LOST - THE CANDIDATE ... UH-OH

Well, let's start with the death list and injury roster!

I think I counted Smoke Monster/Locke shooting to death 17 or 18 people, he snapped the neck of at least one other, and in his smoke form killed at least a couple more (Sayid conveniently knew how to disable Widmore's EM fence).

Crazy Claire killed at least a couple of the expendable Widmore people (but, alas, Billie Jean King clone still lives for another ep at least) ... no sign of Widmore. No Desmond this ep. What happened to Miles?

Next ep, Across the Sea, is the flashback to how it all began - the backstories of Smoke Monster/Man In Black and Jacob. So that only leaves the eps What They Died For and a 2-parter, The End to explain it all.

After this ep, I'm kinda feeling shorted. Too many of the principals crowded together but not doing much. They go to the plane planning to fly it away (er, with what runway and with blown sand in the engines and no gas?) - but Smoke Monster/Locke finds a bunch of C-4 Widmore had hidden away on the plane to blow them all up (specifically Smoke Monster/MIB/Locke because that's who Widmore is after). Locke then leads them to the sub - they'll leave that way. Jack says he'll stay behind but Kate gets shot and so he helps get her on the sub (after pushing Smoke Monster/Locke in the water they way kids at camp do) and then climbs aboard himself. Sawyer is playing boss and says to leave Claire, who stupidly doesn't seem to notice that they're leaving without her.

But wait, there's a twist! Our main characters escape in the sub, but meanie Smoke Monster/Locke put the C-4 in Jack's backpack and it has a timer, but Jack realizes they must not do anything because the island won't let them die, they can only kill each other or themselves if they try to disarm the bomb - Sawyer can't process that in his Cro-Mag brain and finishes his fit of machismo and a quicker timer now races to ZERO and Sayid suddenly grabs the explosive device and runs with it and saves most of the rest of them and gets ... blown to bits. A sub door flies loose and kills Jeff Fahey's pilot character (they kept him around all this time to kill him like this?), and Sun gets trapped and Jin decides to stay with her and they lovingly drown together. Sayid tells Jack about Desmond and then tells Jack "It's going to be you" i.e., our candidate. Weirdly, Sayid tosses that off almost as a throwaway line, mumbling almost and looking down and almost out-of-frame (writers', director's choice?).

Only Sawyer (who saves Jack), Hurley, and Kate make it to the beach. Hurley breaks down and sobs and they shorted Jorge Garcia a real moment - he could have conveyed Hurley's deep sadness and the futility of it all if they've let his emotional reaction play out longer.

In the Alt+B timeline lots of Jack (and everyone intersecting again - Jin in the hospital hallway with flowers for Sun ... Leela - er, I mean Katie Sagal, pops up re; father stuff). Dunno what's up with the creepy dentist who seems to know stuff and intones mysteriously to Jack. The father complex stuff is played out and Jack tries to reach out to Locke who again refuses him. A music box is left to Claire and she and Jack open it but don't really listen to it's tune nor look through it more thoroughly ... oh, and bad acting alert: Emilie de Ravin (who plays Claire) didn't even attempt to move as though pregnant - that fake baby strapped to her real tummy didn't seem to weigh anything when she moved.

This episode felt very much like that Dave Chappelle skit Wrap-It-Up

LOST - THE CANDIDATE

Pre-viewing: Jack has a choice to make

LOST INTERVIEW - LINDELOF

Ain't It Cool News has a couple video clips of an interview with LOST showrunner and main writer Damon Lindelof (seems like a really cool, unpretentious guy) here ... looks like 'ole radii is calling it correctly so far: down to 2 timelines and some will get off the island and some won't

- some will "go on a journey."

Lindelof plays it coy with regard to Desmond not being in the final cast photo but I take that to mean that Desmond dies in both realities in order to fracture the link once it is re-set to the Alt+B timeline.

Now, if he would just read my critique of his Star Trek ... they need to fix some things for the next film [click image for readable screen-cap of the review]

Some spoilery info is up ... next ep, The Candidate, seems to be focused on Jack of course [he's offered that Faustian bargain] ... and the one after that - Across the Sea - seems to deal with Jacob and MIB - and the teenage boys are them in earlier lives

IN PRAISE OF A REGULAR READER

Blogs, and various other internet contributions people post sometimes sit out there all alone as some remnant to history that a thought was thought, words and/or images were composed for maybe - no one. For a while a particular YouTube video, or a snarky blog, or Twitter feed or whatnot gets popular and sometimes has a meteoric rise - having touched the zeitgeist just right in the cultural G spot to get a lot of notice (82nd Airborne soldiers dancing to Lady GaGa anyone?).

Many talented and creative people have stopped by here over the time I've had Galactica Variants up and running (originally to celebrate the reimagining of Battlestar Galactica) and I appreciate that some found what I did here entertaining and maybe even thought-provoking. This posts wishes to thank my most consistent comment-poster. If you are a Heinlein fan, check out this story [Note on image mash-up: The Breen were in Star Trek pantheon, Daft Punk looks like them, ending of story and Heinlein]

LOST - PREDICTIONS

Okay, just 4 episodes left (the finale, The End, is a 2-hour ep):

The Candidate
Across the Sea
What They Died For
and The End

Time for predictions:

The Candidate - Jack is a candidate for both MIB/SmokeMonster/Locke and Jacob and he must choose to be on the side of good or evil, which will determine the fates of everybody else. Likely, he will be given a Faustian bargain by MIB/S.M./Locke that goes something like this: "You can go back to your life, and have no memory of any of this, but you must A. make sure I get off the island; B. Kill all these other people." But Jack will opt for C [see below].

Across the Sea - This will probably focus almost entirely on the Alt+B timeline [see post below for Alt+B] and how Desmond battles Eloise's order with his bringing of chaos - to send reverberations to the island reality that can fracture the balance and free the souls trapped there to live out in the Alt+B timeline. There will probably be Penny in this ep, and she'll probably have to die. Desmond will reveal to some (at least Jack and Penny) in the Alt+B timeline what he knows about the island reality.

What They Died For - The title implies we'll get explanations, but probably not fully satisfying ones, or else there is no mystery left for any movie versions. Something along the lines "maintaining the balance" is probably what we'll hear - Smoke Monster remains trapped and they can carry on their lives in Alt+B. The science will probably come into it here, Jacob intervened in all their lives because in a future timeline he met them all and thus knew these specific people had to be compelled to fit into that island timeline ... it could be that MIB/Smoke Monster has been messing with electro-magnetism and time to try to free himself all along. The Dharma people were drawn by the strange magnetic properties and physics anomalies and were trapped in his web.

The End - The "end" is, of course, an open end - A, because they have a movie to make, and B, because the struggle between good and evil is never-ending in the minds of most people who believe in that kind of thing ... Desmond will let everyone know that their lives exist in other time streams and urge them to let go of what happens to them on the island - doesn't really matter if they die, so long as they accept it so they don't remain trapped like Michael and the other "whisperers." Hurley and the rest of the gang, most of them, will let themselves get killed. Desmond will let Jack know that he must stay and his life on the Alt+B timestream will have to end - he will only live on the island.

Now, a recap from The Candidate that factors into the finale - Jack is a candidate for both MIB/SmokeMonster/Locke and Jacob and he must choose to be on the side of good or evil, which will determine the fates of everybody else. Likely, he will be given a Faustian bargain by MIB/S.M./Locke that goes something like this: "You can go back to your life, and have no memory of any of this, but you must A. make sure I get off the island; B. Kill all these other people" ... since Jack is our ostensible hero he will choose the noble course, C., and sacrifice himself and take over the Jacob role and be forever locked in perpetual struggle with MIB/S.M./Locke

LOST - SPOILER ALERT - THE END

io9 is reporting that a call sheet was found for the final ep of LOST and that it gives away some juicy details. The link is above and you can read what the call sheet says on the shooting schedule, and it is exactly what I expected [hightlight below section]

Jack sacrifices himself to hold MIB/SmokeMoster/Locke on the island, so he is the new Jacob after all ... with Desmond the facilitator ... so Jack and Locke will be forever in battle: the father/son dynamic of their early bond torn asunder and twisted all around

It sounds chilling, the way they have the showdown set-up ... and it leaves us with our primary antagonist and protagonist for the inevitable movie version

LOST - ANSWERS SCHMANCERS

This latest episode - The Last Recruit felt forced. For a brief time while watching I got that queasy feeling I had during the No Exit episode of Battlestar Galactica ... but the feeling passed because the LOST ep wasn't nearly as bad. No Exit is where BSG totally lost it and just became terrible.

With Last Recruit, we've seen some worrying signs, but the show didn't step over the line ... yet. Way too many loose threads were sewn together - from Sun seeing Locke on an ambulance stretcher right next to hers as she's being wheeled into the Emergency Room, to cop Sawyer catching Sayid at his girlfriend's house, to a shiny new sailboat MIB/SmokeMonster/Locke had hidden away, to Jack ready to operate on Locke, to Ilana at the office to - and this was the big groaner - reunite Jack and Claire - who ends up being Jack's sister (oh, and I'm sick of Crazy Claire anyway). It was a most inelegant episode and I hope the nadir of what's left - I certainly expect better from here on out.

The Billie Jean King lookalike who works for Widmore calling in missile strikes on MIB/S.M./Locke was just stupid - no way around it. Even if they hit him dead-on, er, couldn't he just transform into smoke and have the missile and explosion harmlessly pass through him? I must say, I think the LOST Untangled spoof is better than the ep.

LOST - UNTANGLED

New to me - LOST Untangled is on the ABC website and uses Muppets to re-enact the previous episode and explain it - hilarious

LOST - THE POWER OF LOVE

Lots of touching moments in LOST these past few eps, and I'm beginning to get that love transcends all feeling ... which, in poetry and movies can be nice but in a time-travel/vortex/alternate universe/evil-held-prisoner surreal television show can come across a bit, smarmy. I'm hoping the love stuff isn't going to be the end-point but a means to get there.

Lady Miss Kier has something to say on the subject:






And a lesser-known (but terrific) track by Deee-Lite that sorta works with the theme also:

V - GETTIN' CHEESY

Another show in no hurry to go anywhere, V

All the parameters of the story are known but they don't move things along - it is descending into soap opera. This show had low expectations, exceeded those with its initial 4-ep run, and now just 2 eps into its regular run and it's a bore already ... it would work better as an over-the-top Spanish-language telenovela (complete with lustful and I'll-kill-you stares) or as ... porn - ooh, lizard-human gettin'-it-on (visualize Candy Clark and David Bowie from Man Who Fell to Earth)

GUILTY PLEASURE - STREET PREACHER

Here is a fan-made a compilation vid of one of my favorite characters from one of my favorite guilty pleasure films - Johnny Mnemonic (directed by the artist Robert Longo). I love it when an actor surprises you with their performance. Action star (and former husband of Grace Jones) Dolph Lundgren is terrific as the hired assassin Street Preacher

HUGO X2 - TIMELINE ALT+B

The parallel lives / alternate reality / coexisting universes / prime number / cannot upset the equation concept should be expanded upon in tonight's ep ... and I expect we'll see Hurley win his lotto jackpot with the other set of numbers. The prime this time is 53

post-viewing update: Well, despite the still image floating around with the different set of winning lotto numbers, we didn't yet see that scene and we got no Hurley's dad (boo-hoo) and just the one scene (previewed often) with his mom in the ep Everybody Loves Hugo. Sideplot took away a bit of the mystery when Michael appeared to Hurley at Libby's grave and later revealed that he was trapped on the island, as are many others - strengthening the purgatory aspects of the island vis-a-vis the good vs. evil component of the story.

We got the two Hugo realities and the two Desmond realities, and as with Charlie, the Alt+B timeline (as I'm calling it) that the LOST writers are focusing on as they close the show seems to be where our characters get glimpses into the island reality that has made up most of the show. They seem to be dispensing with all but two timelines.

Desmond has seen, and he is now hell-bent on changing outcomes.

He served an almost Jacob-like role in the Alt+B timeline getting Hurley to pursue Libby and have that date on the beach that never happened on the island ... mission accomplished (Hurley kissed and sparks really flew - he saw the other reality - the post-crash island - in flashes and the rich golden color-saturation) ... kudos to actor Jorge Garcia - it is always a mark of a fine actor when they can just silently react to something and convey deep emotion or move a scene along. Garcia was just terrific, as was actress Cynthia Watros - who played Libby in three touching scenes.

Desmond even staked out John Locke and ran him over ... and back on the island MIB/Smokemonster/Locke threw that Desmond down a well (despite knowing Desmond has some special magnetic properties, as did the well) yet Desmond is completely content with whatever happens to him on the island.

I'm pretty convinced that the EM field Widmore subjected Desmond to with his machine either lets Desmond transcend both realities simultaneously or he saw enough to know that what he does in the back-on-the-mainland reality is much more important than what he does on the island. I suspect we'll get a flashback at some point showing us Desmond's POV of that moment in the EM field. Despite Eloise's admonition not to "break rules" he is breaking every rule he can to upset the balance.

If Eloise is determinism then Desmond is the bringer of chaos.

LOST SECRETS REVEALED - XAVIER STARCHILD

Just look at the audience's faces! Okay, so this is just a clip from the mincers over at RuPaul's Drag Race - but I have a feeling LOST audiences may react the same way to some of the coming revelations ... Sawyer becomes the new Jacob! If you want a Galactica-Science level analysis (why did you take the site down Michael Hall?) go over to at-largely, where investigative journalist Larissa Alexandrovna has applied near superstring-caliber analysis to the plot machinations.

And here is Xavier: Renegade Angel, set to music, with a different kind of trippyness not so far from the LOST world ... here's Hulu's Xavier content

LOST EQUATION

Well, let's see ... take one plane crash (or several), one mysterious island, a smoke monster, some secret government science/military program, time-travel, electromagnetic disturbances, ghosts, a nuclear bomb, and bunch of intersecting lives and what do we get?

LOST - PARALLEL LIVES

Ah, now we have it. The LOST writers are uniting the good vs. evil and time-travel streams into one story and it involves all of the principals having intersected before, during and after the plane crash, and Eloise Hawking (Daniel Faraday's mother and wife of Charles Widmore) seems to be the fulcrum upon which the whole time-travel element to the story pivots and will be resolved. She knows the answers and her consciousness seems to transcend the various time-streams of parallel lives we've been shown.

This Desmond-centric episode, Happily Ever After, finally brought back the sci-fi time-travel stuff, and as expected, returned Faraday to the equation.

So it looks like Mommy Eloise screwed up the time-stream originally somehow and she raised her son in one time-stream to skip music for science so he could try to right her wrong (something to do with the bomb probably), and she probably married Widmore because he had the money she needed to make things happen.

Widmore's daughter Penny and Desmond have some special time-equation properties also because they seem to factor into the events that led everyone to the island. Desmond must intersect with Penny in all time-streams and Desmond is impervious to huge electro-magnetic discharge as shown in Widmore's experiment early in the episode.

The whole subplot with Charlie was pretty good ... in this time-stream he's had a vision and seems to invite death by pushing limits on everything - hoping to have the revelatory moment he recounted to Desmond earlier. Charlie forces their car into a marina and Desmond has a flash of another time-stream also - he sees written on Charlie's hand "NOT PENNY'S BOAT" and then has visions of Penny and the two of them together.

Desmond is Widmore's favored errand boy/dealmaker in this time-stream and he tasks him with seeing his wife to break the bad news that Charlie's band won't be performing and this will disappoint her son (Faraday). She takes the news in stride and only turns into the predicted witch when Desmond mentions trying to find Penny. Eloise tells Desmond not to look for her to just leave it all alone.

Faraday overhears and takes Desmond aside and tells him he thinks they've lived other lives and are seeing flashes of these other lives and that he, Faraday, blew up a nuclear bomb in one of these other lives. Desmond looks at him like he's a wackadoodle until he says Penny is his half-sister and he can tell Desmond where to find her.

Cool back-and-forth between time-streams and story arcs this ep - well done. And at the end when a resistant Desmond is checked, found healthy, and released from the electro-magnetic experiment Widmore had subjected him to on the smaller island, he is a changed man. He wants his Penny back, and knows to go with the flow to get to her. Widmore told Desmond he'd have to make a great sacrifice, so likely that will end up being Penny (probably to set the time-streams right again).

Now I don't know how they are going to join up the supernatural with the science, but next ep is Hurley and his I see dead people, so maybe the ghosts will glue together the time-travel and good vs. evil for us. My worry is that the writers will give us a Schrödinger's cat scenario, whereby the nuclear bomb detonated on the island - with its weird magnetic properties opened a rift in time and now allows various time streams to co-exist with the island as an inersection point to all those people involved. My guess is the bomb serves the same role as the guy with the gun in the top Schrödinger Cat image - upsetting the balance.

AS CAPRICA TURNS

Egads. Caught up with End of Line on Hulu. Could this show get any more soap opera? Hey, Bonner Hammer, are you drawing the 13-45 female demographic you targeted? I sure hope so, because there is little here to watch other than weepy wimps spiral around one another in their despair. Sad wifey and the musical dirge almost made me want to slit my wrists!

Daddy Adama finally finds his daughter - and she turns in a Sofia Coppola-level acting performance (circa Godfather III) before popping Dad right out of the virtual New Caprica forever. She's going to stand alone in the virtual world! Who cares? Why is this character even in the show? Is the to be the Yin to Zoe's Yang? (sigh) ... they have made a good actor, Esai Morales, into such a pussy it is hard to watch. To appeal to a female audience you don't need to turn the men into women Bonnie Hammer.

Dyke-y schoolmarm has a face-off with a kinda weak guest star playing the fellow terrorist in the infinity symbol-one god faction and yet another subplot is introduced (a power struggle among the monotheists) ... yawn.

The story is finally pushed forward with a little exposition from the defense contractor lady and now 100,000 robots are to be delivered like today (er, did anybody build any?) so now Zoe/Cylon must bust out and she reveals herself to nerd-boy who works for Daniel Graystone and he freaks and hits the alarm. Her first murder - he deserved it and off in the Mom minivan goes our Cylon escapee! A couple ships from Aliens chase her down a deserted highway and the other schoolgirl (Zoe's friend) is supposed to blow up schoolmarm to prove her terrorist worth (as her part of the bargain for getting the robot smuggled to Gemenon - are you following - do you care?)

So our mid-season cliffhanger leaves us with depressed wifey having jumped into the river from a high bridge (or did she?), schoolmarm escapes explosion by seeing depressed wifey, Daniel Graystone's world is crumbling, Zoe is off to the robot races, and a bunch of other characters are doing stuff that's in the scripts too. This show is lame.

LOST - FINAL EP TITLES

ep   6-15     4 May 10   Across The Sea
ep   6-16     11 May 10   What They Died For
ep   6-17     23 May 10   The End (1)
ep   6-18     23 May 10   The End (2)

[presently no info on these eps - check back periodically,
at some point some info about each ep will be posted
- click on title: it is a link]

LOST - THE PACKAGE

Well, this was a set-up episode that had little content.

Unless you count the dull-as-dishwater Sun/Jin backstory (there's a sink right there in that restaurant kitchen and Jin doesn't have Sun wash her bloody hands?) How and why Sayid happened to be the contract killer who killed the other contract killers hired by Sun's daddy to finish off Jin is about all that is of interest there - like if we were still in season 4.

MIB/Smokemonster/Locke can't cross the zapper fence. He goes all the way across the island to get Sun then bops her on the head and leaves her there?


Billie Jean King (oop, I mean Zoe) and Whitmore bring "the package" on their mini sub, and it's Desmond?

Desmond and Sayid have a nice stare across the water? Don't ask, don't tell.