TGITDNMAR (11/5/10)

KV here again, taking a look at the weekend’s new release for good old Irwin:

Due Date

So this one is Galifiniakas latest movie of the 20 flicks he signed on for post-Hangover fame, and playing the straight man in this one is the great Robert Downey, Jr., the plot appears to be a buddy road trip flick, with Zack playing a wacky psycho. It will probably be mildly amuising, but I like the rest of the nation am pretty upset with Gallifin these days for getting up on his high horse and being too pious to work with the great Mel Gibson. Props to Downey for calling out this jerk, and pointing out that Mel had worked with him when he was a drug addict criminal and Hollywood tried to blacklist him. On a scale of Hollywood offenses yelling at your wife is pretty low on the Richter scale, besides obviously that B had it coming.

KV’s chances of seeing in theatre: 10%

Megamind

Some animated flick with Will Ferrell doing some voices, I’m not really into the whole animated flicks, maybe I’ll catch this one and all those Pixar flicks down the line if I move out to the suburbs, raise rugrats, and live happily ever after…

KV’s chances of seeing in theatre: 0%

Fair Game

This apparently is a remake of the Cindy Crawford/Billy Baldwin classic from the 90s, from what I remember they were running around Russia, blowing up trains or something, I think there was a nude scene or two, which is probably the only reason anyone went to see it. Naomi Watts apparently stars in this one, but its rated PG-13, might want to skip this one…

KV’s chances of seeing in theatre: 0%

For Colored Girls

A bunch of black girls probably do some black stuff in this one, it looks like this one is made by Tyler Perry, so surely he’ll be popping up in drag throughout this sure to be clunker, I’ll probably skip out.

KV’s chances of seeing in theatre: 0%

So looks like a pretty weak crop of movies this weekend, I’ll probably make it out at some point this week, I’m seeing some new girl, I dunno right now though it looks like I’ll be deciding between Jackass or maybe Secreteriat…

And then...

Survivor Live (day after) Blog?!?!

Morning kids, pinch hitting for my boy Ir while he’s on a mini sabbatical, as I e-mailed Irwin last night this season of Survivor is so painfully bad its almost enjoyable, if for nothing else than to fuel your hatred for humanity. Anyway I caught about 15 minutes of the ep last night between channel surfing and binge-drinking, so I’m not quite going in fresh, but I will quasi live-blog this baby while I watch it on my computer, so let’s see what’s going on this season in Survivor…

0:00 – So I guess the point of this season was, umm we know we’re on the last legs of the show, so we’ll throw in a celebrity to tide you over until we do another Russel vs. Rob season, poor work by the producers not rigging the game to keep in Jimmy Johnson though, couldn’t they have put him on a team with hardcore Cowboys or Hurricane fans, the ratings must have dropped off a cliff after Episode 3…

3:24 - So for some reason they are merging the tribes with about 15 people this year, I guess when the footage is this painfully boring the producers were forced to throw in some bizarre twists…

5:32 – I can’t even remember the alliances, I know the old cripple Dan is Marty’s follower, and the psycho black chick (Nayonke?) was in some poorly conceived minority alliance with Brenda the Asian chick, I’m still rooting for Jimmy Johnson…

8:16 – This is about the time I bailed last night, I’ve started surfing the net on my second screen, man these people are boring, let’s make a list of people we know/care about as of now…
-Naonke – the psycho black chick, very hateable, at least she goes out of her way to be a good villain, didn’t she threaten a one-legged chick a few eps back?
-Brenda – The hot Asian chick, she’s pretty annoying, and pure evil, but I guess she’s the brains behind the power alliance
-Marty – The old “strategizer”, clssic overcompensater who has watched every season, and tries too hard, this jerk voted off Jimmy Johnson because he was jealous that America would think Jimmy was the protagonist of the season over him…
-Fabio – a happy go lucky simpleton, at least watching him makes us at home feel smarter…
-The hot blonde chick – In a season this thin, why not put her at the forefront, maybe base an episode on her quest to find a good tanning spot…

11:12 – A coworker just stopped by to discuss football picks, (I paused the ep) my lock of the week is the Bears by the by… (more on this in my TGIF edition)

12:35 – So Nayonka just made her wacky move to steal a bunch of food, wow caught a little bit of this last night, but yeah probably not smart, at least Rusty stole all his stuff when everyone was asleep…

14:40 – Naayonka is already posturing for jury votes? Has survivor ever had a jury of 15 people?

15:58 – Ha, Nayunka just got outted for stealing stuff, by Fabio of all people, this is why you don’t stir waves when you’re in a power position, she has an immunity idol, for some reason she has the numbers, and she is making wacky moves, not smart, every season there are some wacky panic moves, I never understand them, I mean for a million dollars I’d happily go 39 days without any food, without seeing anyone, but these people always catch island fever and make crazy moves

22:00 – So it’s time for the first immunity challenge, I guess theyre doing one for boys and girls, why not do one for fogeys and one for young uns, I guess I like the mix-up, when there are twice as many people as a usual merger why not have twice as many immunity idols? Hey remember that medallion of power they trotted out for the first 2 episodes, that was funny…

26:00 – So the annoying old country woman won immunity, she’s the one who flipped on her tribe because the young people “liked” her, not exactly a master of strategy right there, she has no chance to win…

29:16 – Wow the gay guy is actually honoring his word, this is unprecedented in Survivor, he really endeared himself to me right there, annoying old country woman is still posturing against good old Marty, she’s worried Marty will win immunity the next 20 times and make the finals… there are 15 people in the merged trible, even Colby only won immunity 12 times in a row

31:52 – Marty is going out of his way to overstrategize and annoy people, can’t blame him for not trusting the word of a Survivor…

33:34 – They are trying to swing Fabs to their anti-Marty alliance, he’s a huge Marty fan for some reason, I think Marty told him the movie Bobby Fisher was based on his life a few eps back, Fabs is such a good-natured simpleton… for the record the people I like thusfar are… Fabs, Gay Guy (he really won me over by honoring his word), Hot Blonde chick, and maybe Marty (I love a good villain, and at least he’s interesting), and of course Jimmy Johnson (can we get a wacky Survivor twist to bring him back??)…

36:56 – Ha, Marty is opening an open frontal attack at Jane, pointing out that people would have to be functional retards to keep her around, this group is so stupid though that probably hadn’t occurred to them until then, I doubt any of them are thinking long-term…

38:58 – Elena (?) is playing the swing vote card, probably a little early for that, there’s never been a merged tribe of 40 people, no one needs a swing vote now, plus this crowd is too stupid to know how to use a swing vote… reminds me of on the Apprentice when Trump bragged everyone had an IQ over 150, Probst must only select people with IQs under Forrest Gump’s 75

42:00 – If Probst reads the first vote for someone, you know they’re safe, he’s the master of showing votes in a way to build suspense, it’s gotten predictable Jeffrey, the first two seasons he’d just reach into the urn and randomly read the names… Alina got voted off

42:45 – Still seems like a pretty boring season, there is an alliance of about 35 people, and all of them are too stupid to make a power play, so it appears they’ll just pick of the 5 people not in their alliance, and then realize “wait a second, it might not have been smart to make a 35 person alliance to get me to the end”…

44:00 - Also, just I did some Wikipedia research, Jeff said Alena was the first member of the jury, and there are 11 people left, meaning if there is a two person final there will be a ten person jury, and if there is a three person final there will be a 9 person jury, the only way to eliminate an option of a tie is to have an 11 person final next week, and Elena be the only person to vote… so as usual I will be rooting for the tie, why not just have a two-person final with an odd numbered jury, why even keep the chance for a tie and the show to look like idiots, it makes no sense to me… I mean does the BCS ever look smart in college football when 4 teams have a claim at the national title every year??? Nice work Survivor, this season is a trainwreck, but on the plus side this trainwreck already made them retool next season, celebrities include: Russell, Kimbo Slice, and Carrie Prejean… could be some interesting watching…

And then...

The CoW is back!

First the Things to Click On return, and now the Comment of the Week (we like to ignore the "the" in the acronym up there). It's like 2008 all over again up in here!

Your old friend and mine, Kid Vegas, popped in last night with a tremendous comment, which got me to thinking that it's high time this little short-lived feature made a comeback. A minor edit: previously, I highlighted a few contenders and then unveiled the Comment of the Week. This time around, though, I think I'll skip right to the good stuff - just one comment, and it even has a sponsor. Write up something good, and you might make the cut come next Saturday. So, without further ado:

The winner of the Chong Li Memorial Comment of the Week is...


In response to the post for LAMBcast #34, Kid Vegas wrote:

"A. Hey jerk, how about putting out your weekly TGIF column timely once in a while, some of us actually want your stance on the week's offerings, I wanted your preemptive take on Expendables, start publishing that Thurs night...

2. I was verily disappointed in your teeth column, your tom cruise thing freaked me out, after a quick google search though, Tom's teeth are solid, you got tricked by a photoshop or something, and Tom still resides alongside me as one of the 5 best looking gentlemen in America

g. Why haven't I been invited on one of these podcasts, me, you, and Nick arguing before the finale of Lost would have been good listening, wasn't Nick head over heels for Hurley, and me with my thing for Desmond?

7. I thought I had one more bullet point... whatever... get this, I suggested the name Santino to an Italian friend of mine for his kid about to be born, and it didn't ring his bell, and he and his wife ridiculed for me for my suggestion... query.. would even you Fletch, the lamest of classic movie fans respect Santino?? To me it's the coolest Italian name ever thanks to Jimmy Caan...

8. Oh, I have a new column idea if my spot is still open next fall; my fans, especially Nick, would be heartbroken to lose me, if you're still coming to Vegas next month, we can discuss my contract over a cocktail or 20..."

And then...

LOST - FINAL episode

All right this here’s my swan song ladies and gentlemen, the last episode of Lost, my last Lost breakdown, you guys won’t have old kid vegas to kick around anymore. So as for this episode, shockingly… I kind of liked it. The on Island stuff was pretty solid, I got the all-out war I was hoping for, Team Jack killed MiB and saved the world, and a few of them even made it out to live long fruitful lives in the real world.

Off island the big reveal was that their retarded “flash-sideways” timeline was actually a “other dimension” timeline, since apparently they were all in heaven the whole time; I’m a little dubious of this one, a couple too many inconsistencies. I think Cuse and Lindelof called an audible midseason when they realized everyone thought their alternate timeline was retarded (thanks mainly to me and my blogging) and switched it to heaven. But you know what, the heaven interspersals kind of worked in this episode; they didn’t work in any of the season’s other episodes, but for the finale they worked. Even I was a little emotional as Jack saved the Island and simultaneously came to the realization he was dead with his old man. Now let’s get to my final observations on what worked and what didn’t:

-Rose and Bernard, really?? Did we really need them to rescue Desmond just so he could be kidnapped two minutes later, and all so we could get that same retarded speech they gave last season finale about them thinking they were too cool to get involved with the other castaways? Yeah, Jack is busy saving the world while you two are douching it up in a hut, and you’re the ones who are too cool. And what was the deal with them showing up at the Church at the End - none of the castaways even liked them. How did they get an invite? Why not throw Frogurt, Steve, and hell, even Ethan Rom in there? Sure, Rom killed about 5 castaways, but at least he wasn’t old, annoying, a poor actor and didn’t douchily move to the other side of the Island and lecture people about things he didn’t understand.

-Speaking of random fringe characters no one liked showing up, I was kind of a little disappointed they didn’t have a 40-year old Walt show up at the church, even if he was just in the background laughing with Hurley. His bizarre age spurts don’t need to make any sense in heaven, I would have liked to have seen him, just for comedy’s sake. And why does Aaron have to spend eternity as a baby, we assume he led a long life after Jack died… I would have gotten his namesake Aaron Boone to play him.

-I mean going back through the season we can point out a million weird things with the Lost producers heaven, but the three that stand out the most to me are:

1. What is up with being able to have kids in heaven, now that doesn’t make a lick of sense… I’m looking at you David Shepherd. The obvious explanation here is they were going to make it an alternate reality and wimped out because that was such a stupid, stupid idea, or they just threw him in there to throw everyone off the scent of it being heaven, or maybe it was just some random kid who died on the island and Jack and Juliet just pretended he was their kid. They should have had that kid play the young Jacob in the Early island flashback, now that would have been a mindf^&$.

2. How the heck did Keamy slip into heaven yet Michael is still stuck on the Island whispering to random people. I mean Keamy killed Alex in cold blood, he was such an over-the-top bad guy it was ridiculous. I mean couldn’t they have cut to him being trapped in a hut with Rose and Bernard for all of eternity? That would have been an appropriate fate for him.

3. Why is Sayid the only one who doesn’t get to be with the girl he liked? I mean, did the producers just forget about Nadia? He loved her since he was 5, they got married, when she was killed he went psycho and killed a bunch of people for Ben Linus (speaking of, did we ever find out who those people were?), or maybe Sayid was being punished for all the people he killed by having to watch his brother nail the girl he loved, while being stuck with some random chick he banged because he was deserted on an Island. (More likely, the producers were seduced with the prospect of a Maggie Grace cameo, and couldn’t find any other way to work her in. I must admit though, I did enjoy seeing her).

-I get why they had to end where they did, because if they had done any flashforwards during the season it would have ruined the ending for everyone, but I still wouldn’t mind seeing an epilogue episode where we find out what happened with Hurley, Kate, Sawyer, Alpert and of course Dez. We know Kate “waited a long time for Jack”, but I mean she had to have at least banged Sawyer a few times off-island after Jack died. And what about Alpo being reintroduced to society after 500 years on an island? And will young Charlie Hume develop any super-powers passed on from his father, and if so will they form a father/son crime-fighting team? (Sounds like a spin-off to me. They could have Mr. Paik and Ji-Yeon be the supervillains they are constantly trying to thwart.)

-All in all a pretty good series though, obviously some pointless plots and lame mysteries over the seasons, but as a whole I guess most of our questions were answered, though the answer to most of them as we said a few weeks ago was “magic.” Sure we all have a few questions we’d still like answered. (e.g. Why did Jack’s magic tattoos make Asian people hate him?) But I think we got the closure we needed from the finale and can say the 6 seasons of Lost were pretty solid as a total product. So good luck out there and godspeed. I will answer any lingering questions people have about the show or any leftover mysteries in the comments section.

And then...

LOST - Jacob Episode

Morning all, so I know everyone has been eagerly anticipating my take on this latest episode which “solved” so many of the questions about the two godlike fellas we’ve seen running things over the last few seasons. My thoughts are it was a pretty terrible episode, and of course that we knew this was coming. I told you guys at the beginning of the season that there was not going to be any acceptable solution to the hundreds of bizarre and senseless mysteries they’ve spun together, and now that it’s time to start wrapping some up they’re doing what I foresaw all along. Hey how did Jacob and Man in Black (or “MiB” as the Lost nerds call him) get their powers? Magic. How did Mib get turned into black smoke? Ummm Magic? How did that wheel that sends people through time and space get made? Magic!! The only thing I learned last night were that Jake and Mib weren’t Gods, but rather humans given Godlike powers for some unknown and uncared about reason. Whatever, they could have told us that in 5 minutes instead of wasting a whole episode on it; now I’ve forgotten everything that was happening with Jack, Kate, and the gang again after 2 weeks away.

Listen, you aren’t going to get any life changing answers from Lost… obviously. Once they started traveling through time and doing even more bizarre stuff it became pretty obvious the solution to all their “mysteries” was going to be magic, but they could at least continue the strong character driven storylines that made people like the show in the first place. The final season was destined to be a disappointment no matter what, they made all these promises about solving all the mysteries in a genius way that would change television forever, but not even the most gullible Lost fan had any delusions of that happening. Yet, they somehow made it even worse by trying too hard with pointless alternate universes, even more confusing mysteries late in the game, and wasted characters. They should have just stuck with their tried and true formula of everyone running around the island doing their usual antics and trying to get off, hell just give me good old Desmondo running around without a shirt on, doing his Desmondo things, and I’m a pig in the mud… Here are some more additional thoughts:

-The Richard Alpert episode was kind of similar to this one, they spent a whole episode on Alp’s backstory, yet somehow the Alpert one was good and this one was boring, I think it was because Alpert was a character we already liked, it still had a couple of Island cut-ins with future Alpo interacting with Hurley, and of course the fact that Nestor Carbonell is a great actor…

-Which leads me to my next point, I get that they had to hire a kid who was an absolutely painfully bad actor to play young Jacob, since the adult Jacob can’t act either. But the adult Mib is an even worse actor than Jacob, and that young Zac Efron was actually a pretty good actor, it really confused me. Also, I’m obligated to mention, the babies that played Mib and Jacob in the I really did believe they were babies, which is more than adult Mib or Jake have ever done for me…

-I was hoping after their mother named the first kid “Jacob”, and the second one popped out she’d say “Call him Mib” or some kind of joke nod to all the retarded names the Lost nerds have come up with for old smokey, instead they just never said what his name was, ohhh it’s so mysterious…

-Here’s how I imagine the conclusion to the episode was written up at their writer table…

Cuse – “and then Jacob finds his brothers body and carries it back to the camp, then quietly buries his and his mother’s bodies and he’s all alone on the Island”
Lindelof – “hmmm, you know as long as we’ve got TWO bodies lying around…”
Cuse – “Great thinking, we’ll toss them in the caves, and cross another mystery off the big board! That should get those Lost nerds off our backs!”
Lost Nerds (upon viewing) – “Of course!!! It was Mib and his mother all along, I should have known!!! Those producers are geniuses!!!!!”

And then...

LOST - John Locke Episode

So, it looks like they are really ramping up the action as they head toward the series finale. We still have no idea what the point of wasting half of their final season on an alternate reality was, but at least some exciting stuff is going on at the Island. Locke finally made his move, and the team members for both squadrons were hit last night with a bunch of casualties. Let’s take a look at my usual bunch of observations:

• Locke’s planning is pretty subpar – If he had just let Jack die when Widmore was lobbing missiles at them last episode, and let the rest of the gang get on that airplane where Chuck Widmore’s bomb was, bang all the candidates would be dead and he’d be off the island and causing some trouble in the real world already…

• And that leads us to another point, if Chuck Widmore wants to keep the candidates alive why is he shooting missiles at them, setting C-4 booby traps everywhere, and constantly shooting at them; makes me think he’s up to his usual Chuck Widmore tricks, I wouldn’t go trusting him just yet… he’s probably working with Locke

• In the alternate reality why does everyone seem to know the flight number, I get that if a plane crashes the number is constantly referenced, like they made a movie about that 9/11 Flight 93 that was taken over by terrorists and shot down. But who remembers the number of a random flight they took, Jack and Desmond are going around asking everyone, “Hey were you on Oceanic Flight 815?” If I was talking about flying back to New York last year, and some weirdo asked me, “Hey were you on Flight 74 from Vegas to JFK?” I’d have no idea what they were talking about and probably think they were a psycho or a stalker.

• So, what we learned last night is that Locke wants to kill the Candidates, Jack seems to be inheriting Jacob’s powers, Chuck Widmore is still dick, and last but not least… Desmondo is alive!!!!!! (omigod, omigod, omigod I hope they show him next week!!!)

• No random alternate reality sightings this week, (unless you count Jack visiting Bernard, which I don’t… not quite random enough), c’mon they couldn’t have had Shannon be the nurse that wheeled over Anthony Cooper? Disappointing.

• Well that was a short reunion between Jin and Sun, I feel bad for their kid, now she’s going to end up with Sun’s pop Mr. Paik, and that guy is a dick of Widmorian proportions.

• I guess it’s 1 candidate down,3 to go, at least that Sun/Jin death was confirmed by Locke himself so we don’t have to worry about the standard retarded Lost rising from the dead, probably safe to assume also that even the Lost writers aren’t stupid enough to try to sell someone surviving a C-4 blast at close range, so we can write off Sayid.

• I wonder if Alpert and Linus are going to get involved in this showdown, those guys have got to have a trick up their sleeve right? On the other hand, let’s all keep hoping that Rose and Bernard don’t somehow get involved, that Bernie sighting last night was forced and painful enough..
  

And then...

Lost - Ensemble Episode

All right, a pretty mediocre episode of Lost, although it finished up pretty well so maybe there is still hope for these last 4 episodes. Hey, we knew what we were getting into with this Final Season, we all knew they had created way too many pointless mysteries and left no possible satisfying conclusion. It was an interesting strategy by the producers to say “you know what screw everything that happened so far let’s just do an alternate reality,” do they have some genius endgame in mind for these last four episodes? Who knows, I highly doubt it myself, the Lost nerds all think the two reality will merge, I don’t even know how that is possible, not even considering the laws of physics, just plot wise. Will they just combine them and have two of every character wandering around hanging out with themselves? And if so, will they observe “Timecop” rules of “same matter can’t occupy the same space?” Either way the check is coming due on all their Lost shenanigans, and I don’t think they can cover it.

-I know we’ve all been dreading the forced Jin/Sun reunion, and it was as terrible as expected. The Richard Alpert/ghost wife reunion was way better and we had just met his wife earlier that episode, Jin and Sun have been wandering around for 3 seasons trying to find each other and still no one cared.

-I know I wasn’t the only one thinking it would be awesome if the electrical fence was on and Sun had been electrocuted to death as she ran to Jin. Man, I would have forgiven every bad plot of the last five years if they had done that. They were probably worried that Asian people would boycott their show if they did, stupid wimpy PC world we live in.

-Can’t believe they killed off my favorite character Desmond, how are they going to do these next four episodes without him, what will Widmore do without his secret weapon…and yeah, couldn’t do that with a straight face. Why do they even bother with these fake “deaths?" Has anyone ever been fooled? (Well, maybe there is one gullible rube out there - with all his money invested in some Iowa oceanfront property - who has believed that Jin, Michael, and Sawyer died on the raft explosion, Desmond died in the hatch explosion, Locke died when Ben shot him into that dead body pit, Jin died again when he blew up on the freighter, and numerous others.) Cripes, I’m still waiting for Nikki and Paolo to dig out of the grave they were buried alive in to pitch in for these last couple episodes. Unless they take a dude’s pulse and Dr. Jack announces him dead, he’s still alive. Of course, even that isn’t foolproof as they brought back Patchy for some underwater heroics after he’d been electrocuted to death.

-So looks like the bizarro Islanders are all getting ready for a giant reunion, maybe Desmondo will kidnap them all and fly them over the Pacific, hoping for an Interdimensional timerift… whatever…

-Great nickname by Sawyer for “Widmore’s #2”, seeing as how an actual poop from beloved character actor Alan Dale (The OC, 24) would do a better job acting than that annoying bespectacled girl.

-Coincidental alternate reality islander sighting of the week… Ilyana is a lawyer!!! And she’s reading Christian Shepherd’s will!!!! I’m setting odds on who Jack Jr.’s mother is now: I’ve got Juliet at 3:1, Libby at 5:1, Ana Lucia at 5:1, Widmore’s #2 at 10:1, his original ex-wife at 12:1, Rose at 1,000:1, and the rest of the field at 3:1

And then...

Lost - Hurley episode

All right kids, I’m back for another episode, I know lately the site is mostly famous for gay rankings of which movie star was sexiest 30 years ago, so sorry to break up the parade. Well, Lost is winding down only a couple of episodes left and they are solving “mysteries” left and right, that toss-out answer of the jungle whispers last night was pretty random, I mean I guess we knew it was ghosts, but was Michael saying the Island was Purgatory, vindicating all the Lost nerds who have been touting that theory since Season 1?

It seems like the producers are finally starting to pick up the pace, and creating some real buzz about the final 6 or 7 episodes, at least with me. Who would have thought back at the beginning of this final season that they would actually be able to put together two good episodes in a row? If they can stay strong down the stretch, it could be quite an emotional conclusion to Lost. And what will I watch next year, my two mainstays Lost and 24 are both calling it quits, and even though its time (I mean I even found myself rooting for the terrorists this season of 24, but that’s a whole different story) it could be a while before television spits out two classics like that again. (At least we’ve got Dex.)

Well, as for the latest episode, there was a little something for everyone in this baby. A healthy dose of Desmond in both realities for me and the ladies, Hugo wandering around annoying everyone for all the hipster doofuses, Libby in a low cut top for the fellas and the drunk drivers out there, that stupid ghost boy for people who enjoy awful acting, and the producers actually moving the plot forward on both sides of the island for everyone fed up with the starting and stopping of plot every week. Anyway, here are some of my witty observations for the week:

- So apparently if you meet some person you were in love with in the other reality, you can see through the veil, as we found out last week with Faraday and Pace. So what was the deal with Libby seeing Hurley and getting a glimpse? Did the writer of this episode even watch Season 2? Libby barely even liked Hurley, she only put up with his awkward fat guy advances on the Island because he threatened to jump off a cliff… must be a crazy chick thing.

- Another thing I noticed is that only people who have died in the original timeline (and Desmondo) seem to be able remember the Island (Faraday, Libby, Chahlie, now Locke). A little coincidental, no? They better not throw some weird twist where it’s the afterlife or something. Also, obviously Juliet is the next logical step, after her spouting that the H-bomb worked with her dying words, hopefully her new role on V doesn’t prevent her from an appearance…

- Man, was anyone crestfallen when Hurley ordered his Cluck chicken order and some random doofus complimented him on being the owner? Did Fletch’s boy DJ Qualls big time them and refuse to come back for that role?? A couple of movie hits (New Guy, Delta Farce) and now he’s too famous for a cameo on Lost?? Everyone knows the Lost writers think there are only about 1,000 people in the world, so consequently you’re always bumping into the same people everywhere you go, it was disappointing they couldn’t get Qualls back.

- I also would have liked to hear some explanation on how Hugo won the lottery in this reality, as the Lost nerds pointed out after the premiere, the Island would have blown up before that crazy dude would have gotten the magic numbers off a radio broadcast, and the odds are pretty slim of Hugo winning the lottery just by pure luck…

- So I’ve got the current rosters as something like this: Team Locke - Sawyer, Sayid, Kate, the candidates, ghost Michael, Claire, Lapidus, and some miscellaneous Others VS. Team Jacob – Alpert, Widmore, Jin, Miles, Linus, and some miscellaneous Widmorians. Looks to me like Team Locke is stacked, Chuck Widmore better hope that Dez survived that well fall and he can pick him up in the free agent market…

- I kind of enjoy how the writers use Hugo as a conduit to the fans, like how previously they wrote him a line about those two corpses being time travelers and how stupid that was, and in this episode they had him talking about “a bizarro, alternate reality” and how ludicrous that was. And also wasn’t I the only one using the Seinfeld lexicon of “bizarro Jack, bizarro Kate, etc.” (the Lost nerds use “FST Jack, FST Kate, etc.” for flash sideways time, I guess... stupid nerds) , am I getting delusions of grandeur here, or were the writers indirectly telling me that me and my blog are awesome? Thanks for the hat tip fellas!

Until next week...

And then...

Lost – Desmondo Episode (finally!!!)

So halfway through their final season they finally give some screen time to their best character. As is usually the case with Desmondo, his episode was not cutaways but a continuous story, this time taking place in the “flash-sideways.” Sure, we were all happy just to see Desmond, and having their best character back in the mix gives us hope this season can be salvaged, but nevertheless this was a pretty underwhelming episode - the “flash-sideways” world still seems pretty pointless and boring and nothing really happened. Although with Faraday’s theories and Charles Widmores antics, we have an inkling where they are going with the alternate reality. Still not worth dragging out an entire season on that plot but whatever. Here are my usual batch of points:


- Obviously Chuck Widmore plans on using Desmond as some kind of secret weapon combined with some pockets of electromagnetic energy to try to take out Locke. At least Dez will be around for the rest of the season...

- I was a little surprised that Dez’s powers didn’t let him remember everything that had happened in the alternate reality, I guess after he touched Penny he started getting flashes, but heck that was even happening to Faraday after he saw Charlotte, and Charlie was getting flashes after his near death experience. What happened to Dez’s superpowers??

- What’s the deal with the flashsideways running side-by-side in different years, its 2007 or so in the original timeline and 2004 in the flash-sideways. I get that it’s just for convenience, but if they’re using Back to the Future as their model, Marty’s alternate universe was still in 1985. His two realities didn’t run inconsistently after Biff split the timeline with his sports almanac.

- I was a little disappointed that the alternate reality Chuck Widmore wasn’t pulling any of his trademark douche moves. C'mon he’s still the same old douche - this is the guy that slit his Other buddies neck back in the 50s when Team Sawyer captured him. It’s not like something after the “the Incident” turned him into a douche. Also it was pretty predictable that Dez would be working for Widmore, but still humourous.

- The random supercoincidental annoying cameo this week was by George, the ship captain that died from traveling through time in the Constant. In this reality apparently he is a limo driver, it took me a second to place him also.

- I’m on board with Eloise Hawking/Widmore knowing everything that is going on, let’s not forget she was the one who helped Jackie get a hold of the H-bomb after she killed her son. She knows she’s living in an alternate reality, and let’s not forget she still has Daniel’s journal, so she knows of Desmondo’s powers. Obviously, she would be frightened of him doing some of his tricks and somehow causing Dan’s death again.

- Of course they have to make it ambigious at the end with both the 2007 original Dez and 2004 alternate Dez acting a little odd, did these two switch places, did they become aware of each other, are they just so much cooler than everyone else that it only appeared they were acting odd? We don’t know, also with evil Sayid possibly abducting Dez, it might be interesting to see an intro to Locke. It would be awesome if Locke just turned smokey as soon as he saw Dez, and then they fought it out with Dez fending him off with some new electromagnetic powers.

- Either way we’ll probably have to wait a few weeks to see Dez. Next week, we’re back on the other side of the Island, with what appears to be a Hurley episode. One of the only good things about that Sun/Jin episode is that the double episode allowed them to still show what was happening on both sides of the Island. This stopping one plot to show another every week gets a bit grating - maybe the two groups will finally unite soon. At least they haven’t shown us what is happening on the far side of the Island where the Rose and Bernard retirement house is… though, knowing the producers, I wouldn’t put it past them to burn an episode on old people sex, Rose and Bernie’s awful acting, and alternate reality dentistry and cancer. It would be nice to see Vincent again though. Speaking of Vincent, I guess one of the perks of running the alternate reality in 2004 is they can’t have a ten year old Walt involved in the plot, since the actor is like 30 in real life now…

Until next week…

And then...

LOST - Richard Alpert Episode

Sorry for the late posting this week boys and girls, been a busy week, didn’t get around to watching the episode until today. Also, I of course did not want to step on the Blog Cabins crown jewel, the weekly Survivor running diary. Anyway, as for this week’s Lost episode, I was pleasantly surprised with the ep, and hope this is a movement back to the high quality we’ve seen in seasons past. So here are some notes on the long awaited Richard Alpert episode:

- I think one of the main reasons this episode was so enjoyable was because it was an uninterrupted flashback, usually they reserve these babies for Dez (sigh… Dez), but it was nice to just be able to watch an episode without constant switching to an unrelated story with random retarded cameos and nonsensical plots.

- This episode didn’t really reveal any great mysteries, we already knew Richard came as a slave on the back rock, Jacob had made him immortal, and that the “Man in Black” couldn’t act, but it was still a good watch

- It was good to see them bring up the Island is hell theory again, with MiB telling Rich that Jake was the devil, the purgatory angle was the theory du’jour for the first few seasons until the producers refuted it, and of course has been introduced on the Island when the original Sawyer said that it “felt a little hot to be heavan”

- The main focus for the final season seems to be the mystery of who is on the right side, as they are deliberately leaving it ambiguous who is good and evil between Jacob and Smoke Monster, and their respective teams. I’m still holding out hope for a battle royal in the conclusion. And if you want my opinion, I’d side with Smokey, Charles Widmore is trying to kill him, and that guy has never been on the right side of anything.

- Those Lost writers sure do love tearful reunions between long suffering separated lovers. Obviously they peaked in “the Constant”, I’ll admit it got a little dusty when I watched that scene, but Richard Alpert’s ghost wife talking to him for the first time in 300 years was pretty good too. I doubt if the Jin/Sun reunion will live up though, they should kill off Sun and have Jin go rogue.

- So Ilyana is supposed to protect the six candidates, did we get a definitive answer on who the 6 are? Jack, Hugo, and one of the Kwons are confirmed. MiB told Sawyer he was one, I think Kate is one? Was Locke a candidate? Otherwise who is the sixth?

- Also old MiB said he would kill whoever replaced Jacob in his quest to get off the Island. Can’t he just go smokey and ice the Oceanic 6, or do the same rules apply to them as Jake, and he has to find a “loophole”?

- I guess it’s a little late in the game to give Alpert another flashback, but I wonder what he’s been up to in his 300 years on the Island, how long did he wander around by himself until the next ship got wrecked and he formed up the Others? And sure he was still in love with his wife, but did he ever get drunk on that Island wine and wake up next to some hot young Other thing (300 years without a woman is a long time)? Did he, Jake, and Mib ever hang out and cruise the Island?

Good ep this week, so until next time… I missed the previews, but I’m guessing next week we’re on the other side of the Island, probably stuck with a Jin episode, if it was up to me, I’d go with Widmore though…

And then...

Lost - Sawyer Episode

Happy St Patty’s Day all, hope everyone is able to get out for some green beer tonight. So, how bout the latest Lost episode eh? Pretty par for the course it seemed, by now I’ve pretty much accepted the flash sideways aren’t going to change, and that the producers are dead set on wasting half of their final season telling a completely unrelated story. They’ve become utterly predictable as well, I mean everyone knew that Sawyer was a cop from the get-go, it was obvious the red head would turn out to be Charlotte, we knew it was Kate running from the cops, I don’t know why they waste our time with these slow reveals, like having Kate’s face covered as she ran away for a minute or two. The on island stuff is turning out to be pretty solid this season, hopefully they will have the time and structure to bring us to an enjoyable conclusion. Here are some other observations…

- Obvious plotholes in the flash sideways, just for giggles:

1. Pretty big stretch that Sawyer and everyone else whose life is completely different in this bizarre world would all be on the exact same flight from Austrailia to LAX.

2. Can Miles still talk to the dead? And why is his life so different?

3. Was that the same Charlotte, she looked much hotter?

4. Are cops really allowed to shag suspects?

5. Why did allegedly good cop Sawyer let fugitive Kate escape in LAX?

6. At least Sawyer is still a huge “Little House” fan in this reality, otherwise I’d feel like I didn’t know him at all…

- On island it looks like we are sticking with the frustrating one week Team Jacob, one week team Locke switchoff, I think last time we left Sawyer he was hanging out in the candidate cave with Locke, now it looks like they are bosom buddies, I enjoy the dark turn Sawyer is taking on Island, if the series doesn’t end with him or Jack killing each other I will be pretty disappointed.

- That was funny when Sawyer sniffed out the Widmore spy, and said “You’re good, but you’re not that good,” because I was just thinking she was a terrible actress, whether this was because her character was supposed to be a bad liar or the actual actress playing the character just wasn’t very talented, I lean toward the latter

- Good to have old Chaz Widmore back in the mix, some allusions to his mysterious past and unquenchable Island love were made in this episode, hopefully these mysteries will be cleared up, the only theory I could muster is he wants Richard Alpertian immortality. Here’s a fella who’s ass loaded and hates everything, even his own daughter and son, and all he cares is taking over the Island in his final years of life. Geez fella, relax, kick back drink some Maccutheon…

- Sawyer’s plan seems pretty ill-conceived, but at least it looks there should be quite a bit of action in two weeks, next week it looks like we’re back on Team Jacob and we might finally find out what Richie Alpert’s agenda is. Too bad Rich can’t have a flashsideways since he blew up in an H-bomb explosion at the time-split point. His bizarre self would actually be interesting since he’d remember the Oceanic crew from their time jumping adventures, knowing the producers they’d do something bizarre and probably have him running a florist shop married to Shannon, and having an adopted kid who turned out to be Walt. Until next week…

And then...

LOST - Ben Linus episode

Greetings Lost fans! Well the countdown has begun, only 9 more episodes left after this one, and it looks like on island they are starting to build up to the finish. Off island of course they are still wasting our time with the alternate universe, this one was at least fun to watch though since at least it was about Ben Linus, arguably the second best character on the show. Of course there was the infuriating coincidence of his alternate reality French daughter landing in his school district, but whatever we know those are coming at this point. I’m almost starting to buy into JackSmirkingRevenge’s theory that these alternate stories are all in their heads, Ben’s bizarre life played out exactly like the decision he was lamenting about, choosing between his daughter and his “destiny”, only as a regular joe he took the bullet for the team so Alex could head off to Yale. Here are some more episode points and theories in easy to read bullet form:

-Some balls on that principal responding to Ben’s threat to get him fired with a counteroffer of recommending Alex for Yale, of course this was to give Ben a second chance to pick Alex, as discussed, but I don’t think anyone would have hated if Island Ben leaped into his body and beat him within an inch of oblivion, then exposed his affair, then went ahead and killed him if he still had the balls to “bury” Alex

-I almost didn’t mind the Arzt cameo, that guy has always been a character, but was it easier to hack e-mail accounts back in 2004, otherwise what is Arzt doing as high school teacher? He also discovered all those new Island species back in the Nikki/Paolo episode, they should have kept him on the show as the professor to Jack’s Gilligan.

-On island, I think we were all rooting for Ben to just kill Illyana and embrace the dark side when he had the chance, she’s easily claimed most annoying character honors this season grabbing the torch from past winners such as Keamy, Walt, and Charlotte

-So I guess they settled the Alpert mystery, putting him as a slave on the Black Rock as many Lost message board nerds had theorized, and carbon dating him at somewhere around 400 years old

-Apparently Jack has embraced his role as future Jacob, maybe he will start getting superpowers in time for the finale and the looming war against Locke, Sawyer, Claire, and Sayid, or maybe he will use his superpowers to warp into the alternate reality and hang out with his son, who knows, but at least Jack is actually doing something these days, next episode it looks like he’ll start pumping Alpert for answers, let’s just hope we like what we hear…

-Nice little mini-cliffhanger with Charles Widmore approaching the Island in a submarine, should set up for an interesting episode next week, provided they don’t switch over to Kate, Sawyer and whoever else, and leave us high and dry, also I don’t want to jinx anything, but hopefully Chuck Widmore’s appearance leads to a sighting of one of his old adversaries… Scottish fellow, likes to say “Brotha”, happens to be shagging Chuck’s daughter… last time we saw Charles he, Eloise, and Penelope were in the waiting room in an LA hospital…

-So there are 9 episodes left, I read some article this week about how the show producers said a lot of mysteries are going to end up unresolved, hopefully they focus on the on-Island stuff like who are Jacob and his enemy, and not waste so much time on the alternate reality stuff, like “why does Sayid suddenly have a brother”. With 9 eps left, you’ve got to figure we’ll get stuck with a bizzarro Hurley, Jin/Sun and Sawyer episode, at least one more Jack and Kate bizarro episode, the finale will probably be a two hour special focusing on everyone, leaving us two wildcard episodes, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that one is a Desmondo ep, with him traveling through time and dimensions, tying together this whole “sideways” fiasco

-Also one of the commenters to that article had a pretty funny remark that I thought I’d pass along. “The creators to Lost game plan: Phase 1 – Make up a bunch of mysteries. Phase 2 - ????. Phase 3 – Profit.” You could do worse for a business model than those savvy South Park underwear Gnomes.

And then...

Lost Episode 5

All right a little late checking in with the Lost breakdown, sorry for all the fans constantly hitting refresh all of yesterday trying to find out just what exactly that episode meant. So, maybe going forward, I should just focus on the on-island action, at this point we pretty much all know what we are going to get with these “flash sideways”.

-First off they will be boring and contribute nothing to moving the story forward, in this, the last season.

-Second they will be sort of similar to the lives they had in the flashbacks, but just confusing enough so that they make no sense at all, and subsequently anger everyone, perhaps with the random appearance of a son or brother that somehow an H-bomb in 1977 at a remote island caused to exist.

-Thirdly we know they are going to be unfulfilling, because who gives a crap in the first place what Sayid’s life would be like if he had a brother, and that brother had married his sweetheart. And if by some miracle someone actually did care about this unrelated plot, why would they want to wait around 8 weeks for another installment from Sayid’s bizarro world to see what happens next (maybe only 4 weeks in this case, since his “flash sideways” might overlap with Jin’s).

-And lastly, we know we’ll get a random appearance from another minor Lost character to “delight” the fans with an “OH, so that’s what Keamy would have been up to if he hadn’t been on the island!!!” moment, we also know these random appearances will be stupid, and of course make no sense compared to all we’ve learned in the first 5 seasons.

So unless they are going to give a Desmond “flash sideways” where he remembers everything and ties it all together (or at least toss us a Boone “flash-sideways” for nostalgia sake), I think we’d all be okay if they just cut their losses went back and reedited all future episodes to remove them, I guess until then we’ll just accept that there are about 100 plotholes in each “flash-sideways”, and we’ll try to focus on any part of the show that might actually make sense.

As for the on-island action, I can’t really remember what happened, I know it was a Sayid episode, so he was probably up to something, I think he fought samurai guy or something, I can’t remember who won. I vaguely recall Kate running around annoying everyone, as per usual, she finally reunited with Claire, something might have happened there. I don’t remember seeing Sun, Jin, Ben, Richard, Sawyer, Jack or Hurley; so that probably means they’re resting up for next week.

Next week’s episode is a Ben episode, so he’ll probably be up to something then, hopefully chilling with Alpert. After that they’ll probably toss in a Sawyer or Hurley episode since we won’t have seen them in 3 or 4 weeks, and will have forgotten what was happening on their respective sides of the Island. So until next week, we’ll all just keep hoping that the producers have some giant miracle up their ass that will somehow tie together five seasons of bizarre mysteries and pointless plots; as an old colleague might say “what a show!”

And then...

LOST Episode 4

All right, back for episode 4, I appreciate all the kind words everyone had to offer my breakdowns thusfar; they really are the best Lost theories, criticisms, and tidbits on the world wide web. And as Blog Cabins superfan Nick stated, settle down with the grammar police fellas, we’re blogging on a free blogger website, none of us is going to win a Pulitzer. If you want great writing take a page from our boys Desmondo or Nick and stick to exclusively reading Charles Dickens or internet porno stories, respectively; now there are two sources with great storylines. And hey, I’m as big a Lost fan as the next guy, it was great watching back around Season 3 and 4. Let’s not kill the messenger, it isn’t my fault the writers painted themselves into a corner with all their bizarre mysteries that have no explanation and are subsequently submitting a turd final season.

Now let’s delve into this episode, they finally decided to move the plot forward a little in an episode that was shockingly almost decent!!!! Plus the “flash sideways” actually served a purpose this week. Amazing… I’m still not sold on these, I probably would have rather seen a flashback from the original timeline where Jackie was getting it on with the prom queen after the dance and then Jacob knocked on the car door and offered him a rubber, but the point was made, apparently Jacob has been watching and interfering in Jack’s life for decades. Jake somehow prevented Jack him from having a kid originally, and I guess he has Jack pegged as the #1 seed in the candidate bracket. It looks like they are shaping up to have one of the candidates take over the reins in the season finale, I think they are down to five left. Here are some more notes on the episode, in bullet form:

-They just couldn’t resist a random appearance from an Islander in Jack’s bizarro world, with samurai dude having some phenom piano playing kid also, absolutely terrible as seems to be par for the course. Obviously Samurai’s not getting his own “flash sideways” ep, but do we really need to know what he’d be up to if the island hadn’t imploded back in the 70s?? Also if he was an Other back then wouldn’t he have been blown up, I’m a little iffy on his timeline, but we at least know Ben was on the Island when the h-bomb was detonated, yet he seemed fine last week as a random school teacher. We’ll just write it off as one of the hundreds of plot holes I guess.

-That was pretty funny how they had Hurley rattle off the enduring Lost nerd theory that the two skeletons were actually some of the plane crash survivors stuck in the past from time traveling, then had Jack look at him like he was a complete retard. At least they put that “mystery” to bed.

-I kind of enjoy the psycho Claire, I haven’t seen a solid axing to the chest that good since Scatman Crothers got his in the Shining

-Nice also to see Claire aligned with “Locke”, and now having a grudge against Kate, this could lead up to my hope of an all out Island war with Team Jacob facing off against Smokey/Locke, Claire, Sawyer and Jin, and the winner gets the Island

-Lastly, here are the top five “mysteries” we hope they wrap up before the show’s conclusion:

5. What is the deal with this alleged sickness that is afflicting Claire, and possibly Sayid? I guess it’s supposed to be the same sickness that took out Rousseau’s team. How is this related to the smoke monster?

4. Why did the writers think it would be a good idea to create an alternate reality? Was there not enough sci-fi-iness with all the time traveling, monsters, magic, and super-powers? And why couldn’t they make an alternate reality that didn’t suck, and mainly sticks to showing us lame uninteresting things we already knew?

3. Will Ben finally get his chance to ice Charles Widmore? And why is Chaz such a dick?

2. How did Jacob, Smokey, and Alpert come to the Island?

1. Why would they completely write off their best character, yet keep his name in the credits just to taunt us? Come on what does it take to get some Desmondo up in this piece?? I wouldn’t even mind if they had another gaping plot hole to get him into the mix; hell, have him develop another superpower and fly onto the Island Superman style for all I care. It’s getting to the point where I almost wouldn’t mind seeing him pop up randomly in someone’s “flash sideways” doing something stupid that makes no sense at all to the plot… I just miss his face…

And then...

LOST Episode 3 Breakdown

Oh yeah, I guess I am supposed to put together a Lost breakdown for last night’s episode, that crapfest last night didn’t exactly inspire me, so between that and Fletch’s minions disparaging my grammar last week (ripping on my grammar… that was really hitting me where it hurts, sniff), let’s just go with the top 11 reasons that John Locke/Smoke Monster centric episode blew:


11. I liked how they casually mention that the Monster can’t change form anymore, a nice little homemade loophole to keep Terry O’Quinn on the show. Besides who’s going to question this retarded Island rule they made out of convenience, when they make up an average of about 20 an episode.

10. Wow, so John Locke would have still been paralyzed if they hadn’t landed on the Island?? Who’d have guessed? We get it, things would have different if the plane had landed in LA, I don’t think I can stand a season worth of these “flash sideways” (as the Lost nerds are calling them).

9. I had almost forgotten how annoying Ilyana was until last night’s episode, plus she’s not that attractive either, how did she manage to seduce a multi-millionaire Sayid back in the day… curious.

8. Their plan to do two retarded storylines and just rotate them every other week that they started last season (with the 1977 past plotline one week, then present day plotline the next week) and continued into this season (with Team Locke one week, and Team Temple the next) is really annoying me. Its fine if you’re churning through a season on hulu in a week, but when you can barely remember their retard plots anyway and then they switch to a completely different one next week, it just takes us out of it, by next week I will have forgotten that Claire is back and allegedly psycho.

7. Oh my god, so Rose is working in Temp office and still has cancer!!! I’m beginning to think things might have played out differently for the characters if the plane hadn’t crashed on the Island…

6. Wait I thought Ben was just bs-ing with his story about Jacob’s list, apparently Jake really does have a list, and his chosen people all correspond to a number. Whatever, I think everyone got over all that number/list hoopla back in season 2, they better have a hell of a resolution if they’re reintroducing it.

5. Holy cow, Hurley would have still been rich if the plane hadn’t crashed!! This strange new world frightens and confuses me, it’s too different from my reality. At least Hurley is still fat and still a douche, otherwise my head would have surely exploded!!!

4. I knew something was missing this season, a weird looking kid who couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag, hopefully this ghost kid follows around “Locke” for the rest of the season. Better yet maybe he and Walt will get their own spinoff next season.

3. Apparently Alpert doesn’t know as much as we hoped he did, too bad, if he and “Locke” had been able to just have a candid discussion about what was happening on the Island, they could have wrapped up a good chunk of their retarded “mysteries “, and put this season out of its misery early.

2. What does it take to get some damn Desmondo up in this piece? The guy appeared in like two episodes last season, and only made one 5 second cameo this season. I guess you can’t fault the producers, anytime you can completely write your best character out of a show, you have to do it.

1. Benjamin Linus, alternate reality history teacher?!?! But, but he’s an Other leading, good guy killing psycho, how could he be an ordinary history teacher?? It must be some sort of secret plan of going undercover to kill John Locke again, because if he was just an ordinary teacher that would mean Jack blowing up the Island somehow changed things… and if that were the case, surely they would have found a subtle way to let us know things were different in this reality.

And then...

LOST Breakdown - Episode 2!

So here we are at week 2 of Lost, and after their season premiere and highest ratings ever, what do they go to hook all their viewers…? A Kate episode?!?! No one ever likes Kate episodes, but maybe they at least had a decent subplot to save it… not even close, with a subplot about Samurai and John Lennon trying to poison Sayid. Classic Lostiness right there. But never fear chums - they always mix in a bunch of stinkers, it just means we’re that much closer to an episode that doesn’t actually suck. They’ve been resting up Desmondo for practically a full season, it might be time to get that fella back in the mix; he was on Flight 815 in their bizarre alternate reality, and the only reason he’d be there is if he has memories of the original timeline. Is it too much to ask for him to start mixing things up, causing trouble for the passengers and speaking of what was, is, and never should have been. Maybe build up to some finale where Desmondo through killing a bunch of people and righting some wrongs makes the two timelines merge, and then there is two of everyone in some bizarre combined world. Also, they picked a poor week to give Richie Alpert some rest, I for one was looking forward to some war of demigods with him and Jacob’s nemesis clamoring for allies in a civil war to settle once and for all who rules the Island. And when was Alpert in chains? Was he in fact a slave on the Black Rock, as some Lost nerds have been postulating for seasons on end?

As for this episode, “What Kate Does”, it was the typical Lost throwaway episode, with Kate doing what she always does: running around annoying everyone. In the alternate reality, Kate kidnaps Claire, escapes from some cops, then makes friends with Claire, and then they make plans to live happily ever after together raising Aaron. Also in yet another colossal alternate reality gaffe, they had Claire come up with the name Aaron, when originally she only named her kid Aaron because Boone had just died and she wanted to honor him (and like every other rational person she despised the douchebags of Red Sox nation), and since it was 2004 she went with Aaron since Aaron Boone was currently the hero of Anti-Sawx nation. Also in Bizarro L.A., there was a cameo by Ethan Rom, but since Jack blew up the island, Rom grew up on the mainland as Goodspeed, a retarded appearance that just gave the writers a chance to show that yes, if we hadn’t figured it out by now, things would be different in an alternate reality.

On the island, the episode seemed to have some promise thanks to the triumphant return of Aldo, played by popular character actor Rob McElhenney, Mac from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”. Last time we saw Aldo he was falling for the old “Wookie” trick and getting knocked out. Aldo looked like he was calling the shots for their little hunting posse too, until Kate got mad and knocked him out again. Sadly there is no hope of him rejoining with Samurai and John Lennon next episode, as he got shot by a possibly evil Claire. Also since the Others have a John Lennon, why not go all the way and give three other guys Beatle haircuts and just have them hanging around, maybe have their George rocking a moustache and breaking out an axe from Hurley’s guitar case to start playing “Here Comes the Sun”. On the other side of the Island, Sawyer threatened to shoot everyone, giving me hope for my dream of him going vigilante and wreaking some havoc, but it turned out he just wanted to go get an engagement ring from his old house. Then he and Kate cried together or something - I dunno, I lost interest there pretty fast. And, as previously mentioned there was a masterminded plot to poison Sayid that Jack managed to thwart. Judging from the ashes they poured on him, they must think he’s some vessel for the smoke monster or something. At least that whole weird sequence ended Fletcher’s bizarre theory of Sayid having secretly been Jacob in disguise the whole time. Better leave the predictions to us professionals, Irwin.

I don’t remember seeing any previews for next week’s episode but I sure would like to see a heaping dose of Mister Hume, wouldn’t mind some Alpert also, and I’d love to see them get the inevitable Jin/Sun reunion out of the way, looks like they’re trying to build up to a replay of the Desmond/Penny reunion, only with Jin/Sun no one cares. I guess we’ll probably find out what Claire has been up to, it would be sweet if Jacob’s nemesis could occupy numerous bodies and she’s chilling with “Christian Shepherd”, while “John Locke” is torturing Alpert, and in his third possessed body, Sayid turns evil and ices Samurai, then jams out with the Others’ Beatles cover band.

And then...

LOST Episode 1 Breakdown

A pretty solid season premiere last night, you can’t beat two hours of Lost after a 6 month hiatus, sure there were the usual solutions to their lame mysteries that made no sense, but we’ve grown to accept that over the years. So the big Season 6 Plot seems to be them doing two alternate timelines, one where Jack’s big plan to blow up the Swan worked, and one where it did not. They kicked us off with Jack on Flight 815, not crashing this time, just getting constantly annoyed by fellow passenger Rose (at least some things don’t change in alternate realities), and those disturbing old people PDA’s. Let’s just hope these alternate realities fizzle out quickly, do any of us care what would have happened to any of the people if the flight hadn’t crashed, I know I don’t, they’re mostly just regular folk, they even had to make a lame plot about Kate escaping from custody to try to make their lame alternate reality interesting.

Obviously Katie escaping from custody and outsmarting that cop for the 25th time is a little farfetched, but luckily it is not the only gaping plot hole in the absurd alternate reality. Right off the bat I suspected a dream or some lame flashforward fakeout from the producers since Jack’s hair was much longer than the buzz cut he initially sported on Flight 815. Then there was the fact that good old Desmondo was on the flight, even if the island had been blown up, and Dez’s around the world Sailing trip had been successful, why in the hell would he be flying from Austrailia to Los Angeles, the only logical explanation of course is that Desmondo’s powers carried over when the timelines split and he remembered the original timeline, and took Flight 815 so he could hang out with his old Island buddies.

Then they changed the Charlie timeline, originally when the plane crashed Chaz had just dropped his heroin in the toilet and was about to flush, so we’re now led to believe if the plane hadn’t crashed he would have picked the H out of the toilet and swallowed it? I’m not biting, plus if he was suicidal, there are a lot of better ways to do it than choking on a bag of H that is probably covered in that blue airplane toilet water. It was nice of Dominic Monaghan and Boone to come back for an episode for their lame alternate timeline, I was a little disappointed they couldn’t get Shannon, not like the actress has anything going on, and what was the explanation for where she was the whole flight while Boone and Locke chewed the fat. Also, humourous to think of Frogurt and Artz being pumped for the alternate timeline, so they could cash one more paycheck . Lastly, what was the deal with Christian Shepherd’s coffin going missing, didn’t Jackie find that coffin on the Island in Episode 2, so it had to be on the flight; there is a simple explanation for that one at least, that clerk Jack talked to clearly had a necrophiliac look to him, he was probably having some fun with Christian’s corpse in the back, and will return it to Jackie after a few days. That Christian is a dashing fella, we might also remember him as Bob Warner, one of the few lucky actors to pull off the double dip of the two best shows on tv, Lost and 24. Anyway obviously this alternate storyline is going to go on for a few more episodes and only continue to get lamer. If we wanted to see side by side alternate relaties we could watch that lame Gwyneth Paltrow movie or that episode of Scrubs where J.D. does/does not get caught checking out some girl’s rack.

Despite the classic Lostiness of throwing in a lame plot line, all the other storylines they have going on seem to be firing on all cylinders, the H-bomb team teleported through time to wherever Sun and her gang are at, another solid brawl between Jack and Sawyer and the “heart-breaking” goodbye between Sawyer and Juliet (I don’t care what Irwin’s readers think, Penny and Desmond, they aren’t). At least Miles got a chance to use his talking to the dead powers, as I requested. Also awesome to see the ghost of Jacob, turns out Hugo’s insanity really worked out for the good of the team, hopefully Jacob and Hurley form some kind of super team like Pat Swayze and Whoopi Goldberg. They did finally show us the temple and sure enough there was quite a team of Others hanging out there, leading us to the patented Lost contrived way to add new characters at the beginning of a season. Let’s delve into that quickly…

In Season 2 they had the tail section joining up with team (Ana Lucia, Libby, and Bernard, three misfires right there), some psycho Scotsman hanging out down the Hatch (Yes! Desmondo!), as well as a kidnapped ballooner they suspected of being an Other (Ben, another strong character). In Season three they introduced the Others (Juliet and Tom, not bad) and had two random wierdos pretending they were there the whole time (Nikki and Paolo, so hated the fans made the producers kill them off). In Season 4 Widmore’s team came to the island for some wacky hijinks (Farady, Miles, Charlotte, and Lapidus; Faraday and Miles added something to the table). In Season 5 they already had too many characters, but still felt the need to add a bunch of Dharma bit players through the time traveling angle (Rog Linus, Phil, Horus, Radzinsky), a couple old school Others (Alpert’s role was dialed up, a Young Hawking and Widmore also served to annoy) and some new plane crash survivors (Ilana is the only one left I think). Now in Season 6 it appears the Temple posse is the latest bunch of actors to join the cast, namely that John Lennon wannabe and samurai wannabe, possibly Cindy the annoying flight attendant also, after one episode I would say the chances of them panning out are pretty remote.

On the other side of the Island nothing really happened, Jacob’s old enemy revealed that he was the smoke monster, and that yes he really can’t pass through ash, then he yelled at Ben and kidnapped Alpert, some pretty uneventful happenings after the crescendo of killing Jacob, but it looks like they are setting up a faceoff against Jacob’s enemy and it looks like he’ll be staying in John Locke’s body or at least his smokey counterpart. Hopefully Team Jacob can rally and pull off the upset, a strong move by Jake preserving Sayid, that guy is kind of badass, definitely a good fella to have on your side in any upcoming war. So all in all a decent first episode, we’ll just have to wait and see where the rest of the season takes us…

And then...

LOST Season Preview Part 2

All right, back for Part 2, for Part I which covers the intro to the season and what is going on with the People off Island click here, now let’s get into the main plots and what is going on at the Island…

People on the Island – Current Time

Sun Kwon – As you may recall Sun went to the island to try to track down Jin, and instead found herself abandoned by her old Island buddies and left to fend for herself against Linus, some Jacob worshippers, and what she thought was John Locke in the current time, she’s been typically annoying, but thankfully relegated to a background player in the Mexican standoff between “Locke”, Linus and Alpert. Her goal for the final season is to reunite with Jin and her kid back in Japan. Our goal for her is no Sun-centric episodes this season.

Benjamin Linus – Old Linus really went off the deep end at the end of last season, his whole life all he’s ever wanted is to make Jacob happy, then he spazzes out and stabs the fella upon their first meeting. For a master manipulator like Linus, it has got to be embarrassing being played like a fiddle by Jacob’s enemy. Linus should continue to be a major player this season, and hopefully we’ll get some more backstory on him, those never fail to be interesting, I’m still wondering whatever happened to his girlfriend from back in the day, the producers have been threatening to introduce her for two seasons…

Ilana – Ilana as we know is the annoying bounty hunter that kidnapped Sayid and who couldn’t act; until she arrived on the island and we found out that she was some kind of Jacob groupie, but sadly still couldn’t act. She and her posse seem to have some insight into the island, they were the ones who figured out someone else had been using Jacob’s cabin (Enemy as Christian Shepherd), and they tried to warn Riccardus about the fake John Locke, but arrived too late, we’ll probably find out the back story behind this group and how Jacob recruited them, and how they came up with their little group question “What lies in the shadow of the Statue?” Frankly I think Desmond’s insider question was cooler, “What did one snowman say to the other?”

Jacob’s enemy – And here he is, this guy has been trying to kill Jacob since back in the Black Rock days, and as Jacob said to him in the finale, it looks like he finally found his loophole. The loophole was using Linus to kill him, evidently. From what we know of Jacob’s enemy, he does not age, can assume the appearance of dead people, gets trapped in circles of ashes, hates Jacob, and may or may not have some relationship with the smoke monster (or may be the smoke monster, I’m still a little confused on that one myself). Anyway as everyone figured out in the finale, he’s been posing as John Locke and playing Ben into killing Jacob, which apparently has been a plan in the works for quite a while, dating back to a time loop where he (as Locke) had Richard tell Locke to kill himself. He’s also posed as Christian Shepherd and Ben’s daughter, now that he finally achieved his goal of killing Jake, we will have to see where he goes from there, does he now assume leadership of the island, will he and Richard face off in duel of demigods? All we know now from the preview I saw, is it looks like he’s staying in Locke’s body for the time being, probably for the best since his original body back in the 1400s gave Walt a good run for worst actor.

Frank Lapidus – Lapidus hasn’t been up to much, mostly just getting knocked unconscious by everyone, he is getting recruited by team Jacob, so he will probably be a player in the faceoff against Jacob’s enemy if he tries to take over the island.

Richard Alpert – Alpert really burst into the limelight last season being a major player in both the past and present plots thanks to his immortality powers. He seems to have all the answers, so obviously he’s going to be around as the answers unfold. He was pals with Jacob, and it will be interesting to see if he has crossed paths with Jacob’s enemy over the numerous centuries they’ve all been chillaxing on the island. Also let’s not forget that he told Sun he saw the whole Jack-Sawyer team die, though he wasn’t at the Swan so some more past events could unfold, only time will tell. One of the few interesting theories put forth by the Lost nerds is that Richard Alpert, or R.A., is actually the Egyptian god Ra, since the Island seems to be focused on Egyptian mythology, this one is interesting, I could see Jacob, Alpert and enemy all being Egyptian gods playing chess with all the people on the Island over the centuries.

People on the Island – Past

Jack – Jack went through quite a transformation in Season 5, he went from unquestioned leader to a background player and Locke disciple, finally making his big power play in the finale by killing a bunch of Dharmas and detonating a hydrogen bomb on the Swan. Jack still got the lionshare of touches off the island, as the focus was on him and Kate and their doomed relationship, so doomed was it that it motivated him to blow up half the island. Where this detonation lands him is still up in the air going into tonight, but at least we know he won’t just teleport to LA and go back to doing surgeries, that wouldn’t make much of an interesting Final Season.

Kate – Kate was still spazzing and running around getting into trouble all season, even if Jack was content to kick it in the janitor’s closet, Kate still hopped on any chance to get in trouble, whether saving Little Ben’s life, fighting off Dharmas to bring Faraday to his mother, recruiting Sawyer and Juliet to fistfight Jack, and then after that fizzled out, switching sides to join into a gunfight to detonate a bomb. Kate is obviously poised to be a major factor in the final season, let’s just hope they don’t rehash the tired Sawyer/Kate/Jack love triangle angle for yet another season.

Sawyer – Sawyer took over Jack’s leader duties during the season, and also settled down and became domesticated with Juliet. Sadly this really took Sawyer away from what he does best which is being a jerk, making snarky comments, and occasionally coming through in clutch to everyone’s surprise. Sure a little character development is expected over five seasons, but turning Jack into Locke, and Sawyer into Jack is a little bit of a stretch. They tried to have Miles assume a poor man Sawyer role, but it didn’t really pan out. Hopefully Juliet’s untimely death will give Sawyer some edge and maybe he’ll go off vigilante style in this final season.

Hurley – As discussed they are developing all the characters, except Hurley, who still is just as lame as ever and just hangs out calling people dude and doing stuff that is supposed to be funny, the only mildly amusing thing he’s done is trying to write Empire Strikes Back before Lucas, couldn’t they have made him go completely psycho after getting out of the mad house, that would at least be interesting, running around telling everyone on the island he’s a millionaire from the future and acting zany. The character is pretty stale, sadly I don’t think the actor has the range to pull of anything but fat, annoying guy with awful hair. It’s a safe bet he’ll just be in the background doing his usual Hurley things this season and not adding to the plot.

Sayid – Is Sayid going to make it seems to be one of the “cliffhangers” of last season’s finale. Sayid went off the deep end a bit after his wife was killed (by Widmore?), and Ben had him take out a bunch of Widmorians. Once he got back to the past he went rogue, tried to kill the young Ben Linus, then apparently roamed through the jungle for a month or so killing people at random until he joined up with team Jack again. Who knows what Sayid will be up to after he somehow survives that gaping bullethole in his gut, probably a safe bet that he’ll add to his team high kill total though.

Jin – Jin finally got his own plotline last season, as he skipped through time getting into some hijinks with Rousseau and her wacky gang of Frenchmen, it was a decent plot and filled in some blanks about Danielle and some early history of the Island. And of course, Jin was the “cliffhanger” “death” of last season, why the producers always feel the need to do these lame fakeouts is beyond me, no one is ever fooled, was anyone surprised when they “brought Jin back to life”. Jin unlike the rest of the gang doesn’t get his kicks from gun fights and blowing stuff up, he’s just looking to get reunited with his wife and go home, maybe meet his daughter. Let’s just hope if he ever does get reunited with his lost love, they don’t put him on the shelf like they did with Des.

Miles – Miles was mostly relegated to Sawyer’s sidekick during the season, I don’t think he even used his talk to the dead powers once. Miles however was the one who figured out that maybe them setting off an H-bomb was the Incident that his father was always talking about in those videos. Hopefully Miles gets a chance to chat with some corpses and if he bumps into Ilana and her team again maybe he’s figured out the answer to that “What lies in the shadow of the Statue” question by now, those guys did try to recruit him remember.

Rose & Bernard – Painful, just painful, is it really necessary for these two to make an appearance in every season, Paolo and Nikki were more popular. The fact that they are supposed to be the voice of reason, and were acting like they were too cool for the gang was again painful. Let’s just hope these two don’t appear in the Final Season, their flashback episode was hands down the worst, most pointless episode in the history of the show.

Hopefully that brings everyone up to speed for the big premiere tonight, let's just hope this final Season can live up to the hype and wrap up all these loose ends they've left, with a a satisfactory conclusion, and some solid episodes to finish this baby up strong...

And then...