Oh that Family Circus

Peanuts and Andy Capp and the joys of sequential art made me a reader. Among my earliest memories are moments lying on the living room floor on a Sunday morning in Fairborn, Ohio, in my little kid pajamas, reading the Sunday comics while a cat would walk across or plop itself down right in the middle of B.C. or Wizard of Id. It was those brightly colored stories, each panel leading to the next to some punchline, that lead me to comic books - the same thing as Sunday funnies but thicker and more variety and a lot more to read and to books.
So when DC in 2009 launched its 12-issue weekly Wednesday Comics series, printed on folded up 14-by-20 inch sheets like Sunday comics, no glossy covers, with each of the 15 storylines getting one full page a week so that you had 15 different stories going simultaneously, each one done by a different artist/writer combination, I was hooked instantly on the concept.
The hardcover collection (200 pages, $49.99) lets you plow through each storyline one after the other - the dark noir murder mystery Batman story by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso followed by the delightfully pulpy Kamandi story by Dave Gibbons and Ryan Sook and so on.
For a concept that harkens back Sunday comics, the test is fun. And some of the stories hit that in spades - the Deadman story by Dave Bullock and Vinton Heuck, where he tries to stop a serial killer and ends up battling demons in some extra dimension where is alive again; the wonderfully pun- and gag-filled Metamorpho written by Neil Gaiman and arted wonderfully by Mike Allred (what will it take to get those two to work together again?); the gritty Sgt. Rock story by Adam and Joe Kubert; and maybe the highlight being the goofy, bright Supergirl story featuring Krypto, Squeaky and Aquaman, courtesy of Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner.
Really, the mediocre turns are few and far between - the Demon and Catwoman team up that never clicked; the Superman story that had great art and a nice concept but a weak payoff; and the confusing Wonder Woman tale.
What shines through is that the people doing this had fun. The time twisting Flash story, the fun Metal Men piece, all of them show writers and artists having a blast with the tropes of superhero comic-ing and the Sunday funnies format without being condescending about the whole thing. It's also a love letter to the comic fan - among such bigger names as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, you have a Kamandi piece, an Adam Strange story - characters that are far from household names.
This isn't a book to get someone started on comics - there are plenty of options for that. But Wednesday Comics is a great way to get someone back in if they've been gone. Grade A.

The first round of Yo-Jo Cola is on me.

The 1980s were a golden era for toy/television synergistic marketing crossovers like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe or Thundercats. And the granddaddy of them all was G.I. Joe.
It started as a Hasbro toy line of 12-inch action figures in 1964. (I remember having one in the late 1970s with a bristly sort of beard, though in terms of toy technology it was primitive compared to my Steve Austin with a small crummy magnifying glass built into his skull you looked into a small hole at the back of his head through the magnifying glass and out his bionic freakin' eye.)
And then in 1982 Hasbro rebooted the line with 3.75-inch action figures, playsets and vehicles and put the characters in these garish proto-military costumes and gave each one of them funky nicknames and a weird terrorist-like enemy called Cobra whose members had their own nicknames and '70s Studio 54 looks (I mean, Destro had a shiny metal headcovering mask and wore this leather outfit open to the navel, what was that all about aside from partying with Kristy McNichol and Norman Mailer) and the whole thing was obviously very superhero influenced. And thus was born the modern G.I. Joe line It was popular enough that in 1985 came the cartoon series. That reboot also spawned a Marvel Comics series.
And sales of that were good enough that in 1986, Hasbro and Mavel put together a second G.I. Joe title (the same kind of marketing notions behind the multiple Batman, Superman and Spiderman titles that are forever on the shelves at your local comic store, which is probably not all that local as they are fewer and farer between). G.I. Joe Special Missions was billed as telling the stories of "some missions so secret, so sensitive that even the Joes who go on them are told only the bare minimum."
Which brings us to G.I. Joe Special Missions vol. 1 (2010, 182 pages, $19.99, IDW), which reprints the first seven issues of the series and a prequel that was part of G.I. Joe issue 50.
First, the pluses. Writer Larry Hama is insane. A Vietnam vet, martial artist and longtime writer/editor in the comics world, he's been attached to numerous G.I. Joe products for years. And he clearly has a ball with this stuff, with most every story in the collection focusing on a small team of Joes on some kind of mission, some of which are amazing in their outlandishness - like disabling a toxic payload in an old Nazi bomber that never made it on its original mission to NYC and ended up frozen in a Greenland glacier but now is about to fall out of the glacier and into the sea and maybe kill millions and meanwhile Cobra troops also are after the bomber and meanwhile a SEPARATE Joe team is in Brazil to secure the help of an old Nazi who can disarm the toxic gunk bomb in the bomber but he's also being pursued by a squad of Israeli intelligence, oh and by the way one of the Joes is descended from Holocaust survivors and do you see what fantastic melodramatic fun this guy is having with all these plates going at once? Or there's this piece of primo dialogue from a group of terrorists who take over Cobra's consulate (!!!) in NYC - an incident the Joes use as a distraction to also break in: "Cobra must withdraw all support from the neo-conservative party hardliners that have turned Sierra Gordo over to the illiterate peasantry so that a Menshevikista intermediate regime can take custodianship of power until the masses can be elevated to the level at which they can rule themselves ..." I mean, even Joe leader Duke would sympathize with the Baroness as she slaps her forehead in tired exasperation at that moment.
And alongside Cobra, there's also a constant Soviet threat that creates either antagonists or the plot device that gets many of the stories going.
Artist Herb Trimpe - whose work with Marvel dates back to the Silver Age - does a decent job capturing the sort of cartoon nature of what is going on in this universe where a Joe hides in bushes in a snowy Eastern European mountain range wearing only his boots and boxer shorts as he uses his clothes and chicken blood as a decoy for the helicopter of Soviet bloc thugs chasing him.
And the Mike Zeck covers reprinted in the collection are, like everything Mike Zeck has ever done, a comic art wonder to just study and stare at, with his lines really capturing great splashes of action as well as intensity on the faces on the cover. He might be the master of guns blazing.
Some issues are stronger than others. "Burn Out," featuring the Joes in some Middle Eastern nation with a parallel story of an American pilot working for the regime there falls flat, and the artwork at one point becomes confusing in terms how one of the main characters actually looks, thus creating a speedbump in the reading enjoyment.
And the $19.99 price tag is a bit hefty (though obviously there are places like instocktrades.com where pricing is less withering.)
To be sure, Special Missions is not a place to look for character development or messages or insight into anything. It's over the topness can be draining after a few issues in a row, kind of like eating too much chocolate. But for big stupid fun, it's a good read.

From the library: The Unwritten tpb. vol. 1

Tom Taylor is kind of a loser. The son of a famous writer who disappeared when Tom was a child, Tom tried such routes as acting, writing and music, but never amounted to anything. He makes his living as Tom Taylor, son of the famous writer who wrote a huge YA series about a young wizard named Tommy Taylor (a sort of Harry Potter-esque thing), by appearing at book signings and promotional events.

Except now Tom has questions about whether he really might not be the son of Wilson Taylor, increasing numbers of people think he's either a fraud or actually Tommy Taylor made flesh, and his life is taking on weird parallels to the Tommy Taylor series.
That's the basic premise of The Unwritten, a Vertigo series written and arted by Mike Carey and Peter Gross. The monthly series launched in July 2009. The first trade paperback ($9.99, 144 pages) collects issues 1-5.
This series has gotten a lot of love in critical circles. And the premise - about the importance and power of stories - is intriguing. The highpoint is issue 5, which takes a slight digression from the main Tommy Taylor story to give us some background on the shadowy conspiracy/supernatural group that tries to control storytelling, focusing on Rudyard Kipling's interactions with them and manipulation by them. It's a smart series, with references to everything from Milton to Frankenstein, with Carey obviously being well read and doing his homework and this putting him perhaps on the same level as Neil Gaiman in terms of sheer amount of intellectual content.
The main storyline, with Tom Taylor, is not disappointing. But it's obviously a slow build. After four issues, a lot has happened, seemingly, but you don't quite know what yet.
Am looking to seeing the second and third trades of this, as it builds and as you get a better sense of what exactly is going on.

Going through the cassette crate: "Grave Dancers Union" reconsidered

In which a cassette from 1992 evokes mix of wistful nostalgia and slight disappointment at one's younger self.
Is that normal for everyone, that you slightly kick yourself for years of wasted popular culture consumption when you could have been filling your eyes and ears with a better caliber of pop culture? I don't regret my metalhead days of being glued to "Headbangers Ball" in the Treadway third floor lounge, but I wish I also could have appreciated at the time music like the Clash (too reggaeish for my tastes then) or the Cure's "Disintegration" (too goth emo, though I didn't yet have that vocabulary).
At the opposite end of the spectrum, how much listening did I give to the Goo Goo Dolls, Live, and Soul Asylum's big commercial breakout, 1992's "Grave Dancers Union." True, this thing churned out adult-alternative hit after hit - "Without a Trace," "Runaway Train," "Somebody to Shove." The album sold more than 3 million copies, "Runaway Train" won them a Grammy, and the band even played at Clinton's 1993 inauguration.
At the time, I disliked this album heavily. If it wasn't Dinosaur Jr., Swervedriver or Nirvana's "Nevermind," I was having none of that.
But it's not bad. Opening track "Somebody to Shove" has an aggressive guitar riff and urgency in singer Dave Pirner's vocals that are stroner than the jam-band-lite grooves that mark many of the tracks. "Keep It Up" could've been an '80s guitar pop hit straight from Triumph or Foreigner, down to the "na na na na na na" refrain.
But there are misses too."I want to live with you in the fifth dimension, in a dream I've never had." Really, "Homesick"? Really?
Soul Asylum, like Live and Goo Good Dolls, should be categorized together - the Luckiest Damn Bar Bands in the World as acts that scaled far bigger heights than I'd ever expect if I was listening to them now for the first time.

From the longbox: Jonah Hex issue 50

It's a tricky tightrope to mix dark, heavy story with bright, cartoony art in comics. Series like The 'Nam and Queen and Country - about Vietnam and British espionage, respectively - are still debated in fanboy circles as to whether the art complimented the story or was a speedbump to its enjoyment. And Queen and Country personally took me a little effort before I came to appreciate the various pencillers and the almost Disneyesque art approach the book took even as it told stories of spies and the ruins of their personal lives.
In the same vein, I can see some people having trouble with the art of Darwyn Cooke in Jonah Hex #50 (DC Comics, Dec. 2009, $3.99). Cooke, whose work looks like a cross between Ditko and Harvey Comics, is best known for his retro projects like New Frontier (which retells the DC universe story in the 1950s) and his mid 2000s relaunch of the classic Spirit character, also for DC. Cooke's art has a decidedly Silver Age feel, with clean lines, little shading and eyes a little bigger than life. All of which makes it an interesting choice for the 50th issue of the latest Hex series. The Old West bounty hunter antihero - known for his horribly scarred face and always wearing remnants of a Confederate uniform - dates back to the early 1970s. The 21st century relaunch of the book by DC, written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, is notable for its constant bleakness and refusal to give Hex any redeeming qualities. He's a humorless, remorseless killing machine. In issue 50, we see the story of Hex and Tallulah, a female bounty hunter who similarly is facially scarred (she also has an eye patch), with whom he had a child. And in the course of the story, we see several dozen killings, one dog kicking, a baby cut out of a pregnant woman - Tallulah - and a final image of an infant-sized coffin. Fun for the whole family. If your family watches Leaving Las Vegas together.
A saving grace of the book is the levity in amidst all the darkness. The single panel of Hex with a lit cannon pointed at an occupied outhouse like some kind of weird Roadrunner cartoon bit, an arched "are you kidding me?" eyebrow of a prostitute Hex gives to a grizzled prospector type for information. All those moments come in the first half of the book, the second being about the collapse of the domestic idyll Tallulah had tried to create and then Hex's search for their infant kid and the climactic gunning down of a huge collection of fugitives for whom he was searching.
Another saving grace is the fact Hex is always fascinating to watch, just like any skilled tradesman. His trade in this case being riding and shooting and chasing down people roughly as bad as him (though history is written by the winners). While there's no easy simplistic "good guys winning" motif here, the book would quickly become unreadable if not for the audience's realization that. as horrible as life is in this largely lawless universe where the good men and women who make up the background characters routinely suffer and die miserably, at least the villains regularly get the comeuppance. I need to get some trades of the Gray/Palmiotti run. I imagine they will become well thumbed.

From the longbox: Star Brand

The best comic book characters - the ones carrying with them classic Greek tragedy levels of suffering - don't want to be comic book characters. Batman would have been much happier and more content if his parents had lived. The Hulk and the Thing don't want to be superstrong-yet-misshapen freaks. Spiderman's great power comes with great responsibility that's always messing up his life. Being a superhero in the real world would probably suck.
Which brings us to the tragedy that is Star Brand. The 19-issue series, which ran from 1986-1989 in Marvel Comics' New Universe imprint, was created by writer Jim Shooter and artist John Romita Jr. It told the story of Ken Connell, a Pittsburgh-area guy in his 20s who works for an auto detail shop, rides his dirtbike on weekends, and one day was handed the Star Brand - essentially this unlimited power to do anything - fly, invulnerability, strength, bring back the dead, etc. etc.
Star Brand started with an interesting concept as it blended some real world situations (people like the Libyan government start trying to track down Connell to use his power) with a weird mystery (who was the old guy who just handed this d-bag unlimited power and then tried to get it back?) with always-strong Romita Jr. art. Add to that the fact that Connell turned out to be not all that noble a guy, as he screwed around on his girlfriend and turned out to be sort of a self-pitying loser.
Unfortunately, the wheels came off the cart pretty quickly on this one as a succession of writers caused and artists vast unevenness.
And even when Star Brand went for broke, with Connell accidentally destroying the city of Pittsburgh and killing a million or so people, it made the mistake of going overboard and too far into the comic book world (with mutated creatures coming out of the pit that was Pitt) instead of maybe evaluating more what would the world be like with a true Superman. Writer/artist John Byrne came aboard for the last third of the series and was given the unenviable task of trying to wrap it all up. And issue 19 in fact did tie everything together and semi-solve all the questions, but in a rushed way.
Interesting side note: in the Legends miniseries for DC that Byrne did around the same time, Byrne had a Star Brand-like character caught by Green Lantern who accidentally zapped his own foot off, probably a thinly veiled jab at Shooter, who was well known in the comics world for being the tight manager Marvel needed at the time (getting books out on time, bringing in people like Frank Miller) who also happened to have no people skills and alienated vast numbers of writers and artists.

Half-eaten Apollo Bar, going once, going twice ...

A-hem. My birthday is coming up next week. JUST in time for the auctioning of props from 'Lost.' From the press release from the auctioneer:

Profiles in History, the world's largest auctioneer of Hollywood memorabilia, in partnership with ABC Studios, will be auctioning the props, costumes and set pieces from the hit ABC television series, LOST August 21-22 live from Barker Hanger in Santa Monica, CA. WORLDWIDE bidding begins at 1pm PDT both days. Bids can be placed in person, via mail, phone, fax or live on the Internet by visiting www.profilesinhistory.com or www.liveauctioneers.com.

Included in this auction will be the Swan Station Computer, which is an Apple-II Plus system running an Apple-III monitor, with a Disk II floppy drive, each featuring DHARMA logo.

Here is the complete catalog description of the computer:

This configuration is an Apple-II Plus system running an Apple-III monitor, with a Disk II floppy drive, each featuring DHARMA logo. This prop computer was used at the Swan station and by Desmond, Locke and other cast members to enter "The Numbers" every 108 minutes. It is the destruction of the Swan station computer that prevented "The Numbers" from being entered, leading Desmond to trigger the fail safe mechanism, causing the Swan station to implode. (Of trivial interest is a 1980s film, entitled "The Self," employed in some psychology classes today, which features an Apple-III computer monitor that is used to test the effect of positive personalities. Incidentally, the numbers 4, 8, 16, and 23 appear frequently in these tests.) The monitor currently exhibits the DHARMA Tempest station logo, indicating its subsequent use in the Season Four episode, "The Other Woman."

For more information and to download the free LOST: The Official Show Auction catalog, please visit www.profilesinhistory.com/lost-the-auction.html


Highlights include Hurley's Camaro, a DHARMA van and Jeep, a large section of Oceanic Flight 815 wreckage, Dogen's hour glass from the Temple, Sawyer's improvised reading glasses from Season One, polar bear collar with DHARMA Hydra station insignia, Pearl station printer with "System Failure" printout, Swan station turntable, Man in Black's ancient dagger, two crates with six Virgin Mary statues, Ben's orders to commute Juliet's execution, dial mechanism and mirror array from the Lighthouse, a row of Oceanic Airlines plane seats, Desmond's fail-safe key with "Joe Inman" dog tag, Jin's wedding ring, Swan station Hatch door, Eko's signature staff with Bible scripture carvings, Daniel Faraday's journal with extensive handwritten notes from his time travel experiments, nuclear bomb core detonated in Season Five finale, Hurley's winning Mega Lotto Jackpot ticket, and Sawyer's letter to the man who murdered his parents.

From the longbox; Namor the Sub-mariner

Moreso than Neil Young, Canadian John Byrne (technically a British-born immigrant and now naturalized American) made me who I am today.
At the peak of my comic-reading life, in the 1980s, Byrne's involvement was all I needed to pick up a book. From the clean lines of pencils to his writing, I was a sucker for his run on Fantastic Four and his work on Alpha Flight. And I thought his revamp of Superman in 1986, toning down the power level, was exactly what that character needed.
So digging through comics brought back from Dayton, I was intrigued to find issues 15-29 of Namor the Sub-Mariner with art and story (for most of the run) by Byrne. ($1 cover, until $1.25 with issue 23).
Byrne started the series, which recast Namor as a corporate titan whose company, Oracle, was never quite clearly defined but had something to do with environmental protection. And Namor, like Tony Stark, Bruce Wayne and Danny Rand, joined a line of superheroes who walked around in business suits until they had to go on some mission and would turn the reins of the company over to someone else.
On the plus side, Byrne's art was as solid as ever during the 1991-'92 run of the seris that I own. And his love of Marvel is evident by the cameros galore - Capt. America, Dr. Strange, Iron Fist, the Super Skrull, the Punisher, Savage Land, Ka-Zar and Shanna, and WOlverine. There are some charming bits in the run, like the two pages of Phoebe Marrs celebrating the death of her brother (another corporate titan type involved in some corporate chicanery against Oracle or some such).
And the story brought back Iron Fist, who had been killed off a couple years earlier.
I still have a sort of love for Byrne's purple prose. (Like when he tells Cap in issue 15 "It is not permission I seek, old friend. i am called back to Atlantis on a mission most urgent. I am here to tell you i am going and the petty laws of surface humans are not sufficient to restrain me." Or this narration in issue 20: Within the space of a single heartbeat, Namorita's lithe form was gone, vanished into the darkness of the angry waters.)
Really the series dropped off a cliff with issue 27 and artist Jae Lee and with Byrne only doing the story but scripting left to others. The tone changed heavily, the art wasn't nearly as appealing and the writing somehow became even more overwraught and ungainly. That proved to be a good quitting time.

From the longbox: The Psycho

It's taken literally 18 years, but the entire comic collection is out of mom's basement and now is cluttering up the wife's and my apartment. I've been culling out some to give away here and there. And some I've been re-reading and, to varying degrees, enjoying.
Case in point, issues 2-3 of 'The Psycho' (DC, 1991, $4.95).
A three-part miniseries on high-quality paper (thus the premium price), 'The Psycho' was the work of writer James Hudnall and artist Dan Brereton.
I have no recollection of buying this back in the day, so it was like reading it for the first time. I'm presuming that it was either the art or Hudnall's presence (he being involved in one of my fave works, Strikeforce Morituri) that got me to pick it up and shell out that premium cash at a time (college) when money was somewhat at a premium. (Or so it seemed - I never imagined the tightness of cash that would come a couple years later living off $16K in Ashland, Ohio). Brererton, meanwhile, is one of the few painters who works pretty much solely in the comics art field. He's best known for the mid '90s book The Nocturnals.
The Psycho premise is a sort of Captain America/Martial Law offspring. The U.S. back before WW2 discovered a drug that creates superpowers, and the second half of the 20th century became in essence a Cold War over superpowers instead of nuclear weapons. The U.S. president is a former U.S. operative who killed Hitler and later Castro. The Soviets have their own army of superbeings. And there's a small island nation that offers tax-free residency to these 'psychos' so it has a booming population. (You and I without powers are 'norms.')
Against that backdrop, Jake Riley, a U.S. govt. agent assigned to monitor psychos, ends up in a Bourne-like thing on the run and being chased by the government and ending up having to get psycho powers himself. Thus he becomes this Hawaiian-shirt and mask wearking guy, The Psycho, who is - of course - the baddest of the bad asses out to uncover the conspiracy that set him up or something.
The whole thing is on the clunky side. The subplot with the Soviets developing the atomic bomb never gets developed well. Same with the issue 3 twist involving Riley's girlfriend. And the book seems gratuitously violent for violence's sake. While the initial premise is interesting, you've read this sort of thing done better in Martial Law or The American.

You are the new number two

So when the big Lost six-season complete DVD set comes out, and there surely will be one, one added bonus will be a few minutes of extra footage showing some of Hurley and Ben's interactions as the new Jacob/Richard dynamic duo.
That according to an interview with Michael (Ben) Emmerson.
Whoever picks up that set, you have to throw a viewing party.

It's Bob $*&@^ing Newhart

I gotta admit, I chuckled aloud at these. Especially the thought of Jin completely unable to parallel park. I mean, that space is huge.

More analysis of Earth 2

The Definitive Guide to WTF Just Happened on ‘Lost’ - Film School Rejects

Who's Who

This is a great, fun resource of who's who on and off the island. And the caricatures are nice too.

But is it art?

The serial TV drama as serious art, more than just entertainment? And LOST as part of that pantheon? Discuss.

Personally, I think there's something valid in the argument. Art comes when we look at some of the fundamental questions of human existence. FRIENDS was often a hoot, but I don't know that I'd call it art. It was entertainment, a distraction. LOST on the other hand made one contemplate issues of fate vs. free will and the nature of good and evil.

So what do I do with my time now?

I knew that on some level it'd be disappointing.
You can't build up and build up layer upon layer of mystery and character development with all these quirky twists ("waitaminute, waitaminute ... after flash forwards and flash backs, we're flashing sideways?") without at some point hitting a wall.
And it's not as if last night's series finale of 'Lost' - and man, I wear my nerd badge proudly to say those six words make me a bit sad - was without merit. I appreciated the Jack/Flocke knife fight climax. While I call bull**** on his survival, it was cool to see fan fave Lapidus bobbing there in the ocean. And I'm always going to be a sucker for jerky camerawork and styrofoam boulders falling.
But c'mon. It literally came down to pulling a big rock out of a hole and then putting it back into a hole while bright light was shining everywhere and when the act of doing so was sure to kill you? Did the writers have a slumber party and watch 'Wrath of Khan' at some point?
And I'm still digesting how I feel about the realization that Earth 2 was Purgatory. And thus everything we've been watching there in terms of plot really had nothing to do with anything. And thus half of season 6 really hasn't had a point or a purpose, as it was completely disconnected from the plot of the show. And Jack's kid was imaginary. And the atomic bomb set off on the island years ago apparently had no effect except maybe bouncing the Losties back through time to now. And the whole Earth 2 thing was apparently cribbed from the movie Jacob's Ladder.
Jimmy Kimmel apparently had a good observation, that in the first ep. of this season, during the plane turbulence, Rose told Jack "You can let go," which wasn't about his death grip on his armrest at all.
And ultimately I'm a little disappointed to find out the series was all about Jack's journey. He's been a good character, mind you, but not any more compelling than Locke or Ben. (In a side Jack note, the overt Christian imagery around him came by the bucketload last night, didn't it? From the church ending to the wound in his side?)
There were some fine moments - Ben and Hurley briefly reminiscing about the time spent together as the Jacob and Richard. And Vincent got some screen time, to satisfy the animal lovers among us.
I don't think the finale was a failure by any means. I think not every mystery needed to be wrapped up nice and neat. So we don't know what the deal was with Walt or the Dharma Initiative or why it is Juliet and Desmond on Earth 1 could seemingly briefly see into Purgatory or what the deal is with Hurley being able to commune with the dead the way islanders Miles and Man in Black could. OK, I can live with that. But at the same time, the way the producers have almost been proudly talking about the way they're not going to reveal everything, that that is part and parcel for the show, seems like a convenient cop-out too.
In the end, I was a little more emotionally touched than I thought I'd be with that scene of dying Jack on the jungle floor, watching the jet take off overhead and his eye slowly closing in a nice little bookend to what we saw six years and countless debates ago.

Because every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints

Among the cameos as we head toward home plate, I never expected to see Rousseau or Ana Lucia. So their brief appearances in "What They Died For," the penultimate ep. of the rapidly winding down Lost was a hoot.
So too was the ep. as a whole. We got a boatload of answers. We got some more major character deaths (Widmore and Zoe and presumably that's the last we see of Jacob). We got the storyline winnowed down to its climactic fundamentals, at least on Earth 1 (Jack and crew vs. Smokey over the light at the heart of the tunnel). And we got the pleasure of seeing more threads tied together on Earth 2 with characters bumping into each other all over the place and the fun of trying to figure out what Earth 2 Desmond actually is up to. (Presumably it has something to do with getting our characters back on an Oceanic flight, seeing as how he punk'd Jack with a phone call seemingly to get him back to the airport).
After seasons worth of speculation, it was good to finally see a clear cut, voice of God explainer of some of the major questions we've had. Yes, the chosen Losties all are there because they were flawed people ripe for some sort of redemption (sucks to be you, Rose, Bernard, Frogurt and everyone else who just happened to be on the flight). And the reasons why Kate is now off the list - actually having something to live for off the island - fits into that well.
And we got far too little Miles and Richard, though it was nice to see a return to form for Ben on Earth 1 (and indications of an interestingly creepy potential future for Rousseau and Earth 2 Ben).
We also got some annoyances. Ben is just able to gun down Widmore when previously there were some kind of never-explained rules that kept them from killing each other? Widmore turned from baddie to redeemed guy because Jacob enlightened him to the error of his ways? The character Zoe ended up being killed off without ever fulfilling any kind of role? Is Richard dead? That's what passes for instructions on how to safeguard this island - a few mumbled words, a swig of water and a "son, you're on your own" sendoff? Even the Greatest American Hero got an instruction manual.
And how is it that Jacob was able to go off island to the Losties to begin with? As we saw last week, the whole issue boils down to he and bro being unable to leave.
I imagine that a lot of these questions never are really going to get answered in a sort of 'leave that to the imagination' kind of way. And frankly, entertainment is rife with creations that had great buildups that didn't hold together under the light of day (I'm lookin' at you X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, numerous Stephen King and Dean Koontz novels), so having not everything spelled out from a storytelling standpoint is perhaps better, despite the inevitable howls of viewers who've been watching this as a puzzle to be solved.

Don't get into a bidding war with me for that Apollo Bar wrapper

Eagle-eyed blog reader Frank E. sent in this nugget. ABC is auctioning off some props from the show.

Monkey chicken duck

Nothing at all to do with Lost. I just like it.

Go start your own blog, Lost purist. See if I care.

Adam raised a Cain

"You're born into this life paying for the sins of somebody else's past." - Bruce Springsteen.
So mad props to actor Titus Welliver, he playing the Man in Black in our most recent installment of Lost. His frustration, his rage and ultimately his hurt at the dang unfairness of it all, it really swung for the fences.
"Across the Sea" is going to be a polarizing episode. It didn't actually give us a lot of meat to chew on and instead went all mystical/magical/ill defined. And CJ from 'West Wing' left us with just as many new questions - these unfortunately will never be answered - as answers about what the heck at the end of the day is going on. And even a Lost apologist like me who even like the Nikki and Paolo episode, I'm mixed on what we were given.
It would've been nice to get a better sense of what exactly the Jacob vs Smoke Monster conflict actually boils down to. Presumably Smokey is some kind of primal evil. But is protecting the island the same as keeping Smokey on island?
So Smoke Locke wants off the island because that's what was motivating Man in Black when the smoke monster imprinted on him. Also hardwired into Smoke Monster from Man in Black is apparently the dislike of humanity, seeing them as venal and corrupted.
And apparently Jacob is immortal because he drank from the same hooch that Allison Janey's character did at some point seemingly looong ago. But how did she kill off those people on the other side of the island, Man in Black's cohorts?
And why isn't Smoke Monster now wanting to stay on the island, since that also was Locke's desire?
And finally I was a little annoyed at the season 1 flashback spoon feeding me the reminder about the Adam and Eve skeletons. THat's been one of the pleasures of the show, someone not giving exposition explaining everything to me. And yes I realize that seems to contradict what I was just carping about in terms of not having the Jacobian conflict better spelled out. Bite me.
Your thoughts?

My heart will go on

Go ahead, hate me for the lateness of this week's post. Lack of Internet access will do that.
Anyway, to the heart of the matter ...
Wow. Just wow. Obviously we're picking up momentum as we hit the final stretch of the series, so the writers feel liberated enough to take a few chances. Like kill 3.5 major characters, just wipe them off the face of the map. (Lapidus, with his awesome Beastmaster hair, I count as half a character, though he was one of my favorite tier two folks).
"The Candidate" was far more on action than answers - though a big one was solved with the realization Locke doesn't need all the candidates, he needs them dead. And even though there are only three eps. left, I still see it pretty shocking to kill off Sayid, Sun and Jin like that. And for even Hurley to break down like that was nice evidence that this show still has some great ability to tug at viewer heartstrings.
An interesting twist to show how very different Locke's life on Earth 2 was sans island - still in the chair, still a heaping dose of self loathing, but this time for turning his beloved poppy into a vegetable instead of being the perennial sucker who gets hosved out of a highrise window by dada.
I also like how even with Desmond's interference, Jack is getting this weird sense that something is amiss in Earth 2 just because every third person he meets was on the same flight as him (and speaking of Desmond, I'm now of the 'Desmond is to become the new Jacob' camp because what has Earth 2 Des been doing? Going around influence Losties lives just the same way Jacob did to get them on the island. Nice parallel there).
So why did Locke take the explosive off the plane only to plant it on the sub? Why not jst let everyone on the jet? Was he counting on a gunfight with Widmore's people to force Jack on the sub? I'll chalk that up to TV drama. Meanwhile, where was Widmore during all this gunplay? And was it Widmore who wired the plane or Ben/Richard/Miles, who set off to do just that? And who here like me is feeling increasingly bad for Claire, who is getting ditched left and right like the unwanted younger sister when you and your friends just want to go to the mall (the mall in this case being a submarine)?

A Primer/Recap of Season 1-5 if you need it.

This made me laugh.

Reunited and it feels so good

Finally.
After so much teasing and so much leading up to it, we've finally got some major intersections that really indicate what we all know - the sprint is on for home plate.
First, we've got the paths of the Earth 2 Losties increasingly coming together and overlapping. You know that in an episode or two we're going to have the scene of everyone - or at least the candidates - standing around sort of looking at each other, wondering what the heck they do next as they remember their lives on island. I imagine it being in a warehouse.
Second, we briefly had a shot at having all the Oceanic survivors finally back together until Jack jumped ship.
And thirdly, we had the loooong Sun/Jin separation storyline finally come to a bit of an awkward end - I expected a little more emotional resonance with the thing. Though maybe that's how real life would be anyhow - a bunch of people standing around awkwardly while two people embrace near a sonic pylon.
We got some good solid answers on the Smoke Monster Impersonation deal, that he can only take on the form of dead folks. So that was him as Christian Sheppard. And that was him as Yemi, talking to Eko. Interestingly, that was NOT Smokey as Walt in those times we saw the Walt sightings around the island.
And I can't take credit for this insight, I read it online, but now we see why it was important, according to the psychic, for Claire to raise Aaron - here we had been going along thinking it was for Aaron's sake. But really it was for Claire's, as she's gone relatively batpoo insane. Though there also might be some hope for her redemption, it seems, as she's going along with the Losties instead of Locke. (And credit for best line of the night, as usual, goes to Sawyer: "Who the hell is Anakin?" Game, set, match, Lost writers).
So Smoke Lock promised he'd return dead Nadia to Sayid? We know Jacob said he cannot raise the dead - he told that to Richard back in the 1800s. So either A) Smoke Locke and Jacob have very different abilities (which seems somewhat likely since we have no reason to believe Jacob could also become a deadly cloud of smoke) or B) Smoke Locke is lying to Sayid with the thinking that 'hey, once I get off the island, none of what I promise these doofwads matters.' Which seems likelier.
Meanwhile, I'm increasingly convinced that Jack must be the likeliest Jacob replacement. If all the Losties are needed to get off the island, why has Smoke Locke taken a particular interest in Jack, going off into the jungle to talk to him specifically (in a nice parallel to the constant confrontations that were going on early in the series between Jack the Self Appointed Leader Who Was Having None of This Faith and Numbers Entering Crap and Locke.
And did the Widmore folks pull guns on the Oceanic crew because Jack was not there? Or was the whole "Deal's off" thing just how it always was going to play out? (On a side note - I'm really looking forward to the point when Widmore's henchwoman Dirty Tina Fey gets shot or kicked in shin or something. She's a jerk).
Your thoughts?

Lost-tacular

I love Lost, don't get me wrong. But the series finale being a five-hour TV extravaganza? With a two-hour retrospective, the two-hour finale, and a special, Lost-centric edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live? That's a lotta Lost.

Mom always said never play with dynamite in the house

To revert to my Ohio roots, yee-haw, son, that was a heckuva ride. The "Everybody Love Hugo" episode (only five left!) was a heaping mess of TV fun. You had Illana go kablooey. You had the return of Michael and Libby. You had Fake Locke cold bloodedly take out Desmond (ahades of when Ben shot Real Locke and left him for dead in that pit of dead Dharma folks back oh so long ago).
And interestingly, you had the scenes from next week's Lost, "The Last Recruit," accompanied by a snippet of dialogue from the uber creepy, out of control boat ride in the 1971 classic "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory." Which is a nice parallel in some ways to the direction the show is taking this season - Willy Wonka being all about finding a replacement and testing recruits as they go through this psychedelic, increasingly elaborate freakshow of a place. And like that boat ride, where the boat seemingly is speeding out of control heading to doom while increasingly disturbing images flash in the background, the climax of Lost seems to be heading in the same direction, with things spiraling out of control and heading to disaster before, soon, they pull to a stop and all is revealed.
And speaking of reveals, so now we know those whispers are the spirits of dead folk caught in an island limbo (thus making those protestations from the show creators a couple seasons back that the Lost folks are not dead and in the afterlife technically true but a bit misleading).
We see the evolution of our Earth 1 Losties, as Jack is embracing his new role as Not the Guy In Charge Fixing Everything, a mantle Hurley is picking up.
I think Ben hit the nail on the head when he said that the island seemingly was done with Illana, and thus she got a big sendoff. Interesting sidebar question - is the Island some kind of entity like Smoke Locke or Jacob? Is it a consciousness as well? Whose side is it on?
Another side question - we see Chang at the opening of Hurley's wing at the natural history museum in Earth 2. Wasn't he killed by the nuke going off back in 1977? How exactly can he be here?
Favorite scene, though, must be Earth 2 Hurley drowning his sorrows not at a bar but over a bucket of fried chicken. Can't be any worse for you than a bottle of bourbon, one supposes.
A close second was Desmond's relative calm serenity whether he's deep in the jungle in what should be an "oh fudge" kind of moment when someone gives the equivalent speech of the "we're miles from where anyone could hear you scream" chestnut or whether he's running down a handicapped guy in a wheelchair with his car. And was that move supposed to kill Earth 2 Locke (and if so why) or to trip his memory of Earth 1 (and if so, surely there's an easier way to do it. I mean, near death worked for him and Charlie in bringing back their memories, but criminy, it only took some kissing or a TV commercial for Hugo and Libby. Seems a wee bit unfair in a grand scheme of things kind of way, no?)
So once these Earth 2 Losties all realize what's up, what then? Hop another Oceanic 815 flight perhaps simultaneously as some big electromagnetic pulse is being unleashed on Earth 1 by Widmore and crew?
What'd I miss? Your thoughts?

We are experiencing technical difficulies

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Much apologies for the delay in this week's edition. We here at Lost Talk Central have been so transfixed by the bizarre train wreck that is the new Tiger Woods Nike ad and by noisy neighbors (his name is Tray) that a lot of things have fallen by the wayside.
So this week is housekeeping week, catching up on reader mail.
Doug from Fairborn, Ohio, writes: So what, now Desmond is going to try to convince the Earth 2 Losties to revert to their original destinies?
I think you've hit the nail on the head, Doug. We see now that Earth 2 - which we knew to be the world where things were slightly different from ours - is actually a sort of time-warped mistake, as if Biff had gotten his hands on a sports almanac from the future and became super rich and Marty had to go back in BttF II and get that almanac. The interesting corner the writers have put themselves in (and let's face it, that's what we always enjoy the most in our entertainment, that "how is Indiana Jones/Elinor Dashwood/Navin Johnson going to get out of THIS one?" moment) is to see how exactly that's going to happen. I mean, in 1977 an atomic bomb went off on the island, meaning no Oceanic 815 crash and seeming no island, even. That's a pretty tight corner to write your way out of, knowwhutimsayin'?
Marv from Boca Raton, Fla., writes: How'd you like them parallels?
Marv, you know us here so well. If nothing else, we're suckers for references and allusions, from Charlie's open hand in the car which resulted in Flashsideways Desmond's flashback to Charles Widmore offering Desmond the aged Scotch that in another life he denied him. We also dug seeing Daniel Farraday as a weird twitchy musical impresario instead of a weird twitchy physics genius.
And wasn't it awesome that the slight hints we've had that the two universes are not completely separate now are a full-throated scream as evidenced not just by Charlie, Daniel and Desmond but also by Eloise still playing her role as time cop (at one poitn chiding Desmond for some unnamed 'violation'), writes Beverly of Boulder?
Damn straight, Bevs. Even the ultimate aggravation of this show - to be chock full of questions and mysteries and then in the final season add a whole new layer of questions atop that - is still a constant hoot and frankly I don't care about the illogicality of it half the time, the characters and Easter eggs and little moments (like seeing Charles Widmore finally get smacked around a bit like he was trespassing on Clint Eastwood's lawn) make it all the worthwhile.
Dennis of Chicago writes, so if Smokey gets off the island, everything ends. But couldn't he have gotten off the island in Earth 2, after the bombing, so why is everyone there still alive?
Excellent question we here have been pondering awhile, Dennis. Hopefully someone answers this at some point.
The show has got a lot of balls up in the air right now - Smokey and his posse trying to get off island, Widmore having some plan to use the pockets of island electromagnetism to keep him there, Desmond having some tragic destiny to play in that Widmore plan, the bleeding over from Earth 2 to Earth 1, Earth 2 Desmond trying to round up the Losties to tell them something ... And we've only got a few episodes left. Tick tick tick.

Covered in bacon grease

Jin/Sun episodes have not been all that interesting to me for awhile, not since Sun thought Jin to be dead and was going to be all payback time on Ben for his death (remember that short-lived plot?)
But "The Package" was a relatively decent episode, at least in terms of Earth 2 characterization. Even though we knew Jin was ending up tied up in the restaurant and rescued by Sayid, getting there was somewhat interesting. I guess the point being that the two are eventually to be together and with child, no matter what reality we happen to be in.
Meanwhile, we got some Island Mystery advancement.
To wit:
- We know getting off the island will require another lineup of Losties, just like getting on did. The question being who now is part of that required group and why is Kate now not part of it. (Anyone got any guesses on this? My bet is that it has to do with the fact on Earth 2 she's still a fugitive on the run, not showing any ability to transcend her mistakes of the past, and thus ruling herself out as a Jacob candidate).
- We got a clearer sense of the sides shaping up. So there's Smoke Locke and his crew looking to get off island (seemingly a big no-no since everyone will 'cease to exist.') There's Richard and our ragtag folks trying to stop him. And now there's Widmore and his knockout dart shooting army of geophysicists (armed with a heavily drugged Desmond) also there to stop Locke. Though one has to imagine Widmore's motivations are more than just pure altruism (I mean, the guy also sent soldiers previously with the sole intent of whacking off Ben, so he's not exactly a Jain).
- So how the heck is Desmond supposed to be a secret weapon?
- Sun knocked the English right out of herself? Laaaaame.
- Sayid is now an emotionless automaton doing the bidding of Smoke Locke. Awesome. Ditto too Locke basically throwing meat Kate to crazed dog Claire. And ditto that actor who plays Martin Keamy. That guy should be a heavy in every movie - I get the feeling he can't even go to the dry cleaner without scaring the crap out of people.
After last week's reveals, of course this episode was going to feel a little light, as it was more about getting pieces in place than really revealing much. Like Sun taking Jack's hand on the beach, I'm still giving this show some trust that we're heading to some fun stuff.

Covered in bacon grease

New kid in town

TV Guide also has an interesting interview with the actress who plays Zoe (the chick who tried to convince Sawyer she was a survivor of the second plane, but really is a Widmore homie).

TVGuide.com: Well, what is she there to do?
Kelley: She is there on the island looking for somebody and she's looking for something. She will know who it is when she finds that person. She also believes she has the answer.

TVGuide.com: How did she come to work with Charles Widmore?
Kelley: She is a geophysicist. I think that she's very brilliant and loves what she does. She is a maverick in her field and believes there are more answers than the status quo is willing to buy into. So she wants to bring the concrete world of physics and geology into much more esoteric happenings, like time travel and the energy of the island. She's bridging the gap between science and belief. It's a strong theme throughout the whole show.

http://www.tvguide.com/News/Lost-Sheila-Kelley-1016540.aspx

My only friend, The End

So what's the name of the episode of the series finale? "The End," according to the fine folks at TV Guide.
http://www.tvguide.com/News/End-Near-Lost-1016637.aspx

Welcome to Sunnydale

If you've never seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the TV series, not the movie). I feel bad for you, son. While ostensibly a show about a group of high school (and, several seasons in, college-aged) kids who go around fighting vampires and demons and monsters, really it's a metaphor for modern teen life set against a backdrop of chop-sockey and wooden stakes. And the fictitious Calif. town of Sunnydale was always beset with these horrible monsters and plagues of vampires was because it sat on the Hellmouth - literally, the earthly entrance to Hell.
Turns out that the kids of Sunnydale High and the Oceanic survivors have similar real estate.
Wow. So now we have some meat to sink our teeth into in terms of the overarching island mystery. It's literally the lid on Pandora's box, with Jacob and Man in Black being the Goofus and Gallant eternally sparring over keep the lid closed.
Given that it was such a big reveal, and Richard (a fine Nestor Carbonell, who will to me always be 'Batmanuel' from the short-lived live-action Tick series) has been such a mystery, I can see why the episode was so Richard-centric and 90 percent about his flashback.
But honestly, this one seemed a little slow and clogged. Which is a shame considering how important this episode was to the canon. We now understand the struggle. We know why the Oceanic folks were brought to the island (Jacob basically trolling for damaged goods who can demonstrate that people can change for the better). Which raises a question - the Oceanic survivors are supposed to be a demonstration of the fact people can rise above their evil ways, right? But Hurley? Jack? Sun? Claire? What are their sins? What misdeeds are they supposed to have grown from? Sawyer, Sayid, Kate, like Ricardo they all are killers. But what was Locke's sin when the jet crashed (perhaps one could argue pride, in a sort of Seven Deadly Sins kind of way, but that seems weak.)
My other slight disappointment was with machinations of the Smoke Monster guy. He kills all the ship survivors because that's what he does. He spares Richardo presumably because he sees how he could manipulate him into killing Jacob. He impersonates Isabella to solidify that manipulation. All very smart and dastardly. And then he frees Ricardo and ... proceeds to sound like the worst salesman one could imagine. "Wait, YOU killed all the people on the boat?" "Look, forget about that, just go stab someone. Just do it. Do it." And because Richard's not so bright, he goes right along with that plan.
So now we're heading to a climactic confrontation about keeping Locke/MiB/Smokey from leaving the island. I presume Richard is not a candidate for the Jacob job for the very reason that Jacob didn't seem to have brought him specifically there (remember the whole fight on the beach and Jacob saying 'who are you?') I dunno, my money for now is going to stay on the team with the guy who can turn into a homicidal cloud of smoke. Hurley's amusing stoner vibe is not much of a counter weapon to that.
One interesting tidbit:
- The captain of the Black Rock ship, Magnus Hanso, is the great grandfather of Alvar Hanso, who went on to help found the Dharma Foundation, which as we know set up shop on the island eventually (brought there I assume by Jacob at some point).
One gripe:
How many Haley Joel Osments are we going to have on the island? Miles and now Hurley are talking to the dead?
Interesting mysteries we'll likely never get fully solved:
- So what happened to the statue? It was full sized when the Black Rock was in the storm, and now it's just rubble except for the feet.
- So how is it that the Black Rock ended up in the interior of the island? Am assuming that has to do with the constant moving of the island (same with how a boat heading from the west coast of Africa - the Canary Islands - to North America - ended up hitting the island that was, at least for a time, in the South Pacific too)

Anyone else hungry?

I have no idea what this is or what it's about. But I've watched it three times now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hILqMGb2u2w

Nobody's perfect

How excited am I right now? I am very excited. Why? Because the clips for next week's ep. indicated we've got a Richard-centric one coming up, including flashbacks. He's the Rosetta Stone of this show, and next week could provide some big answers to questions about the island. Hopefully.
Meanwhile, we've got the chess pieces being put into some interesting configurations on the Island. Widmore and the Smoke Monster are at odds and seemingly heading to a climactic conflict. Sayid is a shambling zombie - seemingly far more messed up than Claire actually might be.
My pet theory that Earth 2 is where this series is heading, and that it is some kind of place where the Losties get some kind of wish fulfilled received more ammo. Sawyer and Miles as LAPD cops? Isn't this just a reworking of the lives they lived in the 1970s as Dharma security? A time when Sawyer was demonstrably happy? Wouldn't it be natural for him to want a return to something like that? (the one hiccup in my theory - where's Juliette? Unless the fact he and Kate keep running into each other represents what he - or both of them - both want as well).
- So what killed the Ajira survivors? Smoke Locke is a far more likely suspect, since the sub just arrived on the island. And having the jet without all these pesky survivors would make leaving earlier, I imagine
- Reasons to like the episode: a cameo by Charlotte. And Sawyer getting wisdom from watching a rerun of 'Little House on the Prairie.'
- Reasons we should've hated the episode: Sawyer punching the mirror. Oh please. That old TV/movie chestnut?
All in all, a decent, middle of the pack episode. Sawyer's always interesting to watch.

And now for something completely different

Exclusive! 'Lost Talk' has obtained footage of a flash-sideways version of 'Lost' that was to actually air on 'Lost' as a show-within-a-show. But it got cut.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAAmVd5enWU
I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Better Late Than Never

Sorry for the delay this week. Technical difficulties delayed the watching of the episode. Specifically, SOMEone broke my looking glass that I settle in front of each week in the lighthouse, with my cup of hot cocoa, to catch 'Lost.' I'm not pointing fingers, but the story about a raccoon getting in doesn't hold water. For one thing, they're nocturnal.
Anyhoo, on with the discussion.
First off, continual big ups to actor Michael Emmerson. His work as multilayered Ben - dastardly Ben, deceiving Ben, powerful Ben, powerless Ben, sad victim Ben, scurrying through the jungle in desperation Ben - never ceases to be top notch.
The evidence is increasingly strong that our flashes to Earth 2 are also to Fantasy Island, where our island folk get that one thing they want most in life (Sayid - Nadia is alive, Jack - over his father issues, Ben - choosing to help Alex over his power trip). Are we heading to a conclusion where this life is the reward to our Losties?
In the same vein, applause to the writers who have given us the evolution of Jack. Remember the Jack who was so certain Locke was wasting his time punching in the numbers that there blowups about it? Remember the Jack who was so certain by setting of a nuke everything would be all right that he actually made that happen? Now we've got Jack so certain that he's part of some great Manipulation in the Sky. If the series is, at least in part, a mediation on issues of rationality and belief in destiny, he's charted an interesting course.
More and more, I'm thinking the show is heading to a scenario where we get some indication that the conflicts and roles here have been going on forever. Jack maybe is the new Jacob? Locke as Man in Black? And Kate - who came to the island a captive - is the new Richard (who also seemingly came to the island in chains, perhaps as a slave or prisoner aboard the Black Rock). And why is it that Locke is telling different island stories to different folks (to Sawyer: "Man, this place sucks and there ain't nothing here to protect, let's jet." to Ben: "I need to leave someone in charge of the island. You."
And speaking of Richard, does Jacob's touch automatically confer some kind of quasi immortality? Are our Losties also like Richard in that regard, since we've seen Jacob had physical contact with them at some point in their past? (One hiccup to that - how'd Sawyer age from little kid to adult?) Or perhaps there are different gifts to different Losties.
Some random thoughts:
- OK, a nuclear bomb went off on the island, sinking it, right? So why would Ben's dad suggest their lives would've been better off staying there. Curiouser and curiouser. I think we'll find at some point that something is going on with the island other than it just being a submerged wreck like the season opener indicated.
- Please, can we do something with Illana? Either kill her off or give her some fleshing out? Right now she's like Ben or Richard in earlier seasons - seemingly knowing lotsa stuff but never divulging - but without the fun or dimensions.
- Ditto Sun. I miss the off-island Sun who was going to be all Charles Bronson on Ben for, she thought, killing Jin. But instead since last season she's been this housefrau running around the island with one line of dialogue - "I have to find my husband." The only thing worse likely will be when they in fact reunite and then Sun doesn't even have that to do.
- So why does Fake Locke need followers to come with him? Is the Widmore sub going to rendezvous with Locke and his crew? Or is Locke wanting them to take it from the seamen?
- Lovin' the Nicki and Paolo shout out.

Now why'd you go and do that?

I've never been a huge Sayid fan myself. While Jack or Locke or Ben have, over the course of the series, shown surprising layers or evolution and the actors - Matthew Fox in particular - have demonstrated some serious acting chops, Sayid/Naveen Andrews has always been, to my eye, a little static as the quiet-but-deadly guy, the suffering killer archetype that we've seen in movies and TV before.
But props to last night's Lost, which again provided an slam-bang solid hour of kick-butt entertainment, even if I remain as lost (pun!) as ever.
So in terms of answering the Big Questions, what'd we learn? Not much. There were again indications that the underlying theme is the battle of Good and Evil. But given Jacob's past manipulations and Lost's yin/yang themes, am still not sure that we can say he's unequivocably Good either. (Insert here musings on a Janus-like situation where Jacob and Man in Black are not two characters but flip sides of the same coin/the same character in some kind of 'Fight Club' scenario.)
And speaking of themes, the series' musings about people being able to transcend their innate natures got a swift kick of harsh reality in the form of both Earth-1 and Earth-2 Sayids being stone-cold killers, seemingly disproving what Sayid himself said to his brother ("I'm not that man anymore.") Was that a departure from what we've seemingly seen in recent eps with Earth-2 Jack and Locke having indications of transcending the baggage they've carried around (father issues, handicap issues)? Mebbe so. Though the latest killings - Dogen and Hippie Dude - seem to be not by the Sayid we all know. That smirk at the end, a sign of the Sickness inside him that maybe also has claimed Claire? Sayid never seemed quite that callous about killing before.
Highlights of the episode:
- Sayid in some nice Republican Guard-fu with Dogen. Then later on Smoky Flocke going on a temple killing spree. I'll give this to Lost, if they're not going to give me answers, they're at least going to throw me a nice bone of action.
- I love the 'everyone running into everyone in Mayberry' vibe going on on the island, with Miles and Kate and Sayid all bumping into one another. Five years ago, this island seemed the size of Ohio, with endless miles of green hiding secrets and tribes and all sortsa freaky stuff. Now you can't walk five minutes without tripping over somebody else.
Big question:
- So given that Flocke is talking about having Whatever You Want if you follow him, am wondering if the Earth-2 flashes sideways are not actually alternate timelines but the future/present for our Losties if they in fact do something in particular on the island. Not sure what yet. But what if these alternate life clips we're seeing are in fact what the Oceanic Bunch are heading toward. You've got an off-island life where Nadia is alive, where Locke and Hurley and Jack all are somewhat less troubled.
So, your thoughts?
Big question 2:
- In other Earth 2 flashes sideways, the Losties have bumped into Others in some fashion or another. In Sayid's case, he runs into Keamy, from Widmore's boat. Is there some significance to that discrepancy? Or is the idea merely that life is full of interconnecting lines? To quote Keanu Reaves, 'whoa.'

Father's day

Fate can mean a lot of things. If you're a Calvinist, everything is predetermined, including every action you ever were going to take even before you were born. And mythology is filled with fates - the Moirae of ancient Greece, for example, and the Parcae of Rome.
In our prosaic now, we still struggle with that same idea, though today we couch it in terms of "nature vs. nurture."
Which leads us to Lost's major daddy issues.

Last night was another solid in-park triple of an episode. We got some answers (what are the Numbers? They're coordinates for a magic mirror that spied on people who could be replacements for Jacob! Ohhhh, duh! Why didn't I see that obvious answer in Season One?!). We got Craaaaazy Claire with an animal skull baby in a bassinet. We got some intriguing new notions (With Jin's leg all messed up like that, does that indicate maybe the healing properties of the island are no more? With Jack freaking out about his scar the way he did briefly at LAX about the cut on his neck, is there more to Earth 2 than it just being 'the world where the island didn't influence the Losties' lives?' And could the two come together at some point?) We got foreshadowing of something big and ugly going down at the temple (nice ongoing manipulation of Claire into Rambo Lizzie Borden, Smoke Monster Locke Jack's Dad thing) and of someone coming to the island (my bet, Desmond).
And we got a return to the ongoing theme in Lost of how parental issues can really screw up your life. We've seen Locke, Jack, Sawyer to an extent and Kate to an extent all grapple with this. Now we got a second dose of Jack's father love/hate and Earth 2 Jack seemingly working to overcome that (shades of the way Locke last week was having more success overcoming his handicap self hate than he did in Earth 1?)
And what's with each Earth 2 flash sideways containing a Lostie run-in with an Other? I can't even begin to speculate on where this is going. My brain hurts a lot just thinking about it.
So who's David's mom? Inquiring minds want to know!
And how interesting is it that the Candidates apparently are the bosses of the Others, though they only are starting to get a sense of that.
So here's where we stand - Jack seemingly chosen for something big, Hurley as his Pancho Villa, both out in nowheresville. Jin trapped with psychos and monster badasses. Locke building a group of followers. Dynamite. A seeming convergence on the temple. This is starting to look like a build up like in Stephen King's The Stand, with forces of good and evil. Except that Jacob seems to be just as much a manipulator as Smokey Locke, so I dont think the simplistic labels of 'good' and 'evil' apply here very much. We shall see.
On a side note, check this craziness out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAGdJqaa3ag&feature=player_embedded
Let the discussion begin .... now!

Earning Daneman Money, .00005 cents at a time

I clicked through to the ads on the right hand column, to help our budding e-trenprenuer earn a (very) little drinking money (like enough to buy 1 calorie of beer). And dammit all that cafe press store has Driveshaft t-shirts and car stickers. Must...not...give in...to...shameless...commerce...

By the way, you should click on those ads too. Cause someday, I want to see Google send Daneman a check for 16 cents.

Weirdest damn funeral I've ever been to

Some of us love Lost for the rich, elaborate, layered mystery. Some of us prefer the strong characterizations (is there anyone on TV as fascinating as John Locke?). But all of us have to admit that if the show wasn't entertaining, we wouldn't be here week after week.
Which brings us to Tuesday's Locke-centric ep. First and foremost, you have got to applaud the moments of dialogue like "he's getting pretty ripe" or Ben's eulogy over Locke's grave or even the brief interchange between Earth 2 Locke and Rose in the temp agency. A scene that in much of TV could have played with huge heapings of shmaltz instead became a quick wakeup call to a life.
The changeup characterizations also made this a 4.5 out of five on the "hot diggity damn that was good" episode scale. Earth 2 Locke struggles with the same feelings of inadequacy, but less so and is able to get over them. Instead of being a complete rager or sad sack as he was in Earth 1, he had some ability to transcend his handicap (for example, can you imagine 'our' Locke just getting an aww shucks grin of amiable defeat if he fell onto a lawn and then the sprinklers went off?) and ultimately that lead to his growth and redemption on Earth 2, where he found the peace that he never had before. Meanwhile, here we are so used to seeing Richard as Mr. In Control with all the right answers, and suddenly he's now running around in the jungle like a squirrel being chased by dogs.

Meanwhile, the central mystery of Lost got a little more illuminated and that much more interesting. We've been dealing with lists throughout the history of the show - Ben sending Ethan to infiltrate the 815 survivors, and references to Jacob's lists in numerous instances. Now we finally have an indication of what those lists are about - finding a replacement for Jacob.
Curiously, Kate was not on the cave wall. And equally curiously, some of the people who were are not supposed to be there. Members of the Others in the past have made passing reference to Kate, Sayid, Locke and Jack all being absent from Jacob's lists for various reasons. Yet SmokeLocke now shows us a wall listing Jack, Sawyer, Hurley, Sayid, Locke and either Jin or Sun as Candidates to seemingly replace Jacob. (I'm going to make a case here that Jin is the intended one - evidence being that it was he and not Sun who got snatched up in the time jumping, thus there being some indication that he is somehow chosen or different. Or course, Kate also was a time jumper and not on the list, so curiouser and curiouser).
Random thoughts:
- So who's the kid in the jungle? Did Richard actually not see him as in incapable, or did the kid just run off when Richard's head was turned? Sawyer obviously could see him. Who knows.
- While SmokeLocke is a big old killing machine in smoke form, in human form he's just a big a putz as you and me, panting and tripping and all the rest. I think that sets the stage for Sawyer's inevitable heroic turn (he can't be the Max to SmokeLocke's Doc Hopper forever, right?
- It's still not clear to me whether in Earth 2 coincidences just abound or if there's still some kind of manipulation going on. In Earth 1, it was Matthew Abaddon who told Locke to go on the walkabout. (Which raises the interesting notion that Charles Widmore, who was the dude behind the dude in terms of Michael Abaddon, may have been working for Jacob instead of a totally evil bastard. Or notion 2, that Jacob and SmokeLocke are just two peas in a pod of otherworldly manipulators and while there's all this seeming black/white evil/good symbolism the reality is far more gray). So if Earth 2 Locke also tried to go on a walkabout, what prompted that?
- One off note - I never took Sawyer to be a Stooges fan. He seems more Merle Haggard or maybe classic rock guy.
- As the episodes tick down, I'm getting a bit sad about the inevitable end of all this. And I really need to buy some Old Spice body wash.
Your thoughts? What'd I miss?

No. I am not a zombie.

Nothing like a good beating over the head with the whole notion of rebirth and redemption. Case in point, our latest episode of 'Lost.' Sayid, the torturer, gets tortured. The island role of Danielle Rousseau, the crazy French lady, is seemingly picked up by Aussie Claire.
And speaking of Rousseau, the Infection (harkening back to/same as the 'Sickness' Rousseau said seized her fellow research team castaways?) is gettin' confusing. As we saw when Jin was bouncing through time, a member of Rousseau's team back in 1988 was dragged down into a hole by the smoke monster. Other team members went after him. They came back changed somehow and tried to murder Rousseau.
Years later, in present time, she told the Oceanic 815ers she thought the Sickness was somehow caused by the Others.
Now we have the new Others - headed by Dogen who shares the same name as a 13th century Japanese Zen master (I'd assume one of those games the writers like to play, like naming characters after notable western philosophers Locke and Rousseau) - indicating that Sayid is somehow infected with that same Sickness, as is Claire. To quote famed debater Stephen A. Douglas, 'Why the face? Huh? Asphinctersayswhat?'
I think we can assume that if Claire in fact is Infected, she got it while palling around with the smoke monster impersonating Jack's dad Christian, right? But Given that the latest Others put Sayid into that Lazarus Pit, how'd he then get infected by some outside evil? And what was up with the whole torture/diagnostics? Was the same going to happen to Jack when the Others wanted to talk with him alone?
And atop all that, poor Sawyer, having a sizable self-pity of a time dealing with Juliet's death. After all the Kate/Sawyer/Jack triangle stuff for several seasons, it's interesting to see him ultimately heartbroken over someone else altogether.

And last but not least, let's not forget Dr. Ethan there in the hospital when Claire is about to give birth. As an Other, he was after Claire's baby because of the fertility issues plaguing the Others. In the hospital, is he just there by Claire purely as fate/coincidence? Or is there still some kind of machination at work specifically after her kid?
This very much felt like an in-between episode - things happened and the story was advanced, yet it wasn't very satisfying. Yet more mysteries. When I end up using more question marks than periods, I know I'm vaguely annoyed.
Your thoughts? Your take?

Kierkegaard telling us to embrace the absurdity of faith and other thoughts you'd never thought you'd connect to a network television show

Doc Jensen at EW.com spins himself a pretty dense web, but I don't think you'll find a more interesting and more lucid recap and analysis of this crazy show on the Web. And yes, I'm including this site in that calculus.

Glad everything is all cleared up now

There. Now everything makes perfect sense. No reason to even watch the rest of the season, right? But for the slower Lost fans, let's go through everything new we learned.
- Most importantly, never check your father's corpse with the airline. Always take it as carry-on.
- We've had flashbacks and flashforwards. It looks as if, this season, we'll have flashes sideways, to an alternate timeline where the island was blown up and sank in 1974 and never had influence on today's cast (Hurley is the luckiest guy in the world, Desmond never ended up shipwrecked there). The significance of the flashsideways? Too early to say. Maybe just to illustrate the characters' ongoing evolution and redemption at the hands of the island. Or to show the Losties - who all wanted off the island except for Locke - how crummy their lives would've been if they'd never crashed. But there still obviously is some kind of greater force at work on their lives even minus the island, as evidenced by them all being on the same flight and by the presence of Waitress in the Sky Cindy the Other. But with the island out of the picture on Earth 2, that whole idea of influence in their lives is blowing my mind.
- Relating to the inevitability theme going throughout the show, winner of the best line of the night award goes to Trainspotting Charlie: "Shoulda let that happen, man. I was s'posed to die."
- The redemption imagery is getting almost overboard now, with Sayid's deathbed talk of going to hell and then literal baptism and rebirth. Is he now the new Jacob?
- So the anti-Jacob is the smoke monster. Makes a kind of sense in that we've seen smoky judge people (like Eko) and punish them and the anti-Jacob guy seemed decidedly downbeat on humanity as a group when we met him last season.
- Hey, a welcome return to the weird-toed statue! And the ankh symbol in the guitar case, that indicates to me the statue might be that of Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead. Significance? I imagine even Anubis sitting somewhere, watching this show and texting, like, Odin and going "WTF is up w/ this show, yo?"
- Closer to the understandable world, Juliette now has gotten two separate death scenes in the series. The hitting the nuke was more dramatic, but I am really anticipatory of the whole 'Sawyer's going after Jack' direction. We've had five seasons of 'who runs this town, anyway?' and now we're going to get direct clash of the titans.
- My Jerry Springer final thoughts: More questions raised than answers (can they still keep doing that?). Kind of slow moving episode. But at least we're back in the present, and in the hands of Others, so it's like nothing ever happened. Except something major did and the plane never crashed. Ow. My head. And yet I'm anxiously awaiting next week.
- What'd I miss? What're your thoughts?