Tag Archives: flashforward

Desmond of two worlds!

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Or, “See You In Another Life, Brotha!”

Last night Desmond finally properly returned to the world of Lost and I do believe that he not only brought some of his crazy Scottish magic with him, but he also brought the endgame we’ve all been eagerly anticipating/dreading.

And with his return last night, there came not only a new spin on this season’s recurring flash sideways action, but some complicated questions and theories about whether anyone on this show will ever be allowed to live “Happy Ever After.”

Ah, poor Desmond. I’ve said it many a time before, but I truly believe that he lingers somewhere at the living, breathing, constantly raw heart of this show, that he’s immersed in the DNA of Lost like permanent alcohol poisoning. At so many points in his life he’s been not only lost himself, but a constant loser, yet still we love him. He is our sad, wayward Homeric hero and we root for him endlessly, always on the edge of our seat in his continuing quest to return to his Penelope and his Ithaca. And two years ago he found her, only to discover at the end of last season and here in the midpoint of this one that his particular odyssey is not through him.

If this season of Lost, with the continue flash sideways motif going on, has been about, it’s parallels and opposites. Whereas Island Des has always been a coward struggling to find circumstances to make him better, always been a man out of work, a man whose relationships define him more than anything, particularly his love for Penny and the struggle for approval from her father, Charles Widmore. With that family it’s always been a question of worthiness. Widmore never saw Desmond as worthy of his daughter, let alone his fucking Scotch. And though Penny was there, alive and breathing in the flesh in Desmond’s arms so many times, he still went out into the world and struggled to be worthy of her.

Of course there’s parallels to Jack’s love for Kate there. Kate was right there in front of him but Jack was willing to blow up a nuclear bomb to start over again, to be worthy of her (or to get the fuck away from her once and for all). And Desmond wasn’t necessarily as extreme enough as a nuclear weapon, but for him it was about winning a race around the world, besting her father in one of his own challenges. That fails, of course, and somehow Desmond discovers a vastly more important calling in life: Saving the world by pressing a button every 108 minutes for three years.

And then there’s Sideways Desmond! He’s a man defined by his work, both immersed in his materialistic joys and apart from the world that offers them, and he’s beloved by his employer/father figure, Charles Widmore.

You just know that 60 year old MacCutcheon tastes amazing.

And of course Charlie comes into his life again, and he ruins it all again.

from here.

Well, Charlie, and all those crazy electromagnetics.

This is a complicated episode, both in itself and what it means for the future for Lost, and the way it’s evolved from the show’s past and complicated mythology so far. Parallels and opposites: The worst three words that Desmond could ever face in his life, “NOT PENNY’S BOAT,” mean something powerfully different in the Sideways World, a call to something else he should be struggling to find. His odyssey is just beginning and his Penelope is just out there waiting for him. He now needs to seek out what Charlie called, “spectacular, consciousness altering love.”

But then again, Charlie’s a fucking junkie. What the hell does he know?

And so many wonderful returns: Fisher Stevens as George Minkowski, his driver who wants to find him some “companionship,” Jeremy Davies as Daniel Widmore/Faraday, and Finnoula Flanagan as Eloise Widmore/Hawking. Everyone seems to know something more than Desmond, to know that he’s not ready yet for… something, but in some way they’re going to aid him on his quest. Faraday is a musician (one who wants to combine classic music with modern rock) in this Sideways timeline, which was perhaps his heart’s desire even if his dreaming destiny is science, but I loved the philosophical ramblings he shared with Desmond. This is not the world that they were meant to have, he says. Something’s been changed. Like the after of a nuclear weapon going off. Do you want to blow up a nuclear bomb? Desmond asks. I think I already have, Widmore/Faraday replies.

And then Desmond meets the woman of his dreams, the love of his life in another life. Parallels and opposites: This time she’s the one running the tour de stade. She probably has a lot of frustrations to vent (she is, sadly, stuck in Flash Forward at least through this season, after all).

Unrelated, I think this episode highlights a strong difference between Americans and Europeans…

Americans drink and they get drunk. The Eurotrash have really developed and mastered the skill to just keep drinking. Pouring yourself a glass of whiskey is just an extension of your hand, something you just do, like breathing, eating, or genital manipulation. It’s an ability we used to have, but clearly lost. It’s something magical that I think we’ve really lost since the days of the swinging 60s and the era of Mad Men.

It’s nice to have you back, Penny.

Other than that… There’s so much you could say about this episode, about all of it, all over the spectrum. Too much. I typically wouldn’t recommend Jeff Jensen’s Lost ramblings over Entertainment Weekly because they’re usually pretty asinine, but he brings up some good thoughts in his write up about last night’s “Happy Ever After.” Also, I’ll begrudgingly credit him with a good phrasing for the solenoid/toroidal coil chamber room in which Charles Widmore conducts his electromagnetic experiment on Desmond: “Quantum Sweat Lodge.”

from here.

And I tell you, all those years ago, I wish that Hurley hadn’t been reading the Flash/Green Lantern team up comic (the one that teased the audience with the notion of polar bears), but had instead been reading the classic Gardner Fox/Carmine Infantino story, “Flash Of Two Worlds.” It’s the story that pretty much created the DC Comics Multiverse and gave birth to a modern look back at the Golden Age and Silver Age of comics (and has been obsessed over by numerous prominent Scottish comic book writers since). Thought the conversation about the Flash back in “Catch 22″ is a lot funnier to me now. Desmond is a man in two worlds now, he is both Barry Allen and Jay Garrick now. That is, Desmond is the Flash, and things are going to start moving faster now…

…because now the end looms larger still. Things are set in motion, and timetables are being advanced all over the place. Sayid is running around killing people all willy nilly. Desmond’s able to cross his consciousness between two worlds, and seems to have found a mission in both. We’re going somewhere now, but where? Who can say? And who knows in what direction. Up? Down? Forwards or backwards? Or perhaps Sideways.

Intensity.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

No more tears. Let’s have some shouting!

I think if you’ve read this site before, then you’ve probably guessed that we’re fans of the Jack character on Lost. I mean, I hope you’ve gotten that impression at least.

In a nutshell, even if the show didn’t have an Island, didn’t have love triangles and quadrangles, didn’t have a giant motherfucking four toed statue or a smoke monster or flashbacks, flashforwards, or even flashsideways for fucks’ sake, you’d still have a pretty spectacular show about a man just falling apart…

And falling apart pretty spectacularly.

And it’s not just a man crying. Anybody can cry. Man, woman, children, perhaps dogs and fish too, I don’t know. Hell, you can probably program a robot to let go of a salty discharge every now and then. But, no, what’s wrong with Jack is something serious and tragic and beautiful. And it’s not just about crying. It’s not just this:

And a lot of that has to do with Matthew Fox’s portrayal of the character, something that I’ve posited before has probably been heavily influential with the direction the writers have pushed the character into, probably without a map too.

Maybe he can push the character into the lap of a stripper… Oh!

Sidenote: Is it me or, mustache aside, if and more accurately when they do the eventual remake of Magnum, P.I., how great would Matthew Fox be in the Tom Selleck role? I’m just talking out loud here, people.

Now, I’m not really trying to fully analyze the character here or crack Jack open. What would spill out of that nutshell would be far too much. But what he means to me is probably not a whole lot different from what he means to you. It’s about frailty. It’s about failure. It’s about not being what people expect you to be or cracking under the pressure. It’s about giving people a lot of really crazy, intense looks, getting up in their face a lot, and sometimes firing a gun, killing people in, like, easily the double digits. Seriously, Jack is insane, right?

But, as the ending of Lost looms on the horizon, I start to think more about the resolutions I want to see, the questions I want answers to. It’s not just about what the Island is, what the numbers are, or questions about the smoke monster or alternate realities, it’s about the characters effected by all of this too. Jack is a tightly wound ball of frustration and daddy issues and addiction and questions about masculinity and need and issues with women and leadership. He may not be the lead of this show anymore, but he’s the leader of some of these characters. He’s the spinal surgeon who became the spine of an entire show.

Here’s hoping the character gets the happy ending he deserves. But without losing any of the intensity.

“It’s good to see you out of those chains.”

Posted by Marco Sparks on

I’m going to be as eloquent as possible here, okay?

HOLY FUCK, LOST IS BACK!

Last night’s premiere episode, “LA X, parts 1 and 2,” which was #10 on our Top 100 Moments Of Lost, if you didn’t notice, was easily the most anticipated two hours of television this year (so far, at least), right? And, to me, it was extremely satisfying, and in typical Lost fashion, frustrating with the new questions it sets up, and anticipation it builds.

Did Jughead explode and reset the timeline?

The answer is yes! We see our favorite characters right back there on Oceanic flight 815, flying from Sydney to Los Angeles, encountering a bit of turbulence as it soars over the submerged Island we’ve been getting to know so well over the last 5 years.

We see a few familiar faces, and notice some absent ones, and learn that this timeline wasn’t born out of Oceanic 815 not crashing on the Island, it’s was created specifically by the explosion on the Island in 1977.

That’s 30 years of a whole new world to explore, and one that we’ll get to do flash… sideways… backs (technically we’re flashing back to an alternate universe 2004 from 2008, right?) all the while…

We’re in our regular “timeline” on the show, on the Island, with our favorite castaways, and those wacky, crazy Others. Jacob’s dead. Sayid is dead, then not. And the Jacob’s nemesis? Turns out HE IS ACTUALLY THE FUCKING SMOKE MONSTER. And also kind of badass, right?

And more than a little scary, which is, not surprisingly, a nice fit.

High praise should be more than paid to Terry O’Quinn, who has played the broken and weary but always hopeful John Locke so perfectly the past 5 years only to turn it all on it’s head, to be a new character, seemingly evil incarnate with a masterful ability to fool and manipulate. That mad gleam that Locke always had in his eye? Now it’s fully shiny.

And we’ve spoken volumes before about Matthew Fox’s performance as Jack, who’s always been a little broken, a little deranged, and he’s the same here, always feeling hunched over with grief and the vapors of failure that hang over like black Smoke Monster clouds. He just feels like an outsider, in the “real” timeline and in that “sideways” timeline, as he watches Rose and Bernard canoodling across the aisle from him. The only real shine that enters his eyes is his momentary passing Kate on the plane and later when he meets wheelchair-confined alterna-John Locke, a man who did go on his walkabout and maybe feels that bit of hope again when the spinal surgeon tells him nothing’s irreversible.

That looks suspiciously like connective tissue to a looming mystery, friends and readers. That, or Jack really missed a spot when he was shaving his chest.

Also, I would love it if our only glimpses of sideways Charlie are just those as he’s being lead away to jail for trying to kill himself in the airplane bathroom.

RIP Juliet. Oh, and Sawyer and Juliet’s love.

Also, the Others! Well, no just the Others, but the temple dwelling Others. With their leader, Dogen, who only speaks Japanese because English leaves a nasty taste on his tongue, his aide and translator, Lennon (named for the fact that he wears the same glasses as the famous Beatle?), and the return of Cindy and those fucking kids, with their waters of life that are seemingly polluted by their messianic figure’s demise. And with the news of Jacob’s passing, they’re afraid of the rise of the Smoke monster? Isn’t he the security system for the temple? And if he’s a smoke monster, is it possible that Jacob was also a smoke monster in some natural form?

It wouldn’t be a Lost season premiere without new mysterious characters, new mysterious locations, and well… new mystery, right? And also this:

And we’re all here, on the edge of our seats, ready to discover it together. Now, I’ve said too much, way more than I had intended to, but the excitement and the curiosity, it just springs forth. More importantly, what did you think?

The 100 Greatest Moments of Lost, part 5: “I’m sick of lying!!”

Posted by counterforce! on

We know your LOST BONERS must be huge by this point. Only a little while until the premier. Why don’t we knock out the Top 10 in the meantime, eh?

The 100 Greatest Moments of Lost!

PART FIVE

10. Marco: The “LA X” Premier. Can you feel it? I mean, can you fucking feel it as it gets closer? That beating you hear, those loud insane drums, that’s your heartbeat. That’s the sound of your blood rushing through your body, to your brain, to your genitals, getting you ready as the circles closes tighter and we get near tonight’s premiere episode. I could make it even more surreal for you there, but let’s just say that we’re taking a chance here and saying that THE SHEER EXCITEMENT alone for tonight’s episode, “LA X,” especially after watching that new promo, is in the top ten greatest moments of this show.

9.  Benjamin: The pan over to the plane crash in the Pilot episode.

I don’t want sound like a broken record here, but Lost’s first episode is the best television pilot ever made, and it’s not even close. Who wasn’t floored when the camera panned around some bushes on the beach to show us the carnage of a motherfucking plane crash?

The shot, on just a technical level is superb. Then you throw in the excellent sound editing, the way the noises slowly resolve into screams, and the creepy music.

And the clever camera trickery that at one moment gives us an idyllic beach and the next chaos just around the corner. I don’t think anybody who watched this first 10 minutes of this show changed the channel.

8. Marco: The giant FOUR-TOED FOOT STATUE.

Let me just quote Sayid for a moment here: “I don’t know what’s more disquieting, the fact that the rest of the statue is missing, or that it has four toes…” Exactly. I’m glad that they gave us a lot of glimpses of rest of the statue in season 5, especially in the finale (for the longest time we were like, “OMG, is it Tawaret or Sobek?” Ancient Egyptian God intrigue!)(Team Tawaret won. Go fertility!), and wonderfully, it only confuses us more. But ever since the introduction of this massive mysterious beauty in the season 2 finale, “Live Together, Die Alone,” from the biggest minds to the most infinitesimal, there’s no way you couldn’t have been just a little captivated by this tease.

7. Marco: Eko meets the Monster. From one thing that’s kept audience enthralled for years now to the mother of all mysterious goings on on the Island of Lost: The motherfucking Smoke Monster. In particular, the scene in which it was revealed to us in all it’s bizarre, gorgeous glory there in “The 23rd Psalm,” when it comes screaming out of the jungle to confront Mr. Eko, who merely turns and faces it down, and he doesn’t have the sonic fence that Juliet had in “Left Behind.”

There, as Charlie watches from a tree, Mr. Eko stares into the eye of the black foggy beast, and it seems to stare right back into him, with flashes from his life off the Island appearing in little electrical surges through it’s wisps. And if I just take it there for a moment, this moment alone, with all it’s possible implications that one couldn’t even begin to fully grasp at, gave me a boner.

…and further ignited my hatred of Charlie. I can understand his climbing up into a tree to hide, that makes sense. He’s no Mr. Eko, that’s for damn sure (even though Charlie did have a weird crush on Eko throughout season 2), but what kills me is after the Monster apparently judged Eko okay and left him there in peace (for the time being), how does someone like Charlie not go running back to camp and scream, “OMG, guys, guess what I just saw out there in the jungle? THE MOTHERFUCKER MONSTER is what, and you know what? IT’S MADE OF A NANOTECH-like SWARM OF INTELLIGENT BLACK SMOKE!!!”

Benjamin: Not to defend Charlie, but let’s be honest, if he dude had run back to camp, the rest of the castaways would have been all “yeah, sure, black smoke. Fucking tweaker. Go play some more shitty guitar and stroke it to the pregnant chick, limey.”

Marco: Side query: Do you think that the man in black/the dark man/Jacob’s nemesis/Esau (too many Stephen King references there, sorry) is actually the smoke monster when he’s not taking on the guise of deceased human forms like Locke, Christian, Eko’s brother, Yemi, or Alex? If so, go back and watch the scene between Jacob and his nemesis at the beginning of “The Incident,” and when Jacob asks him if he’s hungry, the man in black merely says, “No thanks, I just ate.”

6: Benjamin: Desmond asks for Penny’s phone number. “I won’t call you, for eight years!” Maybe it’s my own fantasies of disappearing from the world for while, but the wrap up to “The Constant” gets me every single time.

How would you react if an ex demanded your phone number, promising not to call for 8 years and giving you an exact time to expect the phone to ring?

And then, 8 years later after being missing for years, he calls? I love this whole sequence. “Eight years from now, I need to call you. And… I can’t call you if I don’t have your number.”

Des and Penny, who are kind of the heart of the show, finally get their reunion. “I’ll find you!” Penny gasps, crying. If you didn’t get a little misty during this scene then you’re a fucking robot.

5. Benjamin: Jack and Locke’s argument in “Orientation.” “Why do you find it so hard to believe?” “Why do you find it so easy?” “It’s never BEEN EASY!” Three lines of dialog that distill Jack and Locke to their base ideologies.

Our two tortured heroes were perhaps never so honest with each other. If Lost were  movie, this would be its Oscar reel. And I think it gives necessary weight to Locke’s conviction: he’s not just a blind follower, he’s gone through quite a lot to arrive at this moment, but he needs someone else to share it with him.

4. Marco: Locke screams and bangs on the hatch in “Deus Ex Machina” after Boonie dies, and then… the light comes on. The thing about characters like Jack and Locke, the men of science and faith, respectively, isn’t just so much their belief systems, but their failings. Jack represents our very base, very human failings and insecurities. His suffering is so tragic and real, and not unlike the things we can all go through. And Locke, well, Locke is no stranger to similar failings, but he’s also a man looking for answers, for a place in the larger context of the world and what it all means.

And when you begin to scream out big questions to the universe of that nature, you’re bound to be let down, in a much bigger way. You’re going to fall from such a larger height, only in this case, it wasn’t just John’s hopes that took a tumble, it was also Boone, “the sacrifice the Island demanded,” Locke later reasoned. And there, when Locke was at another in a long series of moments of crushing defeat, screaming and banging on the door to the impregnable hatch, essentially asking the universe why he was nothing in it’s eyes, a light from inside comes on. And John Locke, at his very lowest there, is bathed in this new light…

3. Benjamin: Jack’s “Live Together, Die Alone” speech in “White Rabbit.” He wasn’t always the greatest leader. Ok, he usually wasn’t one, but for this shining moment, Jack really was the leader and hero of the castaways. Bonus points for a speech that doesn’t just have to apply to plane crash survivors on an island. If there’s a message in Lost, it’s in this scene.

2. Marco: “Not Penny’s Boat,” from near the end of “Through The Looking Glass.”

So vague, and yet, so heavy with potential meaning are these three words written on Charlie’s hand that he shows to Desmond as the room he’s in fills up with water and he drowns.

Just like Locke can find the light to continue on when he’s literally at his lowest, covered in another man’s blood, these two guys in a thirty year old DHARMA station underwater can find victory snatched away from them at the last possible moment, when they were at their highest. And Desmond can’t really fully know what Charlie meant by that or what he saw/heard to make him convey this message, but he knows what that moment isn’t: the happy ending they were hoping for. Perhaps you can’t cheat fate. Whatever happens, happens. The universe will always course correct, right?

Benjamin: This is my favorite scene in the series. Who would have guessed that a sodding tool like Charlie would go out with the most epic and moving death scene of all. Love the message on his hand, love the understanding that comes between Desmond and Charlie. Crossing himself while he drowns is a beautiful grace note to end the scene.

and here we go. The greatest moment in the history of Lost…

1: Benjamin: Jack’s flashforward revealed in his meeting with Kate at the airport.

This was the moment that forever changed the show. It was an excellent show before this scene, and a legendary one after it. “I’m sick of lying. We made a mistake… We were not supposed to leave,” Jack pleads to Kate.

The twist isn’t just neat on a plot level, it’s devastating on an emotional one. We learn that they did make it off the Island, but rather than triumph, somehow it’s all gone terribly wrong. It didn’t just feel like a glimpse into our characters’ futures, it felt like a warning about our own. What awaits our heroes isn’t rescue but tragedy. Narratively, it’s genius, and the kind of story-telling structure they’ll be teaching in writing classes in 20 years.

After this flashforward, we not only had the excitement of the events on the Island, we got a peeks into the future at lives torn asunder, and on top of every other mystery in the show, the question of how did it all go so wrong to end up like it did at the airport, a drugged up Jack, completely bottomed-out, screaming “We have to go back, Kate! WE HAVE TO GO BACK!!!”

Just because we saw this show doesn’t mean it has to happen.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Flashforward is no Lost.

It’s more of an experiment done in the ABC network labs to try and replicate and cultivate a Lost variation using some stolen cells from the much more interesting, much more popular show that’s “just about a bunch of people on an island.”

It’s Lost season 6 filming now OMGZ!

One of those cells shaved off the original is that annoying little hobbit, Charlie.

I’d like to point out that Charlie was such an integral part of Lost that he was killed off three years ago and half the audience has not only moved on, but pretty much forgotten about him.

from here.

But, no, no, this isn’t going to be nothing but Charlie bashing. That’s honestly too easy.

The same goes for the lovely Sonya Walger, Desmond long lost love on Lost who he was finally reunited with. I feel really bad for Walger, who’s a fine actress, because she’s had to go from jacking guys off on cancelled TV shows to soon to be cancelled shows like this, and her lone quality stop in between the two being her being cast in a role seemingly locked into the heart of Lost‘s mythology, only to then be barely utilized. Desmond’s Penelope wasn’t content to sit around waiting for her husband to return to Ithaca, but then… well, that’s a whole other story.

Flashforward is more of a show for people who (foolishly!) stepped out on Lost a few years ago and now claim “it’s too confusing” for them to dip back into, but really what they mean is that they’re ashamed. Elements of Flashforward‘s pilot (given the appropiate meta title of “No More Good Days”) are essentially the same set up from Lost, just brought over to an urban environment. But done in a not too subtle, not too interesting way. Nothing seems dangerous or interesting on Flashforward.

I’ll admit that Matthew Fox was a gamble for Lost to cast as their lead (as opposed to their original choice, Micheal Keaton), but you’d think that conversley, Joseph Fiennes, would be an incredibly safe lock for a lead on Flashforward. But what we didn’t know is that prior to filming the pilot episode, Ray Fiennes’ little brother had any charisma or allure that he may have possessed surgically removed.

The same could be said for the showrunners on Flashforward: David Goyer and Brannon Braga. Goyer’s one of those guys that’s really only popular with comic book nerds and fans of mediocre TV and movies (his sole “win” seemingly being Batman Begins and the “outline” for The Dark Knight). And Braga’s one of those Star Trek refugees who’s best at mindless, escapist TV that doesn’t require you to care all that much (he’ll be running 24 this coming season, I believe).

It is amusing to me to see Roger Sterling’s wife as the horny babysitter.

And it’s splitting hairs, but the show falls into that category of “That’d never happen like that.” The beginning near-apocalypse seems kind of calm compared to how such a catastrophe would really affect the worlds, and most criminal, after the first twenty minutes, the characters have seemed to make a little too much peace with all the weird shit they’ve experienced. Also, it seems odd to me that the local office of the FBI would be put in charge of the worldwide phenomena that’s just happened…

Also, Seth MacFarlane as the Special Agent in charge of Exposition at the FBI? Ugh. Though MacFarlane is certainly no stranger to derivative entertainment.

The novel the show’s based on, by Robert J. Sawyer, isn’t perfect. In fact, it’s about as flawed and passion-less as the show, which isn’t a direct adaptation by any means, more taking a central concept and a few minor character archetypes and situations over. The novel feels like watered down Crichton, starting with a very interesting premise and then either moving away from it as fast as possible or getting completely mired down in the prattling on of the uninteresting self centered characters. The one thing the novel did have right about itself was that it was primarily set at CERN, and it’s main characters were scientists, afraid that they were responsible for the consciousness of the entire world flashing forward in time, and so it made a little more sense for them to get heavily involved in an investigation into this sort of thing.

For a show that should have a lot more potential and promise than was on display, how sad is it that I was more excited by the productionally challenged V remake’s commercials during the broadcast?

That said, I did enjoy the Oceanic Airlines ad in the background of one scene:

Makes me wish I could flash forward to January 2010 already.

Lovers across time and space.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

So, like I said the other day, I’ve read The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, and it’s really good.

The movie, however, maybe not so much.

But now there’s going to be an attempt at a television show version of the novel. The attempts to bring the story to the small screen started before Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company tried to bring it to the big screen, and presumably it’ll keep the same basic premise: A man with a genetic disorder that causes him to involuntary move through time and space and his romance with the woman who loves him.

This is a relatively new thing, the turning of novels into television shows, right? I mean, True Blood and Dexter and even shit like Roswell make a kind of sense since they’re not just a single novel, though a series of continued novels, and Veronica Mars doesn’t count because it was an adapting idea in continuous morphing form from it’s original young adult novelized version (featuring a male lead character). But like Flashforward? I mean, I get that it’s easily cashable as an attempt to synthesize what people think is so successful about a show like Lost, but does anyone really expect it to last longer than one season?

Not impressed by the filmic version of The Time Traveler’s Wife, I eagerly look forward to an attempt to do good on the story/characters via television, and succeeding where a show like Journeyman did not.

In other television news:

James Marsters of Buffy/Angel/Smallville/Torchwood fame is going to be featured in Caprica, the Battlestar Galactica spinoff prequel, which also will now feature Patton Oswalt amongst it’s cast.

Robert Kirkman’s zombie comic The Walking Dead is the getting a television adaptation, but for AMC, and with Frank Darabont involved somehow (nice to see him pulling his face out of Stephen King’s lap for a while), joining the ranks of Mad Men and Breaking Bad, showing that AMC has an interesting taste for original programming. More so than FX, at least. The Walking Dead is quality work, and probably the most realistic take on the zombie thing. I just hope they lose the folksy atmosphere, but other than that: it’s something that has good elements that can translate straight from page to screen and plenty of things that could be improved via television writing.

Right now: You can watch my favorite episode of Joss Whedon’s Firefly, “Objects In Space.”

Experience The Venture Bros. panel at this past Comic-con.

Everyone was joking around the release of G.I. Joe that Mr. Eko would want to be one of the returning cast members to Lost this coming season, and then the actor who played Mr. Eko, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, confirmed that he would indeed like to make such a return (which makes a kind of sense since they’re even bringing fucking Charlie back). Now, it’s looking like he may get his wish since they’re rebuilding his church. Or maybe not.

Top 5 of Lost: #2, “Through a Looking Glass”

Posted by Benjamin Light on

Lost

Marco and I agreed to put this one at number 2, but in my book it’s 1A. I’ll be honest, I fucking love this episode. I can remember getting off from work, coming home at 3 am and watching this immediately and being so fucking floored I think I just ended up staying awake all night.

After this episode, you will need a drink. And maybe a cigarette.

After this episode, you will need a drink. And maybe a cigarette.

I think that after the series is over, people will look back at “Through a Looking Glass” as the narrative climax. Everything comes to a head and it’s all crashing down on poor, flawed Jack’s shoulders. This is Jack Shephard’s crucible.

Jack and Ben

Previously? on Lost. The castaways have set up and ambush for the Others on the beach.

Nadler, Jarrah and Kwon, Attorneys at Law

Nadler, Jarrah and Kwon, Attorneys at Law

And Charlie has swam down to the Looking Glass underwater Dharma Station to push a button, only to find it filled with feisty OtherBabes.

You all everybody

I’m not even going to bother recapping the whole thing here, just go watch it if you haven’t. And if you have, watch it again.boom

This is the episode that turns the whole show on its head. You think you’re watching a JackBack to a dark time in his life, when you’re actually watching a flash forward. The writers have the balls to say, “yep, they get off the island, and it’s a huge fucking mistake,” and then fold the entire story back in on itself like a crease in space-time.The shortest distance between two points is no line at all

My least favorite character on the show dies, and it turns out to be the most moving death in the series. Charlie warning Des and then signing himself as he drowns is gut-wrenching and uplifting at the same time. I think this is partly due to Charlie somewhat redeeming himself in the prior episode, but he was helped by the fact that “Greatest Hits” remains the only time where we get to see a flashback to when a character is happy.not pennys boat

I think this scene, which starts with Charlie punching out a Beach Boys song on a keypad and getting a surprise call from Penny, and ends with his sacrificial drowning, is the finest 5 minutes in all of Lost.last rites

But I also want to talk about Jack. Even though Charlie steals the best moment, this is the definitive episode for Matthew Fox and Jack. The JackFace is off the charts. I mean, just check these out:jackfaceJackface!JACKFACE!!!!!!

Damn. Jack was at the end of his rope when the episode started, in both timelines. And then things got worse.

These two are totally screwing in Season 5.

These two are totally screwing in Season 5.

Off the island, he misses the chance to kill himself because he’s such a goddamned hero (I think we can assume now that the Island wouldn’t let him die; fate being a fickle bitch).

Forgive me

And on it, his plan just keeps getting worse. The ambush fails and Jin, Sayid and Bernard are captured. Then Ben shows up and pretends to have them executed. And just when things are looking up, John Locke shows up to put a knife if Naomi’s back.Locke still has his fastball

Fox does a great job both with Jack’s stoned distress in the future and his pained determination in the present. His biggest moment of action, beating the shit out of Ben, isn’t his moment of strength, it’s his moment of weakness.Beatdown

Jack is at his absolute breaking point here, and, perversely, we know from the 4th season that things get progressively worse for him every day after until he leaves the Island. It’s not hard to imagine how he came to pill-popping in the future.

doctors store their good shit between the menthol and cherry cough drops

Remember kids: doctors store their good shit between the menthol and cherry cough drops

And there were like 50 other great moments in the episode, too:

WAAALLLLLLLTTTT!!!

  • We finally get to see the Radio Tower that the French Woman was broadcasting from.
  • We see undead Mikhail without his eyepatch.
  • We learn it’s “not Penny’s boat” *sniff*. Russo reunites with Alex.
  • Sawyer kills Mr. Friendly. Jack gives Juliet the weakest “I’m only doing this cause Kate is watching” kiss of all time.
  • Waaaaalllllttt!! reappears.
  • Mikhail: not dead! And then he dies! No, wait, he doesn’t! Well surely he must be dead now? (I fully expect him to return).
  • The writers find a way to redeem that cheesy Hurley episode.
  • Sayid kills a guy with both hands tied behind his back, which we always knew he could if he wanted to.

Oh, and the coffin.The funeral of Jeremy Bentham

Sigh. What a phenomenal 2-hours. And this was just the second best episode of Lost so far. Tomorrow, the best, and also, the Season five premier in just 40+ hours.

We have to go back, Kate.

We have to go BACK!we have to go back