'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?

I'm Going to Let David Letterman Handle the Joe Wilson Story

You've likely all heard about it by now. A U.S. congressman yelled, "You lie!" to President Obama during his health care reform address to a joint session of Congress this week. A classless move to be certain. Even my three grade school-aged kids were surprised that someone like a congressman would do something like that in a forum such as that.

But instead of saying all the things many people are already thinking, I decided to let David Letterman's Top Ten list do the heavy lifting on this one.

Letterman Doesn't Get It

So David Letterman has now formally apologized to the Palin family for the joke he made about a Palin daughter getting "knocked up" by A-Rod. During his show last night, Letterman went on and on about how people just didn't seem to get the joke he told. He kept saying that he didn't realize that the daughter who appeared at the New York Yankees game with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was the Palin's 14-year-old daughter Willow. He thought the girl accompanying Gov. Palin was her 18-year-old daughter Bristol, the one who had the baby and who has appeared on People Magazine's cover offering herself up as a cautionary tale to other teens. (She told the magazine, "Girls need to imagine and picture their life with a screaming newborn baby and then think before they have sex. Think about the consequences.")

During his "apology" last night, Letterman said, "There's no getting around it, but I never thought it was anybody other than the older daughter, and before the show, I checked to make sure in fact that she is of legal age, 18." He added that after seeing a PBS commentator complain about the joke he thought, "Oh boy, now I'm beginning to understand what the problem is here. It's the perception rather than the intent." (Link to video here.)



Beyond the incompetence of Letterman's staff -- they didn't know which daughter was in Yankee Stadium, fact-checking always bites you in the behind if you don't do it -- there's the notion that, at the root of this, it's funny and okay and acceptable to mock an 18-year-old girl for having a baby, to shame her because of her mother's conservative politics and polarizing public persona. It's amusing to make sport of a life-altering mistake for which Bristol is trying to atone by telling fellow teens that life's no picnic now that she's a teen mom.

Letterman is not alone in using the teenaged Bristol Palin's pregnancy as a punch line. A writer at The Washington Post did some digging and discovered that other late night hosts used Bristol's pregnancy more often than Letterman:

"Through mid-March, Leno had made 15 jokes about the Palin daughter's pregnancy, Stewart had told four on 'The Daily Show,' and Letterman checked in with eight, according to an analysis of late-night humor by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a nonpartisan research organization affiliated with George Mason University.

The comedian most likely to bash Bristol Palin? O'Brien, with 20 jokes at her expense."

Telling a joke that uses the offspring of a politician -- a teenager to boot -- as the butt of a joke, leaves a trail of slimy residue behind. The children of politicians shouldn't be fair game. Do all the jokes you want to about the politicians and celebs who make their living off of garnering public attention, but somewhere, there should be some boundaries which protect the children. (True Bristol's 18, but she can't even drink legally yet.) I'm all for cutting, edgy humor, but maybe the late night comics should choose their targets more wisely. Bottom line: Letterman's protestations and intent aside, he told a joke about a 14-year-old, not the 18-year-old. Not cool.

I Heart Michael Emerson (aka Ben Linus)

Just happened across two clips from Michael Emerson's appearance on Jimmy Fallon's Late Night show this week. Fallon dug up a couple of illustrations Emerson did when he was a freelance illustrator for the Boston Globe. They were as nightmarish and creepy as Ben Linus is on Lost.

Fallon wrapped up the interview by begging Emerson to read "Little Boy Blue" in as sinister a fashion as he could muster because Emerson does "creepy" so well. (Link to the second part of the interview is here.)



During the first part of the interview, Emerson talked about his character on Lost and how he believes that Ben Linus is the most beaten (as in physically abused) character on TV and challenged anyone to come up with another character who's been smacked around as much as Ben.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: The Bleeping of Blagojevich

The news coming out of Illinois is absolutely ripe for satire, and the late night comedians haven't let that go unnoticed. Just as they were feeling blue about the departure of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin from the national scene, in walks Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and all his hair.

The Late Show's round-up of TV news coverage of the "Who Wants to Buy a Senate Seat?" scandal made me laugh. (Link here.)



I can't wait to see how Saturday Night Live handles this.