Notes on Pop Culture: Jack Bauer's Last Hour, More on 'Lost's' 'The End' and Parenting Teens in Primetime

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the series finales of 24 and Lost.*

'Friday Night Lights:' Coach Taylor Lies to His Wife

One of the things I really admire about Coach Eric Taylor’s character on Friday Night Lights is the fact that he’s been a really good, down-to-earth husband. Certainly he's not been perfect, and Tami Taylor’s certainly not a perfect wife, but Eric’s been a supportive husband and father throughout the series, a role model of sorts, albeit one who doesn't like to talk much.

However the latest episode, “In the Skin of a Lion” hints at larger problems that may challenge the Taylors’ marriage this season with Eric coaching the East Dillon High School football team, and Tami serving as principal at the West Dillon High School, both of whom have targets on their backs, Tami more so than Eric at this point.

In a recent episode, Tami was put smack-dab in the middle of local politics when she learned that Eric kind-of-knew-but-didn’t-really-want-any-details about a mailbox the West Dillon Panthers had been using for years as a sham address for players who lived in other school districts but who’d claim they lived in West Dillon territory in order to play Panther football. The address was for a mailbox in front of an empty lot in West Dillon. The Panters had been using it for a star player, Luke Cafferty who lived in East Dillon territory.

At first, Tami asked Eric whether he knew about this when he was the West Dillon coach, as she was the one who had to pull Luke Cafferty off the Panthers because one of Eric's friends -- the one who erected the mailbox in the first place -- told Eric that Luke was supposed to be on his football team. When confronted by his wife, Eric argued and tried to turn it around on Tami as though she were the one making trouble. Although she sagely and gaemly played politics with the West Dillion football boosters, who threatened to tarnish Eric's previous state championship, the entire situation left her feeling vulnerable, particularly when she was booed by the student body.

During the latest episode, it was Eric who found himself in a jam. Sure, that big fire he lit in the center of the football field and into which Eric had encouraged his players to pitch their jerseys proved inspirational to fledgling team, symbolic of their fresh start. But there was one small catch. It left them without uniforms. And without more financial support from the cash-strapped high school – which barely has enough cash for academics – Eric had to turn to other means.

He staged that fundraiser where he had the players push a car through town and collect money from residents. While I thought it was sweet that Eric gave Tim Riggins some cash to spread around to the crowd to give to the players so they’d feel supported by their community, I wondered if Tami knew about it.

Then the bill for the new jerseys came due. And Eric had to write a hefty check, a personal check, from his and Tami’s account in oreder to get the gear in time for their game. When Tami asked Eric about it, he lied and said the check was for $45 for dry cleaning. Near the end of the episode, he came home after one too many beers and told Tami the truth, that he’d written a $3,000 check and hoped to raise the money and replace it. "We don’t have $3,000 in our checking account!” Tami shouted.

I expect that this dust-up – combined with a Panther football booster boasting that Joe McCoy will “figure out a way to get that bitch out of there” (meaning Tami as principal) – won’t be the last big tests for the Taylor marriage this season.

'Lost' Goes Spiritual in 'The End'

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the last ever fresh episode of Lost.*

Live together, die alone.

About that 'Grey's' Finale . . .

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the Grey’s Anatomy season finale.*

Have you come down from that intense, highly caffeinated Grey’s Anatomy season six finale yet? Seriously.

The blood bath, the deaths, the tension. For two freakin’ hours. That’s not what I need to watch right before I going to bed.

Betty White Continues Her Campaign to Take Over TV, One Show at a Time

* Cross-posted on the Picket Fence Post *

When The Middle concluded its charming freshman season this week, it did so with a guest star turn by Betty White, shortly after she showed the other hosts of Saturday Night Live how it’s really done (and got blockbuster ratings to boot). Have I said that I want to be Betty White when I grow up?

Anyway, Betty played a strict elementary school librarian who was ticked that Brick hadn’t yet returned dozens of books to the school library and complained that when he did return them, they were covered with syrup and other sticky substances. (Full disclosure: My family has a checkered past when it comes to returning library books in a timely fashion. Needless to say, we do our part to support the town library with our fines. Right now, we have a DVD that’s waaaayyy overdue at the library, so much so that I’ve told my oldest boy that the late fee’s coming out of his college fund.)

On The Middle, Betty White’s librarian was so irritated with Brick that she threatened to prevent him from progressing to third grade, where he’d be taught how to write in cursive, if he didn’t bring back the 31 books he had checked out long ago. “You think you can make it out in the real world without cursive?” she asked him. “You can’t!”

'Lost' Showrunners List Top 10 'Spoilers' for Series Finale on Letterman

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman last night (looking a tad awkward) and read a Top Ten list of Lost “spoilers” for Sunday night’s big series finale.

The best entry was number five, read by a gloriously sinister-sounding Ben Linus (played by the wonderful Michael Emerson), saying, “I have to go to Target to get socks.” Seriously, you've gotta see it.

Second best “spoiler” was number seven: “Due to pressure from the internet, we’ve been forced to include Betty White.”

I say Betty White hooks up with the Smoke Monster in the final scene. Whaddya think?

Matthew Fox and Jimmy Fallon Talk 'Lost's' Big Questions, Like Kate or Juliet?

Matthew Fox, who plays the heroic Island saving Jack Shephard on Lost, appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and “dished” about the show. He agreed to field some of Fallon's odd ball questions including who he’d pick if he had a choice: Kate or Juliet. His answer may surprise you. Or, maybe not.

'Parenthood' Goes the Mean Girl Route

While watching last night’s Parenthood, I could not stop thinking about the Phoebe Prince case from Massachusetts -- where a teen girl took her life earlier this year after prosecutors said she was relentlessly harassed by classmates in her new school. There were so many similarities between the real life case and the one unfolding on Parenthood where a girl is being harassed by a group of girls for sleeping with her cousin's ex-boyfriend.

I reviewed the latest episode, “Team Braverman” for CliqueClack TV and observed that the response of Kristina Braverman, Haddie's mom, to this situation made me really dislike her character, one I’d previously admired for her down-to-earth demeanor. Plus I felt really badly for Amber, who made stupid, teenaged decisions while I became increasingly irritated with Haddie.

'Lost's' 'What They Died For' Sparked Nostalgia and Sadness About the Coming End to the Saga

I could feel it coming on as I watched the second-to-last episode of Lost, “What They Died For.”

When the episode began with a close up of Jack’s eye -- as episodes have done twice before, including in the pilot -- it immediately kicked in: The nostalgia, the feeling that I didn’t want this to end, no matter how maddening, confusing and sometimes frustrating Lost can be.

I realized that I actually DIDN’T want ghost Jacob to sit down at a camp fire -- looking like something taken from the show Survivor -- with the three remaining candidates plus Kate, and give us answers, like why Kate’s name was crossed off (because she became a mother).

I actually didn’t want to hear Jacob tell Sawyer, Hurley and Jack that they’re flawed, alone, had huge holes in their lives and because of those things made for good candidates to protect the light inside the magic golden drain pipe, the light in the center of The Island that’s the key to all life. ("I didn't pluck any of you out of a happy existence . . . I chose you because you were like me. You were all alone. You were all looking for something that you couldn't find out there. I chose you because you needed this place as much as it needed you.")

I didn’t want to see Jack step forward and accept that responsibility, to become the new Jacob, the chosen one, as I always assumed he would. (A key moment: Jacob said he wanted to give the candidates a choice -- calling upon their free will -- to accept the responsibility of being The Island’s protector, as opposed to having it imposed upon them as it had been on Jacob by Allison Janney. Though one could argue that Jacob certainly manipulated the situation into occurring, not giving them much choice.) This scene led to the best line of the episode which was uttered by Sawyer, "And I thought that guy had a God complex before."

The realizations that I didn't want to know these things surprised me, because in order for me to get these answers means that Lost is really ending.

By contrast, I found myself being more intrigued by the sideways-flashing Desmond who was using an odd series of maneuvers to bring the Oceanic 815 passengers back together in a bid to get them to remember their exploits on The Island, pre-Jughead. (Sideways-flashing Desmond reminded me of Jacob.)

The brutal beating of Ben Linus -- whom I was happy to see got more than a one-minute scene -- at the hand of Desmond triggered Ben’s amber-tinted recollections of Island life, much to my glee. Seeing Hurley bribe cop Ana Lucia to let the prisoners -- Desmond, Sayid and Kate -- go free was similarly awesome, as was seeing Ben have dinner with a beautifully cleaned up Rousseau who told Ben that he was like a father to her daughter Alex, causing Ben to choke up with emotion.

Back on The Island, Ben proved himself to be a delightful villain once again by betraying Charles Widmore and telling Smoky Locke that Widmore was hiding in Ben’s secret room behind the bookcase. Why did Ben cooperate? Because Smoky Locke offered Ben The Island -- once Smoky Locke leaves it -- in exchange for Ben killing some people on Smoky Locke's behalf.

Just before Ben plugged Widmore with some lead -- payback for having Ben’s daughter Alex killed (“He doesn’t get to save his daughter.”) -- Widmore shared with Smoky Locke the fact that Desmond is some kind of a “fail safe” who, if all of Jacob's candidates were killed, could be used to destroy The Island, the one Jack had just vowed to protect with his life, by way of protecting all human life from the snuffing out of The Island’s inner light.

Sure, “What They Died For” had flaws and left us with more questions. (Why couldn’t Jacob have just remained a ghost-like presence to help Jack instead of dying when the camp fire went out? Why have Jack be a father in the sideways-flash? Why did Jacob appear as a kid to Hurley and then as an adult? If Jacob crossed Kate off because she became a mother why did she have to get on that plane the second time?) But in my present mood, feeling nostalgic and all, I embraced all the chaos of "What They Died For" as I look forward to the big finale which’ll take up a bazillion hours of ABC programming on Sunday. My hopes are very high for the finale. I've got my fingers crossed that I'm not disappointed.

What did you think of “What They Died For?” Did it meet your expectations? Oh, and what the hell did Smoky Locke do with Richard, he who shall have eternal life?

Image credit: Mario Perez/ABC.

Jack Bauer's Gone Nuts, Plus He Looked Like a Clone Trooper, Or Maybe Iron Man in That Stupid Mask

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of 24.*

After a strong start, this final season of 24 has been bumpy and has had some dreadful patches -- like the business with Dana Walsh and her ex-con boyfriend, as well as the probation officer storyline, whose body is rotting inside CTU walls -- but in the last few weeks, 24 had seemed as though it had picked up and redeemed itself. Loved the political intrigue, Chloe as the head of CTU and I’ve been a fan of the President Allison Taylor character.

Then came the last two episodes when 24 writers decided to have Jack Bauer completely unravel and go on a brutal killing spree and perform a vicious vivisection, only to be topped by that atrocious scene where he donned a ridiculous mask and stomped on the front windshield of the conniving former President Charles Logan's limo as Logan's eyes bulged in fear. Jack shoved a canister of tear gas into the hole in the windshield, forcing Logan to exit the vehicle so Jack could drag him away and terrorize Logan into revealing the names of those in Russian government who ordered the murder of Renee Walker.

While I understand that the writers may be trying to set up a situation where viewers would accept Jack’s death in the series finale – I am NOT privy to any inside information but I’m convinced Jack’ll die in the final moments – they’ve gone overboard. Jack has always lived in the gray area, committing evil acts if they were a means to an end of protecting people and the nation, of preventing terrorism and war, even if it meant torturing his own brother and facing off against his father in the process of ultimately doing good. But Jack’s never been as patently vicious as he has been in the past two episodes, acting as though his moral compass is as busted as that limo windshield. He’s not saving people right now, he’d exterminating them.

There were plenty of other ways to have Jack evade federal government officials, his CTU colleagues and the goons Logan hired, all in order to do the right thing and expose the presidential cover-up of the Russians’ involvement in President Hassan’s assassination without having the character morph into a grief-stricken, soulless killer bent on revenge, who occasionally dons Iron Man-like masks when he's breaking up a presidential motorcade. They didn't have to have the hero, Jack Bauer, become a terminator.

Anyone else turned off by Jack’s last two horrifically bad hours?

Image credit: Fox via BSC.

'Lost's' Body Count and Which Death Saddened You Most?

Saw this video on Jezebel today, a hodgepodge of all of Lost's death scenes, right up through Mother/Allison Janney gettin' stabbed in the back by the Man in Black in "Across the Sea." I'm not sure that they got them ALL, but the web site did call this a "complete recap" of the Lost fatalities and named the video, "Lost: All the People Who Died."



Can you think of any deaths they missed? And while we're on the subject of deaths, which one saddened you the most? For me the deaths that were the saddest were: 1) Charlie Pace and 2) Sun and Jin.

'Friday Night Lights:' What Happened After the Forfeit

Have I said how much I love Friday Night Lights?

The second episode of the fourth season, “After the Fall,” was a beautiful bookend to the premiere, where Coach Taylor’s brand new, ragtag, no-resources East Dillon Lions football team had to be rebuilt yet again, less than a month after he’d cobbled it together in the first place, all because he’d made the gutsy move to forfeit their first game when they were down 45-0 at the half and the team was physically in shambles.

Eric Taylor spent the bulk of this episode going around town and apologizing to everybody for making a call he knew in his heart was the right one and trying to coax the team members to show up to the field. After facing off against a defiant, delightfully awkward Landry in the cafeteria and a stone faced Vince on the basketball court, Eric was surprised to later find Vince in his office and appealed to Vince to help pull the rest of the team back together and meet with the coaches for a special Saturday night practice. All the players actually showed up -- imagine the drama we would've seen had they NOT -- and they all purged the demons from the first game in a fire in the middle of the football field, encouraged by Coach Taylor to start anew by pitching their ripped football jerseys into the flames, an idea spawned by a strange guy Eric ran into at a gas station, but one which left the team without jerseys. But that's another story for another episode.

The other big story of the episode was the revelation that a star running back for the Panthers didn’t really live in West Dillon territory and that he should be attending East Dillon and playing for Coach Taylor's Lions team. This news had to be delivered by West Dillon Principal Tami Taylor to Luke Cafferty, after which she was “jokingly” threatened with lynching by Joe McCoy, who also threatened to harm Coach Taylor's reputation, and then Tami found herself nastily jeered at a high school pep rally by the student body while Joe McCoy laughed. Being placed in the middle of this controversy, between her husband and her school, is a sticky place for Principal Taylor will almost certainly cause tension in the Taylor household.

And how very depressing is it to watch the story of Tim Riggins, or "the guy who used to be Tim Riggins,” who used to be a star, a VIP in Dillon, but who’s now just a garden variety college drop-out (attended college classes only briefly) has-been who was rendered homeless and sleeping in his truck? This is one aspect of the Texas high school football star saga that I’d always hoped this show would address, the fact that, in this fictional town (and many real towns), one’s high school football career is, all too frequently, the pinnacle of these young men's lives. Everything else is downhill and the rest of life seems like a disappointment by comparison.

What do you think of this season thus far?

Notes on Pop Culture: 'Grey's Anatomy' Finale Teaser, Finale Death Counts and 'The Good Wife' Gets the Job

Grey’s Anatomy Finale Teaser

You so know that this preview of Thursday's season finale of Grey’s Anatomy has been placed online just to torment us. When promos for the season finale ask, “Who will fall?” (note the word "fall" not "die") and say that a shooter will be on the loose in the halls of Seattle Grace, I have to think that there's no way this whole pregnancy thing will pan out, that Meredith Grey will actually have the baby and that, by this time next year, she'll be the dark and twisty new mom. But we'll see.

The bringing danger into the hospital angle has occurred on this show before, like when there was a bomb inside a patient and Coach Eric Taylor was blown to smithereens, when an irate employee shot people including Burke. But a shooter inside the hospital? Given last year's Grey's season finale, after which I felt as though I'd been emotionally manipulated with the George-run-over-by-a-bus story, I'm skeptical.



Finale Death Counts Climb Higher

*Warning . . . spoilers from already aired finales ahead . . .*

Private Practice's finale, "The End of a Beautiful Friendship," killed off Dell, leaving his daughter an orphan, after the drama flirted with killing off Maya and her unborn baby following a car accident caused by a drunk driver. (I reviewed the finale here on CliqueClack TV.)

Brothers & Sisters finale, “On the Road Again,” also had a massive, fatal car accident in the last scene which appears to have killed Robert McAllister while his bloodied wife Kitty comforted him in the front seat of their vehicle. The bloodied Robert, with a huge gash on the side of his head, suddenly stopped talking and his eyes remained open but he was non-responsive and motionless. (See video below.) Holly Harper was bloody and severely injured while being tended to by Justin. Don't know if Patricia Wettig, who plays Harper is coming back.

Given that it’s been known for quite some time since we've known that Rob Lowe was leaving the show, plus the fact that it’s been reported that when Brothers & Sisters returns in the fall Kitty is “single,” it seems like a reasonable conclusion that Robert died from his injuries. Oh, and we also learned that Sol -- who will forever be Arvin Sloane to me -- has HIV. What a damn downer, particularly after that sweet scene where the family members had just frolicked in the shower of an aquifer that'd been discovered under what was left of the property the family owned after their business went belly-up.



The Brothers & Sisters finale was entertaining, the last scene moving (I was shocked by the Sol scene), but the finale that appeared just before it for Desperate Housewives, in a word: Sucked. And I like Desperate Housewives, or I used to. They used to make wry, dead-on commentary about life in the ‘burbs and on occasion they still do. But not with their finale, “I Guess This is Goodbye.” Gabby’s storyline was ridiculous. Bree giving up her business and Orson leaving her *yawn.* At least the only fatality was a character no one cared about, Angie’s former eco-terrorist boyfriend who’d tried to kill her and her son.

Which brings me to this question: Were the writers for Desperate Housewives talking to Shonda Rhimes? Lynette Scavo went into labor while being held hostage by a teen serial killer and her pregnancy was in peril, particularly when it was discovered that the baby's umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's neck and the killer had to save the baby. Given that the last two Private Practice season finales ended with pregnant women in peril, I, for one am tired of series finales pulling this kind of thing.

The Good Wife Gets the Job

Last week’s The Good Wife "Unplugged" episode provided viewers with the answer to the season-long question: Who would win the one open junior associate’s position, twentysomething Cary, who’s unmarried and has no kids and can work a bazillion hours, or Alicia, breadwinner mother of three who took a decade-plus off from the legal profession and only went back to work when her politician husband resigned and was then incarcerated? Alicia got the nod, however in my pop culture column this week I asked what would’ve happened had she not had the political connections. Answer: She would’ve been unemployed.

What do you think about finales killing off characters to boost ratings?

Jimmy Fallon Spoofs the iPad and Robert Pattinson

In another installment of Jimmy Fallon's Robert Pattinson is Bothered videos, he (Fallon playing Pattinson) took on the iPad.

Best part: Asking where a man is supposed to put the iPad when he's not using it. "Who has pockets this big?"

Second favorite part: Fallon/Pattinson's take on, "What's an ap?"

'Lost Untangled' Tackles 'Across the Sea' with Lots of Snark

For those who hated the Jacob-Man in Black centered episode of Lost with Allison Janney playing their Ben Linus-like mommy called, cleverly enough, "Mother," I think you’ll definitely appreciate the snark in this installment of Lost Untangled. LOVE the “knotty mommy hair” nickname, her elevated soap box and the “jungle juice” line.



By the way, while reading Emily Nussbaum's review of Lost's "Across the Sea" for New York Magazine, I came across this gem of a comment, representative of the portion of the audience who HATED this episode: ". . . [F]rom Stella MD, regarding the lack of a name for Smokey: 'I felt like I was watching that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry can't remember [Dolores'] name. 'Goodbye, Mother.' 'Goodbye ... you.'" (That was the episode where Jerry thought the woman's name might've been "Mulva.")

Over on the Chicago Tribune's web site, TV writer Maureen Ryan was really annoyed that the murderous "Mother" was brought on sans context and without the viewers being able to access her motivations and whether she was correct or paranoid or manipulative or evil or whatever. "A few hours before it ends, Lost introduces a character whose motivations and priorities only become more muddied over the course of the single episode in which she appears," Ryan wrote. ". . . A lot of what she said was basically the island version of, 'Because I said so.'"

And we all know how that goes over when we try that on kids.

'Lost' Finally Gets Its Island Origin Story with 'Across the Sea'

*Warning, SERIOUS spoilers from the latest episode of Lost ahead.*

Good God. How many times, while watching “Across the Sea,” did you say something akin to, “Oh my God,” or perhaps you invoked more colorful language? My answer: A dozen or so.

While not every question regarding the origin of The Island was addressed, plenty of them were and, other than the convoluted donkey wheel story (which still makes no sense to me, but I can live with that confusion), I found the writers’ explanations fascinating. And that’s what I'm calling them explanations, not necessarily answers from this very odd-feeling episode.

Alison Janney, who played the nameless woman on the island, was supposed to protect “the light” which is warm and live-giving and a bit of which supposedly resides inside every living being. If humans get it, they’ll screw it up with all their flaws and stuff, exploit it, so Janney’s character had to hide it from other people. Why? Who knows? Is she god-like? I have no idea, except that she did die, but supposedly had the power to make it so that one brother couldn’t hurt another, which seems like an otherworldly power to me.

Annnywayyy . . . Janney (since the Lost writers gave her no name other than "Mother," I’m calling her Janney) found a pregnant woman washed up on shore following a shipwreck. She tended to the woman’s wounds and delivered her babies, twins, boys, one named Jacob, born first and wrapped in a white fabric, then the second, unnamed boy was born and wrapped in black fabric. (WHY no name? WHY? To tick us off?)

Janney brutally killed their mother and raised the boys herself, lying to them and telling them that there was no place other than The Island, that other humans are inherently bad and do bad things (hmm, killing the boys’ mother isn’t “bad”?), that the "other" people “don’t belong here” and that they were there for “a reason,” that the light in what looked like a drainage pipe had to be protected at all costs. “This is the reason we’re here,” Janney told the boys of the golden light coming from a hole in the ground and beaming over a stream. Janney warned, “If the light goes out here, it goes out everywhere.” (Later she says that “life, death, rebirth” are down there, “It’s the source, the heart of the island.”)

However when the then-13-year-old Boy in Black saw the ghost of his biological mother (Jacob, curiously, couldn’t see her) and was informed that Janney had killed her and lied to the boys, that there were other shipwreck survivors who’d been on the same boat as their biological mother, the Boy in Black, whom Janney had told was “special,” got angry and decided to leave the caves and go live with the survivors where he belonged. He pleaded with Jacob to come with him (how many other Lost characters have pleaded with others to leave?), while Janney told her Boy in Black that he could never leave The Island. Hmm. Wonder if that was as binding as the you-can't-hurt-each-other fix?

Years later, an adult Jacob, still bitterly jealous because he thought Janney loved his brother more than him, learned that the Man in Black was planning to leave the island – via the donkey wheel he was building at the bottom of a well adjacent to a pocket of the white light he’d found, though he didn't share the specifics with his brother -- because he didn’t feel as though he belonged on The Island. Upon learning this, killer Janney knocked the Man in Black unconscious, filled in the well, set fire to the survivor’s huts and killed all the other survivors, those “bad” people.

Janney then brought Jacob, who was "good," back to the source of the light by the waterfall and told him he was the chosen one, its caretaker, asked him to drink the cup of wine to seal his vow to protect this place (“It has to be you Jacob,” she said. “. . . It was always supposed to be you.”), charged him with finding his own replacement and declared that they were now the same.

When he came to, the Man in Black was outraged, of course, and sought revenge on his Ben Linus-like mother (though Ben never killed Rousseau as he was supposed to before he took Alex). The Man in Black stabbed Janney in the back.

“Why wouldn’t you let me leave Mother?” he asked her.

“Because, I love you,” she said. “Thank you.” Then she died. Man in Black wept as Jacob came upon the scene, started beating the crap out of his brother then dragged him to the source of the light and pushed him toward it. (Don’t they know they’re not supposed to go into the light?) And *poof* out of the tunnel came the angry black smoke.

Jacob found his brother’s body in the jungle, then mournfully carried it to the caves and placed it next to Janney’s body, entwining their fingers together so that, many, many years later, when the survivors of Oceanic 815 found them, they’d wonder, or rather John Locke -- whose body would be taken over by the Man in Black -- would wonder aloud if they were The Island’s Adam and Eve.

All in all, it was entertaining, thought provoking and a statement about good and evil with one son wearing black and the other wearing white. And I’m willing to be okay with just letting the fact that I was intrigued by “Across the Sea” to be sufficient . . . if only for these questions:

1. Who was Janney and was she godlike because she “made it” so the brothers couldn’t kill one another? (Though putting one's brother down the tunnel of light where he turns into a Smoke Monster, didn’t that kill him?)

2. Why can’t the Man in Black kill the candidates?

3. How could Jacob, who was raised to think there was nothing beyond the island, travel abroad to “touch” potential candidates? How can he get on and off the island with ease? With the donkey wheel? How did he get back?

4. Does this mean that Ben is more like Mother than we thought in his fervor to protect The Island?

What did you think of The Island’s origin story?

Image credit: Mario Perez/ABC.

Talkin' 'Lost': Jack Shephard vs Jack Bauer, Top 10 'Lost' Love Scenes

Bauer vs Shephard

A writer at the Philadelpia Daily News has made an analogy which some 24 fans – and Jack Shephard haters – might find objectionable: She compares 24’s anti-hero Jack Bauer and Lost’s hero Jack Shephard.

Writer Ellen Gray concluded: “. . . [W]hile at first glance the angst-ridden surgeon and the stoic action figure seem to have little more in common than a nickname, a closer examination reveals two guys who, if anything, might be too much alike.”

While Bauer’s do-anything-it-takes-to-stop-the-bad-guys may seem at odds with Shephard’s let’s-do-what’s-morally-right point of view, Gray listedn some striking similarities between the characters including:

-- They’re “obsessed with saving people.”

-- They had “bad dads.”

-- They’ve both been behind bars. (She equates Bauer’s time in a Chinese prison, where he was tortured, to Shephard’s time being held hostage by Ben in order to convince him to remove his spinal tumor.)

-- They had unhappy marriages and haven’t done fared well in the dating department.

-- Their biggest similarity: Gray said they both “survived things – plane crashes, nuclear bombs – that most people wouldn’t.”

Hmm, she’s got some good points there,  but I'm not entirely convinced. I think Bauer's closer to Sawyer than to Shephard. What do you think?

Top 10 Lost Love Scenes

The web site Jezebel had an entertaining post highlighting what the folks at BuzzSugar consider the top 10 “Lost love” moments.

As you might expect, Sawyer turns up a few times – for his cage sex with Kate and his 70s flower-giving/kissing scene with Juliet. Sun and Jin had two entries on the list. . . *sniffle* But the top love scene went to . . . Penny and Desmond’s reunion. That wouldn’t have been my choice.



P.S. -- Just read New York Magazine's interview with Lost co-creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse. It's worth the read, particularly for their explanation for how certain storylines -- like Jacob and the Man in Black -- weren't scripted from the beginning but came up during the creative process.

Cuse said of the 2.5-hour finale: "It will really feel like a feature film."
Image credits: Mario Perez/ABC and Fox.

'Friday Night Lights' Returned with Gutsy Premiere

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the season four premiere of Friday Night Lights.*

How amazingly gutsy.

Losing 47-0, at halftime, his team -- possessing little-to-no experience, precious few resources and no confidence -- sits in the locker room. The grossly undermanned team of less than two dozen teenage high school football players is bloody, broken, physically unable to continue. Their huge-hearted coach -- who had taken his former high school team to win the State Championship, who was humiliated in last year's season finale by being fired and re-assigned to another high school in town, one with no money and no football team – decided, on their behalf, to forfeit the game. They weren’t going to win and going ahead and playing the game would’ve just savaged those kids’ bodies. And for this crucial decision, Coach Eric Taylor, will pay a price.

This season of Friday Night Lights is taking wonderful creative risks this year by having Eric work for East Dillon and his wife Tami Taylor run the more affluent school in West Dillon. My pop culture column this week on Mommy Tracked is all about really fantastic this fourth season is shaping up to be. (I’m about halfway through watching review copies of the fourth season.)

I was a big fan of the 1990 book, Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger on which the show is based. The non-fiction book examined not just the mania that is Texas high school football, but issues of class, socio-economic differences, race and gender, as well as valuing sports more than academics in an economically depressed community. It was tough to read sometimes but much of it has stuck with me all these years later.

The TV show, inspired by the book, has always been good (with the exception of that Tyra-Landry murder business a while back), and I’ve always recommended that people watch it, even if they hate football. But this season it seems closer to the original source material than it ever has, and harder to watch on occasion, which is a very good thing. Maybe they'll finally get a well-deserved Emmy afterall . . .

This coming Friday’s episode, “After the Fall,” has Coach Taylor repenting for his decision to forfeit the game, plus, it hurls one big, giant mess into Principal Taylor’s lap, one that’s gonna cause a heap ‘o problems for her. Here’s NBC’s preview:



Image credit: NBC.

Notes on Pop Culture: White Wows on SNL, Beer-Swilling Ferrell Takes the Mound

Betty White Wows on SNL

Saturday night was the first time in a long time that I stayed awake all the way until the end of Saturday Night Live without falling asleep a few times first. The reason? Betty White. White took the material she was given and just killed. Loved seeing an 88-year-old woman, a comic veteran, get her props, and not in a you're-such-a-cute-granny-we're-just-gonna-pat-you-on-the-head kind of way either.

That being said, she wasn't handed top-notch material for every sketch and the skits weren't uniformly funny. But White did the best she could with it and was an inspiration. And seeing all those female former SNL stars -- including Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Molly Shannon -- only added to an already enteraining episode. Here was one of the edgy skits in which I think White was an extremely good sport (second favorite was the census skit):



I also admired the snark that Poehler and Fey unleashed during the News Update, particularly when it came to the Greek debt.



Beer-Swilling Ferrell Takes the Mound

So there I was, Morning Joe on in the background, while I was making my kid a peanut butter and fluff sandwich for his school lunch this morning when I saw this video of Will Ferrell pulling an wacky stunt during a Texas minor league baseball game. Introduced as a fresh-from-jail pitched named Rojo Johnson, he popped open a beer can and took a long swig before tossing some warm-up pitches. As for the rest of the story . . . check out the insane video:

EW Gives 'Lost' One Last Cover

Entertainment Weekly has given the conclusion of the Lost saga one last cover treatment. Apparently there are 11 different versions of the EW "The End of Lost" cover, each featuring a single character, except for one which features several characters in a Brady Bunch-like series of boxes. (I hope the one that arrives in my mailbox is a Jack one. There. I’ve outed myself as a Jack fan.) The EW cover package also offers something the writers are calling, “Lost: The Complete Viewer’s Guide.”

In other Lost news, there’s a viral video going around featuring Lost’s co-creators, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof and some "Muppets" who burst into the Lost writers' room. Enjoy.



Image credit: Entertainment Weekly.

'Lost's' 'Across the Sea' Promo Includes C.J. Cregg

Allison Janney, who played the awesome press secretary C.J. Cregg on The West Wing, will be a guest star on the next episode of Lost called, "Across the Sea." In the ABC promo below, Janney's character -- called "woman" in a press release describing the episode -- is tending to another woman's wounds, saying she was the only one of "her people" left.

When Janney's "patient" continues asking questions, Janney says, "Every question I answer will simply lead to another question. You should rest and just be grateful you're alive." Is this a none-too-subtle hint to the fans, like a verbal club hitting us on our heads and telling us to cut it out with all the never-ending questions? Hmm.



While we’re on the subject of Lost videos, I finally allowed myself to watch the Lost Untangled version of “The Candidate,” even though I wasn’t really in the mood to watch Dr. Chang get all goofy when I still feel like I'm in mourning. (See my recap/review of “The Candidate” here.) But Lost Untangled's depiction of the Man in Black/Smoky Locke WAS pretty funny.

'Parenthood' Muses on Working Parenthood & Grandparents with Financial Woes

Parenthood has been on the uptick these days – with the exception of the fact that, no matter how much I’ve tried to forget that Lauren Graham played Lorelai Gilmore, I just can’t (her character went out with her daughter's English teacher, went back to school as an adult, has daughter who, according to previews, falls asleep with a guy overnight just like Lorelai's daughter did in a gazebo that looks like it was lifted from the Stars Hollow town green).

Part of the reason why I’ve been enamored of the drama as of late is its treatment of working parenthood, which it addressed in two recent episodes, the latest of which I lauded in my Pop Culture column on Mommy Tracked.

The writers have also, FINALLY, started paying some attention to the grandmother, Camille, who’s been largely wallpaper up until the last episode. (Episode recap is up on CliqueClack TV.)

'Lost's' 'The Candidate' Made Me Cry, Dammit

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Lost.*

Seriously, do not proceed if you haven't yet watched "The Candidate" . . .

It's Coming. In Five Days. 'Friday Night Lights.'

It's been a long wait since we last saw Coach Eric Taylor get the boot from his post as the head coach of the Dillon High School football team and be exiled to the East Dillon High School football team on Friday Night Lights. And finally, we'll find out how this is going to play out when the series returns for its fourth season this Friday.

In addition to the tricky family dynamics -- with Tami Taylor running Dillon High School as its principal while her husband struggles with an underfunded program at the rival school -- the football program storyline promises to become a classic underdog saga. Judging by the two preview clips below, Coach Taylor has got a hugely long and bumpy road ahead of him. In the first clip, he surveys the facilities and finds a raccoon locked up the football lockers. In the second, he's lining the dust-bowl of a field by himself. Quite a stark contrast from his Dillion days.





Are you looking forward to Friday Night Lights returning this Friday?