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After last season’s horribly uninteresting Heroes finale, I was fully prepared to cut my losses and walk away from the show altogether. Unfortunately, Kristin Bell’s loveliness has thwarted my plans once again with its beautiful blonde locks and snappy come-backs by joining the cast (for a few episodes anyway) in its second season (so says TV Guide.com). Not nearly as exciting as the almost-news a few weeks back that she would be spending time on the Lost island, it is nonetheless good to know that we won’t have to wait until her movie with Jason Segel to catch a glimpse of Ms. Veronica Mars acting all sassy.

Her character on Heroes is described as a “sexy, myserious young lady” which sounds like a role she could play while in a coma. I for one can’t wait until next week when we find out this news was bogus and that she’ll actually be joining the cast of Jericho.

Thanks Andrea for the tip!

Here’s a piece of awesome news: it’s being reported that Kristin Bell (Veronica Mars) is going to have a role in the coming season of Lost. According to the story, she’ll play Charlotte, who is “attractive in a natural and athletic way, precocious, loquacious and funny. Charlotte is also said to repress her emotions and have a hard shell to crack.” What? Repressed emotions on Lost? Now they’re really breaking new ground. Next thing we’ll find out is that she has a dark secret.

The news isn’t that much of a surprise when you consider Bell just finished filming the new movie “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” with Jason Segel, which was shot in part in Hawaii. If we’ve learned anything from three years of Lost production, its that the series producers, like the Native Americans, use every part of the islands. The presence of the lovely Kristin Bell is a no-brainer. Maybe Lost can do a cross-over with How I Met Your Mother so that Jason Segel can also make an appearance (he can play someone with a dark secret… and who is tall).

Remember when audiences were fleeing this show like the plague? Man those people were suckers.

I have three pages (though small pages) of notes on last night’s awesome Lost finale and I intend to work through them more or less in order. I’ll do so, complete with all of the brain-melting spoilers right after the break…

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“Are ya havin’ a laugh?”

Going into tonight episode I kind of expected not to really get anywhere until next week’s two-hour EXPLOSIVE finale. Unsurprisingly, I was right in that assessment. Still, I rather liked this week’s installment — especially the fact that it made me actually feel sorry for Charlie despite the fact that I’ve been calling for his death for well over a year.

What the episode did well, that others hadn’t, was used the flashbacks as a way to highlight a person’s life, not just as a way to weave together this maddening web of connections. Sometimes character is character and even though I generally find myself hating Charlie, you had to give the guy the benefit of the doubt when he’s staring down his own mortality.

The rest of the episode was nothing more than a set-up for next week, with the exception of reminding us that, yes, Bernard and Rose are still alive. It was a minor work in the Lost canon, but I don’t get bothered by pit-stops on the way to something really big (we are going to be getting something really big next week, aren’t we?).

Not a lot of mythology this week outside of the underwater station whose name escapes me. I do find it curious that it took this long for our castaways to follow that cable the other way. Speaking of, those hostiles must be awfully hungry since Locke blew up the sub a few weeks back, no?

Harry Potter and the Inscrutable Island

Massive spoiler related commentary right after the break…

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It’s mysterious!

Well, the big news of the day is that Lost has officially set an end date. Yes, the show will be resolved and it will do so in May of… wait for it… 2010! That’s three more seasons for those of you keeping score at home. Now, as you collectively pick up your jaws from the floor and reattach them to your heads, check out how it’ll end up going down as reported by Variety:

In conjunction with the advance order, “Lost” showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have inked hefty new multi-year overall deals with ABC Television Studio to continue with the series until the end. Duo had made setting a wrap date for the show a condition for staying.Lindelof and Cuse had wanted “Lost” to end after two more seasons. They’re essentially still getting their wish: The 48 episodes they’ll produce over the next three years is the same number the show produced during its first two seasons.

ABC execs, however, came up with a way to keep “Lost” on its sked for three more seasons. What’s more, the 16-episode arcs will run without repeats (a la “24″), allowing the Alphabet to make the show more of an event.
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That’s right, 16 episode seasons! This is as much great news as the whole three seasons thing is disastrous. Personally, I’m all for the decision. I don’t care if actual, recordable time is stretched to max so long as they don’t stretch out the story — which is what seems to have been happening to the series the past two seasons.

It finally seems like the networks (or at least a network) are starting to learn a little something from the cable model. Twenty-Two episode seasons over 9 months aren’t necessary when you can have a 13 (or 16) episode season spread over a tight four months. It’s enough time to take advantage of televisions strengths (telling a detailed story over numerous hours) without falling into its trappings (milking something beyond recognition well before it’s sell-by date).

What do you think? Will you continue to watch Lost until the very end? Is three years too long or do the shortened seasons make things a little easier to stomach?

Locke’s dad… kind of a jerk, right?

A murderously delicious episode of Lost last night, despite most of the big shocking reveals having been highly speculated about for months. Despite the above picture being a rather chunky spoiler, I’ll have the rest of the deets after the jump…

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May sweeps, the period in which network television tries to pull out all the stops in an attempt to skewer their ratings higher so they can charge more for advertising, started last Thursday, April 26th. Why Thursday? I’m not entirely sure, but would imagine it is due to the desire to keep the four week period clear of Memorial Day weekend, where the only people watching televsion are fans of mid-round NBA playoffs and losers like me. Sweeps concludes on Wednesday, May 23rd.

The good news is that all of your favorite shows (and even more of your least favorite shows) will be brand spankin’ new, complete with didn’t-see-that-coming twists and turns as well as celebrity cameos, shocking allegations, animals, trick photography and CG talking appliances. In other words, all the reasons in the world to avoid enjoying the outdoors for these few weeks when the weather isn’t suppose to be rainy or so hot you’re convinced you just might take home the pot in your Apocalypse is Nigh pool at work.

Here’s what I’m looking forward to watching:

• Seeing whether those crazy S.O.B.s over there at Lost can actually pull off the unimaginable: making some sense of this sometimes maddening season.
• Enjoying Heroes a few more times before it joins Lost in the category of shows that fell victim to second season frustrations.
• Jordin or Melinda?
• There are still more episodes of How I Met Your Mother, right? Seriously, that show has been especially MIA these past few months.
• Tony Soprano gets wacked or joins the witness protection program or retires to Vermont or god-forbid just goes on with his life as we’re left holding the cable bill

What are you anxious for? Or perhaps the better question would be, are you just anxious for the season to be over all ready?

Mark your calendars!

Well that was good. Outside of the “huh, what?” cliffhanger, we were given probably the best Sun/Gin story in the shows history. Not that the revelations were all that shocking or that the plotting was all that suspenseful (were we not suppose to know that the woman was his mom?) but “D.O.C.” was a terrific episode because it was probably the first time we actually got to see Yunjin act, and as it turns out she’s really good. It’s a shame that the series had taken so long to utilize the character for something other than plot progression.

The ultrasound scenes were especially good because it also marked the first time that I can think of in which Juliette seems to be emoting honestly. She truly loves giving expecting mothers good news and this was the first time we could really see that. All of her previous actions have been cloaked in a veil of double-agent and triple-agent nonsense, but in that scene she was being honest.

Also noteworthy in the episode was that One-Eyed-Jack is not, in fact, dead and that Gin has some cool Dolph Lundgren moves that he can bust out on occasion. There was also the revelation that everyone on Oceanic Flight 815 was dead and the island IS purgatory — or something. Actually it probably isn’t purgatory, but I’ve always felt that the best ending would be the one that people have had the most theories about. It’d be kind of a great F-You to all the whiners. That being said, I really could have gone without a cliffhanger this week. The mood of the episode was too sweet and loving to really need one.

Our favorite ratings-tracking company, Nielsen Media Research, has released its first batch of the most “timeshifted” network broadcast programs. Timeshifting, for those still living a reel-to-reel lifestyle, is essentially recording a program to watched on your own schedule. People have been doing this since the mid-80s when a rocket scientist first cracked the “VCR Timer Code” allowing people to finally program their video recorders to start and stop on command. This audience was largely ignored. Now that the VCR has gone the way of the dodo and replaced by the incredibly friendly and easy to use DVR, suddenly those viewers (the timeshifters) became important… kinda (its not like these people are acutally watching commercials, which is for what the advertisers are looking).

Let’s get to the numbers: House, Lost, American Idol and CSI all had between 2.1 and 2.7 million more viewers when timeshifters were included. In terms of percentage increase The Office and Lost scored the biggest boost from the “I’ll watch it later” crowd getting a 31.5% and 22.8% increase respectively.

While typing this my boss brought up the good point that these shows will probably see an increase in product placement which, as anyone who has ever watched The Office can attest, is probably right on the money.

Get the full details by clicking here. Thanks for the tip, Paul.

The stoic psychic.

There have been Lost episodes with more mysteries revealed, or more action and suspense, or better cliffhangers, but for my money last night’s episode is about all you should ask for at this stage of the game. I’m giving the props to Mr. Brian K. Vaughan, who amongst other credits created the mostly-great comic book series Ex Machina (which imagines New York City being run by a guy who a superpower that lets him control machines). A few weeks ago I wrote about how television isn’t a director’s medium. It is, however, a writers medium, and I felt last night’s Lost proved this.

What made this such a good episode wasn’t so much the main storyline (involving the awesome Desmond getting a vision about the future in which someone comes to the island — and Charlie takes an arrow to the neck), but of all the small character moments that happened around the action. Nothing particularly remarkable happened, but the dialogue seemed fresh and the episode’s momentum wasn’t rushed, as it sometimes feels.

I read Ex Machina for about a year. The comic, like Lost, jumps back and forth in time. That Vaughan would start writing for Lost is really of no surprise. What strikes me about the pairing is that Vaughan never had particularly good conclusions to his comic, but the lead-up was always amazing. Such is also the case for Lost, a show that is very much all about prolonging the middle. It’s a good fit.

It also doesn’t hurt to have a Desmond episode. Outside of Locke (who has barely been in this season), Desmond is easily the coolest character on the island, and as events play out more and more we’re starting to realize that his relationship with Penny very well could be the fulcrum for everything that’s going to happen.

Dude, what’s her deal?

I honestly can’t tell you if last night’s Lost was a great episode or a kick in the balls. Until the final scene I was really enjoying myself, though now I don’t know what to think. What I do know is we seemed to have learned more about the island and The Others over that last 45-minutes of storytelling than we’ve learned in the past three years worth of episodes (have I all ready said that this year? I swear my long-term memory has turned into one never ending blog post). I’m going to try to break it down after the jump…

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Based on the title of the episode I was kind of hoping for some kind of creepy faux-religious mysticism that would beam a handful of The Others off the island and into heaven. Instead we got Juliette and Kate chained together — I would have preferred the end of days.

The thing is, Kate ceased being an interesting character years ago. Easy on the eyes? Sure. Capable a delivering a good back story (or hell, even front story)? Not so much. Of course, Juliette was along for the ride, pulling her own brand of mind games after being “left behind” by the other Others, but that whole group is so into talking in circles and misdirection, what can we really gain from them. At least Elizabeth Mitchell is the better actor of the two with eyes as intense as Evangeline Lilly’s are soft.

The episode wasn’t ‘Jack’s Tattoos’ bad, however, as the writers have finally realized what we thought they all ready knew: Hurley and Sawyer and fun to watch. When they were on the screen (Hurley getting Sawyer to be nicer to everyone by convincing him he was about to be exiled from the beach — a con I saw coming shortly after the first act break), the show would take off (before crashing back to Earth with Kate’s mommy issues).

I’d like to see a Hurley/Sawyer spin-off. Perhaps a 30 minute comedy that takes place on the beach. It should be called Life’s A Beach and air after George Lopez.

It’s a Lost All-Star Extravaganza!!

Well, that was odd. The whole episode had absolutely nothing to do with anything that has happened before (perhaps tangentially), and yet… I kind of liked it. Honestly, I do not mind one-off episodes. Especially on network TV where the seasons are way too long to always build off the main narrative.

Did the episode justify the earlier introduction of the dreaded Nikki and Paulo? I think so. Really, they were only in a few episodes. People have been talking as if the two were in every frame. A little set-up never hurt anyone (except for the subjects of political assassinations).

The episode itself kind of played like a low-stakes Memento, where the mystery is being solved (by us) from two directions simultaneously. Either that or it could be called Hurley P.I.

What was most fun was how those two characters were inserted into two seasons worth of classic Lost moments as if they were a pair of J.Crew Zeligs — in the process allowing us to get reaquainted with Mr. Artz (dude, you got some Artz on you), Boone and Shannon, as well as that always fantastic wreckage scene that they can revisit as much as they’d like as far as I’m concerned.

That, and the opening sequence. Best opening ever? (Likely) Billy Dee, Billy Dee, Billy Dee! I’d tune in to any series about a pair a crime-fighting strippers — any series.

Oh, and how brutal was that ending?

Listen to “Bury Me With It” by Modest Mouse

When I got home from work last night and pulled up Lost on my DVR the description line said, “Some of the islands secrets.” Well played, DVR. Well played.

I don’t know if “some of the islands secrets” was the tag line the guys over in ABC’s promotions department had intended on using for the episode but it seemed to have delivered leaps and bounds above its promise (especially when compared with previous idiotic statements like, “Three big questions will be answered!”

Either way, I feel bad for people who jumped ship on the series. Yes it took a while to get moving, but at this point (just over halfway through the season) things are progressing nicely. This episode in particular had to have pleased even some of the biggest Lost haters, right? Full details after the break…

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