girlfriends, or you're a smothering Mrs. Cleaver meets that woman who runs the Baby Einstein corporation. There's no in between, according to these articles.

I don't bake from scratch. I do play with my toddler, but not all day. I emailed my daughter's birthday invitations. But yes, I do embrace each moment spent with my daughter.

Do I judge SMUMs? Yes, I do. Am I judging them for their admission of child boredom? No, because I think it's a fair thing to say. What I dislike is that they have to take it SO far, and say they'd rather be in a hairdresser's shop than with their child, that they'd rather have another woman raise their children than do it themselves, that they constantly long for days when they could just go to a movie at the drop of a hat. THAT is what bothers me. Have they considered all of those women who have been trying for years to get pregnant, to no avail? I bet they'd LOVE to be bored by their children right now. Do they stop to see the hypocrisy in their statements? That, "Hey, if you want me to believe that you love every moment of sitting on your couch watching your kid watch Barney, then you are LYING" attitude that they take? They are judging ME. And all of the other moms who are offended by these statements.

Yes, I went back to work after I had my daughter, but only after spending nine months on maternity leave (my husband took the next three) and agonizing over leaving her with someone else. I often question the fact that I'm making money working in publishing while someone else is content to make money taking care of my child, and think, what is WRONG with me, that I'M not the one taking care of her? Yes, often in the middle of the night when she wakes up yelling for me, I nudge my husband and say, "YOU do it" and go back to sleep, but when it's my turn, I tell myself over and over again as I sit in there rocking her back to sleep, "Soon she'll be too big to do this. Enjoy it while you can, or you'll regret it later." And I do enjoy every minute of it.

Yes, parenthood is boring for a small percentage of the time. Bravo to the women who say that, who say, "You know, sometimes I think about my old life and I really miss it," because so many of us have. But when you decide to take it to the next level, and hurl insults and stupid acronyms at those who disagree with you, you're taking it too far. These "uninvolved" mothers should shut up, not because they don't have a right to their opinions, but because they're not stopping to think about what those now-published opinions will do to their children many years down the road, who grew up being put to bed by their nannies while their mothers were off apparently pushing feminism forward by writing about how boring those children were to them.

I'm Back, Babeeeee
Honestly, my serious ineptitude will soon be a thing of the past, I PROMISE. For the last week I've been trying to log on, and blogger wouldn't accept any of my email addresses, it wouldn't take my username, and I couldn't remember my password (it's what happens when you do everything from one computer that just has cookies, and then you try to switch to another!) But thankfully, after much hardship, I realized I was using the wrong username (duh) and now I'm back. And I have lots to say.

Hell's Kitchen: Sorry, Virginia; Gordon Ramsay isn't Santa Clause. I was happy with the results of this show. While I actually liked Virginia a lot, the girl would have been lost in a kitchen on her own. Heather was FAR more talented and skilled in a kitchen, though I must say, Gordon Ramsay certainly had his work cut out for him with those two. It's too bad he had such a bunch of yahoos to work with from the beginning. Can't FOX find anyone out there who is an actual chef, or is the fun in throwing a bunch of idiots in a kitchen and wondering who will set themselves on fire first?

Entourage: This week's episode was HILARIOUS. Ari was at his personal best. Martin Landau is brilliant in the role of the aging movie producer, and Ari's frustration with him mirrors his same frustrations with E in season one. I LOVE this show.

Rock Star: I've only recently started watching this show and I was hooked immediately (seriously, my taste usually doesn't run to reality television unless it's America's Next Top Model or Amazing Race, but in the summer, what else can ya do??) I thought Lukas was weird as hell the first week (I can't remember what he sang, but his back was to the audience the entire time) but now I'm weirdly fascinated by him. Not to mention he looks exactly like Hawksley Workman, a BRILLIANT artist from Toronto. (If you don't know who he is, start with Last Night We Were the Delicious Wolves and prepare to be awed.) Hate Patrice, and I hope she goes soon. I kinda like Storm, but I think she's rather insincere, too, so I don't want to see her win. Magni is pretty cool, and Delana rocks.

Thank You for Smoking: I just saw this movie last night FINALLY (I'm so out of touch these days) and frankly, I was rather disappointed. I'd heard from SO many people that it was this awesome film, but I laughed once, when Rob Lowe's assistant commented that Lowe was obsessed with "Asian shit." Otherwise it was just a stylized satire of lobbyists, which I wouldn't have minded if it hadn't have been anti-smoking lobbyists. It turned a tobacco lobbyist into a hero, and that was just... weird.

Little Miss Sunshine: Or maybe I was disappointed in TYFS because it wasn't Little Miss Sunshine, which is the best movie I've seen in ages. I laughed, cried, and wanted the DVD. And I think that happened just in the opening credits. GO SEE IT.

I have some more to say on a completely different topic, but I think I'll post on that separately. In other news, my book is at the printer, and while it was there a photo agency came through with a photo of Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond on Lost). No matter where I looked, photos of this guy didn't seem to exist. My publisher tried every agency, photographer, even tracked down his agent, all to no avail, and then he made some appearance on the weekend at the Creative Emmys and boom, photo. And my wonderful publisher is now going to change one of the photos in the final section and flip in the Cusick picture instead, which has me seriously doing happy somersaults. Well, not really, or I'd probably throw out a hip, but I'll watch my toddler do somersaults and pretend it's me. :)

"Let's Hug It Out, Bitch"

OK, so let me first explain that I'm one of those people who always started diaries on January 1st, and I have reams of diaries with no entries beyond February 10th. So it should probably come as no surprise that I excitedly set up a blog about a month ago, made two entries, and then abandoned it. But it's been a busy month. I handed in the almost-to-last part of my Finding Lost manuscript on June 30th, and it was edited. In July I had to read a Dickens book, as I've mentioned, and finish the final chapter in the book, which was creating a map and a travel guide to the filming locations for the show in Oahu, Hawaii. These last two chapters sort of hung over my head as the two things I needed to do, and the moment they were FINALLY done, everything ended up right back in my lap at the proofreading stage, and I had two days to go over it. I had to choose the photos, place them in the book, and write captions, and as of August 2nd, the beast finally went to the printer, and I've finally been able to breathe again.

Of course, around that same date, we moved my daughter from a crib to a toddler bed, and a whole other can of worms has been opened. Needless to say, my evenings are still pretty busy.

But I am pleased to report that once Lost was off my plate, my husband and I finally began watching Entourage, one of those shows I've been dying to watch for ages. We bombed through all of season one in about two nights (it's only 8 episodes long), then watched season two over the following week, and this past weekend finished off season two and watched all of season three so far. It's brilliant. Crazy brilliant. I can't recommend this show enough.

But confession time: I'd actually seen the pilot months ago, and thought it was an awful show. I couldn't figure out why anyone would want to watch a show about a dullard of an actor who has an evil agent and three hangers-on who are a bunch of sexist pigs. I've always thought Elvis's "Memphis Mafia" was a disgusting display of a bunch of people using someone for their money, and a pathetic guy who gave them the money because he wanted his "friends" close by. But the pilot of Entourage is typical of most HBO shows. I remember watching Six Feet Under's pilot and thinking, "Eh." It took me about 3 months to get around to watching episode 2. The Sopranos similarly left me a little cold, though I still went right into the second episode. Deadwood didn't do it for me, either. In all of these shows, HBO packs so much backstory into the pilot that the show becomes a massive history lesson, and it's only on the second and third episodes that it eases up a bit, and you start to get to know the characters. Then Sal just has to has to sneer, or David just has to give that look to Nate, or Ari looks like he's going to strangle his cellphone, and I'm laughing.

So watch Entourage if you're not already. It's a fabulous show, and very funny. And make sure you watch it with someone else, because like most comedies, it's funnier to watch it with friends. Any reference to Johnny Drama's resumé, or Ari's comments to Lloyd (and Lloyd's comebacks) are worth the entire show.

P.S. I tried six times to post a photo with this blog, but I'm apparently technologically illiterate, so it won't be happ'nin. Here's hoping I can figure out what I'm doing wrong...