Are you a ticked off Lost fan who's feeling as though -- in the words of a Boston radio talk show host -- your once favorite show has turned into a dramatic Ponzi scheme?
Do you love to hate the various romantic pairings on the show (Jack/Kate, Kate/Sawyer, Jack/Juliet, Juliet/Sawyer, etc.)?
Do you become obsessive about the program, spending hours looking up/analyzing literary and Biblical references, researching the title of a book you saw in a two-second shot lying on the floor of the Hatch and seeking out a recording of a song playing in the background in Dharmaville circa 1977?
Or are you resigned to being faithful to the show even though you know you'll always be confused about what's happening and that it may never make sense?
Well a writer over on TV.com has examined Lost fans and created five categories for them: 1) The Super Hardcore 2) The Skaters, Jaters, etc. (Sawyer-Kate-haters and the Jack-Kate-haters) 3) The Catching-Up-on-DVD Set 4) The Angry Lost Fans and 5) The Eternally Confused and Faithful.
Writer Tom Surette explained his categories thusly:
"Lost is a character study. But it's also an action show. And it involves some pretty hardcore science-fiction elements. And we can't forget about the romance. In short, it's a lot of things. Because Lost attacks drama from so many of these angles, it has attracted very different audiences. Audiences that, if our hypotheses are correct, can be grouped into five categories."
Which kind of fan am I? On the heels of the Locke-centric episode last week, which turned everything we knew about Locke on its ear, I was coming precariously close to morphing into a faithless, frustrated hater. But then, as you know from my recent review of "Lighthouse," I decided to change my attitude and have firmly planted my feet into category five, "The Eternally Confused and Faithful."
*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Lost*
I’ve made a decision which is going to make my life much easier: While watching the recent episode of Lost, called “Lighthouse,” I decided to stop trying so hard to figure it all out and just go with it, Zen-Namaste-Dharma style. Some may call this a cop-out, but (*deep centering breath*) I don’t care.
The turning point in my approach to watching this program occurred in the wee hours of the morning last week after I’d stayed up way too late in the wake of the Locke-centric “The Substitute” episode. I poured through several discs from my Lost DVD collection searching for clues to confirm what I thought I knew about Locke’s history before his fateful plane ride on Oceanic 815. When I toyed with caffeinating up at 1 a.m., I knew that things had gone too far.
I’m no longer going to parse every single statement, search for every single Easter egg, pause the TV and stare wide-eyed at the frozen image hoping to glean some insight. Nope. I’m not. I’m just going to enjoy Lost and not fret over the fact that I don’t have any freakin’ clue, for example, why the uncrashed Jack Shephard has a son, lives in a nice apartment and only sees his kid once a month, when the boy’s not living with his mom, who was not identified. I smiled when Jack told his kid David that he’d hooked up the cable on the TV in his bedroom so that he could watch the Red Sox. (Love that Jack’s a Sox fan.) Since I wasn’t so busy playing Lost detective, I was able to notice similarities between Matthew Fox’s days when he played Charlie Salinger on Party of Five and had a kid sister who was a music prodigy, like Jack Shephard’s son David. Sweet coincidence.
When Jacob decided to give Hurley marching orders because of all this “candidate” business, asked Hurley to write cryptic stuff on his arm and to speak authoritatively to the head of the Other Others, I didn’t let the confusion irritate me, just let it wash over me. (*feeling the Zen*)
I smirked when Hurley responded to ghost Jacob’s request that he try to convince Jack to accompany him on another quest by saying, “Did you ever try to get Jack to do something, it’s, like, impossible.” I derived pleasure from the first moments of levity since the season began when wry music was played as Hurley tried to be all 007-suave and convince Jack to come with him with his quip, “Be cool man, act natural.”
The armed, murderous, booby trap-setting, Rousseau-like, dark-hearted-Man-in-Black buddy Claire -- complete with the wild hair and the “I want my baby back” mission – was entertaining as well, as long as I tried not to think too hard about it. Didn’t even rise to the bait of the lighthouse imagery, a newfangled “wheel” (not the time travel-inducing donkey wheel) and freaky surveillance mirrors (pre-Jack-smash). Not gonna think too hard about it. Not. Gonna.
So I’m, essentially, going along with the ride. As Hurley, often referred to as the voice of the audience, said while he and post-crash/post-Jughead/“broken” Jack walked through the jungle together, “This is cool, dude, very old school . . . on a way to do something that we don’t quite understand. Good times.” Just like my newfound mindset toward watching Lost, the final season: Very cool, although I don’t quite understand. But that’s okay. Which made the latest Lost Untangled video all the more fun to watch. (Loved the line about Jacob being so mysterious.)
What do you think of Jack the Daddy? Of the lighthouse? Of the axe-wielding Claire?
*Warning, spoilers ahead from the latest episode of Big Love.*
So there was a boatload of wildly insane moments in the latest episode of Big Love, enough nuttiness to go around for nearly every character. With a bounty of drama jam-packed into "Blood Atonement," two things topped my list:
1. Adaleen is pregnant.
As if last week's eeriely lit scene of Adaleen's wedding night to J.J., her former son-in-law (and father of her granddaughter) wasn't disturbing enough for ya, this week we learned that Adaleen is pregnant with his child. This means that Nicki's daughter, Cara Lynn, will be 15 years older than her aunt or uncle, an infant who'll also be her half-brother or half-sister. Kind of. Ick.
2. Lois can wield a machete with the best of 'em.
After running around trying to make amends with everyone held hostage in the room with her because she was certain she was going to be killed by the Greenes and would have to face God soon, Lois ultimately rose to the occasion. She came to the defense of her son Bill, something she wished she'd done when Bill was exiled from Juniper Creek when he was a young teen. Taking a machete from a nearby table, Lois dramatically sliced off Hollis Greene's arm as blood spattered across her face like something out of Braveheart and gave her family the chance to escape. Don't mess with Lois.
Why anyone would attempt to start watching Lost -- a TV drama renowned for its complexity, its onion-like layers, its sometimes (oftentimes) confusing means of storytelling (flashbacks, flashforwards, sideways flashes) -- during its last season is a mystery to me.
A friend of mine, to whom I've lent the set of first season DVDs, e-mailed me shortly before the final season began and asked me whether I thought he should tune in to the new episodes. Absolutely not, I said, he wouldn't understand what was happening and he'd likely get frustrated ( . . . not that that experience would be signficantly different than the confusion I often experience each week while watching the show even though I've seen every episode).
The blogger, "John," said he plans to write recaps of what he THINKS happened on each episode. He has no plans to research anything. He'll just revel in his Lost ignorance, including whether he gets names, places and details correct. The only thing he asks is that readers not be "haters."
Below is a sample from his review of the most recent episode, "The Substitute," (*Warning: Spoilers, y'all*) about the scene in the cave with post-Jughead/post-crash/dead Locke/Man in Black -- who he calls "Sad Day Monster" -- and Sawyer:
"There’s auditions to take over the island. Everyone has a number. Dead people are crossed off. I got excited when I saw '8 – Reyes' because I thought that meant Jose Reyes was on the island somewhere. But alas, Jose is #7. Clearly Jack is #23 because he is the Michael Jordan of being handsome. The Sad Day Monster gives Sawyer 3 choices. 1) Do nothing (sounds great to me. I’m gonna go back to getting drunk and listening to rock music on a tropical island.) 2) Protect the island from nothing. (sounds like option 1, I’m in.) 3) We just go. Thelma and Louise style.
Drunk Sawyer votes that they hit the bricks. Not what I would have chosen."
Throughout the review of the season premiere, he called Jack by the name Jake, and for the Kate-centric episode, called Kate "a bad person who robs a cab with a pregger lady in it."
*Warning, minor spoilers from recent episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice*
The Picture-in-Picture option on my TV got a hearty workout Thursday night as I put the Olympics (men's ice skating in particular) into a small box on the lower righthand corner of the screen while I watched Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice on the big picture.
Grey's featured flashbacks (a little Lost trick) for three characters. Bailey, Webber and Torres each recalled a case from the past that had an impact on them. My favorite part of the episode was seeing Miranda Bailey as a timid first year intern and who wore pink-rimmed glasses and drank fruity drinks with umbrellas in them before she evolved into the tough Bailey we know and love. My CliqueClack TV post on "The Time Warp" is here.
Meanwhile, Private Practice indulged in more sick/dying kid drama (I think the writers must own stock in Kleenex . . . or Zololoft), closed the loop on the Maya's pregnant/getting married to her 15-year-old baby daddy story and Naomi finally dispensed with her foul attitude and woman-ed up. Kind of. Well, for the time being. Or at least for the "'Til Death Do Us Part" episode, which I wrote about here. Actually, she just showed up to the wedding. Who knows if she'll actually resume mothering her kid.
As for the Olympics . . . what the heck is up with all these skating-related falls? Have there been more falls than in previous years or does it just seem that way?
When I watched the pairs ice skating competitions earlier this week it seemed as though couples which didn't have a spill were the exceptions. Last night, male skater after male skater hit the ice, and not in a good way. Pair this with the brutal skiing wipeouts and the luger death last week and perhaps even the curlers at the Vancouver winter Olympics should consider wearing protective gear. Who knew Canada was so dangerous?
Loved, loved, loved the 1989 film Parenthood starring Steve Martin. Loved how it covered parenthood from the beginning (with pregnancy, infancy and childhood), all the way through being the parent of grown adults. It provided a wonderful depiction of parenthood as a continuum where, on the one hand, you're doing everything for your young child and coaching his Little League team, and on the other hand you're dealing with an adult offspring by providing hands off support, wisdom and babysitting services.
So I'm left to wonder if the new NBC dramedy Parenthood -- starring Peter Krause, Lauren Graham and Craig T. Nelson -- will be as good as the movie, or, perhaps, even better because it can delve into issues with more depth? Will it be a different, more drama-focused version of Modern Familywithout becoming, say, a Brothers & Sisters sans a vineyard?
NBC has finally released some longer clips of the show, which premieres March 2.
*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Lost*
Lots of Lost fans are busy around them there internets saying that they're pleased with the most recent Locke-centric episode, "The Substitute." I'm not one of them.
I know I'm supposed to be embracing this whole sideways flash novelty -- otherwise known as the parallel reality comparing the uncrashed Losties' lives against the post-crash/post-Jughead Losties' existence on the island. I completely embraced the flashbacks in the early days, the revolutionary flashforwards introduced in the season three finale to awesome effect. I was even willing to suspend the plaguing feeling I got when I worked really hard to follow along with the time travel business which occurred last season. I've loved wading through the literary, Biblical and pop culture allusions and the various clues. I've paused the show to examine what was on screen, like the map on the Hatch's blast door that had pinned down Locke in the season two episode "Lockdown."
But the sideways flashes conflict with everything we've come to learn about the backstories of the Losties.
While I watched "The Substitute" with my spouse, another Lost fan, and saw that Locke got fired for deceiving his boss about his Australian walkabout (pretended he went on a business trip paid for by the company), that Locke was with and getting married to Helen and that he was considering inviting his "father" to their wedding, we were thunderstruck. Did none of the previous episodes we'd watched over the years have any meaning? Were they all for naught?
I dug out DVDs of previous seasons to confirm how wildly divergent these sideways flashes were from the history of Locke we'd been presented. Previous episodes showed that Locke told his obnoxious boss that he'd saved up vacation days and was going on the walkabout, about which his pinheaded boss mercilessly harassed him. The love of his life, Helen, had left him, even when he was down on his knees offering up a lifetime of wedded bliss, because of his obsession with his con man of a father. His father pushed him out of a high-rise window rendering him paralyzed when John threatened to expose him as a con artist. Just before leaving for Australia, John had found a woman named "Helen" on one of those pay-per-chat phone lines (typically used for, well, you know), had been regularly speaking with her for eight months, and asked her to accompany him on the walkabout, only to have her tell him that she couldn't go out with a customer.
Events in people's lives would obviously have changed if Oceanic 815 hadn't crashed on the island and if the Dharma Initiative was halted in the 1970s following the detonation of Jughead. But, seriously, how would all of these other things have changed and how, in the short time that's left until the series finale, can writers possibly make all of this seem logical, logical in the world of Lost, that is?
The Numbers -- which we now know correlate with numbers Jacob assigned to possible "candidates" to replace him to be protectors of the island (very cool twist) -- were always bad luck for Hurley. He thought they were cursed. He thought he was cursed. People around him got hurt and he attributed that to the Numbers and his bad luck. Look at poor Tricia Tanaka. How is it possible that by preventing the Oceanic crash on the island and changing the island's history, that, somehow, Hurley would be a successful businessman? That he'd be a different person?
I was on board with the let's-see-how-this-alternate-reality-of-uncrashed-Losties plays out. Found it interesting, seeing if their lives would've been better (or worse) if their plane had safely landed in LA. But having fundamental bedrock stories about these characters' backstories become so radically transformed, I just can't wrap my head around it. After years of carefully constructing these characters, to toss out everything we've known about them as if the past never happened -- at least not as we've been told that events had occurred -- makes me wonder if the rest of the future episodes are going to tick me off in the way "The Substitute" did.
But it wasn't all bad. I DID like, totally bought and was thoroughly entertained by the scene with Ben Linus as a history teacher complaining that his colleagues had left an empty coffee pot and dirty coffee filter in the coffee maker in the teachers' lounge. It made sense because his father would've never gone to the island had Jughead gone off and therefore, Ben would've lived an entirely differently life, as opposed to the Hurley's suddenly lucky storyline.
Are the writers going to try to create some forced storyline about Locke's dad that, because the island blew up, he somehow never became a con man, therefore he never conned Sawyer's mom so Sawyer's dad never killed her and then himself, that he never conned Locke out of a kidney and later pushed him out of a window rendering him paralyzed? So Locke got paralyzed in some other way?
I'm with Jorge Garcia, who plays Hurley, who, when informed about these new sideways flashes, told USA Today, "I was like, 'What?' It's a lot to swallow.'" And feel similarly to a Boston Globe TV critic who said, "I'm enjoying this season, but only when I'm able to let go of that gnawing, and very human, hunger for logic and sense."
I really hope I'm wrong. I hope it's all going to work out in the end. Guess that depends on whether I'm a fan with faith or a fan who's become jaded because she fears she's being taken down a rabbit hole.
Ever since the start of its third season, Private Practice has been lurching from one wildly dramatic storyline (with Violet Turner recovering from the violent, brutal C-section at the hands of a former patient), to another (currently Sam and Naomi Bennett's 15-year-old daughter's pregnancy and the flirtation between Sam and his ex-wife's best friend, Addision Montgomery). Suffice is to say, Violet's baby drama aside, there's been lots of romantic partner swapping, rivers of tears, loads of screaming and shoulder-clenching tension in recent episodes, so much so, that they've provided lots of grist for two Private Practice-centric pieces.
The first is a column on Mommy Tracked about the bold move on the part of Private Practice writers to decide to portray two moms -- Violet and Naomi -- in a negative light, as Violet decided that her post-traumatic stress was too much for her to bear so she gave her baby over to his dad and refuses to see the infant, while an infuriated and unhinged Naomi tried to force her pregnant teenaged daughter into having an abortion against the girl's will. (Naomi's reaction to her daughter's pregnancy has been so harsh that, aside from Emily Gilmore's reaction to her 16-year-old daughter's pregnancy, I'm having trouble thinking of another mother who's been portrayed this badly.)
The second is a post over on CliqueClack TV about the preponderance of Private Practice's intramural partner swapping which has grown to such epic proportions that I wonder if the show's in danger of running out of people to sleep with . . . kind of like what's happened to Grey's Anatomy.
Have you been watching Private Practice? Think they're gonna have to import more Grey's characters (a la McSteamy) in order to get more people for Private Practice characters to sleep with? Are you surprised by the portrayal of Violent and Naomi as troubled moms?
You've almost lost me. While I'm well accustomed to wearing a series of bemused smiles on my face as I watch Jack Bauer achieve superhuman feats (this week's deadly accurate knife throwing comes to mind), as others routinely travel faster than the speed of light to get around places (with no traffic tie-ups or bathroom breaks), I'm not used to openly guffawing at the show, repeatedly, to the point where I'm wondering if I'm actually watching a spoof of 24 instead of the real Jack Bauer power hour.
"I don't know if I'm gonna make it to the end of this season," my husband said about 20 minutes into the latest hour of Jack Bauer's eighth bad day. I concur. Why? Let me count the reasons:
The Dana/Jenny storyline is abysmal. Just atrocious. Worse than the Papa Bauer debacle.
Chloe O'Brian, once a source of quirky brilliance, has been reduced to the embodiment of a snarl who walks around the office and delivers messages to others. I so want the old Chloe back. (Maybe you can resurrect Edgar while you're at it. It'd be as believable as some of the schlock that's on this once gripping show this season.)
President Allison Taylor talked openly, in the middle of the UN floor, about the fact that there are unsecured nukes on the loose in New York City.
And the clueless head of New York's CTU bureau, Brian Hastings, is even more clueless than the usual supervisors featured on 24. I know that by-the-books bureaucrats are often portrayed as one-dimensional cardboard cutouts and are routinely skewered on the show, but, in watching Hastings, I've been scratching my head at the inanity of what he says and keep wondering when he's going to stand up straight. When Hastings questioned how undercover agent Renee Walker could've stabbed the arms dealer named Vladimir when, less than an hour ago she'd been "having sex" with him -- she'd been coerced, under threat of violence by a gun-toting guy with henchmen, to have relations with Vladimir, something known as rape, not "having sex" -- I went ballistic. (There's a thoughtful piece about this issue on the Women & Hollywood web site.) They've sunk to a new low with incompetent supervisors here.
You don't have much longer before I decide that 24's not worth my time any longer after having watched it faithfully for years, even when it veered into wildly uneven territory that massively strained credulity. It had better get better soon. The clock's ticking.
Sincerely,
Meredith
For those of you watching 24, feel free to weigh in on your thoughts on the eighth season.
*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Lost, "What Kate Does."*
Temple. *yawn*
More "Others." (Or, as Sawyer said in the Lost Untangled video above, "Mother Others.") *rolling my eyes*
More "Others" with guns who try to save/kill/confound our Losties while detaining them and, occasionally torturing them, this time with a hot piece of metal and electric currents. *pulling hair out*
Undead Sayid's been "claimed," otherwise known as "infected" with what the crazy French chick, Danielle Rousseau, was screaming about in season one. *areyoufreakinkiddinme*
I truly hope that Lost's team of scribes tie the Man in Black/Jacob thing into a sweet little bow by mid-May when this series concludes. But I'm losing faith that they will. While I'm hoping and waiting for the show to be as deeply thoughtful and character-centric as it used to be and could still be (if it focused on the intriguing parallel time continuums and examined the impact of one's actions on others and how one's true character manifests itself no matter the circumstances, all great topics), right now Lost is overstuffing the sandwich here and I'm losing my appetite.
At this point in the saga, I have zero patience to try and figure out what's up with some new Ben-Linus-wannabe-head-Other honcho. I don't want to get to know a whole new set of Others. I've had it with Others. There are plenty of other things to do with Lost's remaining hours, like seeing how this whole uncrashed Kate versus the post-crash/post-Jughead/still-on-the-island Kate situation play out. That, to me, is interesting. All those Other Others, Dogen and Lennon and the annoying gnat who Kate smacked around in the jungle, I couldn't care a whit about them. Want them to be attacked by the Smoke Monster. Go the way of Nikki and Paulo. Pronto. Ditto for Jacob's bodyguards who are on the other side of the island with Richard and Sun and Lapidus.
I do want to see what happens with Sun and Jin, Richard and Ben, Jack and Kate, and the undead John "Smoky" Locke. And what ever happened to Charles Whidmore and Eloise Hawking? The writers got us all invested in them and now I want to know how they factor into the equation. Dare I even inquire about Christian?
What I adored about the first few seasons of Lost was its rich development of character, relationships and its overall examination of what motivates people. When Lost veered into the realm of time travel last season, I was initially annoyed because it -- along with Daniel Faraday -- was confusing, but hung in there because I felt as though the series was still rooted in building and exploring character. What's been going on now with this temple and Dogen & Co., it's just taking up valuable time and is, frankly, irritating.
What say you Lost fans? What do you make of the new Other Others and all this Man in Black stuff? Do you think I'm being premature in my irritation and concerns and that I should just give it some more time?
Jenny Sanford -- the soon-to-be-ex-wife of South Carolina Gov. Mark "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" Sanford -- has been all over the media promoting her memoir, Staying True, about her life with the man who humiliated her by going on national television and tearfully declaring that his mistress was his "soul mate."
Sanford's the anti-Good Wife, the lead character of a CBS drama about a wife who has remained married to her philandering politician husband (who slept with prostitutes) who's incarcerated on charges of political corruption. Jenny Sanford decided she wasn't going to put up with her husband's insane behavior any longer, after several attempts to reconcile with him. So she's divorcing Mark Sanford and wrote a book about their experiences together. Jenny Sanford, who took time off from her career to raise the Sanfords' four boys and provide political advice to her husband, says she wants to return to work soon, but in the meantime, she's promoting Staying True and fielding criticism for doing so.
When she appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning, co-host Mika Brzezinski said that Jenny Sanford "chose a public route with this book" and asked how her four children are handling all of this publicity. Sanford responded, rightfully so, by pointing out that it was her husband who made this all public in the first place, whose e-mails to and from his lover were read from coast-to-coast. "It would not have been my choice to bring this scandal out in the light," Sanford said. (She also appeared on The Daily Showwhere she was asked a similar question.)
Going ahead and writing this book has made Jenny Sanford the target of criticism and public debate about her own level of responsibility for her predicament and whether she's hurting her children by speaking out publicly:
On Huffington Post, there was an entry debating whether she should've stayed with her cheating husband.
The Washington Post pinned the blame on Sanford for putting up with mistreatment, with writer Ruth Marcus commenting, ". . . [T]he most disappointing part of Staying True is that, consciously or not, Jenny Sanford reveals her own complicity -- not in facilitating her husband's affair, but in allowing herself to be treated so badly for so long."
PunditMom was likewise disappointed in Jenny Sanford after reading excerpts from her memoir, saying, "By marrying [Mark Sanford] and allowing her sons to see her treated in such a casually neglectful way, it sure doesn’t seem like she stayed true to herself or to her obligation as a parent to give her children an example of what a healthy marriage should look like . . . Clearly, their marriage was lacking. One could say, well that’s just between them, but it isn’t — they have four sons who’ve watched and learned about what a woman is willing to put up with for the sake of keeping her man, even a louse who acts like he couldn’t care less."
The same criticism could and has been lobbed at Hillary Clinton -- who also wrote a book mentioning her husband's mistreatment -- as well as at other wives of male politicians who've not only publicly discussed their husband's infidelity but remained married to the men who have treated them poorly, and in full view of their children. I'm of the mind that it's really, really difficult to say what you, personally, would do if you were Jenny Sanford or Hillary Clinton. It makes me uncomfortable to judge women as strong (or good role models) based on whether they stay or leave their cheating husbands, or whether they put their own story out into the public sphere or suffer in silence (like Silda Spitzer).
I keep thinking of Elizabeth Edwards who wrote her own memoir detailing her response to learning that her husband John had cheated on her, and decided that she'd stay married to him. A year later, after all manner of scandal and searingly awful personal details have come out about Elizabeth and John Edwards and John's mistress (and his love child), and the couple has announced their separation. Am I going to judge Elizabeth Edwards for writing her book, talking publicly about the pain John caused her and her decision to stay with him in 2009, and now, a year later, she's changed her mind? Nope. I'm not Elizabeth Edwards. And I'm not Jenny Sanford nor am I Hillary Clinton. I feel for all of these women and hope that they, and their children, can somehow find some peace amid the wreckage caused by their cheating husbands.
Typically, when the subject of a mom working or not working or working part-time or taking some kind of "mommy track," etc. crops up, there's a tendency for some people to get judgmental and mean. And when TV programs have tackled the topic, it's frequently done with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
This is why I fell in love with Modern Family's recent episode, "Moon Landing," which featured Claire Dunphy (Julie Bowen), the at-home mom of three, feeling a bit shaken when she went to wine-fueled lunch with a former colleague of hers (Minnie Driver) who successfully climbed the corporate ladder and seemed to lead a glamorous life as compared to Claire's. In response to hearing about her friend's four lovers in different cities and her major work promotion, Claire mumbled, "Last night I vacuumed the radiator thingie, under the fridge, you know that collects the dust, because you should, and, I don’t."
My Mommy Tracked Pop Culture column this week gives some major kudos to Modern Family for bringing humor to an issue that can oftentimes be treated super-seriously.
Whenever I talk to people about the pop culture work that I do on this blog and in my weekly columns at Mommy Tracked, I usually get asked, "How do you have time to watch all that TV?" My typical snarky response is, "I've given up sleep." (Hence my reliance on copious quantities of caffeine.)
Well now I've got one more reason to keep atuned to the TV landscape: I'm a contributing writer to the web site CliqueClack TV (CCTV), or, in the venacular of the site, I'm a "clacker." The web site creators describe CCTV this way:
"We're the clique that clacks about TV, so if you want to chatter about all things television, you've come to the right place . . . We like to think of CliqueClack TV as a playground for us writers to post about anything we want and to cover what excites us."
My current assignment there is to muse about HBO's fourth season of Big Love, among other subjects. My post about the recent episode of Big Love, "Sins of the Father," talks about how the eppy pursued two, parallel storylines this week: One about Bill Henrickson's public campaign to overcome the political baggage associated with his background as a "Lost Boy" who was exiled from the Juniper Creek polygamist compound when he was 14 and had to resort to some criminal behavior in order to survive (including being busted for assault). The second was about Bill attempting to handle the private fall-out from his recent decision to encourage his own teenaged son to leave the family home because Bill was threatened by the sexual attraction between Ben and Bill's third wife Margene, the one who kissed her step-son two episodes ago.
I found Bill's attempts to pretend he hadn't really asked Ben to leave the house utterly slimy, almost as slimy as asking Don Embry to take the fall for him and admit he's a polygamist in last week's episode. (Last week on CCTV I compared Bill to John Edwards.
For those of you who missed the latest episode, which was heavily centered around Bill's attempts to get his state Republican party's nomination for State Senate, here's HBO's brief recap:
My favorite moments: The Ronald Reagan dance party, Nicki/Daphne/spy asking Bill why she's always asked to do the "morally ambigious" things (like spy on the rival GOP state senate candidate's campaign), Barb in the sweat lodge and Joey telling his brother that he's going down the wrong path. (What was up with Lois siding with and protecting Frank the Vicious? That puzzled me.)
What did you think of the recent installment of Big Love?
*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Lost.*
I wasn't on the internet late Tuesday through yesterday -- pressing family matter -- therefore I haven't yet been able to weigh in on the first episode of the final season of Lost. I'm going to echo what Grey's Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes wrote on Twitter today, "Saw LOST twice. Am very confused. Am happy about the chance to be confused over LOST again."
Well, I've only seen the premiere but a single time, however I'm planning on watching it a second time with The Spouse when he's available. And I too, like Rhimes, am very happy to be once again scratching my head trying to figure out what the heck's going on on Lost.
I will be, although I can't decide whether to be excited about the season premiere which kicks off the final season of Lost, or if I should keep my expectations low.
Fans of the show seem to be largely of two minds:
1. The final season can't possibly meet expectations and provide "reasonable" answers to the main questions that will make all these hours of head-scratching TV viewing worth it. (This is my husband's position.)
OR
2. Since the writers had a series end date in mind, they must've thoroughly thought this all through and will deliver a conclusion to Lost that will leave us fans feeling satisfied. (This is my hopeful position.)
Among the naysayers is Boston Globe writer, Mark Feeney, who wrote that in order to continue to embrace the show through its various ups and downs, you'd need to be a fan of what he called, "implausibility porn" and be okay with that. "We all like a dollop, or more, of implausibility," he said. "Otherwise why bother with superheroes and infallible private eyes and Jedi knights. But even in a galaxy far, far away, the basic rules of cause and effect are expected to apply."
For Feeney, those rules of "cause and effect" were violated on Lost when he felt as though he could no longer suspend his disbelief while observing all these coincidences, specifically last season's scene when Desmond Hume happened to arrive "in Los Angeles to see [Daniel] Faraday’s mother at the exact same instant Ben, Jack, and Sun show up." That was it for Feeney, he wrote, adding, ". . . [I]t was the serendipity that broke the camel’s back. This wasn’t wallowing. This was drowning."
So, where do we go from here? I'm optimistic that there won't be horrific shark jumping in the final season. (*fingers crossed and knocking on wood*) We left off in the 1970s with a grieviously wounded Juliet flailing away at the H-bomb with a rock hoping the bomb would detonate and, essentially, re-set the clock and alter future events. Was Jack right about his prediction that setting off this bomb would be a good thing?
ABC has released a teaser video which they named, "Message in a Bottle." However if you are averse to spoilers, do not, I repeat, do not watch the video. You've been warned.
This week I had the privilege of co-hosting the new installment of Manic Mommies with one half of the duo, Erin Kane.
We dished on issues like crazy work/kid activity schedules and mid-season TV shows like Friday Night Lights, Big Love, Lost, Nurse Jackie, Damages, Parenthood and about this season of Grey's Anatomy.
. . . especially when he played U.S. Senator-elect Scott Brown -- you know, the guy from Massachusetts who has taken the media by storm with his truck and his Cosmo model background -- in a skit where Brown kept busting into a meeting of congressional leaders. (Hamm/Brown to Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "I want to introduce something to the floor, it's called your panties.") Poor Boston/Mass. accent though, Mr. Hamm.
However that digital short where Hamm played a chest-baring sax player named Sergio who haunted a cursed businessman and later emerged from his wife's womb was uber-creepy.
*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Big Love.*
There were so many stunning aspects to the latest episode of Big Love, "The Mighty and the Strong," that I can't decide which one took the cake as the weirdest, most over-the-top thread:
-- Margene and Ben (Margene confessed to Bill that she has non-maternal feelings for 18-year-old Ben, Bill agreed that his son should leave the family home -- which reminded me of the other boys who were sent away from Juniper Creek after they coveted older polygamist men's assigned spouses, plus Margene's painfully tearful rant on the home shopping channel about being "abandoned" by her husband which is CERTAIN to draw media attention, how could it not?)
-- Don the Doormat. (Poor Don Embry took the fall to preserve Bill's political career by outing himself and his family as polygamists so Bill's political rivals would back off claims that Home Plus was employing polygamists.)
Barb and the Casino. (She hit an Indian woman with her car, Barb's daughter Sarah was secretly caring for the woman's baby and was then reluctant to give the baby back to his meth-addicted mom on the reservation because she was still mourning her miscarriage from last season.)
J.J. and Adaleen. (*speechless*)
Love-struck Alby broke into a house and cooked dinner. (I cannot tell if Alby is playing this guy or wants to make a secret life with him, or both.)
What did you think was the weirdest element of the new installment of Big Love?
Longtime readers of Notes from the Asylum are already familiar with my longtime admiration for thirtysomething which, for years, I gnashed my teeth over the fact that it was unavailable on DVD.
Last August, the first season was finally (!) released on DVD. Now, a short time later, the second season of the angsty, yuppie drama has been released as well.
After watching the 17 episodes of the sophomore season, I devoted my Pop Culture column this week to how relevant the work/life/parenting issues remain, despite the fact that Hope Steadman typed her freelance articles on a typewriter and shoulder pads were still in fashion.
I concluded:
"Looking at today’s pop culture landscape, I can find no current TV dramas which capture the gloriously messy and stressful, day-to-day slog of child-rearing, work and marriage as deftly and incisively as this 21-year-old series did. In this case, analog still trumps the digital."
