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)?