Lostaholics Anonymous: Ben Linus

Hello and welcome to this week’s Lostaholics Anonymous. The book is out now, I’ve done a couple of interviews, and it’s up to NINE reviews on Amazon! I’m so excited!! Every time I check in and see another one I have another little squeal of excitement. I just discovered this week that the first week of the book’s sales were higher than any other first week of any of the series, so that was also a very happy moment for me. I guess all that media I did way back in May paid off after all! ;) (In case you’re wondering, I also have a copy of the gigantic Lost Encyclopedia and I hope to get a review up soon on that one.) Once again, if you’ve bought the book on Amazon and liked it, please head on over and leave a review on there. It helps with the book’s visibility, especially around Christmas when it will get overshadowed by all the Justin Bieber memoirs. ;)

I’m so sorry to be so late on this week’s L.A. post. My day job is bleeding into my evenings lately because I’m too busy, but this was a week I’ve been looking forward to for a while (even though Fringe is on RIGHT NOW I’m writing this up... because that’s how much I care about you guys!). We’ve covered off the main dude, the main gal, the third corner of that love triangle, and John Locke, and now it’s time for... the villain.

Oh yes, it’s Ben Linus night!! Where do I start with Ben??

Last year when we were doing the Lost rewatch of seasons one through five, there was a lot of excitement in the first half of season 2. It wasn’t because it was where Desmond first showed up (OK, maybe a little over here) or because of the science vs. faith arguments happening in the Swan, but because of one refrain... “Two more episodes until Henry Gale! One more episode until Henry Gale!” Oh Henry Gale... you showed up on my TV and my favourite show was never the same.

From the moment he Keyser Soze’d the entire group of survivors and walked down the dock in those rags, Ben Linus was the fave character among many fans. I’m sure there are people out there who didn’t like him (and if you’re out there, I’m dying to know what you thought if you didn’t like him) but many of us loved him. LOATHED him, but loved loathing him. Michael Emerson played him with such aplomb, it was an absolute joy watching week to week and wondering just what this guy was going to do next.

In season 2 he pretended to be Henry Gale, almost got himself killed, but ended up getting two other people killed instead. He appeared to be the head guy, no matter what he’d told Sayid, and by the end of season 2 we just assumed they were all following his lead. In season 3 we immediately saw his vulnerability – he had a tumour on his spine and needed Jack to perform surgery – but he continued to be deliciously evil, while apparently following (begrudgingly, it seemed) some guy named Jacob. At the end of that season we finally got the Linus flashback, and saw there was once a time when this cold, heartless villain had been a sad, sweet, scared little boy who just wanted his mother back.

In season 4 he saw his power slip away, he lost the respect of his followers, and he was forced to follow John Locke, who appeared to have taken his place. It added more of a comic element to Ben (even though he’d always been hilarious before then, IMO), while flashforwards revealed the return of cold, heartless Ben as he turned Sayid into a hitman and then just left him there. Losing Alex was the thing that changed him utterly when he went off the island, and meant he had nothing more to lose, so he could play the game even more wildly than he’d done before. In season 5 we saw him kill John Locke and return his body to the island, but at the end of the season there was a turning point in Ben. Just as he’d resigned himself to having lost all his power, he suddenly came face to face with Jacob and realized his life had all been a sham. He killed Jacob out of feeling underappreciated, but quickly knew that he’d been a pawn of the Man in Black all along, and had never been one of the good guys, even though he’d thought he was.

Season 6, sadly, left us a little bereft of our Ben. He had some great moments in “Mr. Linus” and his sideways world self was a wonderful display of what could have happened to Ben had his life turned out differently (and had he made different choices along the way) but evil Ben wasn’t really there in the way we usually liked. By the end of the series he’d been redeemed, and became Hurley’s Number Two, where he actually became (finally) a useful and important follower of the island.

There are some great Ben moments that cannot be overlooked. The first great Ben moment happens at the end of “The Whole Truth” in season 2, when Locke and John finally let Ben out of the armoury to give him something to eat.

GALE: This must be my reward for good behavior, huh? I guess I earned myself some good will for finally drawing that map for Ana.
LOCKE: What map?
GALE: To my balloon.
JACK: [to Locke] Did you...
LOCKE: No.
GALE: Wow, you guys have some real trust issues, don't you? Guess it makes sense she didn't tell you. I mean, with the two of you fighting all the time. Of course, if I was one of them -- these people that you seem to think are your enemies -- what would I do? Well, there'd be no balloon, so I'd draw a map to a real secluded place like a cave or some underbrush -- good place for a trap -- an ambush. [Gales pours himself some cereal.] And when your friends got there a bunch of my people would be waiting for them. Then they'd use them to trade for me. I guess it's a good thing I'm not one of them, huh? [Pause.] You guys got any milk?

I still remember the glorious shivers that ran through me after that scene. BRILLIANT.

My other fave Ben line:

LOCKE: Can I ask you a question?
BEN: I’m a Pisces.

Ha!! Not only is that the best Ben comeback ever, but considering we know his birthday was on December 19, he’s even lying about THAT!

No, wait... that wasn’t the best Ben comeback ever. This was:

JACK: How can you read?
BEN: My mother taught me.

Again, brilliant because not only is it filled with snark, but if his mother died giving birth to him, then she couldn’t have taught him to read.

Oh Ben. How I miss you.

What are your favourite Ben Linus moments?

Next week: Sharpen your pens (or... um... typing fingers?) and load those chef’s knives in the dishwasher pointy-end up! After five weeks of talking about the characters, I’ve decided to pause on them for a bit and jump right into the finale. We’re going to start with why we loved or hated it, and whether our thoughts of have changed between our initial reaction and how we feel now, then that discussion will probably go on for a bit (I might even have a couple of biweekly LA posts to deal with it) before we move to some specifics. This is the discussion I’ve wanted to have from the beginning, but figured it might be better to ease us in by talking about our favourite moments, and then characters. But now it’s time to talk about the meat of this thing: the finale. Looking forward to it!

Motivational Posters

Sorry to make you wait on the Lostaholics Anonymous meeting, which will be up shortly. In the meantime, I've been distracted by this site that allows you to make your own fake motivational posters. Here was my first attempt, and I suspect I'll be wasting loads of time making many more.



Go here to make your own, and please send them to me so I can post them below in this post. ;)

UPDATES:

Thanks to Rochard Scott for sending me this one! :)



I LOVE this one that Lisa just sent to me (I want it in an actual poster!!) ;)

The Importance of Buffy

So I was reading a post on the National's Post Afterword blog this morning about the situation with a small press publisher winning the Giller last night (yay! by the way) and saw at the bottom a link to one of Robert J. Wiersema's columns that caught my interest. He's the guest columnist for the week, and when I saw the title, I was excited. In his column, he talks about rediscovering Buffy the Vampire Slayer with his son, Xander (not named after the character, he states) and what a joy it's been. I can't wait to do this with my own daughter in a few years.

A little side note about Wiersema, whose new novel will be released shortly by Random House: he actually wrote the first published review of a book of mine, when he reviewed my Xena book for -- gasp! -- Quill and Quire, the trade paper for the Canadian publishing industry. It was the first and last time one of my books was reviewed there (they don't even list my books in the upcoming title listings anymore... I don't fall under any major book category they list, so I'm left out). I've always been grateful for Wiersema doing the review -- it wasn't glowing, but he liked the book, and that's all I cared about at the time.

You can read his column on Buffy here.

"Fellas, it's been good to know ya..."

I heard on the radio this morning that today is the 35th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I lived for a short period on that big lake they call Gitche Gumee, and I have very fond memories of my dad playing Gordon Lightfoot's song for me over and over when I was a toddler. As I got older, I was haunted by the lyrics. It's still one of my favourite songs. RIP to the men who died in the crash.

Damon's Fave Flicks

Here's a 5-minute clip from iamRogue.com where Damon Lindelof talks about the 6 films that really influenced him, and in many ways, influenced Lost. I LOVE his choices, and it makes me admire him even more than I already do. Thanks to joshua for the link!

Rock, Paper, Scissors...

I haven't talked about my kids on here recently, but last night my 6-year-old daughter had me laughing so hard I had to share it with you. Last night at the dinner table, she was asking to leave before finishing dinner. My husband said she had to finish. Finally she says, "Let's do rock, paper, scissors, Daddy, and if I win, I get to leave." He agreed to it (nice parenting there, papa). They punched their fists three times in the air, she was rock, he was scissors. Kid one, dad zero. "Best two out of three," says my husband.

Three fists pumps, and my daughter stops, appearing to do a thumbs-up. "What's THAT?!" my husband asked.

"Dynamite."

"There's no dynamite in rock paper scissors!"

"But you used it last week!"

He sheepishly admitted that yes, he had. Dynamite blasted rock. Kid two, Dad zero. My husband says, "Best three out of five."

Three fist pumps later, my husband is doing the thumbs-up dynamite, and my daughter looked like she was going to do paper but at the last minute flipped her hand vertically, waving it in the air slowly back and forth.

"Fire!" she shouts triumphantly.

"Wait, what?!"

"Fire. I win."

"You don't win! Dynamite would destroy fire."

"No, because if dynamite touched fire, then they'd BOTH blow up. So, I call it a tie."

And she got up and left the table.


Now I have to teach her Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock.

Lostaholics Anonymous: John Locke

I'm getting more and more emails from people this week saying they've finally gotten a copy of my book (I can't believe how slow the mail is sometimes, yeesh!) And my first two reviews of the book are up at Amazon, and I was thrilled!! OMG, it's actually four! (I just went there to grab the link for y'all, and found two more! I'm not doing my authorly duty of checking the page every 42 minutes.) If there's anyone out there reading this who left one of them, thank you thank you!! And here's another plea from me that if you've bought the book through amazon, please post a review (if you liked it, obviously) and if you bought it from me, you can still post a review on Amazon if you've bought anything from them recently. Now I'm all giddy.

OK, but the giddiness must STOP because tonight we're going to tackle what might be my favourite topic on Lost: John Locke. Tonight rather than going through John Locke's life, I'm going to make this a more personal account of him. If you've read any of my books (all now available at Amazon at a reasonable price!) you'll know how much I love to write about this character. I could write an entire book on just him... In each of the books, when I got to the first Locke episode of the season, I'd write a mini-essay on my thoughts on Locke thus far and why that character was so important to me. If you want my full analysis of the character, his backstory, and what made him tick throughout the full series, check out my new book, pages 38-45, 214-221, and page 239. There you'll find everything from talking about his life to the long conflict between him and Jack that informed much of the series' direction. But I want to make this a more personal "what John Locke meant to me" entry. Because he meant a lot.

I remember back in season 1 when I was a casual fan of the show (no, really, I was once a person who just watched it once and turned the channel and never thought about discussing it... to quote Ben, "hhhhhwaaaat??") that even then, I assumed John Locke was the key. It wasn't Jack or Kate, but Locke. There was something mysterious about him. And besides, he'd seen into the eye of that island, and what he saw... was beautiful.

Many people talk about being impressed from the show right from the beginning of the pilot episode, and I remember at the end of that episode knowing I'd found a great new show to watch. But it was when I saw the end of "Walkabout" that I knew I was watching a tour de force show. This show wouldn't just be a favourite, but would become an obsession, and it was the idea that John Locke had experienced some sort of miracle -- a plot twist that is kept from us throughout that episode until the final scene -- that suddenly made him more important.

John Locke lived a sad life. He was a successful hunter on the island in season 1, and seemed to appear from out of nowhere all the time, offering sage advice and being the wizened Gandalf to everyone on the island. He told Jack that he needed to figure out how to lead before he could be a leader. He emerged from the jungle suddenly to talk to Kate and Sawyer and tell them the story of his sister dying when he was a kid. He was confident and brave and intelligent. But then he found the Hatch. And then Boone died. And Jack hated him. And then he looked into the eye of the island... and saw a monster.

His backstories right from season 1 onwards were always the cause of much anticipation and celebration. Walkabout was amazing. Deus Ex Machina was heartbreaking. Remember that scene where John is sitting in the car drinking the coffee and casing Cooper's house when Cooper gets into the car and tells him to go away? Cooper is cold and ruthless and has no heart, and he leaves the car, slams the door, and John sits there. For a moment he looks like he's fine. He takes a sip of his coffee. Purses his lips. Glances at the house. And then crumples and bursts into tears. It's an extraordinary moment, and if I wasn't already convinced Terry O'Quinn was one of the best actors going, that scene clinched it.

I always wanted to hug John. I wanted him to be OK. He seemed like the sort of kid who was bullied, whose parents didn't want him. That scene in "Cabin Fever" where Alpert leaves John behind and tells him he's wrong and the little boy looks after him, looking sad that he didn't get to go with the nice man, breaks my heart every time. He was just a kid. Or that scene earlier in that same episode of the little baby in the incubator looking out at his Mommy, who just turns and abandons him because she's a selfish, unstable brat.

Locke never gives up. And that's part of the reason why he was so wonderful and pathetic and sad and inspirational to us. In "Deus Ex Machina" when he sees his mother in the parking lot at the store and he gets knocked over by a car, then jumps up and begins running after her again, it was the perfect metaphor for who this guy is. He ALWAYS gets back up. His mom abandons him, he lives with a foster family. Alpert abandons him, he just keeps going. He finds his long-lost father and is abandoned and cheated by him, but he finds Helen and keeps going. Helen leaves him, he finds a commune and hangs out with them. They abandon him, he goes home and goes into a depression but pulls himself together long enough to try to convince Cooper to leave the woman he's conning. Cooper pushes him out a window, and it would seem that in that moment, he gives up everything. (Again, O'Quinn astonishes with that tremendous scene where he's trapped in the wheelchair for the first time.) But when Abaddon tells him to go on the walkabout, he pulls himself up, trains, and goes. And then the walkabout says no. He gathers his wits and gets back on a plane. It crashes. And then he gets up and walks. And for the first time, John REALLY, truly believes that the universe is on his side.

On the island he goes through one thing after another, and again, always bounces back. He never gives up, except one brief moment where he puts a gun to his head, but then he's stopped, and keeps going.

And that's why it's so heartbreaking, devastating, and shocking that after EVERYTHING this man has gone through, he's ultimately killed by Ben Linus before fulfilling his life's mission.

But, as I argue in my book, I believe that the Man in Black looks like Locke for a reason, and I outline it there. I don't believe his life was for nothing, because it was his belief, his faith, that drove Jack to become the person he did by the end of the season, and to save the island.

I adore John Locke, and the thought of him fills me with sadness and pain. I think I actually miss his character more than just about anyone, and yet he wasn't even there for the final season. But his life was incredible. When Smokey looks at Ben and says that Locke's final thought was, "I don't understand," he adds, "Isn't that just about the saddest thing you've ever heard?"

Yes. Yes it is.

The Walking Dead

Last night I watched the premiere episode of AMC’s new show, “The Walking Dead,” (which I keep calling the Waking Dead... which totally still fits, right?) which had been advertised for the past few weeks through super-creepy trailers that aired during episodes of Mad Men. After seeing a few trailers – one that had a man in a hospital gown walking down the abandoned and destroyed hospital halls and seeing locked doors at the end with DON’T OPEN DEAD INSIDE written on them, I wasn’t sure I could watch this show. Horror movies and I don’t mix. I saw Carrie when I was far too young (a babysitter showed my brother and I the movie when he was 6 and I was 8) and when I was 12 I watched a ridiculous movie called Sleepaway Camp at a sleepover that gave me nightmares for a year. I mostly stayed away from horror movies (save anything by Stephen King, because those weren’t about gore but were about the psychological horror that fascinates me much more) until I saw The Ring a few years ago and was traumatized by it.

So yeah. I don’t like scary stuff that much. I think my husband likes it even less. But it was AMC... I was at least going to check it out. And WOW, am I glad I did.

This past season Mad Men has been firing on all cylinders and was my favourite thing to watch in the second half of the year. With The Walking Dead, AMC has officially surpassed Showtime to rival HBO in my opinion. And, now that I think about it, is rivalling HBO.

Now, first, I’ll just say I haven’t actually read the graphic novels it’s based on, so I can’t speak to its success as an adaptation. There were moments in there that reminded me of other literature – the graphic novel of 28 Days Later (obvs), Day of the Triffids, and Stephen King’s The Stand (that scene where Rick is going down the stairwell in utter darkness reminded me of the Lincoln Tunnel scene. I was CONVINCED he was going to step on something, or someone). But it still felt remarkably original to me.

Yes, this is a zombie show, and yes, there’s a lot of gore, but it’s not really about the zombies or escaping them as much as what something like that does to a person. There’s a lot of humanity in this show that I wasn’t expecting. I won’t go into details, so if you’ve seen it, you already know what happened, and if you haven’t seen it, PLEASE stop reading now, go watch it, and then come back.

There were two scenes that stuck with me in particular. The first is where the protagonist, Rick, is holed up in a house with a father and his son. Just when you begin to wonder, “Hey, where is the boy’s moth—” a woman with hollowed-out eyes, a dragging shuffle, and a dead stare slowly lumbers up the porch steps. The boy screams, and you know there’s an immense amount of pain in him – his mother didn’t just die: she’s still walking around, but would kill him in a heartbeat if she saw him. That rotting corpse once housed his mother’s soul, and now it’s brain-dead but deadly. Rick goes to the door, and she seems to see him through the eyehole in the door. He stares at her, and she stares right back at him, and begins to jiggle the door handle. It’s frightening, but sad on such a deep level, as the little boy buries his sobs into a pillow while his father rubs his son’s back and looks like he’s experiencing his own emotional agony. This scene found its sequel later in the episode when the father perches himself in an upstairs window, shooting the zombies in an effort to bring his wife to the street (the zombies will follow noises) and when he sees her, he sets her up in the rifle’s crosshairs, and she stops and stares at him with an utter lack of familiarity. He’s taped a picture of her – alive and beautiful – to the window frame in an effort to remind himself that that creature down below is not the vivacious mother of his child, but he still can’t bring himself to pull the trigger. He stops shooting and breaks down in tears, and she, bewildered, turns and slowly lumbers back to wherever she came from. It’s a heartbreaking moment.

And yet, there was another moment that moved me even more, and took me by surprise by just how much it moved me. When Rick first leaves the hospital after waking up to a zombie apocalypse, he finds a bicycle and a body of a person that had been ripped in half suddenly rolls over with a disgusting cracking noise (presumably her lower half had been devoured by zombies, who then abandoned the corpse but she came back to “life” as a zombie and now is only half a creature). The face is mostly gone and it appears to be a black and yellowing skull with some long, wispy blonde hair, and with a long, bony arm, it reaches out to him and growls as he grabs the bike. He jumps on the bike, horrified (this is the first zombie he’s seen) and races to his house. When he gets his wits back about him and cleans up and heads out of town, he first remembers that thing in the park that growled at him, so he returns to the scene and walks out into the park. Sure enough, a few hundred feet away, the half-creature is dragging itself along the ground with its arms, and he walks up behind it, not scared because it’s not like this thing can actually jump up and attack him in any way. He stands beside it, and the creature, sensing living flesh, stops and looks up at him in all its horrific goriness. Echoing the words of Jacob to Locke, Rick squats and looks at the creature that is now peering up at him and says, “I’m sorry this happened to you.” He cocks the gun, but hesitates for a moment, and in that moment the creature pathetically extends an arm to him. There’s this half-second where the viewer can’t help but feel immense sympathy for this thing. She was human once, she was perhaps quite beautiful, had a family and friends, and has been reduced to half a body, dragging itself through a field and slowly starving to death while rotting. Perhaps there is still a consciousness in there of some kind, and the extension of the arm was as much a plea as a menacing gesture. Either way, when he pulls the trigger, you feel relief – not for him and his safety, but that he put that poor creature out of its misery. I couldn’t believe the director had taken this disgusting thing and made me feel sorry for it. It was an absolutely brilliant television moment.

A friend of mine was excitedly telling me about the episode on Monday and saying he couldn’t wait for me to see it, and he said the only way a show like this will survive is if it’s not about zombies but transcends that. And I think that if Mad Men is a show that isn’t about advertising as much as it’s about the people who are trying to survive in a dog-eat-dog world, and The Sopranos wasn’t about the mafia but about a man’s personal demons, then this show can easily transcend the zombie genre if it keeps up this level of storytelling.

I’m interested to keep watching and learn some answers. When the protagonist, Rick, first woke up, I was actually thinking it was all a figment of his imagination, that what we were seeing were the fever-dreams of a man drifting in and out of consciousness. But the moment we saw the other group – Rick’s wife and son with his partner and some others – it moved the action away from Rick’s point of view and to a new one, so I don’t think that can be the case. So I can focus on the other questions raised in the episode: Will that man ever shoot his wife? (Will we ever see him again or was that a one-off appearance of the father and son?) Was Rick’s wife having an affair with his partner before the zombie apocalypse or did it happen after when they were thrown together in the midst of all of this? (Since it’s pretty damn harsh to leave your husband behind in all of that, I would think it was already happening when the two cops were chatting in the car.) What caused the zombie apocalypse in the first place? And how was Rick’s life spared when he was in the hospital? Who’s the guy on the other end of the radio at the end of the episode? How the hell is Rick gonna get out of THIS one?

Needless to say, I can’t wait for next week’s episode.

Lostaholics Anonymous: Sawyer

Hello and welcome to this week's Lostaholics Anonymous. First, a few housekeeping things. My book is now shipping from Amazon, and you can pick up a copy here. If you already have a copy, either from me or through Amazon, here is my first request to go and leave a positive review (if you liked it, of course!) on the Amazon site. It's a tough sell to put out a book on a show after the show is over, especially on a season that was as divisive as this one. More reviews (and more stars!) will certainly help it stand out! And you will have my undying gratitude. And it will end this gnawing worry in my stomach of, "OMG, what if they all HATE it?!"

Secondly, I've been meaning to mention this for WEEKS and I apologize for not saying anything until now, but for months people have been asking me if I'm planning on hosting another Lost rewatch now that the series is over. I don't actually have plans to do that -- I would love to, but it took a LOT of my time last year, and I didn't end up having much of a break at all between books, which left me pretty exhausted by the end of this past summer. (It had been book... rewatch... new season... book.) But, I wanted to point you in the direction of a really fantastic rewatch happening right now with our own Matt Roeser (he of the wicked Lost finale parties). Matt and his co-hort, Justin, were smart enough to bring in guest bloggers so they wouldn't fall behind, and this week they're up to "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues." Check it out here, and get involved in some pretty amazing Lost discussions.

OK! But now onto our favourite redneck. Now, many people would argue that Sawyer was never that important a character. I mean sure, he was some pretty awesome eye candy, but take him out of the mix, and does the show really change that much?

Well, anyone who says that clearly didn't experience the same terror I did at the beginning of season 3 when Pickett was holidng a gun to Sawyer's head and threatening to pull the trigger. I REALLY thought he was going to do it. And to suggest he's not important undermines the immense growth his character went through.

Buffy was a show about Buffy. And Angel was a show about Angel. And yet, they weren't the ones who underwent the most development over the runs of their shows. That honour fell to Willow and Wesley respectively. Wesley went from a bumbling slapstick punchline to one of the most extraordinarily realized characters I've ever seen on a TV show. Willow began as a shy bookworm and ended it as a confident goddess.

The thing about Lost is, many characters evolved -- think no further than Jack's journey from man of science to man of faith. But Sawyer was a special circumstance because he was so complex. Not even the audience knew what he was thinking, and that's a combination of great writing, of evolving a character because he was interesting to viewers, and great acting on the part of Josh Holloway.

When we first see Sawyer, he's an angry, belligerent man who separates himself from the group, setting himself apart as the "every man for himself" type who looks out for himself and no one else. This is not a team player. What we didn't know right away was that Sawyer was also broken -- his parents had died when he was young, he'd taken on the name and con game of the man who was responsible for their deaths, and he'd just killed a man in error in Sydney, having been used by a scumbag who just needed to get rid of someone who owed him a debt. He has a child by a woman he had fallen in love with during a long con, and he'd set up a trust fund for his daughter for when she comes of age. When we finally realize there's a lot more to Sawyer than meets the eye, he became a lot more than just a pretty face.

By the end of season 1 he was playing well with others, helping to build a raft to try to procure rescue. At the beginning of season 2, he was faced with a new group of people -- The Tailies -- and had begun to realize when he set himself apart from them as their enemy that it meant he was part of the other group. It didn't stop him from turning on all of them in The Long Con and declaring himself sheriff, but it wasn't long before he was part of the foursome that had been kidnapped by the Others, and when he was hauled off to the cages and forced to break rocks, he realized he had fallen in love with Kate. They slept together, but he soon figured out that Kate still had feelings for Jack. He returned to the camp where he joyously discovered Dharma beer, joked around with his buddies, realized that Hurley had missed him, and he slowly began to integrate himself into the group. When Locke showed himself and led Sawyer off to The Brig, he was finally face-to-face with the man he'd devoted his entire life to destroying.

And this was where Sawyer became James Ford. He killed Anthony Cooper and then fell to the floor, devastated to find out that that pain in his gut hadn't gone away. Killing Sawyer had done nothing to change the way he'd felt for most of his life. Suddenly, he was 8 years old again, and writing that vengeful letter. Cooper's death didn't bring them back to life, and vengeance hadn't paid off. James now returned to the group very angry and isolated. At the beginning of season 4, he believed he was about to be rescued, but he had a connection with John Locke now, and when all signs pointed to the freighter folk being imposters, Sawyer left Kate and Jack and joined the opposite side. And it was with Locke's group that he became more of a leader. He rushed into a burning building and grabbed Claire out of it. He found Aaron in the crook of a tree and saved him, then led the group back to the beach. And when he could actually taste freedom, he knew someone had to stay behind in order to get the helicopter to the freighter, and so he did something that no one else could bring themselves to do: He jumped.

Back on the island, he time-jumped back to 1974, began a relationship with Juliet, and suddenly found himself a real sheriff, with a real sheriff's badge (that was embroidered onto his Dharma jumpsuit), and people looked up to him as their leader who was there to protect them.

Three years later, he was happily in a relationship, content for possibly the first time in his life, when Kate and the others returned. And with them came the complex feelings he'd had before, the memories of what had gone on between him and Kate, the pain of losing her, the animosity with Jack, the jerk he'd been with Hurley, and the realization that Locke -- the only other person who knew about what he did to Cooper -- was dead. Soon he found himself unveiled as a Dharma imposter, on the run and wielding a gun, and beating the living crap out of Jack in the jungle. And then... Juliet was dead.

In the final season Sawyer was dealing with the grief of losing the woman he loved after all -- and the reality of realizing too late that she'd been the one he truly loved -- and he went AWOL, shunning Kate but aligning himself with the Man in Black. After Jack defeated the Man in Black and saved the island, Sawyer joined Kate and the others as they left the island on an airplane. After he died, his sideways world existence was a reflection of the one he'd lived in real life: he was a cop, people listened to him, he was there to serve and protect, but he still had his demons. While on the one hand he was on the good side of the law, on the other he was still searching for his Sawyer, determined to get the same vengeance he'd found on the island. Constantly torn in two directions, his life was as fragmented as his image in the mirror that he smashed at the precinct. But in his awakening moment, he was reunited with Juliet, and he found the peace, happiness, and love he'd been seeking. Sawyer no longer meant anything to him, and all he cared about was her.

As much as he seemed to stand apart from the other characters throughout the series, if the finale showed that everything came down to connection, then Sawyer's story was of great importance: When he separated himself from them all, living a solitary life, he couldn't get ahead. He only found peace and happiness when he connected with them and worked together as part of a team, or leading them.

Sawyer was a character who you loved despite everything he did: whether he was conning Kate or Jack or Sun, or mocking Hurley, or taking advantage of Shannon's agony when she was having an asthma attack, or undermining Jack, there was just something about him that made him charming enough to keep liking.

But he was also a character that divided fans, like Kate did. Many didn't like him, or thought he was all but useless in the show's final season. The adamant Skaters were furious that he didn't end up with Kate, while the Suliets were over the moon at what happened in the sideways world with him in the finale. So where do you stand? Do you think Sawyer was a worthy character on the show?

LA Tonight!

So once again I failed to post the Lostaholics Anonymous blog last night (I'm having a super-busy week with the hubby away) but it'll be up tonight. And since we've covered Jack and Kate, I figured we'd complete that triangle with Sawyer. So James Ford will be our topic tonight. And for some ungodly reason, I simply couldn't incite shipper wars last week. I almost considered posting anonymously, but decided against it. ;)

Until then, please enjoy Jim Parsons explaining the word "arachnid" on Sesame Street! (Thanks to Cynthia for the link.)

The Littlest Buffy Fan

I just had to post this. So cute!! This is a post that went up on a mommy/knitting blog last week. How adorable is that??

Maybe I can convince my publisher to release my Buffy book with a soft squishy cover for toddlers.

JOpinionated + The Trevor Project

I just wanted to pass on a link that is SO important to y'all... I was chatting with JOpinionated today and she pointed me toward an amazing incentive she's got going to help raise donations for The Trevor Project, which is a help line for LGBTQ youth. It's a tremendous organization (you can find out more about them here) and here's the sitch: if you send a donation of $10 to the Trevor Project, your name will be entered into a draw to win one of two gift baskets. One is an AMAZING gift basket loaded to the gills with Lost stuff, and the second is a more general TV one with DVDs and other special gifts donated from many shows, including Fringe, The Big Bang Theory, Mad Men, and many more. See the complete list (seriously, a shotglass signed by Damon Lindelof??) and get all of the information here.

I'm going to be donating a full set of autographed copies of Finding Lost to the Lost basket, but the real reason to go and donate $10 is to support such an incredible project. Thanks for doing this, Jo. You are a true gem of the blogosphere.

Lost Academic Conference!

So I was chatting on email with David Lavery this morning, and he said the new location for the Lost conference (formerly in Oahu, which proved far too expensive for people) will be one of two places: Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida (where this past Slayage was held in June) or in New Orleans. Since I haven't been to the latter (and because that one would be joining with the much larger PCA conference), I'm hoping it's there, but I'd be happy with either one of them. And hey, New Orleans is the perfect Lost location! After all, "The House of the Rising Sun" is in New Orleans. Bingo! ;)

There is currently a survey up taking votes, so please head on over there and put in your two cents!

Lostaholics Anonymous: Kate

Hello and welcome to another week of Lostaholics Anonymous. This week we're going to talk about a character who has split audiences down the middle: Kate Austen.

Kate was the first character who got her own full flashback, season 1's third episode, Tabula Rasa. As a little girl, Kate hung around with her childhood sweetheart, Tommy. The two of them tried to steal a NKOTB lunchbox from a local convenience store, but were caught. Crisis was averted when Jacob purchased the box for her, and she and Tommy took it back to his house, where they filled it with their favourite childhood objects, including Tommy's toy airplane. They included a cassette tape of the two of them talking and imagining what they'll be like when they've grown up -- will they get married?

Kate's mother Diane was married to Sam, Kate's military father, but they broke up and Diane married Wayne, a louse who beat her. The show implied that he may have molested Kate in some way, or at least made inappropriate moves on her. When Kate discovered that Wayne was actually her father, she killed him, disgusted that he could actually be in her. She became a fugitive, and was chased to Australia, caught, and ended up in a plane to LA that never got there.

But what interests fans the most isn't what happened to Kate before the crash -- it's what happened after. Namely... Sawyer or Jack? Now, shipping is something I tend to beg people not to do here. You start a shipper war, it takes down the whole blog. So, for this one meeting, I'm going to let you battle it out. Just please... keep it nice. Don't be inflexible; listen to the other side and be polite.

So... in this corner, we have Kate and Sawyer. He's the bad boy who excites her, who she sleeps with and truly does care about, but who makes her feel guilty about what she's done. He reminds her of another bad boy, the one she killed, and just like she didn't want Wayne to be a part of her, she doesn't want to admit that she's actually attracted to a man who's killed someone before. But Sawyer loves her, and even though he plays games with her in the beginning, she's the one person who makes him stop lying to himself and everyone else.

In this corner, we have Kate and Jack. He's the doctor, the good guy that her parents would be proud of, but he also makes her feel guilty. Throughout season 1, on the one hand he tells her that whatever she did isn't his business, but then he wears a key around his neck that would open a briefcase that she wants, hinting that he has the power over her to open it or keep it closed. He does love her, and off the island they fall in love and become a couple. She excites him and makes him feel like a better person, but Kate also keeps secrets, and Jack can't stand secrets. Ultimately, on the show, Kate chose Jack while Sawyer chose Juliet. Do you agree with her decision? Do you care?

For me, the most important thing about Kate was her relationship to Aaron. In season 5 it was like we were introduced to a new Kate. Where she could never make up her mind between Sawyer and Jack, her love for Aaron was unwavering. She came alive with him, and laughed and loved unconditionally and was loved unconditionally in return. Jack and Sawyer always seemed to want something from her, but Aaron just wanted her to be his mommy.

And therein lay her dilemma, because she knew she couldn't be his mommy. So she left him and returned to the island, finding Claire and bringing her back. Along the way she reignited Sawyer's feelings for her momentarily, before the death of Juliet reminded Sawyer that he actually loved Juliet more. But that wasn't Kate's fault; she wasn't there for Sawyer, and she wasn't there for Jack. She was there for Aaron.

Kate has always been someone who has been used, makes decisions, and then has the people she love turn on her for those decisions. No one ever seems to agree with her, she tries to make decisions that will help others, but so often those decisions backfire and she ends up hurting people by accident. Kate has a lot of guilt and pain in her, but she soldiers on.

In the second half of the series, there was a LOT of Kate Hate. People loathed her, either because they didn't want to see her with either man, or they didn't think she contributed much to the show, or they were simply annoyed by her. But I always liked Kate. I liked that she didn't listen. I liked that she did things her way. I liked her tomboyishness and her independence. I liked her vulnerability. I liked that she put others before herself all the time.

For me, when Kate walked up to Jack after the concert in the finale and says, "I missed you so much," my heart breaks every time. We can imagine that Kate left that island and probably pined for Jack for the rest of her life, and to see him again must have filled her with so much joy. And yet it's Aaron who is the spark that causes her to remember... her connection to him is so strong. Who can watch the scene where she says, "Bye bye baby" without crying? I can't.

I loved Kate, and I miss her as much as any character. But what did you think about her?

And my Finding Lost: Season 6 book is finally available for order on Amazon; copies of this gigantic book started shipping last Sunday. I heard that it's taking entire trucks to bring one copy to people's houses!* Get your copy here!

*This might not actually be 100% true.

Lostaholics -- Tune in Tomorrow

Hey all, I've been swamped with stuff (and, OK, admittedly addicted to this book I started on Monday and can't stop reading... if you get a chance, read Emma Donaghue's "Room." Absolutely fascinating). Anyway, tonight's Lostaholics Anonymous will be postponed until tomorrow night, but it's going to be on Kate. AND... for the only time possibly ever on this site, I'm going to allow you to sharpen your knives and argue full throttle for whatever ship you want. I know I'm probably asking for it, but I also think it could be totally fun. And then we'll get back to normal for the following week's discussion. It'll have to be something bland and not controversial to calm everyone down. Perhaps how the sand colour changed throughout the seasons. ;)

Anyway, see y'all tomorrow night!

Your Morning Laugh

This just cracked me up. Brilliant.

Mad Men S4: Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Man

I was going to go with a different photo for this week's recap of the Mad Men S4 finale last night, “Tomorrowland”... a photo showing The Thing that happened. But I didn’t want to inadvertently spoil anyone, so if you haven’t yet seen the finale and don’t know what Thing I’m talking about, please stop reading now.

This season has been, in a word, extraordinary. We watched Don Draper unravel completely as Dick Whitman dogged him almost to the point of complete self-destruction. His wife was remarried, his children were confused and he was constantly worried about them, the new business wasn’t doing gangbusters like it was supposed to, he screwed the babysitter and the woman down the hall and some waitress in a diner and his secretary before she finally quit and then the psychology expert the company brought in... it was a mess. He walked through the halls in an alcoholic haze, he messed up board meetings, and the creative genius of only a few years earlier had devolved into a monkey that resembled Roger Sterling... without the zingers.

And in an episode I can only refer to as sublime, “The Suitcase,” Don finally hit rock bottom. He’d peaked in assholery, forcing Peggy to stay late in the office on her birthday and then chastising her for not telling him it was a special day, he literally had a lost weekend where he didn’t know where he’d been for a couple of days, and worst of all, Anna, the only person who really knew him for who he was, died. In this incredible hour, Don and Peggy stayed in his office all night while other characters moved in and out of the scene like a play -- not sleeping together, not playing superior and inferior, not playing the roles of Man and Woman -- and we saw a new Don emerge the next morning. He had a purpose, he was going to put his life back together, he was going to attempt to stop drinking, he was going to put an effort into his children and his company, and he was going to stop sleeping around.

And for a while, it worked. The no-drinking thing was stymied slightly when Sally accidentally poured rum all over his pancakes (in a hilarious scene where she mistook the rum bottle shaped like a little Jamaican woman for a bottle of Aunt Jemima), but he shrugged it off and dealt with it. He began focusing his romantic energy on Faye Miller, and rather than continue his Don Draper charade with her, he told her up front who he really was. It was a surprising moment, but you could tell he was simply weary of lying. Finally he opened up to someone. He wasn’t going to lie to her the way he’d lied to Betty for so long. Here was a woman who was strong, independent, who Peggy recently had said she was envious of because this woman seemed to stand out in the world of men, making her own way.

And then, one night when Don was working late, his secretary, Megan shyly poked her head in and offered to help him out. And before you knew it, they were having sex on his couch. Sigh. “Oh, Don, you bastard,” my husband and I both said, exasperated. But this secretary wasn’t like the other one. She didn’t expect anything from Don, and simply zipped up her dress and walked back out of the office. And the next day, it was business as usual. No looking for compliments, no shock when he acted like he was her secretary, just back to putting Mr. Draper’s phone calls through to his phone.

We’d first noticed her when Sally had come into the office and had a complete spazzy breakdown in the hallway, and Megan ran after her, caught her in her arms, and just held her, rubbing her back and reassuring her that it would be OK. Sally quietly said, “No, it won’t.” Sally has been a character who has worried me from the beginning of this season, making me want to reach into the television and just yoink her out of this universe and save her. First, I think the actress who plays her is one of the best casting choices of the series. She looks and talks EXACTLY like her mother, in that very specific, clipped way. I think the young actress has done a fantastic job of learning to mimic January Jones’ way of talking and holding herself. While Betty Draper has turned into Mommie Dearest, Sally seems to take the brunt of it. Gene isn’t really aware of it, and Bobby just remains quiet, like he either doesn’t notice or doesn’t want to. But Sally is old enough to understand that her mother resents her, but too young to begin to understand why, or how she should deal with such a thing. While Betty feels like Don tossed her away, she can’t stand the fact that he wants to spend time with her own tiny doppelganger. Sally used to be the little chubby-cheeked youngster who had the occasional tantrum and otherwise faded into the background, but this season she moved into the spotlight. From the first episode, when we saw how slim she suddenly was, to the scene at the home of Betty’s new in-laws where Sally spat out her dinner, I started to worry that they were setting her up for some future eating disorder. Then as Sally’s life began to unravel, I started worrying more... could she be suicidal in the future? Is there something more at stake here? She’s so delicate and already broken, and she’s only about 10. The current season is set in 1965, and the beauty of this show is that we know the history that will come after it. I remember thinking at the beginning of the season that the poor kid was born at such an unfortunate time – she’ll only be 12 during the Summer of Love, so she’ll miss out on that one, and by the time the punk movement really takes shape in about 1977, she’ll be in her early 20s, so she may be too old to truly appreciate it. Poor thing! Maybe she’ll just really be into David Bowie. (There’s hope for you yet, little one.) But I am worried that they’re setting her up for some sort of eating disorder during a time where it wouldn’t have been understood.

But back to Megan. Don looks on, agog at the fact that while Betty would have simply said in her flat voice, “Go to your room” and given Sally a kick on the way up the stairs, here is his secretary sitting on the floor, hugging his daughter. There was definitely something in her even then. (And I read something today saying that the Google searches on “Jessica Paré,” the Canadian actress who plays her, have been huge today... as a Canadian I can tell you she really IS from Montreal, just like her character, and her first breakout role was starring in a film called “Stardom” about this girl who is obsessed with hockey and just wants to play with the boys until a modelling scout sees her and pushes her into the world of modelling, where she becomes a world-class supermodel and you watch all of the craziness that surrounds her. After that she was in a Canadian film called Lost and Delirious, based on the Susan Swan novel “The Wives of Bath,” about a girl who goes to college and discovers her female dormmates are sleeping together, and then Jessica starred a bunch of roles, mostly in Canadian films, but she was moving her way into American films and TV shows when Mad Men came along.)

But back to Mad Men. When Roger Sterling lost Lucky Strike (right after knocking up Joanie), Don went ballistic, and the company faced a major crisis where, for the first time, it really looked like they wouldn’t bounce back. Last week Don finally cracked and wrote an open letter to the New York Times, taking out a full page and basically saying he doesn’t sleep at night doing ads for tobacco companies anyway, so screw it, they’re no longer taking on tobacco, and anyone else can feel free to come their way. And so... the American Cancer Society did. Could it be the start of something bigger?

This week Betty finally becomes a full-on dragon, firing her maid/nanny Carla (with the patented Betty blindness: “Since when did you become their mother?” Um... from the moment I bloody well raised each one of them, maybe??), refusing to let Carla say goodbye to the children, and then telling Don he’ll have to take the kids on his trip without any help. Meanwhile, Peggy -- who also really came into her own this season as we saw her hanging with beatniks, showing tremendous restraint and confidence in the face of blatant sexism thrown at her every day from everyone from Don to her inferiors in creative to Joan, and connecting with Don on a new level that seemed to raise her up to almost his equal in his eyes -– has brought in the company’s first new client since the loss of Lucky Strike, and this good fortune could be the beginning of the upswing the company so badly needs. Pete has become less loathsome this season, and there was some political bandying this season with Don, but it always seemed necessary, like maybe Don deserved it and Pete wasn’t just being a dick. Joan watched her husband go off to war, had a fast and furious knee-wobbler with Roger in an alleyway that resulted in a pregnancy, and then went off to an abortion clinic, where it was never really obvious if she went through with it or not. This week we discover that she didn’t, and that instead she’s contacted her louse of a husband where he’s stationed in Vietnam and told him the baby is his (and he responds with regret that he won’t see her enormous breasts get that much bigger...)

But the season – and particularly this episode – belonged to Don. I figured with a season as amazing as this one has been, we would no doubt encounter something shocking... but I was NOT ready for this. When Don decides to take Megan with him to watch his kids while he’s in California, she jumps at the chance, and turns out to be pretty excellent with them. She teaches them French, keeps Sally calm, and when Sally accidentally spills a drink, Sally and Don both noticeably brace themselves for the onslaught of grief and guilt that will spew forth from the woman at the table... and instead Megan just laughs it off and begins dousing it with napkins.

While Don’s in California, he visits Anna’s home one last time and sees the signature he made on her wall when he’d been there a few months earlier. It brings back the last vestiges of the real Don Draper and the memory that around her, he could just be himself. And shortly after, in this scene in the restaurant, he realizes for the first time that he doesn’t have to be on pins and needles around Megan, that she just lets him be who he wants to be, doesn’t expect anything more out of him, and just might be the soothing force that Sally needs. While Betty ships Sally off to a psychiatrist, Megan talks to Sally, reassures her, teaches her, and doesn’t berate her.

But even all of this doesn’t brace us for what happens next. When Don wakes up early one morning upon returning to New York and asks Megan to marry him, handing her Anna’s engagement ring from the real Don Draper, I laughed and said to my husband, “It’s a fantasy sequence... someone’s having a dream.” But as the scene went on, I was thinking it was an AWFULLY long scene to be happening in a dream... someone’s supposed to jolt awake right about now, but instead, Megan’s calling her mom in Montreal. If this is Don’s dream, how would he understand enough French to put that in his dream? If it’s Megan’s, how would she know about Anna’s engagement ring? It can’t really be either one’s dream, which means....

WTF, Don, did you just ask your secretary to marry you???!!!!!

Words cannot express my bafflement in this moment. But after 24 hours of thought, I realize it’s pretty much in keeping with his character this season. Of course he did this. What Don needs is stability, and Megan has it in spades. She passes his phone calls through to him, she rushes into his office to make things better when a mistake has been made, she’s excellent with his children, she shows him respect, she doesn’t ask questions and just accepts him for who he is... she’s perfect.

And not perfect. For while everything might be rosy now, once they’re married she won’t be so willing to just sit back and let Don take the reins all the time. She’s going to want some answers, and won’t be so open to him sleeping around. She’ll resent that he plops the children on her lap while he takes off to a bar or away on a business trip. But maybe Don’s genuinely going to change. Is it possible that after this long personal journey of discovery this season, that Don will find a way to merge Don with Dick, and refuse to make the same mistakes that he did with Betty? Despite watching the scene where he calls Faye – a woman whom Peggy mistakenly thought had proven you can make it in a man’s world, but who in fact has been used by a man just like every other woman on the show – and thinking Don’s a complete ass, you have to admit that Faye, for as put-together as she was, not only felt awkward and strange around Sally, but she looked like Betty. Megan doesn’t. She’s an artist, with her feet firmly planted on the ground but with dreams of her own, and she’s a more interesting character than we’d originally been led to believe.

Could Megan actually help change Don?

Season 4 of Mad Men was my favourite season yet. I cannot WAIT for season 5.

And what were your thoughts?

Sesame Street Meets the Old Spice Guy

I LOVE the Old Spice commercials, and I love Sesame Street. Put them together and what do you get? Brilliance. Thanks to Gillian for this link!

Fringe 3.04: Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?

I won't do my normal longer blog post on this week's Fringe episode, simply because I watched it too late to really talk about it much. But rather than point out things to notice (the glyph word was SHIFT; the Observer walked through the lobby as Walter went running up to Peter, Faux-Livia and Broyles when they were all talking and not listening to Walter), I want to talk about the episode overall.

Once again, this one was a home run. The shapeshifters have been made out to be baddies for a couple of seasons now, and we just see them as one more evil thing from the other side. But for the first time, they're shown as more than just robots. One man has assumed an identity for five years, taking on the role of a husband and father of a two-year-old, and now he has fallen in love with his "pretend" wife, and his now-seven year old means the world to him. So when Thomas Newton shows up and tells him he must change identities, he can't handle it, and risks his life to maintain that current identity. Similarly, the shifter who'd assumed the identity of the senator was so convincing in his role, taking on the memories and jolly personality of the man he was pretending to be, that he had become him, and his wife never noticed a change in him at all.

It was a great twist, and, as usually happens, I didn't know the title of the episode and was just going to check it later. As I sat on the couch watching it unfold, I wrote in my notes, "This episode is like Blade Runner -- think final Roy Batty speech, rooftop." So imagine my surprise and joy when I discovered the episode title referred to that scene exactly, considering "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was the novel that Blade Runner was based on. I don't think I've ever felt as close to the writers on a show as I did in that moment.

This is a similar issue to the one explored in Battlestar Galactica throughout its run, looking at whether Cylons are robots, or entities with feelings. They believe in gods, they form connections, they love and are loved... what separates them from humans? In the case of the shapeshifters, they were originally working for the bad side, but they fell in love and got wrapped up in their new lives. Is there death any less real than the person they're portraying?

And as mentioned, this exploration originates in what's probably my favourite film scene of all time, when replicant Roy Batty, who is wounded, sits atop a rooftop with a dove in his hands, and his final words to Deckard exhibit such deep emotions that Deckard realizes -- too late -- that the replicants are not the unfeeling monsters he thought they were.

LOST: Jack Was All About Fun

This week's Lostaholics Anonymous featured a long discussion about Jack, and I realized I'd forgotten to post the above image to go with it, which was sent to me late last week by artist Richard Rische, designed by his friend Mike Steffler. Love it.

I mentioned that as much as I adored that character, he was always fun to poke fun at because he was just so damn serious. A friend of mine forwarded me this video last week asking if I'd seen it, and I said not only had I seen it, but I used to post it on a regular basis here because it killed me every time. And in light of our discussion, I thought hey, let's post it AGAIN!! This might be my all-time fave Lost fan video.

Josh on the Set of MI4

Pink Is the New Blog has posted some new pics of Josh Holloway on the set of Mission Impossible 4, where he will be co-starring with Tom Cruise. I love it when creators develop relationships with actors and writers through other projects. (It's like Terry O'Quinn being on Alias before Lost.)

OK, now go look at the pictures here and forget everything else you were supposed to do today. ;)

Bazinga!

Last Thursday I had the good fortune to head down to the CTV building in downtown Toronto and see Sheldon, Howard, and Raj live on stage... or their real-life personas, Jim Parsons, Simon Helberg, and Kunal Nayyar, the stars of The Big Bang Theory. (I'm sure everyone else has blogged on this already, and I actually started this blog last Thursday, and it's taken me THIS LONG to get around to finishing it!!) BBT is one of my favourite shows on television (the other day I was bemoaning the state of TV to someone, and said the only two network shows I adore are Fringe and The Big Bang Theory... although I'd probably add Modern Family to that). The three guys were at the CTV building talking to Canadian fans, and marveling at the massive audience that had turned up to the event, screaming and begging them to say (or sing) certain things. People had come from all over Ontario, some had lined up as early as 6 a.m. to get a prime spot.



The show began with Teddy and Ajay of Space, the cohosts of Innerspace (I appeared on the show with them to discuss the finale of Lost) who warmed up the audience for a couple of hours before. The guys had done an interview with Space that morning on a closed set, and Teddy and Ajay, in adorably matching sweaters, chatted up the audience and kept everyone pumped for the main event.



Then the Barenaked Ladies came out to sing the show's theme song, and it was so cool to see it done live. When they ended on, "And it all started with the big bang -- BANG!" the whole audience shouted the last word. (BNL stood on the stage like the in-house studio band for the entire show, with the drummer occasionally playing rimshots when the guys would make a joke, or Ed Robertson interjecting with his own joke every once in a while.)They continued playing background music while eTalk host Ben Mulroney introduced the three stars of the show, and the audience went nuts. (And then, as you can see, Jim Parsons looked right at me.... OK, probably not, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it!)



So here were my favourite moments of the show:
• When host Ben Mulroney came out ahead of the actors, he was asked by his co-host if he could prove his geek cred (this guy was born into privilege, with a wealthy father who eventually became the Prime Minister of Canada...) and he somehow managed to do it. He said he believed there was a geek in all of us, which is why the Big Bang Theory is so popular, and he said that his wife had bought him a flux capacitor for his birthday once. When the co-host looked baffled and asked if that had something to do with time travel, he groaned, "UGH, it's only what made time travel POSSIBLE!! You know? Back to the Fu... you know what, you don't know ANYthing." HA!!
• The boys came out and Ben asked Simon (Howard) about the fact that he's a musician, and asked him if he'd ever consider giving up acting for music. To which Jim Parsons (Sheldon) answered, "He SHOULD!" (I wasn't sure if that was a diss on his acting or praise for his music, but it was funny either way!)
• When Ben asked a question that had been tweeted to the show -- How does Sheldon speak without taking a breath? -- Parsons couldn't answer right away, so Kunal (Raj) answered, "He has amazing abs."
• When asked where he keeps his Emmy in his home, Parsons responded, "When I'm not carrying it around at work making sure every single person has seen it, I keep it at home on a used piano."
• Simon had tweeted that he felt like he needed a Canadian interpreter to understand what the hell we were talking about, and when Ben asked if that was true, he said, "I actually haven't understood a single word you've said to me yet." HAHAHA!! Ah, getouttahere, ya hoser, eh?
• On the first commercial break, the pregnant woman behind me stood up and yelled, "Sheldon, will you sign my belly??!!"
• Ed Robertson, lead singer of the Barenaked Ladies, asked the audience on the same break to put their hands up if they thought the second half of the interview should be pants-off.
• And then someone behind me did a pitch-perfect, "HOOOWWWWAAAAAAD!" just like Howard's mom. I could NOT stop laughing. It was GENIUS. I'm not sure if he heard it, though.
• When Ben referred to Howard's clothes as little boys' clothes, Simon got huffy and said, "I will have you know I wear an extra-large... in boys' clothes." Then he explained that the purpose of Howard's clothing was to draw the eye downwards. HAHAHA!!! (He added that there are 3 women on set whose sole purpose was to dress Howard and get him into and out of those clothes. Much screaming from the females in the crowd.)
• Ben revealed that he owned a Toaster toaster (the Cylon toaster they have on the show) because he'd seen it on the show and immediately jumped on eBay to get one. Jim Parsons admitted he didn't know what the heck a Cylon was before they filmed that episode. (I'll admit my heart sank in disappointment to hear that.)
• "Bazinga" was a word that Jim Parsons came up with, along with one of the writers, when they were saying they had to come up with a word that Sheldon would use a lot.
• And then the best part of the show happened for me. On the next commercial break, a few people behind me began yelling, "SHELDON!! SING SOFT KITTY!" He couldn't hear them because Ben was talking to him. Kunal, on the other hand, was listening, and he nudged Jim when they yelled it a third time and told him what they were saying. Jim looked out and smiled at the audience. So they yelled it again. Nothing. So then there was some commotion and "pass it along" happening behind me until someone shouted, "One! Two! Three!" and the whole row sang, "Soft kitty, warm kitty" and then the entire audience went "Little ball of fur..." to which Jim Parsons turned, lifted the mike, and sang the rest of it with us, "Happy kitty, sleepy kitty, purr purr purr..." It was AWESOME.
• When everyone was talking about what an amazing ping-pong player Kunal is (Jim said he made dives for the ball that were just silly, that no one else would make... apparently Kaley is also an excellent player), Kunal said, "I'm Indian so I play all racquet sports." Jim replied, "Really? I didn't realize that was a trait of your people." It was like listening to Raj and Sheldon on the couch.
• The staircase, as most of us probably already assumed (I know I did because I noticed one brick was exactly the same every time) is actually one stair case just dressed up differently for each floor as they walk past it. Behind the elevator there's almost no room and it becomes this cramped space. So they said they nonchalantly walk around behind it and all run into each other and have their faces pressed against the wall. They said the wall is full of gum that people have been sticking there for 3 years, so not only are they crammed in with the other actors, but their cheeks are usually pressed into a piece of old chewed gum.

After the next commercial break, it seemed to be over, but they took a few group shots with the hosts (and as charming and lovely as the female host is, I was annoyed she stood front and centre in the pic... people weren't lined up at 6am to get a great shot of her... yeah, let's let Jim Parsons stand in the BACK):





Then they called them together so they could present them with a special gift from the show... Team Canada jerseys! Jim Parsons was particularly excited, and they're all big hockey fans (they were planning on heading to a Leafs game that night). At one point earlier in the show Kunal said, "Go Leafs Go?" and got big screams and Jim said, "Oh my GAWD, you'll do ANYTHING for applause!"





And then a man from the Foundation of Science and Research (or something... I should have probably written that one down) came up and awarded Chuck Lorre and the show's other writer honourary lifetime memberships to the foundation for their furthering of science in popular culture by making it cool through the show. Simon accepted the awards and responded, "We will travel anywhere in the world to accept other people's awards." Which got the following big laugh from the rest of the guys:



And that was that! The Barenaked Ladies performed the song again in its entirety this time (who knew there was a second verse?) and then they stuck around to continue playing while the guys left.

It was an awesome time, and simply made me love that show even more!

Lostaholics Anonymous: Jack

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s instalment of Lostaholics Anonymous, the place where we Lost fans gather and continue to discuss our favourite aspects of our favourite show.

Before we begin with this week’s meeting I just wanted to mention that I’m continuing to take orders for Finding Lost: Season 6, and am now actually sending out the copies to people (Batcabbage will be the first person to hold a copy outside of North America, and the race is on to see who within North America will be the first to receive theirs!) If you’re interested, the cost is $28.95 CDN if you live in Canada, $28.95 US if you live in the U.S., and $29.95 U.S. for overseas (that’s surface mail, which will probably take 4-6 weeks to get there... if you want it via airmail, it’s $48.95, but I’d go with the surface option if I were you!) You can paypal me at my email account, or just drop me an email if you have any further questions. I’m sticking in 5 bookmarks with each order (one for each of your Finding Lost books) and signing and personalizing each copy.

Otherwise, you can go to Amazon and grab a copy here... and save some money!

OK! So back to the meeting... As mentioned last week, I’m going to start focusing on the characters, and this week we’re going to begin with Jack.

The entire series opened with Jack’s eye, and the moment he became aware of his surroundings, Jack was a hero, leaping up to run to the beach and save everyone he could. He resuscitated Rose, he calmed Claire, he yelled for Hurley and Claire to get out of the way, he called to John Locke and forced him to stand for the first time, he helped Boone busy himself as Boone recovered from the shock of the crash. And then, and only then, did he crawl into the woods to try to deal with his own huge wound on the side of his ribs.

By inadvertently establishing himself as the alpha male, Jack became the one that everyone looked up to, and he didn’t want to be leader, but once he realized that the survival of the people depended on it, he stepped up and accepted the responsibility. The first flashback we get is Jack’s (the first full-length one is Kate’s, but the first person we see on Oceanic Flight 815 is Jack), and the first person we see as a child is Jack. In the first season he had three full flashbacks (White Rabbit, All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues, and Do No Harm) and his flashbacks were featured in the pilot and finale episodes that season. Most of his background focused on the father who dogged him for not having what it took.

In season 1 Jack was mostly a hero, although he had his moments of annoyingness, which early on garnered him some loud detractors. While Jack was no doubt the reason most of the people were alive, he had this holier-than-thou attitude about him that could grate on viewers. (Much of it, unfortunately, can be chalked up to an inconsistency in the writing in the first season.) One week he was pleasant to Kate, and seemed charming and adorable; the next he was in her face, demanding to know her past and dangling the key in front of her and reminding her that it was around HIS neck and SHE couldn’t have it.

In season 2, Jack was defined as the nemesis of John Locke. Locke believed in the island, and had faith that there was a greater force at work. Jack believed no such thing. He argued with John until he was blue in the face, screaming that science was the only thing he believed in, and he wasn’t going to put any stock in faith in a higher power he couldn’t see. Much of his lack of faith stemmed back to his past, and in season 2 those flashbacks focused on those. We saw he’d miraculously saved a woman from being paralyzed, then married her, only to break up with her again when she couldn’t deal with his intensity. Jack was obsessive-compulsive, needing to fix things and doing whatever it took to achieve what he needed to... but in many ways, just as his father said, he simply didn’t have what it took, and was always frustrated.

In season 3, Jack was taken by the Others, and when he saw Kate with Sawyer, he told them to go, and he stayed behind. He seemed to become chummy with them, cozied up to Juliet, and bargained a way off the island... until Locke blew up the sub. Cue Jack vs. Locke, Round 2.

In season 4, Jack broke ties with half the group, taking the other half to the freighter folk, believing they were there to rescue him. He was wrong, but somehow he managed to get off the island with the people he was with, and through flashforwards we saw him make a happy life with Kate... until the guilt of leaving everyone behind finally caught up to him. Jack might have been an alcoholic obsessive person who could never stay in a healthy relationship, but he was a good person. He knew he’d left them behind, he knew that he might have been wrong, and rather than dismissing every single word John Locke had ever said to him... he focused on all of them. He remembered everything Locke told him, and those words began to eat away at him. He began to wonder if maybe the island really WAS a higher power, and that he should have listened to it.

And so... in season 5... he came back.

Zapped back into 1977, Jack at first was very Zen-like, allowing Sawyer to lead, and he to follow. I, like many of the viewers, went back and forth on Jack, but at the core I always wanted him to be happy. I was sad when he was, and with our sympathies and perspectives having been aligned with Jack from the very beginning, it was hard not to want the best for him, regardless of his attitude. (That said... when Pierre Chang said that Jack’s psych profile said he was suited for janitorial work, I thought I would pee myself laughing.) Oh Jack... we love you, but you are SO much fun to make fun of.

Returning to the island took faith, and great courage. Jack had finally believed John Locke was right, and when Daniel showed up and offered the idea of a bomb to reverse everything, Jack went with it. He finally had faith in something that was bigger than him, that didn’t make logical sense but which he believe in with all his heart anyway.

His bomb zapped them back to 2007, where they continued on, and throughout season 6 we see the culmination of Jack’s long journey from denial to faith. He sits with Richard Alpert in the hull of a ship and waits for a stick of dynamite to burn out, because he knows he’s too important to blow up. He helps Desmond because he knows Desmond is important. He drinks the water because he believes his purpose in life is to be the guardian of the Source of the island and all life. He gives up the guardianship because he will instead risk his life to save the island right away, and will die after killing the Man in Black. He’s become the very person John Locke always was, and he didn’t have a miracle to prompt his belief the way John Locke had.

The journey of Jack was an epic one, and one that lay at the core of Lost for all 6 seasons. The show opened with Jack’s eye opening, and closed with his eye closing. I’ve been brief in my rundown of Jack (if you want the REAL recap, check out Finding Lost: Season 6 for a very, very long analysis and summary of the character of Jack, his journey, and the history of his relationship with John Locke).

So now I turn it over to all of you... what did you like about Jack? What did you not like about Jack? What are some of your favourite Jack moments? They could be funny, or poignant, or sad.

There Really IS a God!

Because my prayers have been answered. From EW.com:

In what is sure to be one of the hottest properties of the rapidly approaching pilot season, former Lost executive producers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz are developing a fairy-tale-themed drama series. Oh, and they’re getting a little help from—stop me if you’ve heard of this guy—Damon Freakin’ Lindelof!

Oh, YES!!!!!!! Thank you thank you thank you thank you... You can read the full article here.

Fringe 3.03: The Plateau

I LOVED this episode. The mystery – how someone could possibly predict the outcome of a scenario that has so many variables in it – was fascinating, and unlike anything I’ve seen in a show before. From the moment he first put that pen on the post office box, I immediately knew this guy was putting in motion a Rube Goldberg machine of human events. Watching it happen again and again never got old. (And the actor playing Miles was quite brilliant, I thought.)

The actual plot reminded me a bit of Flowers for Algernon, a story of a man who has a low IQ and is put through various experiments that exponentially raise his IQ, making him aware of the hostility and cruelty of the world around him, and he longs to regress back to the moron he once was. (I use that word in the clinical sense.) It’s a heartbreaking story (and a book that was on Ben Linus’s shelf; it was one I meant to add to one of my Finding Lost books, and I have the sticky notes throughout my copy to prove it, but then realized there wasn’t a place for it in S4 and it didn’t fit in the other seasons, so that was that).

I won’t go into too much detail on it because I’m a little late in posting this, but the thing that stood out to me the most in this episode was right near the end, when Olivia explained to Madeleine that Miles was now working with a computer to detect patterns that were beyond human comprehension, followed by Walternate talking to Brandon about the fact that he’s still a scientist. In season 1, Broyles was explaining “The Pattern” to Olivia (The Pattern, to refresh memories, is the idea that each of the seemingly unrelated events that we’ve seen in each episode ARE, in fact, related in some way, and that when you put them together properly they will form a pattern of some kind, meaning we need to keep track of each fringe event and where it occurred to see if there’s a connection), and he said it was like a mad scientist was using the world as his lab to conduct experiments. When Walternate assures Brandon that he’s still a scientist, he adds, “I’ve just got a much bigger lab,” which made me wonder, could HE be the mad scientist Broyles is looking for in our world?

Of course, the key to the episode is that just as Miles hit a plateau in his medication and the experiment, the experiment on Olivia is beginning to backfire, and she’s beginning to see through it. How much longer before she regresses completely and remembers who she was?

Highlights:
• The way they played with things that are rare in the other world (I want to call it the sideways world!) Someone sees the pen the first time and says, “When’s the last time you saw one of these?” and I was expecting Olivia to say, “Uh… wow… a MINUTE ago??” It was interesting to realize they don’t have them anymore. I really like this weird steampunk feel of the other world – on the one hand they’re so advanced, but on the other they’re behind us (like when it comes to bicycles or the fact they still use airships).

Where’s Baldo?: OK, I THINK I saw the guy this time, but I could be wrong. When Olivia is at that third accident and she realizes it’s still going on, she turns around and looks up to the bridge, and the camera makes a quick cut to the bridge and pans along the people. The first person is a man in a fedora and suit, and I’m positive that it was the Observer. A moment later, when they show the people again, he’s gone, so it would make sense.

Glyph (before each commercial break, there's a glyph that appears, and it corresponds with a letter of the alphabet, spelling out a five-letter word): This week's glyphs spelled out BREACH, a rare occurrence of a six-letter word.

Did You Notice?:
• When they referred to the baddie as “Milo Stanfield” both my husband and I said, “Wait! Where have I heard that name?” and realized we were thinking Marlo Stanfield. Could there be a Wire fan on staff? Considering Bubs was on there a couple of weeks ago, and now a character has a name almost exactly like another character, it could be likely.
• Walternate suggests putting someone in a sensory deprivation tank, which is what they did to Olivia in the first episode of the series.

Questions:
• Will the rest of the season be back and forth between the two worlds, or will it begin to merge so we’ll see half in one world, half in the other?

At Last... My Set Is Complete

So... look what arrived moments ago, just in time for the weekend!!



I'm all warm and fuzzy right now. ;)

Finding... The Contest Winner!

This tongue-in-cheek pic was sent to me yesterday, and I just had to post it as the final pic of the series... sent by reader David McCloughan, Jr., he showed me what SHOULD have come as a bonus in the complete Lost DVD set. I couldn't agree more!!



LOL!! Thanks, David!!

And now, without any further ado, the announcement of the winner of this contest: Man, you guys have made it SO tough! You've all made me giggle or laugh out loud or be astounded by the ingenuity you came up with... but it came down to two, and from there I had to choose one, and my choice is... Erin Pugh! For balancing books on her head while setting a timer, and making me laugh with those great looks on her face. Congrats, Erin! I do want to throw an honourable mention to LittleMo, though, who not only made me love her for that bath pic, but pulled some great yoga poses in her other ones. Thank you for brightening my day and this blog.

You guys are awesome. And I do welcome pics of you holding the season 6 book, because I know every single one of you will get a copy, right? RIGHT?? ;)