The Friday Night Lights Will Still Glow!!!
Yes, folks, FNL has been SAVED!!!!! (Can you tell by the number of exclamation marks that this is the best TV news we've had in eons?) I'm SO happy. As I reported earlier, the deal that was in the works with DirectTV has been struck, so season 3 will be 13 episodes long, and DirectTV gets to run them first, in October. Then the episodes will re-air on NBC in early 2009. Because the season will be so short, it's inevitable that some of the storylines we've been following will be dropped, which sucks. It's only 13, which is disappointing, but it's better than nothing. So I'm taking this as good news. You can read more here.

April Fool's!

Well, turns out some people can still be tricked. I figured it wasn't possible, until I posted yesterday that we weren't getting any more Lost, assuming everyone would see right through it, and then came back to an inbox full of panic (sorry). Meanwhile, my husband, a golf writer and the "inside guy" on a lot of golf breaking news, saw a story on a golf blog yesterday morning, and began scrambling calling sources to confirm the report, only to discover it was a hoax. (In the end, those sources ended up fielding calls all day to diffuse the situation... that blogger was GOOD.)

But I just discovered my favourite of yesterday's hoaxes. A news site reported that Intellipedia, the internal "wikipedia" for the White House, had been hacked by none other than Dick Cheney, who began entering false data about Knight Rider and Buffy. For the latter, he was cataloguing everyone's favourite episodes, and said his personal favourite was "Once More With Feeling": "The juxtaposition of Buffy's emotional dependence on her mentor and the interpretive dance number was deeply moving," Cheney said. "Plus there was some serious blood and gore toward the end."

Brilliant. You can see the entire hoaxy goodness here. What was your favourite (or least favourite) online hoax yesterday?

Sad News...
I know this is old news by now, but EW is reporting that ABC has changed their minds about the Lost scheduling, and will now NOT be running the final 5 episodes this year. Which means... we end with that Michael episode. WAH. The final five will now be merged into next year, so they're going to run them in the fall (since the Writer's Strike has left a dearth of new pilots, and they need something to fill the space) and then the real 16 will run from Feb-May as originally planned. The good news? Those 3 episodes that went missing this season will be tacked on, so we'll get 8 episodes in the fall instead of 5.

So... is this a good thing or not? Did season 4 really deliver what it was supposed to? Would you have rather they left it on the episode 7 ending? Worse... can you wait until the fall to find out if Rousseau is really dead?!

Lost: 4.09 “Of Mice and Sawyer”
TEASE: Sawyer may not be one of the Oceanic Six, but he’s getting off the island… with or without his clothes!

Episode Recap:
Whew!! Possibly the most exciting episode of the series, and the most revealing. In a flashforward, we see what will happen to Sawyer and the other castaways who were left behind. No, they don't die, but in the final moments of the rescue, the reason that only six people made it on the plane is . . . aw, you don’t need me to tell you this. You all saw the episode.

Highlights:
-Sawyer’s naked butt as he emerged from the ocean. OH YEAH!!
-Hurley’s caustic remark that finally silences Sawyer. Best. Line. Ever.

Biggest “GASP!” Moments:
-Paulo and Nikki were ALIENS?!
-The Oceanic Six were NOT the only ones to actually make it off the island!
-Ben is Sawyer’s REAL FATHER!!

Hurley’s Numbers:
The price of Sawyer’s house is $199,065 (42 x 8 – 16 ÷ 4 x 108 + 15 x 23). Kate knocks on the door 4 times.

Did You Notice?:
-Sawyer reading my first Finding Lost book on the beach! How metafilmic, considering it’s about the group of them as fictional characters.
-When Sawyer goes to secretly visit with Jack, you can see the Buffy episode, “Once More, With Feeling” playing on Jack’s television, but he’s muted it. Man doesn’t know good musicals when he hears them, apparently.
-When Stephen Hawking travels through the air on the island in his magical wheelchair, you can see Walt hiding underneath it.
-Sawyer’s house in the real world has a white picket fence and he’s keeping rabbits in the backyard. Looks like he took that Steinbeck novel a little too seriously.
-In the scene where we finally find out why Desmond had to push that button for three years (thank goodness, I thought they’d NEVER explain that!), you can see a polar bear behind the station working on the plumbing. (Is it just me, or did the show become really surreal this week?)

So Many Questions...
-So does this mean Ben killed Sawyer’s mother?
-When will Locke learn? He spent almost a full day drywalling that section of the house in Otherville just to hide the secret documents from Ben, and the moment Ben comes in and says, “Locke, I believe you know where some papers are. If you don’t tell me, I think they’re all gonna laugh at you” Locke points to the wall and says, “Yeah, I put them there. Do you want me to rip it all apart to give it to you?” Sheesh, Locke. What’s happened to you?
-So if Sawyer sees Daniel Faraday in his house in 2007, but it’s actually Daniel from 2001 time traveling, and 1996 Desmond is chained to him as his constant, does this mean… um… actually, what does this mean?
-Could magical wheelchair Hawking be Jacob, or a manifestation of Smokey?

Next week: Deleted scenes from this season’s episodes!

Today's Lost Humour

I've been surfing around on College Humour this afternoon, and there's a ton of Lost stuff there (thanks for the link, Cynthia!) First, there's finally a medication for all those poor souls who just can't keep up with the increasingly complicated discussions on Lost. You can see the commercial for Losticil here.

While you're there, check out this hilarious opening credit sequence. This is how Lost would have opened if it had originally aired in 1986, I would presume. (A warning: you'll have the theme song in your head long after you've watched it, and you might have a sudden yearning to watch MacGyver or The A-Team.)

And finally, here's Lost as a silent film, for all those Jack/Sawyer shippers.

SO... Who Is the Last Member of the Oceanic Six?
I've wavered on this one for the past few episodes, and now that the 7th episode has aired -- and Damon and Carlton had said we'd know all 7 of them by the time the ep was finished -- it's still unclear who the Oceanic Six are. Someone posted to say that the list had been confirmed by producers on another site, but when I went to check it out, it appeared to just be speculation from a "source," and not the actual producers.

Five of them are clear: Kate, Jack, Hurley, Sayid, and Sun. But who is the sixth? Here is a list of possible candidates, and my thoughts on each one.

Aaron:
This one is the resounding frontrunner right now. I've been reluctant to accept him as the sixth member, as have a lot of fans. Other fans are rolling their eyes right now and saying, "Why the hell couldn't he be? It's as obvious as the letters you are typing right now..." He was shown in a flashforward; he was definitely on the island; it just stands to reason that he's one of the Six. I was a holdout on this theory, and after "Ji Yeon" aired, a couple of posters came closer to convincing me than I had been previously, namely Eric, who said that if the term "Oceanic Six" is a media construct, they would have given that name to the six people who were rescued from the island, whether or not they were on the plane.

But here's why I'm resisting this option: the events in "Eggtown" would suggest otherwise. First, in the scene with Kate and her lawyer, when the lawyer suggests they bring Aaron to the stand, and "tell people what you did" (i.e. presumably rescuing Aaron and keeping her as her own son), she goes ballistic, saying no no no, don't bring my son into this. But if he were one of the Oceanic Six, wouldn't his face have been splashed all over the papers, and the great feat of heroism would be obvious already? I've put forward that idea already, and one reader posted a comment, saying that if the rescue happened 2 years earlier, he would have been a baby when it happened. Now that he's 2 and a half, presumably, since Jack goes nuts in April 2007 and in the Kate flashforward he's still holding it together (the kid looks 4, but we'll chalk that one up to poor casting), he looks different, and Kate wants to keep his face out of the papers. Fair enough, but the actual reason why the lawyer wants him there -- to let the jury know what Kate did -- seems moot if the story would have been made public to explain why she came back with a kid.

But more importantly, as I've said on the comments board, the math simply doesn't add up. Here is Jack's false statement on the witness stand:

JACK: Only eight of us survived the crash. We landed in the water. I was hurt, pretty badly. In fact, if it weren't for her, I would have never made it to the shore. She took care of me. She took care of all of us. She--she gave us first aid, water, found food, made shelter. She tried to save the other two, but they didn't--

And then he's cut off. Eight survived the crash. Then another one was born. One assumes a survivor is Claire, and she has the baby on the island. Now we're up to nine. "The other two" didn't survive, by the sounds of what he's saying. Now we're down to seven. And the rescuees total... six. What happened to the other one? Did the writers not think that one through? Doesn't seem possible, considering how careful they are with EVERYTHING these days. A quick look at the plane's manifest would show that Aaron wasn't on the plane, so he can't be counted among the 8 people who Jack claims survived the crash.

SO... the only way Kate's adamant refusal to put Aaron in the spotlight and Jack's math make sense is if there are six survivors OTHER than Aaron, and they smuggled him on board the helicopter and kept him hidden from the media and prying public. If he is one of the Six, then Jack's statement on the stand would have been obviously false for a jury.

Michael:
Because Michael was revealed to be alive and well (one assumes, though there's some speculation that he's actually a grown-up Walt), some have suggested he's automatically the sixth, because he was revealed in the episode. That's a bit of a stretch, considering by episode 7 we've also seen every other person on the island still alive, so couldn't it be any of them? This is in keeping with the theory that Michael's the guy in the coffin, and the reason why Jack's so distraught in 2007, etc. However, if he IS the guy in the coffin, and was one of the Oceanic Six, then his death wouldn't have been some footnote at the back of the paper, it would have been HUGE news. One of the Oceanic Six hanged himself? That's big.

Of course, if Michael isn't actually the guy in the coffin, then he very well could be the sixth member. But we haven't seen him in a flashforward in that case, and the same could be said for every other survivor on the island right now.

Ben:
We've seen Ben's passports and money; we know he's getting off the island somehow, and we've seen him in Sayid's flashforward. He could have gotten the files on every person on board that plane to find out which person was a loner with no family, then had a passport made to make himself that person, and boom, he's one of the Six. But Ben is just too mysterious to me, and if he really did have anything to do with that crash, why would he want his mug splashed on the front of every newspaper in the world? The fact he's hidden away in a dark room when Sayid comes to see him at the end of "The Economist," and he's made Sayid his hitman, makes me think Ben will stay behind the scenes, and not put himself out there for the world to see.

Jin:
Some have speculated that Jin actually DID get rescued with the others and made it back, only to die naturally or at the hands of Paik. But if that were the case, his tombstone would have had a date on it after the rescue, and instead it's posted as the date of the crash, so I don't think this one's even a question: He's not one of the Six.


Did I miss anyone? I think these are the biggies right now. Maybe Darlton were wrong when they said we'd know by episode 7, and there's still someone else to be seen in the future on another episode. But if we have seen all of them, then I'm betting the sixth really is Aaron, and the writers screwed up on "Eggtown." I'd be shocked that they screwed up, so I'm not committing to it yet, but it makes the most sense of any of them.

Doesn't mean I have to like it.

So who do you think is the sixth?

Lost 4.07: Ji Yeon
Wow. Way to make me cry, Lost writers. While this episode seemed to lack in a lot of things going on (many ongoing threads were sort of thrown by the wayside) it made up for it with that scene between Sayid and Desmond and the captain, and the big twist at the end. I really liked this one.

Those old flashforwards ain’t what they used to be...

Previously on Lost...
On my blog, last week’s episode seemed to generate more chatter about who would be revealed on the boat this week than anything that had happened in “The Other Woman.” So let’s go straight to “Ji Yeon.”

Episode Recap:
Okay, maybe it’s because I just had a baby in September (‘One day after the third anniversary of the Oceanic crash,’ says Her Nerdliness), but the end of this episode had me weeping. On the freighter, Desmond and Sayid wander around and meet the captain, and when they’re finally given their quarters, they are introduced to the janitor, who is – Shock! Gasp! Ohmigod! – Michael. Meanwhile, in the island, Sun no longer trusts Daniel and Charlotte after last week’s weirdness, so she wants to defect to Locke’s side of the camp. The flash shows Sun off the island (one of the Oceanic Six) and her husband, Jin, apparently rushing to her side to give her a giant panda. But when the end finally comes, we realize, for the first time, we were watching one flashforward (Sun’s) and one flashback (Jin’s). He wasn’t there. It was only Sun who made it off the island. Sniffle.

Clues that Jin’s flash was in the past:
• Sun makes a big deal about them not removing her ring at the hospital.
• Jin’s giant cellphone.
• When Jin tries to buy the second panda, the storekeeper offers him a dragon, saying in the Year of the Dragon it’s good luck. The Year of the Dragon was 2001, and the next one isn’t until 2012.
• Bernard explains what karma is to Jin, that if you do something bad, something bad happens to you.
• Sun telling Jin that she thought she’d lost him, and him saying she’ll never lose him.

Highlights:
• Jin telling Jack that Sawyer has been helping him with his English, but Sun is better.
• The look on Desmond’s face when the captain tells him that Widmore is behind the freighter.
• Hurley seeing Ji Yeon and saying, “She’s awesome.”
• That ending.

Biggest “GASP!” Moments:
• Sun and Jin BOTH made it off the island!! YAY! So they are the fifth and sixth members of the Oceanic Six.
• Juliet telling Jin that Sun had an affair. My jaw almost hit my lap. On the one hand, she achieved her goal at keeping Sun close by, but on the other hand, at what cost? She risked their marriage, and the child potentially being brought up by a single parent. Way to get Sun’s trust there, Juliet.
• Wait... Jin’s is a flashBACK?
• Hurley showing up at Sun’s door.
• Jin didn’t make it off the island. He’s not one of the Oceanic Six. And... he died the day of the crash, according to his tombstone.

Biggest Non-GASP Moment:
Michael is on the boat.

Hurley’s Numbers:
The license plate on the taxi that drives away with Jin’s first panda is 2369. (First number is 23 and the second is 23 times 3.)

Did You Notice?:
• Regina is reading Jules Verne’s Survivors of the Chancellor. This is a book about a ship lost at sea, written in the form of a diary by one of the people on board. Throughout the book people die or commit suicide by jumping off the ship, and the ones who don’t die are cannibalized by the others. Perhaps the book gave Regina the idea?
• In the first flashforward, when Sun is packing a suitcase, that episode of Exposé that featured Nikki is on the television (it’s at the scene just before the Cobra shoots her, and it’s being dubbed in Korean).
• “Panda diplomacy,” something that’s no longer practiced, was where China would give a panda to another country as a show of friendship, because of the extreme rarity of the animals. This is probably why it’s important to Paik to give a panda, and not another animal.
• One of my complaints about this show in the early seasons was, what exactly do those people talk about around the campfire? Clearly it’s not THEIR LIVES, or they’d actually know a little bit about each other. Bernard finally opening up to Jin and telling him about Rose’s cancer was a moment where one character actually tells something personal to another. It almost never happens on this show.
• The freighter is the “Kahana,” meaning it’s a Hawaiian ship.
• Zoe Bell (Regina) actually made that jump off the ship. Acting isn’t her first profession: she’s a stuntwoman, most notably for Lucy Lawless on Xena.
• Both Regina and Captain Gault are Australian.
• The blood spatter on the wall of the quarters looked like the one Radzinsky left in the Swan station.
• One side effect of getting pregnant on the island appears to be losing all the baby weight only days after having the child. (A nitpick I have with the majority of television births; that and the fact the doctor says, “Oh, it’s time to push!” and she pushes for about 20 seconds and out comes baby, rather than the more traditional hour or more for a first child. Ahem.)
• I think if we were to put the flashforwards into a timeline, Sun’s happens first, and Kate’s comes around the same time or shortly after, followed by Hurley’s, where he ends up in an institution, and then after Jack seems so together in Kate’s and Hurley’s, he loses it and his happens last.


So Many Questions...
• What the heck was going on between Keamy and Frank at the beginning? Frank looks squirrelly when Keamy asks him if he’s ready, and says he’ll be up later. For what?
• Can Desmond remember anything since 1996? There’s no indication in here of whether or not he remembers anyone from the island yet. At one point Sayid mentions being in Locke’s camp and Ben saying there was a spy on the boat. Desmond doesn’t say, “Who is Ben?” or “Who is Locke?” so either Sayid’s been filling him in, or he remembers.
• What’s the problem they had in the kitchen? (Oh, and if all there were to eat were lima beans, I’d starve.)
• Any Korean translators out there who could tell me what Ji Yeon means?
• Who was banging the pipes on the freighter?
• What’s up with that doctor on the ship? Is he really a doctor? He totally creeps me out. When they’re walking to their new “quarters” Sayid says the ship isn’t moving, and the doc says, “Well, if you say so.” What did that mean? Is it moving? Is that some reference to time travel?
• What made Regina jump from the freighter all of a sudden?
• Where did Frank take the helicopter? Did his “errand” have anything to do with what Keamy wanted to discuss with him at the beginning of the episode?
• The captain says that it’s the close proximity to the island that’s making people go batty. What on the island could be causing madness on the ship? How long has the ship been there? You don’t develop cabin fever by being on a boat for a week.
• I’ve seen fan speculation that maybe the wreckage of Flight 815 that had been found was the actual plane and everyone really did die, and what we’re seeing on the island is their lives in Heaven or Purgatory or Hell (despite Darlton shooting down the Purgatory idea), but finally, the captain puts all that to rest and reveals that yes indeedy, that wreckage was entirely staged. So... who staged it? To paraphrase the captain, who would go to such lengths?
• “And that... is just one of the many reasons why we want Benjamin Linus.” What did HE have to do with the wreckage? Could he have staged it? How?
• So... is Michael Ben’s man on the boat? Or does he just happen to be on the boat? Is he faking them out by pretending to be Kevin Johnson, or does he actually believe that to be true? Did he go nuts after killing two people, shooting himself in the arm, and then selling out his friends? Or did he feel so guilty that he’s back for restitution?
• When Hurley asks Sun if the others are coming (presumably meaning the rest of the Six) and she says no, he says, “Good.” Why? Are the others the ones putting the pressure on them to keep quiet and he’d rather not be around them?
• So... was Jin killed off because Daniel Dae Kim was busted with a DUI? (The curse continues...)
• Why didn’t the rest of the Six come to see Sun?
• The date on the tombstone was September 22, 2004, the date of the plane crash. Is Jin’s body really buried there, or is it a memorial stone? Jack lies on the witness stand in Kate’s flashforward that eight people survived the crash, but only six made it off the island. Perhaps Jin is one of the eight, and they brought his body back? Or could he actually still be alive, on the island, and Sun left to save the baby? Or are Sun and Jin faking his death to keep him safe from Paik? I’d like to believe Jin is alive.
• Damon and Carlton said we’d know all of the Six by the end of the seventh episode. This is the seventh, which means Aaron must be one of the Six. I still think that seems wrong; he wasn’t on the manifest. So if Jack is saying that only 8 survived the plane crash, and 6 of them made it back, wouldn’t people assume that Claire was one of the 8, then she had Aaron, died, and then two other people died to bring the number down to 6? It seems like wonky math to me.

Next week: As the voiceover said, “Someone . . . will . . . die.”


UPDATES: So it's been established by Damon Lindelof that Desmond got all his current memories back after talking with Juliet (and I'd read that interview, too... my bad). So the question is, would he have even known Michael? Correct me if I'm wrong, because I could totally be wrong, but he's not around when Desmond shows up at the beginning of the season, he's with the tailies. Then when Des comes back at the end of the season, Michael's on his way to the other side of the island. So was Desmond's look of non-recognition genuine, or did he meet him and I'm just not remembering it?

Secondly: A few people have put forth that Michael is actually the sixth member of the Oceanic Six. But just because we've seen him doesn't mean he's one of the Six. Couldn't the same be said for any of the people we've actually seen on the island? I believe the Six can only be known for sure because they've been seen in flashforwards, and the producers said we'll have seen all six in flashforwards by this episode, and since we haven't seen Michael, presumably, then we haven't seen all six.

Now, I'm still of the mind that he's the guy in the coffin in Jack's flashforward, and if you'll recall, in the obituary the guy in the coffin went by another name. In this episode we saw that Michael was using a pseudonym, so perhaps he still is later. And if he'd actually been one of the Oceanic Six, then his death would have been front-page news, not some small obit near the back of the paper. He probably gets off the island, but I'd suggest he's not one of the six. But that's just my theory at this point.

UPDATE #2: My husband just watched it, and he suggested that maybe the tombstone had been erected BEFORE Sun actually returned! I'd never thought of that, but if the announcement had gone out that Jin and Sun were dead, someone could have erected tombstones for both of them and then Sun's death date was taken off once it was clear that she was alive. That's another possibility of why it had the plane's crash date on it.

UPDATE #3: Sorry, guys, I went away for the weekend and got there to discover no Internet... gah! Anyway, while I was away from the computer for a couple of days, I was thinking about what someone had posted, that maybe Regina was upset because her lover was Naomi, and that she was the R.G. on the bracelet. Then I was thinking, is there any possibility it's the captain? His last name is Gault, and they don't mention his first name, which might have been intentional... oops, and now that I just began reading through the comments I haven't yet seen, I saw that Barry brought up the same thing!

Also, I put in my column that the captain and Regina are both Australians, when Regina is clearly a New Zealander. Oops... sorry, I hope I didn't tick off any Kiwis. As a Canadian, I shouldn't have made that egregious error...

UPDATE #4: I'm just going through the comments now, and someone has stated Ji Yeon was the last episode before the break. I just wanted to clarify that next week's episode, "Meet Kevin Johnson" is a new one, and IT is the last one before the break.

Stuff for a Wednesday
Ah, more of that stuff I don't have time to post on properly because I'm too busy nattering about The Wire or Lost.

So first, as usual, some Wire and Lost. For those of you (that would be me and one other lurker on the blog, presumably) who watch The Wire, Entertainment Weekly has listed their 15 favourite moments. Not all of them would be my 15, but some of these are great, especially in how prescient they are (like the chess game). Now I have to go back and watch all of it again to see how much of the ending was evident in the beginning. If you haven't been swayed yet by my constant posting on how awesome this is (seriously, WHY NOT??!!), the first 4 seasons are available on DVD, and the entire fifth season of The Wire is currently (and will be for the next six months) available on The Movie Network OnDemand. WATCH NOW.

For Lost, something a little more upbeat than the usual fare. The Kirk and Skylar Show is something I just discovered, and it's hilarious. This is a father-and-son team who do reenactments of episodes of Lost by using the action figures (the son is a precocious 7-year-old). It's pretty hilarious stuff, especially when they're dealing with a bikinied Sun in the flashbacks. Check it out; I guarantee you'll laugh out loud.

In Treatment continues to be fabulous. Here's a piece in Salon on it, where the writer asks if she's the only one who's obsessed with it. No, I would make two of us. :) Just when I decide which story intrigues me the most, something happens in another one and I suddenly love that one more. All episodes of In Treatment (which is a 43-episode series) are available on The Movie Network OnDemand, so those who have the service can catch up on the series at their own convenience, so if you haven't started watching, start now (new episodes will continue to air each night of the week at 8:30 p.m.).

And I've got some amazing news (FINALLY) on Friday Night Lights. It's not a definite go, but things are lookin' pretty positive for our favourite football show that's not about football. According to several news reports, NBC is very close to signing a deal with DirectTV to do a deal where they'd both air the show in different ways, thus spreading the costs over the two networks and ensuring a third season. Come on, DirectTV!!! Thanks to John for directing me to one of the stories.

Oh, and, um, back to Lost! A week late (I've been meaning to post this forever), here are some answers about The Constant, care of Damon himself. And reader Danielle sent this hilarious link to me, called Lost Madness, where you can try to eliminate Lost characters the same way teams disappear in the NCAA championships. (They refuse to allow you to eliminate Nikki and Paulo together, but presumably whoever makes it to the next round will be instantly squashed.)

Mitch, I love you. Take my advice: GO TO ANOTHER NETWORK!

Paleyfest, you're killin' me. Here are some of the panels, along with the confirmed guestage. Not only do I heart Chuck, but check out the moderator!!!! ARGH.

March 15 Saturday 7:00 pm

Pushing Daisies

In Person:
Kristin Chenoweth, "Olive Snook"

Bruce Cohen, Exec. Prod.

Anna Friel, "Chuck"

Bryan Fuller, Creator/Exec. Prod.

Ellen Greene, "Vivian Charles"
Dan Jinks, Exec. Prod.

Swoosie Kurtz, "Lily Charles"

Chi McBride, “Emerson Cod”

Peter Ocko, Coexec. Prod.

Lee Pace, "Ned"

Chuck

In Person:
Adam Baldwin, "John Casey"

Chris Fedak, Cocreator/Exec. Prod.

Joshua Gomez, "Morgan Grimes"

Scott Krinsky, "Jeff"

Sarah Lancaster, "Ellie Bartowski"

Mark Christopher Lawrence, "Big Mike"

Zachary Levi, "Chuck Bartowski"
Julia Ling, "Anna"

McG, Exec. Prod.

Ryan McPartlin, "Captain Awesome"

Vik Sahay, "Lester"

Josh Schwartz, Cocreator/Exec. Prod.

Yvonne Strahovski, "Sarah Walker"
Damon Lindelof (exec. prod., Lost) will moderate this evening's discussion.

March 19 Wednesday 7:00 pm

Friday Night Lights

In Person:
Connie Britton, "Tami Taylor"

Kyle Chandler, "Eric Taylor"

Zach Gilford, "Matt Saracen"

Jason Katims, Exec. Prod.

Adrianne Palicki, "Tyra Collette"
Jesse Plemons, "Landry Clarke"

Scott Porter, "Jason Street"

Jeffrey Reiner, Exec. Prod.

Aimee Teegarden, "Julie Taylor"

March 22 Saturday 7:00 pm

Gossip Girl

In Person:
Penn Badgley, "Dan Humphrey"

Chace Crawford, "Nate Archibald"

Amy Kaufman, Prod.

Bob Levy, Exec. Prod.

Blake Lively, "Serena van der Woodsen"

Leighton Meester, "Blair Waldorf"

Taylor Momsen, "Jenny Humphrey"
Kelly Rutherford, "Lily van der Woodsen"

Stephanie Savage, Cocreator/Exec. Prod.

Josh Schwartz, Cocreator/Exec. Prod.

Matthew Settle, "Rufus Humphrey"

Jessica Szhor, "Vanessa Abrams"

Ed Westwick, "Chuck Bass"

Cecily von Ziegesar, Author, Gossip Girl books

March 25 Tuesday 7:00 pm

Dirty Sexy Money

In Person:
Samaire Armstrong, "Juliet Darling"

William Baldwin, "Patrick Darling"

Greg Berlanti, Exec. Prod.

Jill Clayburgh, "Letitia Darling"

Glenn Fitzgerald, "Brian Darling"

Seth Gabel, "Jeremy Darling"

Matthew Gross, Exec. Prod.
Peter Krause, "Nick George"

Zoe McLellan, "Lisa George"

Josh Reims, Exec. Prod.

Donald Sutherland, "Tripp Darling"

Blair Underwood, "Simon Elder"

Craig Wright, Exec. Prod.

Natalie Zea, "Karen Darling"

And this one really, really, really hurts:

March 20 Thursday 7:00 pm

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Reunion

In Person:
Amber Benson, "Tara Maclay"

Nicholas Brendon, "Xander Harris"

Charisma Carpenter, "Cordelia Chase"

Emma Caulfield, "Anya"

Eliza Dushku, "Faith"

Sarah Michelle Gellar, "Buffy Summers"

Seth Green, "Oz"
David Greenwalt, Exec. Prod.

Alyson Hannigan, "Willow Rosenberg"

James Marsters, "Spike"

Marti Noxon, Executive Producer

Michelle Trachtenberg, "Dawn Summers"

Joss Whedon, Creator

Kill me now.

The Smartest Show on Television™ Comes to an End
Last night marked the end of The Wire. Most of you come here to see me talking about Lost, but regular readers know I am deeply in love with HBO's fascinating look at the Baltimore drug scene, and all of the levels of bureaucracy surrounding it. This show was groundbreaking in many ways.

And after watching the finale, I can tell you that this show is as close to perfect as a television series can be. Lost has had its missteps (Nikki and Paulo, parts of season 2, parts of season 3), Buffy and Angel each had a bad season, Alias had more than one... but The Wire is near-perfect from beginning to end. It never let me down, and refused to take the easy way out on any of the storylines. Unlike many viewers now, I've been watching this show right from the beginning, so the ending has been five years in the making for me.

And what an ending. My favourite character, Omar Little, died a few episodes ago, not in a hail of bullets, not by Marlo, not by the police, but by a freakin' kid. Randy, the young entrepreneur of season 4, shows up in one single scene this season, broken and disillusioned. His appearance is so fleeting, but it casts a shadow over the entire series. Randy had potential, a LOT of potential. He was smart, sweet, and loyal, and he knew right from wrong. When he went to the police with some information, Herc -- the sonofabitch to end sonofabitches -- kinda, you know, TOLD, and now Randy has the rep of a snitch. He's angry at the police, his innocence is gone, and he probably won't live to see his twenties.

Dukie was the real innocent of the show, however, and we see him again this season, joining up with an older man looking for scrap metal to take down to the scales. Michael was the one who actually turned to the corners by the end of season 4, and by the end of season 5, he's a full-fledged gangster. Marlo and his people ended up in jail, with the exception of Snoop (and when she was told to take out Michael, he was on to her, and took her out before she could do the deed, in one of the most strangely touching scenes of the year). McNulty fashioned a lie that got out of hand, and paid the price for it. Bubbles FINALLY stayed off the drugs, and watching him come to terms with who he is and who he used to be has been one of the highlights of the season.

The season had its share of amazing moments, and many of them came last week. Michael shoots Snoop, and then realizes he's a target, so he takes Bug and Dukie and goes to his aunt's to drop off Bug, and leaves Dukie with the scrap metal guy. As Dukie walked away with his dirty t-shirt and small backpack, paused for a moment in the alleyway, and then realized it's all he had and continued on to sit next to the bonfire, it was a sad, sad moment. I thought it was the last we were going to see him, until the finale, where his story took an even worse turn. He returns to school, patiently waiting outside to see Prez, and when his old teacher comes out, Prez takes one look at his matted hair and dirty clothes and knows he's on the streets. Dukie tells him he wants to get his GED and asks for some money, and Prez knows before he even gives it that Dukie's going to use that money for other things.

McNulty gets outed by Kima, and in the finale he's told exactly what he's going to do -- he'll keep his job until they can fire him quietly, but he won't be allowed to do any police work. McNulty does the right thing, and just "retires," along with Freamon. His wake at the pub was a nice moment, but it was a little odd that no one actually said, "Hey, why are you guys retiring?" When Kima showed up at the end to 'fess up, McNulty blinked once, and then said, "Well, if you thought you had to do it, then you had to do it." It was one of the very, very few insincere lines in the series, I thought. The brass all think McNulty was doing it for the money, but it was to bring down Marlo. In other words, he had to create a crime in order to do the police work that he was actually being paid to do. And Kima, knowing his intentions, ended what he was doing, almost brought down the department, and destroyed Jimmy's career. And all he has to say is, "Well, if you thought you had to..."? I just didn't buy it.

It was the only insincere moment in a 90-minute ending, though. Marlo is told that he needs to retire as well, but just like McNulty breathed police work, Marlo is a gangster. It's what he does, it's who he is, and upon his release, the first thing he does is go right back to the corner and just stand there, doing what he does best. But he's powerless to do anything, or he'll be brought down. So a new army is building, and they just need the $10 million to buy the corners from Marlo. They kill Cheese (thank cripes), they collect the money, and then Michael shows up just in time to take it off their hands, along with a little quip. And in that moment, it was clear: Michael is the new Omar. He's the perfect successor.

In fact,the end of the series -- handled beautifully with a montage of scenes to let you know what the future holds -- illustrated that the next generation is on its way, and things will pretty much continue on as they have been. That one cop whose name I always forget (he helps Freamon with the wire tap this season) goes to a judge the way McNulty used to do in the first season, trying to do an endrun around the department. The final, sad scene we see with Dukie is him shooting up in an alleyway, just like Bubbles used to do. Carcetti becomes the governor, and after we see the way he coldly covers up everything in this episode, we realize it's NOT a new day in Baltimore, as he'd suggested, just the same day, different head honcho. Marlo will be succeeded, the police will continue to try to bring down the corners, the higher levels of government will prevent that from happening, the media will continue to miss all the big stories, and nobody wins.

The only people who show us a modicum of hope in this show are the ones who go out on a limb and do things for themselves. Bubbles gets himself off the corners, and the scene of him walking upstairs to have dinner with his sister's family -- a seemingly innocuous moment, but HUGE if you know the show -- is a triumph of epic proportions for him. McNulty does the right thing and returns the kidnapped homeless man to Baltimore. Michael figures out a way to be on the corners but not being a henchman for the drug dealers.

The Wire is an extraordinary piece of television, and now that it's over, there's only one thing left for me to do: break out season 1 and start watching all over again.

Lost 4.06: The Other Woman

Another great episode! These writers are on a roll... it wasn't quite last week's episode, but I don't envy this one coming on the heels of that one, which is probably in my top 5 episodes ever.

We surpassed 100 comments on my main post last week! Coupled with my followup on Faraday, there were over 125 comments on that episode alone. I'm not sure Juliet will garner the same amount of chatter, but I look forward to discussing it with all of you.

“What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun! And she is MINE, all MINE.”

Previously on Lost...
Last week’s episode was a doozy; my initial post on it alone garnered over 100 comments on my blog. The physics fans were out in full force, and discussions of time travel dominated. The biggest question involved Faraday, easily my new favorite character. He’s written in his journal that Desmond would be his constant if anything went wrong. Des visited him in the past and gave him his coordinates for time traveling consciousness, so how often has Daniel time traveled since then? He has memory problems, are they a “side effect” of his travels? When we first see him, he’s in a home of some sort, with a female caretaker, watching the news of the Oceanic going down. He’s crying, and when she asks him why, he says he doesn’t know. Could he have a residual memory of the future Oceanic survivors that is in his subconscious in 2004? Has he traveled beyond that year? That episode definitely ranks among my faves.

Episode Recap:
I enjoyed this week’s episode, though it wasn’t nearly as good as the one last week. “The Other Woman” featured a flashback (it was rather nice to see one of those again, though I loved how they set it up to look like a flashforward) of Juliet. Faraday and Charlotte head off to the Tempest station (one we haven’t yet seen) and Juliet is visited by one of the missing Others, telling her to follow them and kill them. Through Juliet’s flashback and the present-day events on the island, Ben comes off as more nefarious than before, and we finally see the link between Desmond’s backstory and the people on the island. Overall, an interesting episode, but because the backstory was so close to the one we’d seen in “One of Us,” I didn’t come away knowing much more about Juliet than the fact she was having a secret affair with Goodwin, and that Ben is crazy for her. (“Crazy” being the operative word.)

Highlights:
• TOM!! My favorite Other is back, if only for a brief moment.
• Jack: “You people had therapists?” Juliet: “It’s very stressful being an Other, Jack.”
• Ben asking if the rabbit had a number on it. Ha!
• Hurley beating Sawyer at horseshoes. “Son of a bitch!”

Biggest “GASP!” Moments:
• That’s not a flashforward we’re watching, it’s a flashback.
• Harper appearing in the jungle. Gah!
• Ben sending Goodwin to the tail section of the island was actually meant to be a death sentence for him.
• Charles Widmore is the guy who owns the freighter!!
• Ben: “You’re MINE!!”


Hurley’s Numbers:
The combination on the lock behind Ben’s picture is 36-15-28. One of Hurley’s numbers is 15, and 36 minus 28 is 8. On the computer where Daniel is typing, it keeps repeating the same warning: “CROSS FEED ASS/16 OVERPRESSURE ALERT!”

Did You Notice?:
• The writers drew a parallel between Juliet saying to Ben that she’ll only be on the island for six months and doesn’t need such an elaborate house, and Sun saying they’re about to be rescued and asking why Juliet is building such a strong shelter.
• The psychiatrist’s name is Harper Stanhope. I think her name is foreshadowing the Orchid Station that I talked about in last week’s column (the station whose orientation video was shown at Comic-Con and appears to involve teleportation). The Stanhopea is a genus of the orchid family, and appears to be an upside-down orchid. The flower blooms for such a brief period (three days at the most) that it has developed a way to spread its pollen to avoid extinction. The flowers usually die on the second day, which is interesting… on the island, the pregnant women die in their second trimesters.
• The new station is called the Tempest, no doubt after Shakespeare’s play (my favorite one, incidentally). The play is about a magician, Prospero, who is alone in an island with his daughter, Miranda, a result of his brother putting them there. They were saved by an island spirit named Ariel, who is a servant to a witch, whose son is the deformed island native, Caliban. When a storm created by Prospero causes a shipwreck, the island gains new inhabitants, mainly Alonso and his son Ferdinand. Prospero sees a possible mate for his daughter in Ferdinand, but makes him his servant so he can earn her hand. Meanwhile, Alonso thinks his son is dead, and Prospero keeps the truth from him until the end, while Caliban conspires with the other shipwreck survivors to bring down the magician. The play is full of magic, mystery, and daddy issues . . . in other words, the perfect Shakespearean counterpart to Lost. Could Ben be a more Machiavellian Prospero? Or is he Caliban?
• Goodwin mentions that a woman named Henrietta died that morning. She has the female version of the name Ben uses as his alias, Henry.
• Claire tells Locke that she might be a less intimidating person to talk to the freighter folk… perhaps foreshadowing why Aaron will be left motherless.
• The material in the flashbacks happens concurrently with many of the same events in “One of Us,” but it fills in some of the gaps for us. Juliet comes to Ben’s house in a rage in that episode days before the plane crash because she’s just found out he has a tumor, and she’s begging him to let her leave the island. Now it’s clearer that not only did she want to see her sister, but she was becoming increasingly worried that something could happen to Goodwin, and she was being stalked by Ben. Then he shows her proof that her sister is alive and well and has a son, and Juliet is eternally grateful. Here we see her going to his house for a dinner party (for two) shortly afterwards, and she’s kind to him.
• Ben and Juliet talk about Zack and Emma – these are the two children who were in the tail section and Ana Lucia vowed to protect them, but they were taken in the beginning; we saw them again last season standing outside Jack’s cage with Cindy, the stewardess.
• Yet another Red Sox reference. If this really IS the same tape that he showed Jack, it means the video was recorded in the last month, since he showed Jack that tape a month before the events here.
• The symbol for the Tempest station is strange, and not as obvious as the others. I’m assuming we’re supposed to look in the white part and see a wave (?) If you look at the black sections instead, it looks like a sperm with a giant apostrophe over it (ooh… did I just become the perfect test subject for some Rorschach psychiatrists?)
• The title of this episode seemed to apply not only to Juliet being the other woman in the relationship between Harper and Goodwin, but Jack and Kate.
• Locke used to be one of my favorite characters, but now he’s a tool.


So Many Questions...
• Where has Harper been all this time? Will we see any of the remaining Others who vacated Otherville when Juliet was left behind?
• Juliet asks Harper how Ben could possibly know what Faraday and Charlotte are up to if he’s being held prisoner, and Harper says, “Ben is exactly where he wants to be.” What does this mean? Is it possible that Ben has figured out how to astrally project himself in some way similar to Walt? Or has he also figured out how to move his consciousness around like Desmond did in the previous episode? Could he have time traveled and created more than one of himself? (Yes, I’ve been thinking far too much about last week’s episode, and watched that Orchid video one too many times.)
• Now that we know the freighter folk were sent by Widmore, does that mean the map that Faraday is holding could have been from the Black Rock journal that we saw Widmore buy in the previous episode? It looked old-fashioned (actually, it kind of looked like a map of Middle Earth) and there were plenty of “unknown” sections marked on it. On the south end of the island there’s a distinct spot circled, which could be the survivors’ camp, and in the middle there’s something sketched out, which may be the Black Rock itself. The only words I could make out on it were the arrow at the top, pointing to the mountains, marked, “Possible Path Through Northern Mountains.”
• Daniel looks surprised when Kate tells him Locke has Miles, but he was right there when Sayid took off with Miles and traded him for Charlotte, and Frank said he never liked Miles anyway. Did Daniel forget this happened?
• In the flashback where Juliet is showing Ben the microscope, she says the white blood cells are dropping in women who have conceived on the island, “…which makes me wonder…” and then she doesn’t finish her sentence. What was her theory?
• Is Ben telling the complete truth about Widmore? Ben is as sneaky as it gets, especially when it comes to Locke.
• So… the revelation of the man on the boat is something that would make Locke need to sit down. Who the frak is it?? (I repeat: Michael.)
• If Charlotte and Daniel were really trying to save everyone on the island, why not just TELL people that, rather than act like they’re going to do them all in and get them all in a tizzy?
• Why is Ben so obsessed with Juliet? When she asks why he would let Goodwin walk into the lion’s den, he replies like some sort of stalker, telling her in an impassioned way, “Why? You’re asking me why? After everything I did to get you here, after everything I did to KEEP you here, how could you possibly not understand? That you’re MINE.” What is UP with that? He makes it sound like he was hunting her down for reasons other than her being a fertility doctor. I thought the Zack and Emma thing was a little curious being thrown in here… was it there because of Ben’s response, that they’re children, and children forget? Could Juliet have forgotten something from when she was a child? Is it possible that she’s the Annie we saw Ben fall in love with as a child?
• Or, could Juliet remind him of his mother, and when he said children forget, he was being sarcastic, because he’s never forgotten her, and she’s the biggest loss of his life? This could tie in to the fact that all of the mothers on the island end up dead and their children are never born. Could there be a connection? Is Ben actually behind that, too?

Next week: It’s a race to get Sun off the island, and the preview says we’ll see the last of the Oceanic Six, and a face we never thought we’d see again. If the “last” of the Oceanic Six is one person, then it would seem Aaron IS being counted as one of them, which is ridiculous, since he wasn’t one of the Oceanic passengers on the manifest when the plane went down.

The Constant: Daniel
I've been raving for the last few episodes about Jeremy Davies' brilliant turn as Daniel Faraday, the mad scientist who has been sent to the island for reasons not yet fully clear. In "The Constant," Davies upped that performance to award-worthy, and made me even more intrigued about this guy. Forget flashforwards concerning the Oceanic Six... I want to get some more flashbacks of this guy!

So what's going on with him? We see in this episode that he used to do his research at Oxford University. He specialized in time travel and anomalies in time-space, and was constantly doing experiments involving electromagnetic flashes. He tells Desmond that he would conduct these experiments up to 20 times a day, protecting his body with a lead vest, but, as Desmond points out, not his head. Now that Desmond is experiencing time flashes in his consciousness, the first question Daniel asks Jack is whether or not he's encountered an electromagnetic surge of some kind.

Has Daniel experienced what Desmond is going through, as a result of not putting something on his head during these experiments? He's written in his journal in the past that should anything go wrong, Desmond is going to be his constant. So... has it already happened? Has he already been to the future in his consciousness?

But what about his memory? If he's already been to the future, shouldn't he have had a memory of all of this happening before? In "The Economist," Desmond comes walking up over a hill and Daniel doesn't seem to show any recognition, despite Desmond being crucial to his experiments in 1996.

But in "Eggtown," we see Daniel and Charlotte playing a card game where she's showing him cards, then turning them over, and he can only remember two out of three of them. Daniel is suffering from some sort of memory loss, which must make his research (and daily life) so frustrating for him. Was the memory loss caused by his exposure to radiation? Or was it caused by him becoming unstuck in time?

All of this brings us back to the first time we see him, in "Confirmed Dead," where he is sitting on the couch watching news of the crash of Oceanic Flight 815. A woman (who was later revealed by producers as his "caretaker") finds him crying, and asks him what's wrong, and he says, "I don't know." Could he have some residual memory of being in the future and knowing these people who are now "confirmed dead"? Is it possible that Daniel is a time traveller who forgets his travels as soon as they happen? What if he's already been to the future, but doesn't remember doing it? Some part of his unconscious could remember it, and that's why he's so upset on the couch.

We have a GREAT discussion going on in the comments here, so check it out if you want to find more insight into the episode. My next post will be pulling my favourite theories from those.

Lost 4.05: The Constant

I LOOOOOOOVED this episode. Loved it. At every commercial break, I felt like Daniel Faraday, rushing online to look up names, try to put things together, checking old notes on Hawking, going, "Okay... no, I got it... okay if I just go here... oh, I love it... um..."

Last week's episode was more about old-fashioned storytelling and big gasp moments, but this week's was doing what Lost does best.

And it doesn't hurt that it's about Desmond. SWOON...

Let's discuss. I have a feeling Matthew, Brian, and my other resident physics experts will have a LOT to say. :)

Want to understand what’s going on in this week’s episode of Lost? Should have paid more attention in Physics class.

Previously on Lost...
To really get into the mood for this week’s episode, you must think back to the season 3 episode, “Flashes Before Your Eyes.” In this episode, we see what happened to Desmond when he woke up after the hatch imploded/exploded. He goes back to the time where he was about to ask Penny to marry him, and thinks he’s been given a second chance with her, that the island never happened, and now he can be with her. He runs into a strange woman when buying the ring, named Mrs. Hawking, who tells him that he must let fate run its course, and if he tries to change the past or the future, there will be a “course correction” that will happen to change things back. That episode led many fans (including myself) to read Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, a book on Ben’s nightstand and a favorite of one of the Others, where Hawking discusses black holes and time travel. I’d recommend it to anyone trying to understand that episode, or the this one. (I wrote a brief summary of the book in Finding Lost — Season Three: The Unofficial Guide, pp 67-72.) I won’t pretend to know a lot about time travel and parallel universes and wormholes, but some of the readers on my blog know a lot about it, and we’ve spent the last week chatting about various possibilities. I was thrilled to see some of them seem to come true this week.

Episode Recap:
Mindblowing episode. This is the reason the hardcore fans love Lost. When Sayid, Frank, and Desmond are flying to the boat in the helicopter, Desmond suddenly finds himself in the Army in 1996. Just as he begins convincing himself the helicopter ride was a nightmare, his consciousness moves back to himself in 2004 . . . but that self no longer has any memory of anything that’s happened after 1996. Throughout the episode, Desmond tries to reconcile his two worlds and find a way to make his time travel stop, and his answer lies in finding a constant, something that is part of both worlds and means a lot to him: Penny.

Highlights:
• Faraday in 1996 . . . he’s almost as unhinged as he is now.
• Daniel putting on a radiation vest and Desmond saying, “So what do you put on your head?” (That suddenly explains a lot.)
• Daniel saying, “I’d be careful crossing the street if I were you!”
• The phone call at the end, and Desmond finally making contact. I was so scared that he was going to suddenly die, I was holding my breath.

Biggest “GASP!” Moments:
• Dan saying that their perception of time on the island is not necessarily the same as to those on the helicopter.
• Desmond not recognizing Sayid.
• Daniel telling Desmond to go and find him in 1996!
• The Black Rock journal.
• Penny and Desmond FINALLY making contact!
• Daniel’s mysterious journal entry. I guess now he and Desmond need to be reunited.

Hurley’s Numbers:
Desmond is travelling 8 hears back in time. Dan’s machine has to be set at 2.342. The Black Rock painting is auction lot 2342; the bidding opens at £150,000. Penny’s new address is 423 Cheyne Walk. The numbers in Penny’s phone number add up to 46, which is 23 x 2.

Did You Notice?:
• Frank’s “cheat sheet” says he has to go North bearing 305. Michael was told by Ben that he had to bear 325. I’m still convinced that he’s going to be Ben’s man on the boat.
• Sayid leans forward to chat with Desmond about what Charlie said (that it wasn’t Penny’s boat) and he’s talking to him as if Frank can’t hear, but Frank is also wearing the headphones, and can hear everything they’re saying.
• There seemed to be an inconsistency with what happens to Desmond when he moves from one time to another. In the army sequence, he’s standing and saying he’s not supposed to be here when his consciousness moves back. When he returns to his consciousness in the stairwell and the auction house bathroom, he’s unconscious on the floor.
• Daniel in 1996 says he’s going to “unstick” Eloise in time. That’s a reference to Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, where the protagonist is “unstuck in time,” bouncing around to various moments in his life.
• At this year’s Comic-Con, Damon and Carlton showed another of the hatch orientation videos for the Orchid Station, and in the video Marvin Candle (going by yet another alias) is holding a rabbit with a 15 painted on it. Partway through filming something shoots by him, and he looks up to see the same rabbit sitting on a shelf above him. He cries, “Don’t let them see each other” and runs to the side of the room, as if it’s the same rabbit, one in the present and one time-travelling from another era. In this episode, it appears only Desmond’s consciousness is time travelling, but the rabbit was doing it physically.
• The painting at the auction is of the Black Rock. We already knew it was a slave ship, and that the Hansos had something to do with it (in the online ARG, The Lost Experience, it’s established that Magnus Hanso owned the ship; in the screen cap of the season 2 blast door map, we can see a spot pinpointed where Magnus Hanso is buried on the island). Now we know it had left Portsmouth, England, for Siam, and was lost at sea.
• As Widmore leaves the room with Desmond, you can hear the auctioneer say the next lot is a collection of Charles Dickens books, which is interesting since Desmond has read every book except one, which he’s saving for when he’s about to die. Also, Portsmouth, England (where the Black Rock departed from) is Dickens’ birthplace.
• On the calendar where you see the days marked off with X’s, there are no X’s over the dates October 20, 21, 22, or 23. The Boston Red Sox won the American League Championship Series on October 20, and went on from there to win the World Series. Could that have caused some seismic reaction in the world that made four days go missing on the calendar?
• Penny’s address and phone number were clues in the Find 815 online alternate reality game.
• At the end of the episode, after his consciousness moves back to 2004 and he’s talking to Penny on the phone, we see him in 1996 walking away from her apartment, rather than going comatose, which would suggest the zipping back and forth has come to an end because he’s found his constant. However, there’s a smile on his face, as if he actually has a “memory” of what is happening in the future.


So Many Questions...
• Does this mean Desmond’s starting fresh and won’t have any memory of his time in the hatch or any of the people on the island?
• Why is Desmond’s consciousness in 1996? In other words, why, by moving between the two time periods, does he have no memory of the future? In Hawking’s book, he says there are three arrows of time, and the psychological arrow is the direction in which we remember the past, but not the future. It’s in conjunction with the other two arrows, thermodynamic (entropy increases with time) and cosmological (the direction in which the universe is expanding, not contracting). If one arrow turns, it can turn others. I wondered in my book if, because Desmond had tried to go back in time to change his life, thus decreasing the entropy and turning his thermodynamic arrow, could he have turned his psychological one and that’s why he can remember snippets of the future? But in this case, things seem to have turned back, and now he can no longer remember that future. Interesting that in “Flashes Before Your Eyes” he could remember his time on the island when he went back in time, but this time around he can’t. Could it have something to do with the electromagnetic surge he was feeling during the implosion/explosion?
• What is in the sky that caused him to suddenly jump time, and why does Desmond’s exposure to the electromagnetic surge make him prone to it? Is there a wormhole surrounding the island, as I’ve suggested before, or one section of the bubble surrounding the island that is a wormhole, and the helicopter slipped through it?
• Why doesn’t Frank know why Desmond is freaking out? Charlotte and Dan both know about it, and on the boat everyone seems aware of it.
• George Minkowski tells Desmond that he was getting calls from Penny on his console and he was under strict instructions not to answer it. Why?
• George says to Desmond at one point, “You look a lot older now, huh?” Could this be the explanation for Walt? Maybe the Others exposed Walt to some radiation on the island, and then when he and Michael tried to leave on the boat, he began having the same experiences that Desmond is having. But . . . does that explain why he looks older to us? Hmm....
• Who opened the door to the sick bay. Could it have been . . . Michael?!
• How did Desmond know Mr. Widmore would be at the auction house? Why did he give Penny’s address to Desmond? He despises him.
• If it’s December 24 on the boat, does that make it December 25 on the island? The current timeline suggested the previous episodes were happening on Christmas Eve, so that would make it Christmas on the island. The episode moment I want to see: Jack drawing Locke’s name in the Island Secret Santa.
• So... if Desmond met Daniel in 1996, wouldn’t 2004 Daniel have a memory of it? Or could that be explained away by Daniel’s apparent memory problems? In last week’s episode, it appeared that Charlotte had shown Daniel three cards, turned them over, and then he could only remember two of them. Is he suffering from memory loss?

Next week: The action returns to the island, and Charlotte and Daniel appear to be risking their lives to reconfigure a computer. They also appear to be in the Orchid Station.

Random Stuff for a Tuesday
Lots of little things have been passing by my blog and not making it on because I've been spending all my time talking about Lost. So let's talk about some other things, shall we?

But first, LOST. (Oh stop it, this is my thing.) My pal Jeremy blogged last week on a series of Lost maps that are incredible. A fan named yung23 has studied screen caps of various maps on the show, and then put together any scenes of shoreline that he's seen, and by doing that has created a bunch of maps -- flat and three-dimensional -- that he believes are accurate depictions of the island. You can read all about how he put it together in a long thread he's posted here.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that I'm posting this for a regular reader, "cartographer." I would presume by his screen name that he might have some insight into the maps. :)

You've probably all seen this by now, but in case you haven't, Sarah Silverman was on Jimmy Kimmel, who's been joking at the end of his show that he's run out of time again, and is going to have to bump Matt Damon. So she put together a song about how she's f&#%ing Matt Damon, and Damon participated. It's hysterical:




If that doesn't work, the link is here.

So earlier this week, Jimmy Kimmel ran his response video, where he's f&#%ing Ben Affleck. But he took it to a new level, with an all-star cast singing a "We Are the World" song about it. Watch for a certain cast member of Lost singing (YES, I know, it all comes back to Lost). I just wish this one hadn't been bleeped.



And that link is here.

The TV Addict has posted on the Parent's Television Council's damnation of Dexter. If you've read my Buffy books, you know of my hatred for the PTC. They went against Buffy for using religious iconography to fight the vampires, without realizing that Joss was suggesting that something like a cross actually had power AGAINST evil. These people don't think. Ever. Seriously, if Dexter were broadcast at 4 in the afternoon, I'd have an issue with it. But if, as the TV Addict says, your little kids are up at 10, you are the one with the problem, not CBS.

This is Star Wars, as recapped by a 3-year-old. She talks a lot like my daughter (and is the same age) so I think that's why I laughed so hard when I saw it.




And finally, finally, another Mitchell and Webb, making fun of game shows that make absolutely no sense. That's Numberwang!!




This post has been brought to you by YouTube.

Goodbye to My Favourite TV Character

In life, a titan on the corners.

In death, an unknown body in a bag with the wrong tag.

Rest in peace.

Lost Sneak Peek (no spoilers here)
A few people have asked if it's OK to talk about the sneak preview of this week's Lost that's currently being shown on the ABC site. There are two scenes from this week's upcoming episode, one on the beach, and one... not. Both of them are "whoa" moments.

I won't talk about them right here, because some people would consider them spoilers. I'm a serious spoilerphobe, but in the sense that if a week ago someone said, "Okay, in this week's episode Kate's on trial and JACK shows up and starts talking about how she was a hero" I would consider that a spoiler. But if ABC had been showing the scene in advance and I was able to watch it, I don't consider it so much a spoiler because no one spoiled it for me; I was able to see it for myself.

So if you want to talk about it, go here to watch the two previews, click on the square with Sneak Peek and Sneak Peek 2, and then I'm opening up the comments board below to discuss. If you don't want to see them or hear about them, please don't look at the comments.

But one thing before you comment: PLEASE only talk about these previews. I don't want any talk about anything outside them that you might have heard. I go into each episode unspoiled, and if spoilers start to fly on these boards, I'll just delete this post. I'd love to chat about it in advance (hell, Lost fans will talk about anything, so considering we've got about 4 minutes in clips to discuss, I'm sure we could go on for weeks speculating!) but I don't want to be spoiled for anything else. Thanks!

Breaking News: The Oscars this Year Didn't Suck!
I love the Oscars. Not the telecast, I hate that. And the overblown "What are you wearing?" red carpet stuff? I could do without that. And generally I disagree with the people who get the statues.

So what's left to love? Those little moments. And... the competition. Every year for many years I hosted an Oscar party with my best friend S., and we'd come up with elaborate menus, spend two days making the food, invite up to 35 people over, and everyone would drop $5 into a pot on their way in and then compete to see who'd take it home. I used to go see three or four movies a week, and when the Oscars came, I would pride myself on having seen every single film in the best picture, direction, writing, and acting categories. Now, I'm lucky if I've seen one film in each category. My biggest rival was Jeremy, and every year he'd show up just to have his ass kicked by me. (Okay, he might have gotten a higher score than me once or twice, but don't tell him I admitted that.) Having a pot worth up to $175 made those film editing categories suspenseful and exciting.

This year, I watched the Oscars alone. Even my husband sat upstairs working on our taxes. What films had I seen in the big categories mentioned above? Juno. And as of Saturday, Gone Baby Gone (and if you have small kids, I don't recommend it. I was traumatized by this film, and it's the last time my husband's allowed to go the DVD rental store alone.)

And sitting on the couch, watching it, I have to say it's one of the best telecasts I've seen. Apparently when the writers have only had 10 days to work on that terrible banter, they write funnier stuff. And when the nominees have been thinking for so long that there wouldn't be a ceremony, they're just happy to be there, and thanking their agents and lawyers come second to just turning in a great speech.

But I think I have a new favourite Oscar moment. With no ballot in front of me, and barely caring about any of the movies, when John Travolta walked out to list off the nominees for Best Original Song, I sat up, held my hands together and whispered, "Once Once Once Once." And when he said, "Glen Hansard," I shrieked. The looks on the faces of Hansard and Marketa Irglova were priceless, and then Hansard got up to give the humblest speech of the night, shocked that they were even allowed up on the stage (he later joked that he felt like the plumber at a flower show). Marketa leaned in to say something, and the orchestra immediately began playing. She turned and walked away just as the orchestra stopped suddenly, and then they restarted. Jon Stewart joked, "Wow, that guy is SO arrogant," but after the commercial, Stewart walked this immensely shy woman back out onto the stage and she gave a heartfelt, impassioned speech:

"Hi everyone. I just want to thank you so much. This is such a big deal, not only for us, but for all other independent musicians and artists that spend most of their time struggling, and this, the fact that we're standing here tonight, the fact that we're able to hold this, it's just to prove no matter how far out your dreams are, it's possible. And, you know, fair play to those who dare to dream and don't give up. And this song was written from a perspective of hope, and hope at the end of the day connects us all, no matter how different we are. And so thank you so much, who helped us along the way. Thank you."

There was a lot of love for this little film in the audience. Colin Farrell, in introducing the two before they performed the song, could barely contain his excitement about their performance. As Travolta listed off the nominees, there was a roar from the audience as he announced "Once." When Hansard and Irglova got up to go the stage, the camera zoomed in on Laura Linney, who was almost in tears with happiness. Phillip Seymour Hoffman had his arms above his head clapping (maybe they watched the film together?) Even Jon Stewart mentioned how fantastic the film was.

I reviewed the movie on my blog after seeing it in the summer (short version of review: possibly the best music movie ever). I talked about it again when I went to see Hansard and Irglova live. I can't remember the last time I felt such an emotional attachment to a film, and I'm certainly not the only one. What an amazing Oscar moment (their performance was great, too).

Other fave moments:

• Tilda Swinton's loopy and hilarious speech about George Clooney, saying he wore his nipple-endowed Batman suit under his clothes in Michael Clayton, and hung upside down when he slept. (Her dress was definitely... unique. It's like she thought, "Hmm... might be cold, might be warm; I'd better dress for both.")
• Waiting for one of the presenters to take a nosedive after Miley Cyrus, Colin Farrell, and John Travolta all slipped on the same patch of floor right next to the podium (leading Farrell to say, "Someone should do something about that"... they didn't).
• Marion Cotillard being a surprise upset. Since I wasn't married to any of the performances, it was just cool to see someone completely shocked to win, and act like it. Her speech was giddy and wonderful.
• Daniel Day Lewis bowing to be knighted.
• Javier Bardem mentioning his haircut in No Country for Old Men.
• Jon Stewart saying Away from Her is about a woman forgetting her husband. "Or, as Hillary Clinton refers to it, the feel-good movie of the year!"
• Forest Whitaker. The guy just walks on stage and the 'classy' meter shoots way up.
• Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill's onstage banter. They're in front of a gajillion people and they were joking around as if sitting in their basement.

Low points:

• I love Tom Hanks, don't get me wrong, but does he always have to be so damn cocky? Whenever he, George Clooney, or Julia Roberts take the stage, all you can hear resonating around them is, "DAMN, I'm good." Meanwhile, Hilary Swank has also won two Oscars, but she certainly doesn't act like it. If I were Tom, I'd be a little pissed that they showed my Philadelphia speech from 14 years ago, because in that time, his face has become so puffy you can barely see his eyes.
• Speaking of which, hey, Renee Zellweger! OPEN YOUR EYES!!!!
• John Travolta's hair. If you had to wear a wig, would you choose one that's THAT awful???
• Those damn songs from Enchanted. While I was thrilled to see Kristin Chenoweth singing one of them, that last song made me want to vomit. WHO the HELL voted these terrible things in??? "Falling Slowly" was on a whole other plane. I loved Amy Adams in Junebug, but I couldn't stand her on stage in these songs.
• I think it's amazing that the honorary lifetime achievement Oscar went to someone who was 98, and he actually showed up, but come on, couldn't you cap his yak time at around 5 minutes or so? He seemed to go on for an eternity.
• The Coens' non-speeches. Apparently these guys are wordsmiths strictly in the written sense.
• Katharine Heigl. Did anyone else think she was going to cry? She looked TERRIFIED.
• Steve Carell not doing a sketch with Jon Stewart. Cripes, what does it take to get these two back together??

Lost 4.04: Eggtown
Was that a bombshell or was that a bombshell? While there wasn't much to the stuff going on on the actual island, the flashforward made for some intrigue about what is going to happen in the eventual rescue. Will Claire be sacrificed? Will she die and Kate rescues her son?

And, uh, who thinks they'll start having nightmares about Locke? Sheesh almighty.

I love this season!

Lies and the lying Oceanic Six liars who tell them . . .

Previously on Lost...
Last week’s episode saw Daniel Faraday conducting an experiment that resulted in a 31-minute time discrepancy between what the clocks on and off the island said. Here’s a suggestion I made on my blog: Maybe there’s a bubble surrounding the island, being held there through electromagnetic energy. When Desmond reads the printout and says his electromagnetic surge was on September 22, it would indicate that time is actually moving at the same pace, since that’s also the date off the island. But what if the actual bubble is a black hole, and if you get stuck in it, time moves differently. Last season there were several references to “A Brief History of Time,” and in that book Hawking talks about black holes and how time moves differently in them (he also suggests that if a person fell into one they’d be ripped into spaghetti, but let’s not get into specifics). What if by passing through the bubble, you can age more quickly while in there, so you have to move through it as quickly as possible? Notice that Faraday tells Frank at the end that he has to go back exactly the way they’d come. Maybe he found the hole that allows them to pass through the bubble quickly, and he needs Frank to follow that exact same path or risk getting stuck in there? It could certainly help them deal with the fact that Walt is 12, but Malcolm David Kelley is almost 16 — the writers could trap him in the black hole and he’ll age three years in a matter of minutes.

Another possibility is that there are wormholes in that bubble, allowing people to pass into a different time, into the future and into the past. In that case, the flashbacks, flashforwards, and present time on the island could all be happening at the same time. On with this week’s episode.

Episode Recap:
Great episode! While Locke turns into a madman, Kate takes Miles to Ben, where Miles insists that he knows who Ben really is, and asks Ben for a ransom of $3.2 million so that he’ll tell the people on the freighter that Ben is dead. Kate and Sawyer play house for a bit, Locke trumps Sayid as the most sadistic torturer on the island, and Juliet and Jack find out that the helicopter didn’t actually make it back to the freighter. Three years later, we see Kate on trial for her pre-crash crimes, and discover one blond-headed secret she brought back with her when she was rescued. (And no, it ain’t Sawyer.)


Highlights:
• Seeing everyone hang out in Otherville as if they’re in the real world.
• Hurley: “You just totally Scooby-Doo’d me, didn’t you?”
• Hurley watching Xanadu. Ha! (I’m sure there’s some deeper meaning to Kubla Khan and Coleridge or just the stupid movie and the Greek muses, but I’ll leave that to you guys to hash out.)
• Wine in a box.
• Sawyer referring to Locke as Montezuma when he hears the toilet flush.

Biggest “GASP!” Moments:
• Jack’s many, many, manymanymany lies, beginning with Daniel and Charlotte being there to rescue all of them.
• Locke saying if he were a dictator he’d just shoot Kate. Gah!
• Kate’s got a SON?!
• Jack showing up at Kate’s trial… and telling more lies. That the marshal had died in the crash… that only 8 people survived the crash… that Kate had assumed the role Jack really had in the crash…
• Regina not knowing about the helicopter. Uh oh…
• Locke reaching a whole new level of torture technique. Holy Gestapo, Batman! Horrific… (interesting that we now have something connecting Locke and Mikhail)
• AARON?!

Yes. Aaron.
The big bombshell at the end of the episode was that Kate’s “son” is in fact Aaron. Is Aaron one of the Oceanic Six? He wasn’t technically on the flight to begin with, and Jack mentions in court that eight people survived the plane crash, and six of those people lived. Aaron wouldn’t have been one of those people if he’d been born on the island, so I’m thinking there may still be two other people who will be revealed. Jack doesn’t want to see Aaron because he’s a reminder of their deceit, presumably. Aaron calls Kate “Mommy,” so I would assume Claire is not one of the Oceanic Six, and Kate has raised him as her own. What happened to Claire? Did Kate and Jack sacrifice her somehow? Or did she die and Kate agreed to take care of Aaron for her? Was Aaron’s existence publicized when the survivors made it back to the real world? The lawyer talks about him like some well-kept secret, which would have been difficult considering the publicity surrounding the rescue. One thing is for sure: Now we know who Kate meant when she said at the end of season three, “He’ll be wondering where I am.”

Hurley’s Numbers:
Miles asks Ben for $3.2 million, and Ben asks why not 3.3, or 3.4. I SO wanted Miles to say, “Uh… because 3.2 could be turned around to 23, which is one of Hurley’s numbers?”

Did You Notice?:
• The episode opened on Locke’s eye; in previous seasons this always signalled the episode and flashback would be about him, but not this time.
• Locke sleeps in Ben’s hospital bed.
• The book that Locke chooses for Ben is Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi novel VALIS. This is a thinly veiled autobiographical work about Dick’s philosophical and religious beliefs, where Dick narrates, but creates a main character named Horselover Fat, who is also Dick, to add some objectivity to the situation. The two argue throughout the book in a Socratic way about their Gnostic belief systems. VALIS stands for Vast Active Living Intelligence System. From Wikipedia:
VALIS has been described as one node of an artificial satellite network originating from the star Sirius in the Canis Major constellation. According to Dick, the Earth satellite used “pink laser beams” to transfer information and project holograms on Earth and to facilitate communication between an extraterrestrial species and humanity. Dick claimed that VALIS used “disinhibiting stimuli” to communicate, using symbols to trigger recollection of intrinsic knowledge through the loss of amnesia, achieving gnosis. Drawing directly from Platonism and Gnosticism, Dick wrote in his Exegesis: “We appear to be memory coils (DNA carriers capable of experience) in a computer-like thinking system which, although we have correctly recorded and stored thousands of years of experiential information, and each of us possesses somewhat different deposits from all the other life forms, there is a malfunction – a failure – of memory retrieval.”
• When Locke gives Ben the book, Ben says he’s already read it, to which Locke responds, “You might catch something you missed the second time around.” This seems like a comment on the viewers who watch the episodes over and over again, catching new details every time.
• The scene where Ben and Locke face off mirrors the same scene in season 2 when Benry was locked up in the Armory. And just as he did then when he walked out and smashed all the dishes all over the place, Locke falls for it AGAIN and lets Ben know that he’s won this round, and has gotten to him. Locke, Locke, Locke… when will you learn??
• This is the first conversation between Jin and Sun we’ve seen all season. Interesting that last season so many fans were up in arms for the first three episodes because we didn’t get to see enough of the other characters, and this season we’re seeing even less of the others, yet no one is complaining. Looks like the writers finally found the right balance.
• Emilie de Ravin looks like she’s wearing a wig.
• The backgammon is back, but it’s so different now. In season one, when Locke was playing it with Walt, he seemed like a generally good guy. Now he’s… not.
• Everyone seems to be referring to Hurley as Hugo these days.
• Kate’s listening to Patsy again.
• Kate was never able to resolve her issues with her mother by remembering her in flashback, and finally resolves them in the flashforward, which is a first.
• I was hoping that Sawyer didn’t want Kate to be pregnant because he was scared she’d die. Now I realize it was a more selfish reason.

So Many Questions…
• Eggtown?
• Did you notice the way Miles was sitting in the boathouse when Kate came down to see him? He was all hunched over in the chair. Could he have been communicating with the ghosts of the island? I’m convinced that Miles has been talking to them since he got there… he’s possibly talked to Dharma victims from the Purge, other survivors who didn’t make it, Nikki and Paulo (no wonder he’s raving like a lunatic; wouldn’t YOU be if you had the Undynamic Duo in your head?) Could he have been talking to the dead on the flats when Jack and Co. first came upon him?
• Why has Jack maintained that Kate was the real hero in the crash? Was it out of love? Was it to deflect attention from himself? He’s clearly been doing it since the rescue (she mentions that she’s heard him say it over and over).
• Why would Sawyer immediately tell Locke about Kate’s plan? Is he trying to stop her before Locke does more damage to her?
• Miles tells Ben not to treat him like one of them, and says he knows who he is and what he can do. Who is he? What can he do? Miles talks to him with a lot of hostility. Does it have anything to do with Miles being a ghost whisperer? Are the dead telling him things that Ben has done?
• What the heck were Charlotte and Dan doing with the cards? How was Dan able to know what those cards were? Why is he so frustrated that he’s not making “progress”?
• So what happened to the helicopter? Did they not follow the same path?
• In case I forgot to mention it… AARON??!!

Next week: Looks like things don’t go so well for Sayid and Desmond.


UPDATE: Lostpedia is posting that the definition of an "eggtown" is the following:
Egg-town is a pejorative term that refers to the days of bartering, during the Great Depression. A traveling salesman would have to barter his candy or tobacco or shoelaces for different commodities. A poor exchange would be for eggs, a relatively common item that is also highly perishable. Nobody wants to trade for eggs from a traveling salesman because they have their own, so the salesman who accepted an egg in exchange was forced to accept a bad deal. Salesmen would use the term like "If I were you I would stay away from Bogart. That's an egg-town." Of course, the lack of trust among salesman was also high, and it was likely that one salesman would lie to another about the quality of a town's customers to keep them for himself. Invariably, the second salesman ventures into Bogart only to find it is truly an egg-town. He is either persuaded to not visit a town that has good customers or is tricked into visiting a town that can only offer eggs. The term "egg-town" represents a deal with undesirable outcomes in either case.

UPDATE 2: Bill Ervolino's got a great rundown of the episode over on his blog, including pointing out the conversation Claire had had with the psychic way back in "Raised by Another," where he told her that that baby could absolutely NOT be raised by anyone other than her. Hmm...