30 Day TV Challenge - Day 14: "How many times do I have to tell you, John? I always have a plan."

14. Your favorite male character.

(MASSIVE spoilers for Lost. In fact, even giving you this character's name spoils pretty much everything past the halfway point of season 2 for you. So feel free not to read today's if you would rather not know. In fact, I'm putting the rest of this under a jump break, though you won't be helped if you're reading in a RSS feed. So then.)

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30 Day TV Challenge - Day 7: "It was imaginary peanut butter, actually."

7. Least favorite episode of your favorite show.

"Homecoming"
Season 1, Episode 15

(Spoilers. Couldn't get around it this time. If you'd like to avoid them, bail after the first paragraph.)

Picking my least favorite episode of Lost was actually even easier than choosing a favorite. Because "Homecoming" is the one I most wanted to skip over during my recent rewatch of the series. Now, I should point out that it's actually not that bad -- it's not the worst episode the show ever did, as far as actual quality is concerned; that might be something like "Adrift," or maybe "Stranger in a Strange Land," which was so awful it kick-started the writers out of complacency and forced them into "We need to wrap this up" mode, resulting in the rollercoaster final three seasons. But the prompt asks for my least favorite episode, and while those episodes were bad, they were also interesting failures. "Adrift" ends with a banging cliffhanger and features a few great character beats with Michael and Sawyer; "Stranger" at least tries to mine some insightful psychological drama from Jack's backstory, even if it's undone by poor writing and worse acting (thank you for coming, Bai Ling). "Homecoming," on the other hand, is just plain boring. It's lazy, ham-fisted, over-obvious, ridden with clichés and concludes with one of Lost's most bald-faced attempts at avoiding a narrative resolution.

Charlie Pace is actually a character I short-changed quite a bit during Lost's original run. The second time around, I found him to be quite a bit more compelling, thanks largely to Dominic Monaghan's giddy performance. But "Homecoming" -- Charlie's second flashback episode -- fails him on every level. They gloss over (read: delay) revelations about Claire's disappearance by chalking it up to amnesia -- yes, amnesia, the hoariest soap opera cliché of them all -- then spend the rest of the episode telegraphing the inevitable end: Charlie guns down a potential plot thread before it can go anywhere.

It's telegraphed, of course, by the flashbacks -- while all of Lost's flashback stories reflect and illuminate the present events, "Homecoming" deals them way too on-the-nose. Charlie feels responsible for what happened to Claire and is afraid he won't be able to take care of her -- sure, we got it. Do we need a woman from Charlie's past coming right out and telling us, spelling out the theme, "You'll never take care of anyone"? And when it's over, no one seems all that bothered by the idea that Charlie has murdered a man in cold blood; no one seems to mind that much that he's killed their only lead into the mystery of the Others. No one knows why he took Claire, no one knows where he came from, no one knows anything.

And it's not just me that hates "Homecoming": Damon Lindelof, the show's co-creator, claims it's also his least favorite. He said that it's "as flawed on almost every single level that an episode of Lost could be." And he wrote "Homecoming." It's good to know that someone agrees with me.

30 Day TV Challenge - Day 6: "Every equation needs stability, something known. It's called a constant."

6. Favorite episode of your favorite show.

"The Constant"
Season 4, Episode 5

(Are we going to do this without spoilers again? We're damn sure going to try!)

You'd think it would be harder to narrow down my favorite episode of Lost. It had an awful lot of fantastic episodes, after all. But two years ago, the moment "The Constant" ended, I knew it was the best episode yet. Watching through the series again, it still easily stands out. The narrative is spellbinding, the performances are riveting (Henry Ian Cusick was never better as Desmond Hume), and it packs a massive emotional punch. That's something about Lost that people usually forget -- sure, it had four-toed statues and smoke monsters and a crazy, psycho mythology to carry around, but its heart was always with its characters, which led to some astounding emotional resonance. (Also, a mass uprising at the show's endgame, which resonated deeply with its characters but didn't stop to explain every little middling detail of the psycho mythology. But we're not going to have that discussion now. No matter how badly I want to.)

Oddly, "The Constant" has, at its core, a love story, which is the one thing Lost never did very well. Oh, they certainly tried, bless their hearts: the whole Jack-Kate-Sawyer mess took up most of the series, and never felt very natural -- I never got hung up on the "Which one will she choose?" angle, because it felt ported in from another series, a stock soapy plot the writers offered up because we have to have something to draw in casual viewers, I guess. Instead, they found gold almost by accident: the painful, tragic tale of Desmond Hume and Penny Widmore, lovers driven apart by time, mistakes and -- literally, it seemed -- the universe itself. Desmond found himself in hell after hell, and each time, held himself together by focusing on his love, and the idea that was out there, somewhere, waiting for him.

(Okay, can't get much farther without any spoilers. So, a mild spoiler alert. If you want to stay clean, you can skip the rest.)

"The Constant" takes that idea and makes it starkly literal: Desmond doesn't just need to find Penny to hold onto his will to live -- he needs her to live at all. Trapped in a swirling mess of confusion and terror, the only thing he can find to stop it -- the only thing that can bring him back to sanity and to life at all -- is Penny, the only constant that's always been there for him. Even outside of its relationship to the show's arcs and mythology, it's a powerful metaphor for how real love feels -- watching "The Constant" before and after I found the love of my life certainly gave me different perspectives.

I also want to talk about the show's narrative technique, but I'm not sure I could do it justice in text. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the Lost's executive producers, wrote "The Constant," and called it the most difficult episode they'd ever had to write. Just explaining the concept to people made them sound like idiots...but the episode itself manages to make it crystal clear, almost entirely visually. Lindelof and Cuse set aside the show's typical flashback structure for something that is...well, a lot more visceral. It echoes Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, which is (oddly enough) one of my favorite novels. It also foreshadows some pretty major events in the fifth season, though not in a way that would be immediately obvious. (That's Lost for you -- always running the long con.)

It doesn't have a mind-blowing cliffhanger or a game-changing plot twist. It's just a beautiful love story, thrown into Lost's mythical blender. And that's why "The Constant" is my favorite episode -- because it shows you where its heart truly is.

(Runners-up, presented without commentary and no particular order: "Through the Looking Glass," "Walkabout," "Ab Aeterno," "Numbers," "?," "Flashes Before Your Eyes," "Jughead," "The Man Behind the Curtain," "The Economist," "Confirmed Dead," "316," "LaFleur," "The Substitute," "The Candidate," and "The End." Yes, "The End." I told you, I'm not having this discussion right now.)

Synchronicity

So last night I wrote that endless essay on Lost (one of several to come, of course), and then I come across an article on the new Weezer album, set to disappoint us next month.

Now, I've talked about Weezer before, more than once. Short version: I love their first two albums like best friends, but find their output since frustrating, inconsistent and boring. (BOCTAOE.) But one thing I do like about post-Pinkerton Weezer is Rivers Cuomo's refusal to take the band's image seriously. Here, take a look at the cover of 2008's self-titled "red album":

And then, their (wretchedly awful) 2009 release, Raditude:

I love those covers. They're funny, even if the music they represent is not so great.

So last week, Weezer announces the title of their new record, Hurley. Yes, like Hurley from Lost. And everyone's like, "Huh huh, they should just put a picture of Jorge Garcia on the cover, heh heh."

So they did.

That's it. That's the cover of Hurley, Weezer's eighth album. Not even any words, not the band name, nothing. Just Hurley. Hurley.

And I would think they were making fun of Jorge, except (a) they're not mean people, and (b) I'm pretty sure Jorge and Rivers are friends. As seen in this photo...

...which is, of course, where they cropped Jorge's face for the cover.

I really don't know what to make of it, honestly. Is it joke? Is it a tribute? Is it brilliant? Is it lazy?

You tell me.

(Credit: The A.V. Club.)

30 Day TV Challenge - Day 4: "It only ends once. Everything that comes before is just progress."

4. Your favorite show ever.

You're shocked, I'm sure.

(How about we try to get through this without spoilers?)

I've talked about it incessantly. I've written about it incessantly. Some part of me -- the part that likes to be unpredictable -- thought about tossing a curveball here and not going with the painfully obvious, but who are we kidding? The prompt is blunt and to the point, and so I should be: Lost is my favorite show ever. And since a number of these prompts ask you to write about your favorite show -- I'm counting five or six appearances for Lost over the next thirty days -- you should buckle up.

Trying to summarize Lost comes across as stupid, really, because reducing it to its barest essentials -- "It's about the survivors of a plane crash on a deserted island" -- misses the point entirely. Lost is a show about the power and fragility of faith, the lure of the mysterious, the importance of learning from our mistakes so not to repeat them, guilt and redemption, the meaning of life and death, the collision of the spiritual mind and the scientific, whether people -- on their own or as a society -- are capable of rising above their selfish and vain interests and working for good, and the nature of good and evil (and how maybe they're not as different as we think). Lost is about taking a step back from our narrow perspective and seeing our place on the timeline of history -- all that came before us, and all that will come after us. That everything matters, whether we know it or understand it, and that each and every choice we make, each and every person we meet, affects the rest of our lives and the lives of others in ways we are often unable to comprehend. It was about everything.

And the survivors of a plane crash on a deserted island. Also: polar bears.

Lost is incredible enough on its own, of course: six magnificent seasons of gripping, revolutionary television. But it's more than that to me -- the community that sprang up around the show was almost as much fun. The fan-created podcasts (I'm a Jay and Jack Podcast fan, myself), the endless message boards, the three-thousand word essays dissecting forty-second scenes from four-year-old episodes -- the show felt alive, somehow, a growing entity that spread beyond the hour a week it aired. And unlike Star Trek, which I always felt kept its fans at arm's length*, the creators of Lost fully embraced that community, welcoming it and adding to it, giving fans a wonderful give-and-take that only endeared us to them more. They gave us elaborate panels and sketches at conventions, they gave us internet-only episodes, they published tie-in novels and video games -- hell, even the official jigsaw puzzles were canonical.

Of course, I'm this far in and I haven't really explained why I liked it so much. And that's because I can't. Which is not to say it's a mystery; it's to say that every answer to that question feels incomplete. I loved everything about this show -- even when it screwed up, it screwed up in a way that was fascinating, somehow. I loved the writing, I loved the characters and the actors, I loved the directing and the music, I loved the fluid nature of the storytelling and the way the show insisted on defying convention and expectation at every turn. I loved the way it confronted the Big Questions about life, the universe and everything; but I also loved the way it examined the smaller problems, the problems we all have in life. It's pretty hard to believe one could look at a story filled with Smoke Monsters and magical islands and say, "I can relate to that," but that's what Lost did.

And, finally: it was just flat-out entertaining. The mysteries were dense (some would say obtuse), but I never really got that sinking X-Files feeling, the feeling that the writers had climbed up their own asses and lost the way. (I almost got that feeling. Once. For a week during the third season, between the episodes "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead," I got worried. But it passed. And I was rewarded.) I've loved a lot of shows, but none have made the impact that Lost did on me, and I doubt any show will do it again. It changed the way I look at television -- I have a feeling I'll be looking for a show to effect me on all levels like Lost did for a long, long time.

I feel, somehow, that I need to defend the show -- the internet turned on it, and turned hard, towards the end, and its final episode unleashed an ocean of hate. I know the endless cries of "They left so much unanswered," and I could respond. I could tell you that, in fact, almost nothing was left (entirely) unexplained, and the gaps in the story had far more to do with the unfortunate realities of creating a television series than they did with poor writing or bad choices. But I won't -- I don't think Lost needs a defender. Because the show speaks for itself. Like any epic story worth the time, it rewards the patient and the observant. The central conflict of the show for most of its run was that of Faith vs. Reason, and in the end, the show came down on the side of...neither. The world is what you make of it, however you choose to engage it, and you just have to try to do the best you can. As it is with Lost: if you want to devour each episode and break down all of the clues and hints and foreshadowing and references, that's there for you. If you just watch it for the gripping story, that's there for you, too.

It's funny. It's stunning. It's action-packed. It's moving. It's science-fiction. It was romance. It was adventure story. It's buddy comedy. It's tragedy. It's parable. It's methodical. It's spiritual. It's contemplative. It's classic. It's post-modern. It was the last great show of the Old Media; it was the first great show of the New Media.

It was Lost. My favorite show ever.

*By that I don't mean the actors -- I mean the producers and executives, the big-wigs, who always seemed (at least to me, as a young fan) to be dismissive and confused by the Trekkies, and even their attempts to reach out felt unabashedly mercenary. Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof hosted an almost-weekly podcast on Lost, inviting and responding directly to fan questions and criticism with honesty, openness and aplomb. I cannot see Brannon Braga or Rick Berman ever doing something like that, can you?

It sounds like a good opportunity with an honest, well-meaning company that I have a lot of faith in

Wandering around the internet today, and discovered the new recruitment site for the Dharma Initiative, Dharma Wants You. Now, there's a high-class organization that is always above-board and open with the public. You should take the recruitment test -- it's only seventeen questions, quick and easy. I did, and I passed. I wonder what wonderful opporunties await me!

Namaste!

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Now playing: Fall Out Boy - You're Crashing, But You're No Wave
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Quotable Quotes

Mini Boss, after last night's episode of Lost:

"Lost is like the SATs. If the answer is that easy, it's probably not right."

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Now playing: Third Eye Blind - 10 Days Late
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Lost in a nutshell...what?

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

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Now playing: Mike Doughty - I Hear the Bells
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You do it to yourself -- you do, and that's what really hurts

I bought the Lost video game on Friday night, as I indicated I would. And I finished it last night, somewhat short of the promised twelve hours of gameplay. How was it? For non-Lost viewers, I imagine it would be a mediocre gaming experience with an unintelligible story -- virtually every dialogue contains a reference or inside joke from the show, and characters and places are suddenly thrust into the narrative without introduction or explanation. The game is extraordinarily linear, with a handful of boring Myst-like fusebox puzzles. For true Lost fans, though...it's even worse.

The dialogue is dreadful, and comes off as poorly written fan fiction. And it doesn't even work as video game dialogue -- they're described as "dialogue trees," but they're not trees. They're just lists of questions that always get the same answers no matter what order you ask them, and almost all of them are pointless. All the voice actors -- even the handful of real actors from the show -- sound like they're on downers (except Michael Emerson, who just can't help being awesome). The jackass doing Locke's voice, particularly, needed a Mana Potion -- I'm sure two months' worth of vitamin B12 would've given some life to his performance.

It is fun to explore the island, for a while -- and the section where you get to wander around the Swan is a blast. It should've been a lot longer, in fact...as should the rest of the game. It may have been stupid and badly written, but it also cost me sixty dollars -- I shouldn't be done with it the next day, especially when it has absolutely no replay value whatsoever. Oh, I guess I could go back through it to find the secret objects I'm supposed to snap photos of, but all you unlock are pieces of concept art -- whoopty-shit.

One of these days, I'm going to remember that I always get screwed over when I buy these Lost tie-in products. I'm going to remember it before I buy the thing, not after.

But hey, I guess that's what happens to a Lost whore -- you get screwed.

*rimshot*

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Now playing: The Decemberists - The Mariner's Revenge Song
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If I could give it a gold medal, too, I would

How good was tonight's episode of Lost, "Confirmed Dead"? I give it *****. Or a 10. Or an A+. Two thumbs up. Lost is, as I've maintained before, the best television show of the last ten years, and I would say that "Confirmed Dead" was one of the ten best episodes. Or, one of the five best. Or three best.

Okay, it might have been the best episode ever.

Mini Boss and I watched it tonight at Pizza Place, and could barely sit still in our excitement with each incredible moment. There were about fifty incredible moments, of course, so by the end I was practically pacing around the dining room. Oh, who am I kidding? I was pacing around the dining room.

Over the next hour, we dissected the episode while trying to do our actual jobs. We tossed around crackpot theories, laughed at our favorite parts, and speculated on next week's episode. Mini Boss raged against the producers who don't want to pay the writers more money.

God, it's good to have Lost back again.

And more good news? According to Michael Eisner, the Writers' Guild has been given a deal, the leadership has agreed to it, and it's going to the Guild members for a vote on Saturday.

We'll see, won't we?

As a reward for indulging in my Lost obsession (I know you don't care), here is another Decemberists video. You're welcome.



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Now playing: Elvis Costello - American Without Tears
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Don't even ask me how the dog managed to survive in the first place

Okay. Nobody who read this watches Lost. That hasn't stopped me from talking about it before, so I see no reason for it to stop me now. And, dammit, I have to tell someone.

So they've been doing their "mobisodes" for the past few months, running little two-minute mini-episodes online to hype the new season (which starts Thursday, aw yeah). Now, most of these have, shall we say, sucked the big one. They're trapped by their own edict: they want every peripheral part of Lost outside the show to be canonical and important, but they can't make it too important, because most of the viewers don't know any of that stuff. So we're stuck with filling in blanks (or the "Missing Pieces," the title of the series), like showing Juliet confessing her duplicity to Jack -- a scene we know occurred, because Jack told everyone she told him, but didn't see because, well, it was unnecessary. We've gone through twelve of these things, and they've pretty, and nice, and it's fun to see any Lost at all.

But the thirteenth and final mobisode was released today. And Jesus-Christ-on-a-fish-biscuit, look at this:



For the uninitiated: the dog is Vincent, who belongs to Walt, one of the survivors. The guy waking up in the jungle, of course, is Jack -- his part is actually just the beginning of the pilot (the first image on the show is that shot of his eye). And the guy talking to the dog? Jack's dad, Christian. Jack's dad was on the plane, too, but he wasn't with Jack. He was the luggage compartment. In a coffin. Because he was dead.

Jack later saw his father on the island, and those appearances were written off as either island-induced hallucinations or the Smoke Monster. But when Jack saw him, he was dressed exactly as he's dressed here. Could this be the Monster again? The only other time we think we've seen the Monster in human form was when it (maybe) took the shape of Eko's brother. The apparition taunted him, saying, "You speak to me as if I was your brother." Christian, though, refers to Jack personally, telling the dog to "wake up my son." And what is the "work" he has to do? Looking after the survivors? Leading them? Kick-starting the series?

And wait, he talks to the dog? And the dog understands?!

?!!

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Now playing: Jim Rome - Mon, January 28th, 2008 Hour 1
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The countdown begins

The countdown to awesomeness, that is.



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Now playing: Modest Mouse - Parting of the Sensory
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Something to tide you over

After promising them for years, ABC and the Bad Robot staff finally made good: the new Lost "mobisodes" are here. The first is now on ABC.com for your viewing pleasure. And it's amazing how in just over two and a half minutes, Lost manages to be more compelling than most of this new season of Heroes, which has been branded with an Official Suck Sanction, as we previously discussed. (Of course, it probably only resonates like that for dedicated fans, so your mileage on the mobisode may vary.)

I'm invoking the new "Meh" scale to describe new episodes of Heroes, since I no longer want to be all spoilerly and blog about it directly. (I know René reads the blog, see, and I don't want to give anything away before he gets a chance to see it later in the week.) The scale sees "Meh" directly in the middle, representing a run-of-the-mill, mediocre, bland episode. We can then assign positive and negative numbers, showing how far to either side the episode goes. I'd say five points on the plus side brings us to "Great!"; five points on the negative side takes us to "Garbage!" It's very scientific.

Tonight's episode? "Meh" +1. The Wonder Twins are so painfully boring that they might just become a new slang term.

"Man, they're showing old Next Gen episodes on G4."
"Yeah, but right now, the rotation is in season six. All the good writers left to do DS9, and the whole show went all Maya and Alejandro."
"Yeah, but at least it's better than Voyager."
"Well, yeah."

It's been a few months, so I updated my 100 favorite songs list, as though you cared. The most interesting thing about it? My 1 and 2 songs have flipped. And it's now been fortified with three times as much Regina Spektor!

In the meantime, I have entered into a sacred pact with René. My part of the bargain: to finish the new episode of Revolver in the next two weeks. We'll see about that. (Hey, I've managed to update A Great Disservice consistently, right?)

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Now playing: Dave Matthews Band - Warehouse
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List of the week: the best of Lost

To celebrate the three-year anniversary of the tragic demise of Oceanic Flight 815 -- September 22, 2004 -- here we have my eight favorite moments of Lost, thus far. (Spoilers are friggin' everywhere here, should you care -- fair warning.)

1. The rattlesnake in the mailbox.
("Through the Looking Glass" -- Episode 3.22) I've raved (endlessly) about the flash-forward ending of the third season, and it's for good reason -- those few minutes inverted the show and redefined everything. And it also provided some astounding narrative gymnastics: the current storylines all somehow became more suspenseful with a view of the future. Who was in the casket? Who else got off the island? Why does Jack need to get back? Who does Kate need to "get back" to? Perhaps one of the greatest cliffhangers ever written.

2. Purely hypothetical.
("The Whole Truth" -- Episode 2.16) Michael Emerson was originally signed only to appear in three episodes for a mini-arc in season two. But how could they lose an actor this electrifying? Jack and Locke have kept poor Henry Gale locked in their vault for days, thinking him a spy for the Others; he claims he's nothing but a poor, stranded balloonist. Offering him a measure of trust, they let him out and hand him a bowl of cereal. Gale then "innocently" mentions the map he drew in secret for Sayid and Ana Lucia -- "You guys really have some trust issues," he mumbles at Jack and Locke's surprise. But then his eyes gleam, and he pontificates on what he would do if he was "one of them." "I'd draw a map to a real secluded place," he says, voice dripping with cool menace. "Good place for a trap -- an ambush. And when your friends got there, a bunch of my people would be waiting for them. Then they'd use them to trade for me." His audacity hangs in the air for a few moments as Jack and Locke stare at him in horror. He chuckles off the bad vibe by saying, "Guess it's a good thing I'm not one of them, huh?" Dropping into total nonchalance again, he gestures to his cereal bowl: "You guys got any milk?" And then, BAM -- Lost title card, episode over, see you next week. Emerson's chilling read of what is on paper a fairly ordinary monologue is all the more stunning for the twisted mind game it plays with the audience. Is it any wonder this guy was promoted to the regular cast and found himself with an Emmy nomination a year later?

3. "Guys...that's not just a bear..."
("Pilot, Part 2" -- Episode 1.02) If you're going to do a show all about weird, inexplicable shit, it's best to get started right away. And while the unseen monster in the pilot was suitable to that purpose, it's somehow not quite weird enough -- it's so out-of-the-blue that it's almost expected. But not to fear -- the writers know exactly what they're doing. And so it is that, is the second half of the pilot, Sawyer guns down a bear. Yes, a bear, wandering around this tropical island. The uncomfortable feeling for both the characters and the audience when they see that it's not just a bear, but a polar bear, is a lesson in narrative cognitive dissonance.

4. Does this count as a Stephen King reference?
("The Glass Ballerina" -- Episode 3.02) Michael Emerson strikes again. Ben's endless series of mind games became a mainstay of the third season, and we see them at work here in classic form. He offers Jack a deal -- do what I ask and I'll get you home -- and is declined, because Jack doesn't believe he can follow through. "You're stuck here just like we are," he says. So Ben offers evidence of their contact with the outside world: he rattles off a few current events, like the results of that year's presidential election, and the passing of Christopher Reeve..."And the Boston Red Sox won the World Series." Jack breaks apart with laughter, of course...until Ben flicks on the VCR and shows him the footage. The look on Jack's face -- the look of a man whose world has been spun counterclockwise -- combined with Ben's repeated offer (performed again with genius by Emerson) counts as another terrific cliffhanger. (And is it odd that, after three seasons, the Red Sox winning the Series is still the strangest, most inexplicable thing to happen on this show?)

5. Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage.
("?" -- Episode 2.21) Back in the real world, John Locke worked in a meaningless job at a box company. He was paralyzed. He was ridiculed. He was useless. But on the island, he became a man transformed. He could walk, he could hunt -- he could live the meaningful life he'd always wanted. And when he found the Swan, and the all-important button within, he thought he'd found his purpose. But a trip into the Pearl station with Eko throws everything into chaos -- a training video there reveals the button and the Swan to be nothing more than a purposeless psychological experiment, long since abandoned. Locke's existential horror is profound: he's once again became a meaningless drone, doing a meaningless job. Though the tape was later proved -- in spectacular fashion -- to be a lie, Locke still hasn't quite recovered from the shock.

6. The fine art of staying out of the way.
("Do No Harm" -- Episode 1.20) Oh, Charlie -- he means well. When Claire goes into labor with only clueless Kate to help her, Charlie responds to her anguished screams by trying to run in and help. But Jin -- wise and knowing, even if he can't speak to his buddy -- holds Charlie back with a smile and a shake of the head. It's hilarious, and one of the more touching character moments in a series full of them.

7. The great and terrible.
("The Man Behind the Curtain" -- Episode 3.20) The name Jacob is thrown around only a few times in the third season, which only adds to its mystique -- a rarely-mentioned, never-seen Other, superior even to Ben. So when Locke demands that Ben take him to see Jacob, the suspense is palpable. And boy, does it pay off: the few minutes the pair spends inside Jacob's cabin are disorienting, terrifying, and spellbinding. Evil voices, fire, telekinesis -- the audience is as breathless as Ben and Locke when they finally escape. "What was that?" Locke asks. Ben responds simply, "That...was Jacob." I can't wait for the answers to follow.

8. In medias res.
("Pilot, Part 1" -- Episode 1.01) You should always start with a bang. And so does Lost, beginning with the horrific aftermath of a plane crash. Jack races through the wreckage, saving lives and watching others end. There's no time to learn names or properly introduce characters -- we're too confused to remember, anyway. And so we meet our setting and cast exactly as they do: on the fly, in a panic, with no preconceptions. The show begins with a question mark; the rest of the story is the answer.

He's a real nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody

The fourth season of Lost won't start for another five months, so it's sort of a dry spell as far as news for the show goes. The only things floating around are the announcement that the third season will be available on Blu-ray, and the release of the first complete trailer for the next-gen video game (both of which I'll be able to take advantage of once I get a PS3...unless I buy an XBox 360 instead...but that's a debate for another post).

But there is an interesting story in Chicago magazine about the show's originator, Jeffery Lieber. When an ABC executive's whim became an impassioned demand for a Castaway-like show about people stranded on a deserted island, Lieber was the shopworn screenwriter they turned to. And while they loved his original concepts, his first draft -- titled Nowhere -- was met with antipathy. His frantic rewrites did nothing to appease the suits, and the execs at Disney pitched the project to Alias creator J.J. Abrams. Of course, the rest of the story is well-known: Abrams decided what the show needed was a supernatural, mysterious sheen, co-wrote a brand-new pilot with Alias veteran Damon Lindelof, and then turned the show completely over to Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, who crafted it into a masterpiece of serial storytelling and the best television show of the last ten years.

Lieber is painted in the story as something of a tragic figure -- he was the genesis of the project, and created the bare bones of some of the characters, but it was taken from him and totally revamped. His name appears first in the "Created by" credit on every episode, but it's a credit he had to fight for, vigorously. Lieber bemoans his fate, noting with sadness that his work on Lost is clearly his best-known accomplishment, but he's responsible for of none its success, admitting, "I had nothing to do with it."

Personally, I think it's bullshit. Lieber's original concept for Nowhere had very, very little to do with the pilot Abrams and Lindelof wrote, aside from the basic premise (which came from an executive at ABC, not Lieber) and a few character archetypes (which were really pretty obvious choices, anyway -- who wouldn't have decided to put a pregnant woman and a drug addict on that island?).

And second, it's clear (at least to me) that his concept for the show wouldn't have worked. His pitch was for "ultrarealism" -- essentially, Lord of the Flies. Fine. And he makes it in clear in his script (fragments of which are including with the article) that the idea of being rescued would not be a plotpoint. So what does that leave? A story about finding food. A story about finding water. A story about the drug addict going sober. A story about the pregnant woman having her baby. And then? You go right for the Lord of the Flies playbook, with endless squabbling and violence between survivors. And you've got nothing else. That's not enough to carry a season, let alone an entire show.

Lost, on the other hand, improves upon Nowhere in every single respect. First, the pilot wisely begins in medias res, after the plane has already crashed. This not only throws the audience in with the characters -- confused, disoriented and (gasp) lost -- but sets up the entire theme of the show. If Lost is truly about one thing week after week, it's about discovery. Each episode is about uncovering a mystery, whether it be a mystery of the island, or of the plane crash, or of the history (or future!) of one of the characters. The flashback structure (created by Abrams and Lindelof) has become the backbone of the show, a backbone that Nowhere was missing.

And then there's the simple fact that you can't argue with success -- as I noted, Lost is the best television show of the last ten years. Lieber, by his own admission, is in no way responsible for that success...but that didn't stop him from fighting for and receiving a cut of the credit and, thus, the money. He receives royalties in "the low six figures" annually from Lost, and will get more once the show is syndicated. Meanwhile, Lindelof and Abrams get less money combined* and slave on the show week after week and have turned it into the exalted program it remains today.

So here's Lieber's beef, in a nutshell: He was paid to write a script. He wrote it. It sucked. ABC gave to it more talented writers. They created a masterful behemoth. Everyone gets money and awards. Lieber sues and gets on-screen credit (the first name in the credit). He also gets royalties every time the show airs, even though he hasn't contributed to anything that was even shot, let alone aired. And that credit has allowed him to get his foot in the door to greater career advancement.

Boo fucking hoo.

*The article says that Lieber gets 60 percent of that money, while Lindelof and Abrams share 40 percent. This is just the money for the "Created by" credit, though -- one would think Lindelof gets an additional salary from ABC for his role as executive producer, plus any royalties from credits for writing individual episodes.

That sound you heard was my jaw hitting the floor

"We made a mistake, Kate."

So. Lost. The season finale. "Through the Looking Glass."

If you're curious, I won the bet, but only because of a prearranged tiebreaker. We each got exactly one death right.

But the episode...my god. Two of the most extraordinary hours of television I think I've ever seen. Charlie the hero! Ben the...good guy? Maybe? We don't know! Walt's back (or is he?)! Locke the even-more crazy man! You can't kill Patchy! "Good Vibrations" is the key to rescue! Hurley saves the day! Sawyer goes all dark and evil (more than usual)! Jack admits his love for Kate! Alex finds out who her mother really is!

Wow.

And that was all before the big finish -- the last five minutes, which Lindelof and Cuse have been calling their "rattlesnake in the mailbox," for how quickly and completely it changes everything about the show. How unexpected, how cunning, how evil it is.

And they were not kidding. Not at all.

In the space of a single conversation, a simple exchange of words with two characters we already know, they turned Lost inside-out. Sent it "Through the Looking Glass," if you will.

Wow.

But it's being ruined by stupid people who are reading waaay too much into a comment Jack makes, in one of his flashbacks -- erm, uh, "off-island" scenes. A comment that's perfectly understandable, considering that he's drunk and on drugs and emotionally distraught.

He tells someone to go get his father, "the chief of surgery," and that if Jack is "more drunk than he is..." at which point he trails off. Of course, Jack's father is dead, and so can't be "gotten" from anywhere, and is probably not drunk.

Jack said this, of course, because he's drunk, on drugs, and emotionally distraught.

But not to hear Lost fans tell it. Most of them understand, but some are quick to jump out and start spinning theories about time travel and wormholes and alternate universes.

Guys: calm down. You're ruining this beautiful moment. And you're going to be disappointed when the truth turns out to be far, far simpler than you think.

Man oh man, what a spectacular finish to the season. How long until season four?

...February? Seriously?

...Huh.

*looks at watch*

I should just go ahead and give Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof my credit card number, it'll be easier that way

So, how much of a Lost whore am I, really? I bought Bad Twin, the awful novel "written by" one of the survivors of Flight 815. I've purchased both seasons of the show available on DVD. I bought several episodes from the iTunes store.

And now? Now, what have the nefarious Lost creators offered me to deprive me of funds?



That's right, bitches: Lost the frickin' video game. For the iPod!

Hey, it was five bucks. I'm all over that. Haven't played it yet, but odds are it'll suck. I mean, it almost has to.

Yeah: whore.

Don't fear the reaper

Last week, I posited my picks for the five future corpses on Lost. They were off-the-top of my head choices, not something I put thought into. But now, Airfon and I have decided to make a friendly wager out of it: we each pick five, whoever gets the most right wins. A Quizznos sandwich is on the line. My honor will not be defeated!

The really glorious thing, of course, is that Lost is so batshit crazy that it could be anybody. Hell, I've rethought my picks three times while typing this far.

So here's your dead pool, for real this time, for tonight's massive season finale, "Through the Looking Glass":

Sayid. Hasn't done anything interesting since the second season, and it's time to either give him a serious role or kill him. I'm voting "kill him."

Charlie. If they go through all this "You're gonna die, Charlie" stuff and then don't kill him, it will look kinda ridiculous. Then again, that would be the kind of swerve they get off on.

Bernard. Hasn't been seen all season, then pops up again in a prominent role in last week's episode? That's a coincidence. Sure.

Jack. Hey, one of them has to be truly shocking. Plus, Jack gets flashbacks in this week's episode, and he tearfully says "I love you" to Kate in the trailer. I doubt he'd do that without an imminent bullet to the face.

Jin. Same reason as I said before -- angst, baby! And hey, the new kid just wouldn't be a Lost character if it didn't have some daddy issues.

Those are my five. Of course, Desmond could go. Or Tom. Ben. Or Hurley. Or Sawyer -- Sawyer could definitely die. Rose. Claire. Mikhail -- Patchy could eat it, for sure. Sun. Danielle. Alex. Karl....

There are a lot of possibilities, is what I'm saying.

A disaster waiting to happen

I finally watched last week's Heroes this morning, having at last carved forty-five minutes out of a busy schedule. (Working all the time, going without electricity for a day, writing a mass recap of the Hunter episodes I've missed, writing Revolver -- I'm actually doing things. It's weird.)

Anyway, Heroes. It was...ehh. From popular reaction, I expected to be knocked on my ass, but it was kind of there. I mean, it was entertaining, don't get me wrong -- and it was certainly fun to see a totally different side of Sylar. But nothing happened. It was the very worst kind of foot-shuffling exercise as they get ready for the finale. (As opposed to Lost, which does its feet-shuffling at the beginning of the season and then kicks your ass for ten weeks in a row to finish. And while I'm in this parenthetical and talking about Lost, I should say that last week's episode, "The Man Behind the Curtain," was easily one of the five best of the whole series. It was that good.)

And now NBC comes with dire news:

To stretch the normal 22-episode season of "Heroes," which faltered after its long hiatus this year, NBC will add "Heroes: Origins." The spinoff will introduce a new character each week, and viewers will select which one stays for the following season. The two series will have 30 new episodes combined.

No. No no no. The last thing this show needs is more characters. They can barely find time to deal with the ones they have, and letting viewers pick new ones is not a good idea.

Then again, NBC is getting pretty fucking desperate, as you can see:

Since it found an audience this season with superpowered stars, NBC will remake "Bionic Woman" with Michelle Ryan in the title role.

New series "Journeyman" is about a San Francisco newspaper reporter who travels through time to alter people's lives, and "Chuck" is a thriller about a computer geek who becomes a government agent after spy secrets are embedded in his brain.

A new Bionic Woman? Ick. I'll admit Journeyman sounds kinda cool. Though I liked it better when it was called Quantum Leap.

Man, NBC is a mess.

Namaste

Lost is coming to end in 2010, producers announced yesterday. This, actually, is fantastic news: it's always better for a dramatic show to know when the end is coming long in advance. It makes it easier to wrap up the various plots and story threads when you know you've got exactly 48 more episodes to work with. Unlike, say, The X-Files, a show that limped to its conclusion, bloodied and violated, deluded into thinking it had "more stories to tell" when it actually ran out four years earlier.

Of course, my only sticking point is the way they're doing it: 48 episodes to go, got it, that's fine -- in fact, I'd guessed exactly that many in conversation over the weekend. But instead of doing two more seasons, as I had predicted, they're doing three shortened seasons of 16 episodes each. Which is fine, too, I guess. But just weird.

It's understandable, though, and kinda funny. I mean, of course they're doing forty-eight more episodes in seasons of 16 episodes each. Duh!

Also, today at the grocery store I spotted TV Guide, and its headline regarding the Lost season finale, which according to buzz is a "game-changer" that is so awesome it might actually recombine your DNA. (The evidence backs them up: the finales of seasons 1 and 2 were each spectacular.)

The TV Guide headline boldly announces Five will die!, which is fairly stunning: I knew someone was going to die, but five whole characters is a pretty impressive piece of storytelling real estate to chew up in a single episode.

And since I've been pretty awesome at guessing Lost twists before they happen, especially this season (Claire and Jack having the same father, Locke's father being the guy who Sawyer's been chasing all these years, and a few others), I'm going out on a limb and predicting the death list.

• Charlie. (That one's easy, really, with Desmond's "You're gonna die, Charlie!" premonitions.)
• Ben. (They gotta take out the villain, and his own people are plotting against him.)
• Sawyer. (He just resolved his emotional baggage, which is usually the next step before death on this show: see Boone, Eko, and Ana-Lucia. Plus, one has to be a big-time shocker, right?)
• Jin. (Sun's pregnant, and killing a pregnant lady would be beyond evil, even for this show's writers. But the baby's father -- ah, pathos!)
• Hurley. (Oh, it would make me sad, but Hurley doesn't really contribute much to the show anymore anyway.)

So it is written, so it shall come to pass. Of course, I could be way off base and wrong: they could go for the gusto and kill off Jack, Sawyer, Kate, Locke and Sun, destroying their narrative and alienating their audience so entirely that most never watch television again. Hey, it's Lost, these guys are fucked up.

(The Lost v. Heroes comparison in that USA Today article is pretty funny, by the way.)