LOST episode 4.01- "The Beginning of the End"

I amped up the volume, turned out the lights, and pulled my futon up as close to my t.v. as possible without straining my eyes. Finally, after 8 of the longest months of my life, LOST has returned. It felt like hugging a good friend I haven't seen in a while. Granted, a very mysterious, confusing friend who doesn't tell me WHAT'S GOING ON. Oh well, I'm just so grateful to have it back that I welcome the lack of understanding.

What happened in this episode: Hurley did a cannonball into the ocean and was very happy. Then Desmond came back and told him that Charlie died. Then it was sad... Jack still thinks he knows everything and wants to find the freighter people (I think from here on out I'll call them "Freighties." Losties, Tailies, and Freighties. And Others-ies...). Kate is still under her being-infatuated-with-Jack-because-he-said-he-loved-me spell. She helped make sure those people could find them when she went after Naomi and let her use the satellite phone. Desmond, Sayid, Bernard, Sawyer, Juliet and Hurley leave the beach to find the rest of the survivors and warn them about the whole "Not Penny's Boat" message. Hurley is really upset and gets separated from the group. He hears the whispers, sees a cabin, and sees JACK'S DAD in a rocking chair. Everyone meets up next to the fuselage of the plane (note the parallelism to the pilot episode when Jack, Kate, and Charlie went to the fuselage to retrieve the transceiver). Locke finds the group. Jack tries to shoot Locke, but there are no bullets. Everyone splits up into 2 groups: Team Locke and Team Jack. Locke will lead his team (Sawyer, Hurley, Claire, random people) to The Barracks where the Others used to live because it has some security. Jack will lead his team (Kate, Desmond, Rose & Bernard, random people) to meet the incoming Freighties and probable doom.

Flash-forwards find Hurley in a mental hospital again. Creepy man asks him if they are still alive. Charlie comes to him and tells him that they need him. Jack, pre-beard & depression, comes to visit him. Jack sucks at basketball. Hurley says that they did the wrong thing and that "it" wants them back. Jack says they'll never go back. Jack, as usual, is probably wrong.

Who I thought was the most awesome in this episode: Locke. I lost faith in Locke, just as he lost faith in the island, so I hope he'll forgive me. I trust him again, even though I don't know why he does things like blow up submarines. He survived a bullet to the stomach. If that's not hardcore/badass/worthy of trust, I don't know what is.
NOTE: In my heart, Sawyer wins this award all the time. But that's not fair to everybody else. So I am going to try to give props to all the characters when they deserve it.

Gossip Girl

I watched all 13 episodes of Gossip Girl in less than 2 days. Don't judge me.

Surprising even myself, I had lots of fun with this show. The story lines are a bit one-dimensional. Upper-east side teens drink, party, shop, and have sex all the time. And their parents are crazy messed-up. Okay! We get it! But other than that, I think the writing is pretty clever, and I found myself sympathizing for every character at least part of the time. They're all more complicated than it seems at first--like Transformers! "We're more than meets the eye." Even Chuck. Aside from the fact that he really seemed to care about Blair, I liked his friendship with Nate (pre-Blair, of course). When Nate went to that poker game with jackass-Carter, Chuck totally came to the rescue. Also, the fact that Kristen Bell is the voice of Gossip Girl adds major cool points. I'm not trying to come up with an excuse for watching, I'm just saying...

I think Dan is absolutely wonderful. So is his dad. Serena's pretty cool, too. My favorite episode was the Thanksgiving one, "Blair Waldorf Must Pie," when Eric & Serena/Dan & Jenny find out that their mom/dad used to be in love. The discussion about whether or not they could be related was fantastic.
-"There's no chance we're related, right?"
-"Well, look at Eric's roots."
-"What do you mean? What's wrong with my roots?"
-"They're kinda Rufus-like..."
(Serena enters)
-"What's going on with our parents?"
-"Oh, our dad dated your mom."
-"Yeah, we're not related though."
-"Ignore my roots."


Interesting side-note: I usually try to find more candid photos for these blogs- you know, screen captures or episode promotional pictures. Impossible for Gossip Girl. They're all glamorous cast photos with the kids looking like golden gods (see above picture). The closest I came to a natural shot was this one to the left. I'm pretty sure those leaves aren't even real...







Even their promos look fake!

Marathon #1: LOST

I have spent the past 8 days of my life in the world of LOST, leaving me more excited than ever about the Season 4 premiere on January 31st. I am, however, experiencing some serious withdrawal right now, probably because I've gotten about 10 hours of sleep total and watched almost 50 episodes over the past 3 days. Walking outside today through my rainy, cold campus, all I wanted to do was get back to that island.

I decided when I started my marathon that I was going to keep track of a few important things: my favorite episodes, big unanswered questions, and, most importantly, the best Sawyer quotes.

(For this list, I limited myself to only 1 season premiere and 1 season finale since those episodes are often so pivotal that it seemed like cheating to put them all on there.)
TOP 10 EPISODES:
10) "Deus Ex Machina" Season 1, Episode 19- Locke's flashbacks reveal that his father conned him into giving him a kidney transplant, Boone becomes "the sacrifice that the island demanded," and Jack helps Sawyer with his headaches.
9) "Outlaws" Season 1, Episode 16- Sawyer seeks revenge against a boar, and he and Kate play 'I Never' by the fire.
8) "The 23rd Psalm" Season 2, Episode 10- Mr. Eko carves Scripture into his "Jesus stick" and Charlie takes him out to the Nigerian drug plane from his past.
7) "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead" Season 3, Episode 10- Hurley finds a Volkswagen van and rides around with Jin, Charlie, and Sawyer.
6) "The Other 48 Days" Season 2, Episode 7- Flashbacks show what happened to the Tailies after they crashed on the other side of the island. Introduces a whole new dimension to the Others (Goodwin killed Nathan because "He wasn't a good person. That's why he wasn't on the list").
5) "What Kate Did" Season 2, Episode 9- Kate takes care of Sawyer and thinks he is inhabited by the man she killed, who turns out to be her real father.
4) "Flashes Before Your Eyes" Season 3, Episode 8- After turning the fail safe key in the hatch, Desmond relives part of his past and learns that he can't change history.
3) "Pilot" Season 1, Episode 1- Jack saves many survivors from the plane wreckage and becomes the reluctant leader.
2) "Through the Looking Glass" Season 3, Episode 23- Charlie dies a hero, and Jack's flashbacks turn out to be flashforwards in which he and Kate (and who else?) have left the island.
1) "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues" Season 1, Episode 11- Jack and Kate go after Claire and Charlie. Boone and Locke find the hatch. (This episode is my favorite because I remember realizing as I watched it on television that LOST would be the greatest show of my entire life.)
-Other amazing episodes that deserve mentioning: "Greatest Hits," "One of Us," "The Man from Tallahassee," "Lockdown," "Confidence Man," and "The Moth"

Major questions that have not been resolved yet...
Who is Jacob and why could Locke hear him? What is the smoke monster and why did it kill Mr. Eko the second time he faced it? Sub-question: Are the whispers part of the smoke monster? Why did Jack see his father/Eko see his brother/Ben see his mother? How does the island affect health (i.e. cancer, age, pregnancy)? How is Walt special? Why was Libby in the mental hospital? Why was Desmond in prison? Who tried to make it look like nobody had survived the plane crash? What does Locke's dream in "Further Instructions" mean? Why do the Others make lists and take people? What is the 4-toed statue? Who was in the coffin?

TOP 10 SAWYER LINES:
10) "Look, I don't know what kind of commie share-fest you're running over in cave town, but down here possession's nine-tenths and a man's got a right to protect his property."
9) "Oh I don't know, Mr. Clean, I probably would have gone around Mt. Vesuvius. (Locke: Why'd you pick that name?) Ain't it obvious? All you need is an earring and a mop."
8) "Come on, Freckles, wait! You need me to make you a mix tape?"
7) "Oh yeah, there's my favorite leaf. How could I forget this place?"
6) "What, don't you read? It's from Of Mice and Men. You'd like it. Puppies get killed."
5) "Well gosh, you sure know how to butter a man up, Stay-Puff!"
4) "Do I get a lollipop?"
3) "One second, I'm like this close to the high score on Donkey Kong."
2) "Great plan, Moonbeam. After that we can sing 'Kumbaya' and do trust falls."
1) "You got a band-aid?"

I love Sawyer. My favorite scene is when he is saying goodbye to Jack in "Exodus," the Season 1 finale, and he tells him what his father said in the bar in Sydney about wanting to call his son and tell him that he was sorry and that he was proud of him.

I wish that I still loved Jack. He used to be such a hero- when he saved Charlie's life, when he tried to save Boone's life- but now he's just a tool. Although I will say this for him, when Juliet asks him what he wants to know about his ex-wife, and instead of asking who she left him for, he asks if she's happy, I thought that was very noble. It didn't last very long...

The Strike Update, Brothers & Sisters, Heroes

It's been a long time since I've written a new post. This is partially because thinking about television right now makes me really sad. The strike carries on with no end in sight. If productive negotiating from both sides doesn't begin soon, then this spring will be dismally bare of new episodes of anything good. My idea of the apocalypse has come to life: a commercial for another reality show haunts me every time I turn on my tv, with no Heroes or The Office to turn to. And thanks to the little promise I made when the strike started (the one where I don't watch any episodes from the free online streaming on the networks' websites, even though ABC.com now has every episode of LOST in HD- imagine how beautiful that is...), I have missed a few episodes of some crucial stuff (e.g. Bradford's death and its aftermath on Ugly Betty, HRG's death and subsequent resurrection on Heroes). This may sound a little crazy, but when I am not up-to-date and invested in all of my shows, it feels like part of me is missing. I don't know how the stories have evolved, so I just feel kind of lost (cue obligatory LOST pun).

I am so incredibly grateful that I have LOST to look forward to for 8 weeks starting January 31st, and Battlestar Galactica returns for its fourth and final season in April. Frakkin' awesome. Also pretty exciting: I have a couple of new shows to try that are mid-season starters. One of these is Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Kristen’s description of this show: Half action-adventure, half family drama, Chronicles tells the tale of Sarah (Lena Headey), John (Thomas Dekker) and a pretty cyborg from 2027 (Summer Glau- rock on, Firefly people!) sent back to help fight the future and bring down SkyNet—before it kills 3 billion people. The other new prospect is Eli Stone from Greg Berlanti (writer-producer of Everwood, Brothers & Sisters, Dirty Sexy Money). It's a legal drama is about a young attorney who experiences a series of hallucinations. The visions lead him to believe he's a prophet of God, causing him to change his life.

Now on to the Brothers & Sisters wedding episode. To quote Robert, in his vows to Kitty: "To say I love you seems inadequate because I cannot imagine my life without you." That is how I have come to regard this show. Every episode makes me laugh and cry, takes me from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other, because my heart feels so much for these characters. It's as if the story were actually happening, with me right in the middle of it. In this episode, the ninth of Season 2, Danny Glover, Chevy Chase, and Garry Marshall guest-starred. The funniest scene had all the boys locked in a room by the Secret Service- Kevin for threatening the Senator's life, Stan (Chevy Chase) for smoking pot, Justin and Tommy, I think for fighting, but I can't remember because I haven't been able to go back and watch it online... Me and my stupid promises to stand up for a cause. I'm just kidding (sorta), I love the writers. Anyways, this episode also had me crying like a baby when 1) Nora walked Kitty down the aisle, and 2) Kitty said her vows to Robert: "You are so many things to me… you’re this brilliant poised diplomat, and then you're this really crazy romantic that just takes my breath away. And when you’re tired and when you’re stressed, you get really grumpy. Then I can feel your head on my shoulder at night and I know you’re asleep and you’re so peaceful. I love all those parts so much that I want to have you as my partner for the rest of my life... As long as I’m with you I will be complete and that’s it." Excuse me while I go find a tissue and my stuffed animal monkey, Schwartzy, to hug. Okay, done. Also important about this episode- the arrival of the man named David from Holly Hunter's past (played by Patricia Wettig's real-life husband, and king of awesome, Ken Olin). Now, I know that some people have been saying all season that they thought Rebecca wasn't really William Walker's child. I think some people only said that because of the strange vibe of attraction coming from Justin and Rebecca, which would be sick if they were really half-brother and -sister. Regardless of how many "called it," I still like the storyline they're going down that Holly might have had an affair with this man in the middle of her other affair, and that Rebecca might have to find a new way to fit into the Walker clan if she's not part of the family.

Conclusion of Volume 2 of Heroes, "Generations." Great end to a not-so-great volume. For a long time, I could not bring myself to say that Season 2 wasn't very good. My need to be loyal kept me from admitting that Heroes, like many shows before it, fell to the dreaded "Sophomore Slump." Until Tim Kring himself, the show's creator, said that they had made some mistakes this year, from Hiro spending too much time in ancient Japan, to the hasty introduction of Maya and Alejandro. The past few episodes brought a real return to the quality of Season 1. Kristen Bell added some very cool depth to her lightening-wielding character, Elle. Sylar became his badass, evil self again. Hiro saved the world again and buried Adam Monroe/Tazeko Kensei. Peter and Nathan were reunited, only to have NATHAN GET SHOT DOWN. Oooohh, he better not be dead, or I'm gonna be very angry with Tim Kring. Come on, Claire- you gave your adopted daddy, HRG, your blood to save his life. Now it's time to share the love with your real daddy, Flying Man (whoosh!).

So, while the next few months may not contain the magic of Pushing Daisies or the Jim-and-Pam-ness of The Office, the lovable Chuck-ness of Chuck or the Tim-Riggins-being-hot-and-Coach-Taylor-being-awesome of Friday Night Lights, there is still a bright light on the horizon. And that light is called “Sawyer coming back to me.” You know, I have a t-shirt that says ‘I’d get LOST with Sawyer.’ People always think the picture on that shirt is Jesus. And I say, “No, that’s not Jesus, that’s Sawyer. He’s the next best thing, really.”