Quoted in the Globe

Some shameless self promotion:

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2010/05/16/as_end_nears_lost_fans_still_swoon/?page=1

Preparing for the End....

"Lost" Opportunity

If you, like me, are a mega-fan of the TV show "Lost", then you, like me, are today asking the next big question to the producers and writers of the show:

"What the hell were you thinking last night?!"

Last night's episode featured the long awaited backstory of the two pivotal characters around which the entire mystery revolves - Jacob and the Smoke Monster (aka "Man in Black").  Not since the backstories of Benjamin Linus and Richard Alpert was there so much potential to unlock the many unanswered questions that we only have 3.5 hours remaining to answer.  This episode could have been the Rosetta Stone of the entire "Lost" series!

But instead?  Snooze-fest.  And not just any snooze-fest, not at all. A super snoozer which not only did not really answer anything, it actually only makes us ask more questions (and scratch our heads going "WTF?!")!  In fact, at one point, Allison Janney (normally I love her, btw) actually says to "Claudia"(Jacob and MiB's mother) that "answers only bring more questions" (or something like that) - I muttered "oh no" when she said it.  She makes this ominous, not remotely hidden by the writers display of foreshadow right after the dialog reverts to English from the ancient Latin it started in (thankfully for me, because I never really took Latin in school.  I mean, it seemed unnecessary given it was a dead language and all and I was not expecting to watch a show where characters would speak it).

I should have realized then and there that "Lost" and I were not going to get along last night.  The outing was an utter disappointment. Examples of what we learned:

• Jacob and Smokey are brothers born of a woman (possibly from ancient Rome given the Latin) named "Claudia" (a friend pointed out that the mother of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were also born of a woman named Claudia - obviously this matters - but we will never know how).
• Jacob and Smokey were raised by a woman other than Claudia (Allison Janney) who killed Claudia to properly raise the boys away from their fellow Romans and live away from them for like 14 years before they accidentally bump into them while running around unsupervised as boys often do.
• The island hides an enormous halogen light that a river runs through - probably to keep it cool and prevent it from starting a fire that could burn the house down, as these lights do sometimes.  This light must be protected or all mankind will cease to be (I really dread where this is going).
• Somehow when you drink wine on the island you understand everything about it (you are better off not asking - and I am better off not thinking any more of this).
• Even if magic is preventing you from killing someone you can still do it provided that the dead person turns into a smoke monster and re-appears as human in dead person form (their own dead self included).
• When faced with a giant underground light source, build a giant pinwheel to make it help you get off the island - because as we all know and we learned in Physics, "pinwheel + light source = means of travel" (ok, we already knew the pinwheel could get you off the island and send it jumping through time - but now we know WHY.  See? The source of my pain).

It basically just left me wondering why I have been bothering.  I find this funny because during the first season of non-sense (when the non-sense was still intriguing) I told myself that I would stop watching if the show ever went down the road of "absurd" (and I believe I used time travel and alternate realities as examples - imagine that).

I am beginning to worry about how this show will end.  There is just so much left to answer and I have invested some serious time in this show.  This final season has just been a mess - it feels like they have no idea what they are doing (the writers I mean).  And this is unfortunate because last season was so good.

The show is all about redemption.  And I hope it redeems itself in its final hours.  It started to feel like it was starting to in recent episodes.  But now it has lots of work to do.

I hope "Lost" finds itself before the end.

Conspiracy Theory

Recently while practicing the sacred ritual of working my ass off on the elliptical machine at the gym, I realized I was a captive audience.

There were three televisions in front of me, the one to my right showed some hockey game.  The one to the left showed some talk show on CNN.  The one directly in front of me?  An infomercial for a baking oven of some kind that featured all kinds of wonderfully delectable pastries.  I was listening to my iPod, so was not really doing anything other than drinking in the images.  And it suddenly occurred to me that I could not change the channel, nor could I turn it off.  I suppose I could have left, but still had 20 minutes left on my routine.  So there I was, watching the pastries - and getting nicely hungry.  And that hunger was only going to be satisfied by the consumption of pastries.  And it is the consumption of pastries that forces me to regularly go to the gym to do this routine in front of this television.

It was while thinking of this horrible endless cycle when I realized the truth!  It is a conspiracy between the Fitness and Fatness industries!

Bad Medicine

If Edie Falco does not win an Emmy for Outstanding Actress in a Drama (or is it comedy?) for "Nurse Jackie", I will kill myself.

OK, not really.  But this new half hour dark comedy from Showtime is one of the best new shows in ages.  And Edie Falco is great in it.  Even better than when she was my one time favorite television matriarch, Carmela Soprano.  What Falco does as Jackie is make us feel sympathy for a character who steals drugs, does them on the job, cheats on her husband (to facilitate the stealing of the aforementioned drugs), and lives a double life.  I have even read that her character is a very accurate portrayal of what a functional drug addict who is trying to hide her dark side might actually be like.  Kind of scary.

But another great thing about this show is the excellence of the supporting ensemble cast.  I do not think there is any character on this show that I do not enjoy watching (except maybe Kevin and Eddie - because I hate them).

I know where I will be on Monday nights - All Saints Hospital.