LOST: Return to Craphole Island

LOST returns tonight for Season 5, it’s looking like a good ‘un. Unfortunately if you’re not watching it already, it’s going to be hard to get into with it’s rich narrative mythology, but if you’ve put in the work to catch-up you will be oh so rewarded, Jack’s tattoo origin aside. Lost is an excellent show to catch on DVD - I heard the Blu-Ray Season 4 set is gorgeous, and they’ll be releasing the first few seasons on Blu-Ray as well.

For a summary of the past 4 years on Craphole Island, you can’t beat the write-up by Isaac_Spaceman over at ALOTT5MA. It’s as funny as it is accurate. Here’s an excerpt:

PILOT: Is this a joke?

HURLEY: No, all of the jokes around here are mine.

PILOT: Oh, great, tell me a good one.

HURLEY: What has two thumbs and is dead?

PILOT: I give up.

HURLEY: My girlfriend and my best friend and the French paramilitary lady and her daughter and Arzt. Wait, that’s eight-to-ten thumbs.

PILOT: Ouch.

For the full write-up, click this link to ALOTT5MA - Previously on LOST

TV Returns: Sometimes they come back

Sometimes They Come Back Part 1 - Dead Like Me resurrected

Dead Like Me was a quirky Showtime cable series about the lives of grim reapers, and specifically on Georgia (Ellen Muth) an 18 year old slacker who is employed as a reaper after a flaming piece of the MIR Space Station hits her (it was a toilet seat). It was a fun show, it was morbid and moving, it was a critical hit, it had a loyal following, and it was cancelled after two seasons. Since then it’s enjoyed a healthy life in reruns on cable and DVD sales, but fans like myself wondered how the story would have continued.

So it was a pleasant surprise to see that Dead Like Me has seen a resurrection of sorts, as MGM Studios announced that filming on a Dead Like Me straight-to-DVD movie has wrapped, with a release date expected within the year.

Ellen Muth (Georgia) returns as the lead, with everyone in the cast returning, with the exceptions of Laura Harris (Daisy Adair), whose role is now played by Sarah Wynter (24), and Mandy Patinkin (Rube). Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond on Lost) was cast as a new character named Cameron - the head undead who hands out assignments to the reapers, taking over the slot once occupied by Patinkin.If all goes well, according to MGM's head of Corporate Development Charlie Cohen, we’ll see more Dead Like Me movies, or perhaps even another television series. "If it's a series of movies that's fine. If someone saw it and thinks it makes sense to bring it back as an episodic tv series, we're open to anything," he said. However, MGM has not optioned the cast at this point.

Dead Like Me – TV.com

MGM resurrects Dead Like Me

Sometimes They Come Back Part 2 - Michael returns to Lost

Harold Perrineau (Michael) returns to Lost for Season 4. It hasn’t been said at what point he’s returning, but it looks like it’s not just a guest starring role, but a return to the regular cast. When last we saw Michael, he and his son Walt were on a slow boat off the island, having sold out his fellow castaways for a chance to save get him and his son off the island. While Walt (or an apparition of him) appeared in last season’s finale, nothing has been seen of Michael since. Producers have also said that next year will use both flashbacks and flash-forwards, so I’d guess we’re more likely to see Michael in the flash-forwards rather than returning to the island. Having Michael appear in the flash-forwards (to present day) would also be a handy way to explain away the fact the actor playing his son Walt had a major growth spurt and can likely look Michael in the eye now. Then again, it’d be interesting to see Michael back on the island, reunited with those castaways (Hurley, Sawyer, etc.) he betrayed.

Sometimes They Come Back Part 3 - Joss Whedon approves continuing Angel as comic book mini-series

Fans of the show Angel take note: an Angel – Complete Series DVD boxed set is coming out. But the big news is that series creator Joss Whedon announced at San Diego Comic Con that he’s sanctioned a comic series to act as an official Season 6. Angel – After The Fall will be set in the aftermath of the climatic series finale that saw the main characters seriously outmatched and outnumbered in an alley, and ended with them diving into battle, their fates unknown. Whedon has always stated that a sixth season of Angel was already mapped out by the time the WB network cancelled the show. A release date for the mini-series hasn’t been announced yet.
The announcement of Angel – After The Fall comes on the heels of the success of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer - Season 8 comic book series, which has managed to capture the dialogue and charactization of the TV characters, without being limited in terms of scope and special effects like a conventional TV series.

I recommend ordering the trade paperback collecting the first story arc of the Buffy Season 8 comic, and is written by Joss Whedon. Buffy - The Long Road Home is available for pre-order from Amazon, and is due in November.

"LOST"? You bet we are.

Wow. I have to admit, “Lost” really pulled out one game-changer of a finale. Just some good crazy fun there. I mean that was a headtrip of a final scene, and made up for the not so great moments this year. For all my cheering of “Heroes”, they didn’t provide the big bang in the finale they way “Lost” did last night. If the producers needed to convince ABC to let them commit to 48 more episodes to finish off "Lost", THAT was the episode they would have used to get that unprecidented 3 year commitment. I wrote about the details on the plan to finish up "Lost" here. We have 8 months to sort this all out before the show returns with new episodes.

SPOILERS COMING UP IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED YET





So coming out of that, here are some thoughts:

The big change is the change-up with the flash forward. The producers haven’t let anything slip yet, but I think that when the show returns, we should find the show has jumped forward (remember with Island time it is still 2003) to the present, and the flashbacks will fill either fill in what happened between the rescue and suicidal Jack, or it will cover Island life because...

…maybe one of the reasons that Jack wants to find his way back to the island is that the beach-party (Hurley, Sayid, Bernard, Sawyer, Juliet, Des, Jin) are still stuck there. Something happened with the rescue and now nobody can find their way back to the island. That, and he realized he was happier on the island.

At what point did you figure out it was a flash forward? I thought something was up from all my mental gymnastics trying to figure out where Jack McBeardface fit into Jack’s past. I was guessing he was flying back from Thailand. But little things didn’t fit, like the very modern cell phone he was using. The scene that did it was the 2nd last one, where he’s in the room with maps all over the place. He’s trying to find his way back to the Island. Eureka.

And who the hell is in the coffin? I’m guessing Ben or Locke. If Jack is that obsessed with getting back to the island and insists they should have never left, then he would find the death of either of the men most tied to the island to be a sign that all hope is lost.

It’s certainly not Christian Shepherd, Jack’s dad, in the coffin. He was referred to several times in the flash-forward as if he was still alive. That’s not the drugs talking, the references were repeated and specific.

“A hero two-times over!” – that would be because Jack went into the burning car to save the kid and then back for the mom. If Jack insists to Kate “I’m sick of lying”, then the real story about what happened on the island probably is public knowledge. I think it was Ben who told Michael last year that even if he makes it back to the mainland and tells his story, who would believe him. And it’s not in Michael, or most of the castaways’ best interest, to tell the full story, seeing is how most of the Losties are responsible for some deaths and less than moral actions.

And no, that is not Sun and Jin sitting behind Jack on the plane in the opening. And I don’t think this was a future yet unwritten, or parallel universe, or hell, or a hallucination. Jack McBeardface is what has happened and where we’ve found ourselves now. To keep telling the story of the island and changing to flash forwards rather than flashbacks is too difficult to pull of storywise. A return to the mainland would allow some less necessary characters like Claire to go have a happy life, and allow others like Sun, Jack, and Kate to want to get back to find their friends.

What a great sacrifice from Charlie, trapped in a level from “Tomb Raider 2”. It really was.

I got a little chill when Charlie, tied to the chair, matter of factly tells the ladies how things were going to play out: “I die.” And the last act was to tell Des “NOT PENNY”S BOAT”. And so long Charlie. And if Penny didn't send the boat, then my money is on her father Papa Widmore as the bad guy Ben is referring to.

Does Claire ever get the note he left? Last week’s episode “Greatest Hits” was such a great redemption of Charlie. It made it all right to like him again, especially after the whiny jackass behaviour from last season. Great job to the writers and fine acting from Dominic Monaghan.

Return of the mad Russian. This guy won’t die! At the end of the series, he’ll be a little head and a thumb in a jar. Anyone speculating that Bakunin’s last name is Rasputin?

A great save from Hurley, who uses the bus that we thought was just a novelty item from Ben’s past, having repercussion. Would have like to have seen Ben’s face if he found out that Dad’s van was used to save the Losties. I thought Hurley was going to get himself killed, owing to all the “you’re going to get us killed” comments. Sweet footwork from Sayid too.

Line of the night goes to Sawyer: “That’s for taking the kid off the raft.”

And can we call him a kid anymore. He looked about 6’4”! I thought he was going to answer Locke in a deep voice “Call me Walter.”

Locke lives! And just as knife tossing crazy as ever.

Bernard lives! I thought they brought him back only to get killed. I actually thought they would follow through and kill the three guys.

I also liked Rose: “If you say the words 'live together, die alone' to me Jack, I'm going to punch you in the face.” Because really, that’s what I’ve wanted to do to the character several times this year. Remind me again, isn’t in her best interest to NOT leave the island, on account of her cancer being in remission?

Mother and daughter reunion! The absurdity of “Let’s tie up your father” cracked me up. That’s some real family bonding going on there.

Kate sure cleans up in the real world. She looks like every Survivor contest does at the reunion show. And is it too much to hope that the “him” she says she needs to get back to isn’t Sawyer, but maybe her cop husband from a few flashback back, Nathan Fillion (“Firefly”, “Drive”)?

Well, that’s it until February. The show certainly earned my interest back, and I can’t wait to see where they go from here. And if the show shifts next season to trying to find a way back to the island, then it certainly puts a multiple meanings on the title:

Lost.

"Lost" end in sight. If only Gilligan's Island had planned it this way

It's an unprecedented but necessary decision: ABC announced that Lost is coming back next season and plans for a firm ending in sight.

• The show will run for 3 more seasons.
• Each season to run 16 episodes, rather than the normal 22-24 episodes most shows do in a season, for a total of 48 episodes.
• Each 16 episode "season" will run uninterrupted, followed by a hiatus of some length. (Likely, new episodes January-May non-stop, similar to what we've seen the second half of this season.)
• Producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse both get hearty paydays and development deals. No word on casting commitments, but I wouldn't trust them anyway. 48 more episodes is plenty of time to kill off characters. Who's going to be left standing at the end at this rate?

This season has suffered from lowered ratings and uneven writing. The ambitious scheduling plan of airing the first six episodes in a row, followed by twelve weeks with no episodes at all, and continuing consecutively with the next sixteen episodes, failed to capitalize on the show's momentum. Fans complained that the first six episodes spent too much time away from the beach cast, and kept everyone apart for too long. Also unpopular was the amount of time spent amongst The Others with no terribly compelling reveals, and the untimely end of the popular Mr. Eko (the actor chose this time to leave the show).

Since the break, I've been enjoying some great acting from Yunjin Kim as Sun and Henry Ian Cusick as Desmond. I love any scene with Terry O'Quinn as Locke (despite his Gilligan-like tendency to screw up escape plans) and Michael Emerson as Ben, and Josh Holloway as Sawyer acted the hell out of his scenes last week. Desmond's "unstuck in time" episode stands out as a favourite. Even Kate's last flashback wasn't half as annoying as her previous ones.

Now with a firm schedule leading to the end, the producers can nail down a timeline and plan everything out. ALOTT5MA pointed out that this will take the show up to 120 episodes, and if we follow the show's average "1 episode covers 3 days of Island time" formula, that will take us to about a year of Island Time for the castaways.

BTW: Anyone else worried about Sawyer being added to The Island mortality rate? He's accomplished his life's ambition, he's in love, and he's had sex on The Island. Surely these are all very bad signs based on what we've seen of Libby and Shannon. Plus he's helped out Locke, something that certainly helped shorten Eko and Boone's lifespan.

This week's episode centres around Ben's flashback.