HBO's Recount

Every time I see the letters H, B, and O associated with a television series or a film, I get giddy. And I heart Kevin Spacey in a big, big way. So when I heard about HBO's new film, Recount, starring Kevin Spacey, well, there were no words.

The film is a re-enactment of that interminable month following the Bush/Gore presidential campaign in 2000, when the numbers were too close to call, where the Gore camp wanted a recount of the ballots following Bush's questionable win. I remember a lot of this happening on the news at the time, and watching it brought back a lot of memories (including the stunned, wow, was that really 8 years ago???) Kevin Spacey stars as Ron Klain, who is Gore's elections manager, and who spurs on the recount. John Hurt is Warren Christopher, the former Democrat Secretary of State who advised the Democrat camp on how to conduct themselves during the process. The amazing Tom Wilkinson stars as former Secretary of State James Baker, who is advising (and pretty much running) the Republican side of things. Laura Dern puts in a brilliant turn as Katherine Harris, who was the Florida Secretary of State, and unfortunately, the decision-maker in the process. As soon as she appeared on screen with her fake smile and WAY too much makeup, my husband and I were laughing out loud. I totally remembered this woman during the whole debacle, appearing on television every night in a "Hey, look at me! I'm on the TV!" kind of way. She couldn't have cared less about democratic process, and just wanted to make sure her makeup took on just the right glow on camera.

Throughout the show, you'll feel your blood boil as you watch Harris do what she wants and the Republicans stand in the way at every turn of the recount process, arguing against it, as if they knew a legitimate count of the ballots would have them lose. One asks the obvious question: Wouldn't they want to have a genuine win?? But this is George W. Bush, people... the guy who made shit up just so he could send troops into a country and devastate it. He's the sort of guy who skipped ethics class so he could go golfing instead.

I was amused and thrilled and surprised and delighted to see that Danny Strong was the screenwriter on this one -- yes, Buffy fans, THAT Danny Strong, the little guy who played Jonathan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Looks like he's come down out of that clock tower and done got himself a REAL job!!

That said, as far as HBO films go, I expected a little more than what this film offered. One thing I found endlessly irritating were the constant subtitles running across the screen, as if the viewers were all from Florida or something and couldn't follow a simple plot. In the dialogue, someone says they have only 8 days left, and that at this point Gore is only 300 ballots behind or something. In the very next cut, as we go to the Republican side of the action, along the bottom of the screen it says, "8 Days Left... Gore Trailing by 300." Thanks. The subtitles pretty much stated the obvious (like someone introducing Secretary James Baker, and when we see him it says "Secretary James Baker," like we were expecting the Pillsbury Dough Boy). That said, I'm sure it was some producer or distributor who insisted on it, and not the screenwriter. At least, I hope it wasn't. But I do recommend the film to get a better handle on what really happened during those tumultuous days.

Recount airs this Sunday, May 25, at 9pm, in the U.S. on HBO and in Canada on The Movie Network and Movie Central.

New Lost Book!

So while some TV viewers are watching the season finale of Grey's Anatomy, I still want to talk about Lost.

A lot of people have emailed to ask me if I'll be writing a season 4 Lost guide. Yes, I will, but not for this fall, unfortunately. Next fall (as in 2009) I intend to bring out a combined season 4/5 volume, since maternity leave gives me very little opportunity to write anything beyond this blog.

However, I'm pleased to announce there WILL be an awesome Lost book out this fall. The book is called Lost Ate My Life: The Inside Story of a Fandom Like No Other, and as the editor of the book, I've had the pleasure of reading it already, and I can't recommend it enough. The book is written by two Lost "insiders" -- one is Jon Lachonis, otherwise known as DocArzt, who runs one of the best Lost blogs around (if not THE best). The other author is Amy J. Johnston, also known as "hijinx" on The Fuselage boards, and she runs Lost Editor Bryan Burk's official website, and is one of a small handful of people who has the trust of the show producers.

Darlton are very careful about the publicity of their show. Worried about impending spoilers, they have entrusted only a very, very few people to see advance screeners of each episode: Michael Ausiello of TV Guide, Doc Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly, and Kristen at E!... DocArzt and hijinx are two others who get advance copies of each show, even if they don't actually watch them ahead of time. So when I say these are insider fans, I mean it.

The book is the inside story of both Lost, and the fandom surrounding the series. We read how the world of The Fuselage grew to what it's become today; how the producers began sticking in certain Easter eggs for the fans after finding out what they were searching for; how Lost came up with ingenious marketing ideas never before seen. There's a chapter on the original script of the pilot episode that was never filmed, and how the actual Pilot episode came to pass. There are some laugh-out-loud moments throughout the book, including one as Bryan Burk talks about how difficult dressing the set has become when fans are scouring every book on the bookshelf and using them as clues.

I'm used to seeing raw drafts of manuscripts, and was pleasantly surprised at how solid the writing was from the outset. You'll enjoy the conversational tone of it, and how they invite you in to the inside world of Lost Labs, so you watch the whole thing unfold.

The foreword of the book will be written by former executive producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach, and the book contains interviews with a lot of the key people on the show. I devoured the manuscript, and then sent it back to the two authors full of suggestions for additions, and I'll be getting round two from them in a couple of weeks. As they furiously rewrite the book, I'm sure I'm not their favourite person currently, but hopefully when the editing is back in my corner, the love will fill the room once again. :)

I can't wait for y'all to read this book: Lost Ate My Life is due out in stores in November. And maybe I'll be able to lure the authors on here for a Q&A with all of you... stay tuned!

Lost: The Man on the Plane

A few people have emailed me or posted comments to my post on There's No Place Like Home, Part 1, asking about the man on the plane who Decker nods at. When she first walks back to the Oceanic Six, she looks to her left, smiles and gives a little nod. I remember pausing the scene several times when it first aired, but I couldn't see anyone. A few people have reassured me that there is definitely a bald man sitting in the seat.

Here is the clip from YouTube. Pause it at exactly 1:18, and you'll see a bald head. You can tell it's Aaron's... it's too far in the foreground to be someone sitting that far back.

Keep watching, and then pause again at 1:39. He's small, but this is the point where you see the man in the chair. I can only make out the pair of legs, but no face or head. As someone said in a comment, it's reminiscent of Jacob in the chair in "The Man Behind the Curtain." Can anyone with HD make out this person? Who could it be? It's not Christian, or Jack would be going nuts. Ben? Abbadon?



In other news, here is a brief interview I did with the New York Post on Lost. :)

Welcome to the World!

This is totally unlike me, and not my usual blogging style, but I just can't help myself anymore. 'Tis the season for families to become bigger... I've had a TON of friends give birth in the last few weeks, and one of my closest friends just had a baby a couple of days ago and I'm giddy with excitement right now. My tiny, tiny baby is now an 8-month-old crawler, and I'm already missing how eensy he once was. I'm sure every once in a while I get that look in my eye, and my husband has that other look in his eye that says, "I know what you are thinking, and you can take that thought, turn it around, and march it off a short pier."

So, welcome to the following bouncing babies, in order of appearance... I hope to hold each of you in the very near future: Jack; Fischer; Beck; Marlo; Ally! (Those last three have all been born in the last week!) Hey, maybe we can all hook up and try to bombard the Lost casting offices to cast all of our children as Aaron at different ages (whew, there we go... my post is now relevant to my blog).

Fall TV Preview: Fringe

A few months ago, someone who is on the inside track at Bad Robot emailed me with the subject line, "Your next TV obsession" and gave me the heads-up on Fringe. This new series, which has been picked up by FOX (gods help us) to run in the fall, is produced by none other than JJ Abrams and his peeps, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (both of whom wrote for Alias and also wrote The Transformers, Legend of Zorro, Mission: Impossible III, and Star Trek), and Jeff Pinkner (Alias and Lost). (One of the writers is JR Orci -- yes, another Orci -- who wrote for all 5 seasons of Alias and Vanished and my beloved Journeyman.) The show will star Joshua Jackson, the unsung tour de force acting talent of Dawson's Creek; Lance Reddick (who I know as Cedric Daniels of The Wire, and the rest of you know as Matthew Abaddon of Lost... which is wicked, because if JJ's at the helm of both shows, it means Reddick is free to move back and forth and reprise his role on Lost); John Noble of 24; Kirk Acevedo (Alvarez from Oz); and Anna Torv.

In the super creepy trailer of the pilot episode, we see a plane about to crash, and on board is a rock star huddled in the bathroom about to shoot heroin, a doctor having one too many drinks, a woman handcuffed to a marshall a guy sitting in a seat who madly injects something into himself that causes his body to liquefy, and soon everyone else on the plane liquefies as well. When the FBI finds the plane, it's rather oozy, and they have no idea what's happened. (Mental note: hold off on the snacking until halfway through the pilot episode...)

The premise of the show is that this is just one of many crimes involving weird science, and week after week we watch an FBI agent trying to solve the crimes with the help of a genius and a mad scientist (who also happen to be estranged father and son, from what I gather). It has the premise of a week-to-week CSI-type show, but this is JJ, so there will be some overriding mystery and some ancient force will have started the scientific anomalies and they'll all be connected and we'll be piecing it all together. In other words... yay! I predict a four-toed statue in episode 3.

The trailer (dare I say it) is even more awesome than Dollhouse's.



Wow... Abrams and Whedon, both back with new shows. I'm giddy with excitement!! Let the games begin!

Fall TV Preview: Dollhouse

Y'all know my hatred of FOX. Come preview time, when it's time to roll out the new shows and pilots, FOX is always the impressive one. They have all the coolest genre shows, all the potential, and take some of the biggest risks. Come November, most of those shows have been cancelled, barely able to have made a dent in our schedule, and replaced by reality television.

Yet every fall, I'm back in front of my TV watching FOX shows like I just don't know how to learn my lesson. This fall is the most exciting one since that of 2002, when Firefly premiered.

And we all know how THAT ended up.

This year, Joss Whedon is back with Dollhouse, a show I've been talking about here, but not nearly as much as I should be. I've been reading bits and pieces on it for months, including casting, rumours, and what's been going on with the show, but last week FOX finally rolled out the goods on its shows, and Dollhouse has an official trailer.

Dollhouse stars Eliza Dushku, who became our beloved Faith in the hands of Whedon, as Echo, one of five "dolls" who live in the dollhouse, run by a ruthless woman played by Olivia Williams (Bruce Willis's wife in The Sixth Sense). These dolls can be hired out to play any part you want, and when they come back to the dollhouse, their memories are wiped clean, and they become fresh clean slates, ready for the next job. They live contented lives, unaware of the things they do when they're under the spell of the dollhouse's CEO.

Problem is, Echo's starting to remember some things. And that ain't good.

The show also stars Tahmoh Penikett (Helo on BSG) and Amy Acker (WOOO!!!! Fred/Illyria on Angel) and honestly, the premise could be, "A man sits on a street corner and reads chemistry textbooks aloud. Nothing else happens" and if it were helmed by Joss Whedon, I'd be there. But this show sounds amazing, and the trailer's pretty awesome, too. Check it out:





Dollhouse is going to be a mid-season show, beginning in January, and Fox announced that it and the other big show, Fringe (see my next post), will be running at nearly the full hour, the same length as HBO shows (instead of 15 minutes of commercials per hour, these shows will get about five).

The Office Finale: Goodbye, Toby

Last night's season finale of The Office came far too soon. Since the Writer's Strike, the episodes have actually been a little hit and miss (and definitely far more awkward-feeling than ever before) but there's always a great moment or two in every one. This week's hour-long episode had a lot of the usual -- Michael making an ass of himself, Meredith playing Solitaire in the background of every scene she's in, Pam and Jim flirting. Amy Ryan (of one of my all-time favourite shows, The Wire) guest-starred as the woman replacing Toby. Yes, Michael's long-time nemesis is leaving, simply because he embarrassed himself by touching Pam's knee for a little too long before suddenly announcing he was moving to Costa Rica and running out of the room. Now he's too humiliated to say he'd just been humiliated, so he's actually going along with it. Michael is overjoyed, but he can't take the extreme pleasure in this departure that he'd like to, simply because he has the hots for the HR replacement, and doesn't want her to know he loathed Toby.

The best part of the episode was when Dwight told the new HR gal that Kevin was actually a special hire, and that he was mentally challenged. Kevin never acted differently throughout the episode, yet you could see why someone would think he WAS slow, and my husband and I were shrieking with laughter. At times, it felt very wrong, but then Kevin would have a button in with his change for the chips and I was in stitches all over again.

The only thing that I didn't like about the episode was Pam's reaction to Jim not proposing. It seemed a little strange... she couldn't have possibly wanted him to propose to her moments after Andy's over-the-top insano proposal to Angela, and it should have been pretty clear to her why he wouldn't do that. But that's OK... here's hoping that wasn't a little signal that things will go haywire in the Jam camp, now that their love will be long-distance.

What were your favourite moments?

Evil Dead: The Musical
My brother took me to see Evil Dead: The Musical in Toronto the other night as a birthday present. It's silly and campy, full of hammy actors and bad puns, but it's SO much fun I would recommend it to anyone for a fun night out. It's currently playing at the Diesel Playhouse in Toronto, and has been extended a second time until June 14th, so get your tickets quickly.

The play follows the same premise of the movie: Ash, a guy who works at the local S-Mart, goes up to an empty cabin in the woods with his girlfriend, his best friend, a woman his best friend just picked up, and his sister. The cabin is owned by a professor who has been attempting to translate the Book of the Dead, and the kids break in to spend a weekend there, but the prof had managed to raise the zombies, who fight them and turn them into zombies one by one. My favourite character is the sister, turned into a zombie early on and chained in the basement, who continually pops up through a trapdoor just to taunt Ash. She was hilarious. Jake was another funny one; the actor was great, though he was better when he was delivering lines. When he had to react to another line, he was completely hammy and overacting like he was in a silent movie. But then again, this is a play about horny zombies, so his acting style was rather fitting.

If you go and want to have some REAL fun, sit in the first couple of rows, also known as The Splatter Zone, and you will get seriously wet. Near the very end of the play, the actors just go crazy with the blood, aiming it directly at the patrons, who are cowering beneath their tiny plastic parkas that have been supplied by the staff. You will be warned repeatedly in case you sat there accidentally... but that didn't stop one woman from scowling the entire time, and eventually standing up in anger and shaking herself off. (Learn how to listen, lady... they only had a loud announcement at the beginning AND there's a sign out front AND someone comes around to warn you AND they give you the parkas and give you another warning AND they offer to re-seat you if you don't want to be there...) After the show, I popped into the washroom, where a bunch of women were madly scrubbing fake blood off their arms. It was pretty funny.

Go check it out. It's definitely a fun night out.

Lost: 4.12 “There’s No Place Like Home, Part 1”
Before I go any further, some of you may have heard that a scene-by-scene spoiler of the final two-hour episode on May 29th is already circulating the Internet. I’m disappointed it managed to get out again, but please note this is a spoiler-free blog. I don’t want to know anything, nor do most of my readers, so please please don’t spoil us. Thank you!!

Previously on Lost:
There was a lot of discussion last week about “Cabin Fever” – Is Abaddon a grown-up version of Walt who is time travelling? Is Richard Alpert really Locke’s father? Did Hurley really say Mallomars? – and you can check out the posts on that episode here, here and here. Be sure to check out the comments.

This week’s episode showed the Oceanic Six becoming the Oceanic Six. Four years ago I imagined this to be the series finale – the rescue, the press conference, the reunion with the families. But by the looks of it, this is only the beginning. I imagine the next two seasons will show what happened after Jack began to lose it, and his manic hunt for the island. We’ll probably see a lot more of the Ben/Locke/Widmore stuff and the secrets of the island will be revealed. In the present, Sayid’s trying to rescue the survivors, Jack’s trying to fix things, Juliet’s been given a few throwaway lines, Jin and Sun are gobsmacked to see Michael again, Ben and company are heading to the Orchid where they’ve been beaten to the punch by Keamy and friends, and Frank is promising a helicopter rescue. There is so much going on, I cannot WAIT for the next episode.

This week we knew in advance the group was going to end up at a new station. My seven-month-old son wore his new Lost shirt in anticipation of the show, and he had his ideas of where the station would be. He was wrong, but I’m thinking after a day of being carried around by Sawyer, maybe Aaron could use this station (the poor kid could also use something to eat!) By the way, seeing as we’ll be watching Aaron get older, I missed the boat on getting my son onto the show when he was the perfect Aaron age during the writer’s strike. Now I see I have a second opportunity. I’ll be working on getting the casting people to fall in love with him and want him on their show. :)

“There Are Two People Responsible for His Death”
I think, despite all our hope to the contrary, that Jin really is dead. In this episode, Sun looks shell-shocked when she’s on the cargo plane, and I don’t think it’s because she just left Jin behind. First, she tells Paik that there are two people responsible for his death, with Paik being one of them. That, of course, leads us to wonder... who is the other one? Jack? Ben? Keamy? Michael? Secondly, the fact that Michael, Desmond, and Jin walk into a room of C-4 explosives and send Sun away is NOT good. (Am I a bad person for immediately thinking, “Uh... explosives... DESMOND, GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE!!”) Will Jin stay behind and be blown up? Or are we just being led by the writers to think these things, when in fact he’s alive? I’m still holding on to a tiny possibility that he’s alive but left behind, but her anger and sorrow when she confronts her father seemed to suggest Jin is no longer alive.

The Reunion
When I saw Hurley’s ma, I grinned from ear to ear, and then that smile was totally wiped off my face when I saw Paik. I loved that Sun wouldn’t even look at him, and he knows it. Any power he once had over his daughter appears to be gone, and there’s a moment where you can tell by the look in his eye that he knows it. Sun has come back a very different person. I LOVED the look on Sayid’s face when he sees Nadia. And the last we saw of Jack’s mother, she was yelling at him that his father’s downfall was totally his fault. It was nice to see a happy reunion there. It must have been so hard for her to lose both men in her life, and she’s probably replayed that final night with her son over and over in her head. Now she gets a chance to change the ending. Poor Kate... vindictive Diane just wouldn’t be there. I really hate that woman.

The Press Conference
(Did anyone think, “Hey, it looks like they’re at a sci-fi con! Only.... better dressed.”) This scene is interesting, because Decker first confirms that their plane had gone down near the Sunda Trench (which was in the Find815 game), which is not true. Are they in cahoots with Widmore? Secondly, when the Korean reporter asks Sun if Jin had died on the island, Jack looks at her anxiously. Why is it so important that she say no? Do they have a story involving three other people who died, and it’s important that one of those people can’t be Jin? (Before you correct my math, Kate would have been pregnant according to their story, so she and Aaron would both just count as one, meaning there would be three people besides the five.) Also, wouldn’t any prenatal ultrasounds show that if Jin didn’t make it to the island, then Sun was impregnated by someone else? I’ve had prenatal ultrasounds, and they can determine conception pretty much to the day. Clearly the reporters are smelling something fishy, especially with the pointed questions at Kate regarding her being pregnant with Aaron. Why didn’t the police report mention she was pregnant? I don’t care who you are, if you are a size 2, you are SHOWING at six months (take a look at Angelina Jolie pictures right now). And if Kate ever goes to a doctor to have a physical, the doc will probably figure out she’s never given birth. How will they get past the little hiccups like these?

Highlights:
• Sawyer calling Miles “Genghis.”
• Sawyer momentarily silencing Jack by reminding him that things are playing out exactly as Locke said they would. Take THAT, Jack.
• After Jack heads off into the jungle, Sawyer following him while muttering, “You don’t get to die alone.” HAHAHA!!
• Ben to cracker-eating Hurley: “You know those are fifteen years old.”
• “Jesus Christ is not a weapon.”
• Hurley’s parents putting on a theme party in bad taste.
• Ben “admitting” he wasn’t entirely truthful. Ha!

Biggest “GASP!” Moments:
• Sun buying a controlling interest in Paik’s company. GO SUN!!
• Claire’s mother is ALIVE!!!!

Hurley’s Numbers:
Jack says there were only 8 people left by the time they got to the island. The Coast Guard plane is number 1717 (1+7=8). Hurley's crackers were 15 years old.

Did You Notice?:
• Michelle Forbes rocks. I was so happy to see Cain at the beginning of this episode.
• The plane lands in Honolulu, according to Decker, so for the first time Hawaii gets to play itself on this show.
• I’ve never noticed how many of the survivors are only children... Sun, Kate, Jack, and Hurley have no siblings. (Same with Sawyer, Jin, Claire, Locke, Ben, Walt... Boone and Shannon are only step-siblings.)
• Clearly The Orchid is a need-to-know station, because Juliet had no idea what it was.
• Sawyer calls the Others camp “New Otherton,” which is the first time it’s called that on the show (it’s what the crew has been calling it on set).
• Kate lied about Aaron’s age (the younger they say he is, the less pregnant she would have been before the crash). She says he’s five weeks, when in fact he’s a little over two months.
• Decker says they were found on day 108, and by the Lostpedia timeline, we’re currently on day 97.
• Just before Sayid kisses Nadia, he blinks, as if to check if he’s dreaming. What a tiny but perfect gesture.
• When Sun ascends the staircase, it’s the same camera angle as when she ascended to ask her father for money to pay off Jin’s mother. But now she’s in a completely different power position.
• Mr Tron and Ladytron were apparently rehired (remember the bundle of money they accepted in “Tricia Tanaka Is Dead” to leave the place?)
• Mrs. Reyes has moved her own personal Jesus from the centre of the table to her dresser... or maybe she has two of them.
• Jack wasn’t at Hurley’s birthday party.
• The co-pilot at the beginning of the episode kisses a rabbit’s foot for good luck, and later Hurley’s dad hands him keys with a rabbit’s foot on them.
• Several times throughout this episode, someone looks at Aaron’s face and he’s a picture of serenity, and they seem to calm down after doing so.
• Clearly Jack and company won’t be seeing Christian before they leave the island.
• The Flame station had also been rigged with C-4 explosives, just like the freighter.

So Many Questions...
• Where were the Oceanic Six coming from at the very beginning? They’re all in very nice clothes, and have had time to coordinate their story. Were they coming directly from the island, or did Oceanic stop somewhere first to clothe them and allow them to sit and chat alone? (This is the mom in me, but all I could think of was how weird it must be for Aaron to finally wear clothes.)
• What has happened that makes Jack want to lie?
• Are the five survivors the ones who have come up with the lie, or is Oceanic blackmailing them somehow? Is Oceanic telling them to use the elaborate lie for some reason?
• The plane they’re on at the beginning is a Hawaiian Coast Guard plane.
• How does Daniel know about the secondary protocol?
• Daniel flips through his journal and finds a page where he’s written about The Orchid Station, and says we have to get off this island right now. It seems to only ring a bell with him, and he needs to flip through his book to confirm his suspicion (we’ve talked here before about his apparent memory loss). I think it’s pretty clear that The Orchid is a time travelling station, so did Dan somehow end up there at some point? Has he been to the island before? Another thing: he’d written earlier that if anything happens to him, Desmond will be his constant. Shouldn’t he be staying a little closer to Des?
• I thought Hurley had decided he could make his own luck in “Tricia Tanaka,” and the catharsis he has with the whole VW van barrelling down the mountain scene was him proving to himself that he’s not cursed. So why is he so freaked out by the numbers still? I could see him getting upset when all of the numbers are on his odometer, but why does he tell the reporter that he doesn’t want his $150 million? Didn’t he decide that money was NOT the curse after all? Will we see the numbers one more time, and they’ll send Hurley over the edge again, erasing any progress he may have made?
• Notice that Ben doesn’t answer Locke directly when he asks who he’s communicating with. So who was it, Richard? Richard and company are in the jungle nabbing Kate and Miles... did Ben tell them to do it? Or is he communicating with someone else?
• Paik is yelling at two men who seem to be talking about someone stealing money from the company (they mention the person did it through 5 different banks). This is probably just a scene set up to show loud, blustery Paik, but you never know if it might be relevant later on. It would be pretty funny if it were Ben or someone time travelling and siphoning Paik’s accounts.
• How much money did Oceanic pay out? I was under the impression that Paik’s empire was huge, but if Sun was able to buy a controlling interest, did Oceanic pay them all $100 million or something?? Or is Paik’s company smaller than I thought?
• Did anyone else hear gunshots as Hurley was walking up to his house?
• Who really put the odometer to those numbers? Something tells me Hurley’s being manipulated to end up back at the institution. Could Widmore be involved? Did Charlie reset them?
• Who rigged the ship with the C-4 explosives?
• What is Ben’s plan?

Next week: No episode next week, but please tune in: I have a Lost announcement to make.

In two weeks: Ben’s given himself up, Sayid and Kate are with the Others, Jack and Sawyer are with Lapidus, Locke’s about to go into the Orchid station, Sun’s standing on the freighter deck, and Michael, Desmond, and Jin have to defuse the explosives. Should be an exciting week!!! (No preview on stupid CTV. Argh.)

UPDATE #1: Oops, a reader confirmed that the writers seem to have forgotten about Hurley's brother Diego. So did I. Also, a few people speculated that Paik's people are actually talking about Sun buying up shares through five different banks, which makes perfect sense to me.

UPDATE #2: Here is the ABC preview for the finale, for all those poor Canucks like me who were denied by stupid CTV:



UPDATE #3: I was just watching the episode again, and during Hurley's birthday party, you can see a Geronimo Jackson album on the DJ's table. HA! You have to look really carefully. It's on a tilt beside him, and you can only see the band's name on the album cover when he lowers his arm.

Mystery Tales Comic

Thanks so much to Joshua for sending me the link with the following closeup of the comic book that Alpert laid in front of Locke last week:

An issue of this comic went up for sale on eBay immediately after the episode aired, and while bidding started at 99 cents, it now is up to almost $200. Go see a bigger picture of it here.

As suspected, the horrified man is looking out of an airplane window (under the window you can see an airline logo) and he's seeing a mysterious city, with one version of it floating above another. As we all know, Darlton loves to stick in red herrings, so they're probably just helping out the dude selling the comic on eBay right now, but since Locke's been asked to move the island, this image of one version of the city above the other is interesting. It also speaks to the idea that Ben and John are two versions of the same life, with some diverging paths.

Also, we only see four fingers of the guy's hand... could this be pointing to the four-toed statue??? (Yes, I'm being sarcastic now...)

Gossip Girl: Past the Verge of Awesome
Don't hate me for loving this show. Some readers have asked me if this show is really THAT good. The simple answer is yes. This week's Gossip Girl was my favourite one so far.

When I was a teenager, I watched 90210 and loved it. Sometimes just to laugh at it, but usually it was just a hell of a lot of fun. That show followed the lives of the rich. Gossip Girl follows the lives of the filthy, stinking, disgustingly rich. (No one will be working part-time at the Peach Pit on this show.) But at this stage of the game, they've stopped playing up the money these people have, and instead we're looking at them as people with crazy problems.

I'm not a teenager anymore. Usually I'm happy about that, but sometimes I look in the mirror and think, "Old." But then I watch Gossip Girl and I think oh yeah, I still love shows like this, whoo! This week's episode, however, reminded me why I'm the "more mature demographic" watching this show, for two reasons. The first, I'm deeply in love with Rufus, and think he's the hottest guy on the show. (For the non-viewers, he's a dad. A seriously hot dad.) The second reason is this week's episode featured a segment where VH-1 was filming a special, "Whatever Happened To" episode retrospective of bands of the 90s. Lincoln Hawk, Rufus's band, was one of them, and Lisa Loeb was another. Bands of the 90s are now considered oldies. That's it, I'm old.

Sigh.

(Has anyone else done the math and wondered how Rufus could have been in a band in the early 90s and dating Serena's mom, but now has a kid who's 17, yet wasn't with the mother, um, 16 years ago??)

This episode also showed us the real reason why Serena left, and for anyone worried about the murder element (I loved it) the reason was far less salacious than one would think, and more believable that a teenager would have done something like this. But it featured my favourite line. As Chuck, Nate, and B sit around telling Serena that they've done bad things, too, they go around one by one and say what they've done. When it comes to Chuck, he just looks at them all and says, "I'm Chuck Bass." HA! Best line of the season.

Next week is the season finale. I miss this show already!!