This is an entry about a TV show. Yes, it's come to this.
Okay, I just saw the last episodes of LOST I will see before... probably May, based on a number of factors. One major factor is that they're holding off on airing new episodes again until February.
Anyway... I'm not a huge TV watcher. Based on the fact that when I'm at home (in the USA) I tend to work during "primetime" and that I am a huge hater of reality television, I tend to catch a lot of things only when I am introduced to them via DVD, when friends record, or somehow other go out of my way to get them. Such is the case with one of two shows that not quite one year ago breathed life back into my faith in contemporary television... LOST.
Yes, I was late jumping on the LOST bandwagon, but I watched season one on DVD ...all the episodes... one after the other in short order. I caught up on season two, and I was engrossed. The other show? You're going to laugh, but if you haven't seen it don't you dare - Sci Fi Channel's Battlestar Galactica. Again on DVD, I caught up with it. Now they're both into their third seasons, and BSG continues to be strong while LOST is... well, losing me.
The strength of both shows has always been a strong ensemble of very human characters placed in difficult, unimaginable circumstances but dealing with everything in very human ways. Both shows have very large, strong casts. LOST tends to paint its characters with broader strokes, while BSG doesn't rely as much on archetypes as letting the actors do their work. This is not to besmirch the work of the actors on LOST or the writing - it's just a bit more over the top, in that way. There are many similarities, but strangely, now that I think about it, BSG in its more fantastic setting is somehow less of a melodrama than LOST.
Back to the point - LOST, this season. I don't know what's changed. I don't know if the writing staff has changed or if there is pressure from the network to focus on certain things. Since the strength of LOST has always been your concern for the characters and the fact that there are so many plotlines to follow. This season has been, pretty much, dull. They set up so much in the season two ending cliffhanger, and they've touched on almost none of it. They've ignored huge plot elements they introduced only to focus week after week on "They are still in cages! They could get out, but they don't! There's sexual tension!" I'm trying to say all I can without giving anything away to those who aren't caught up. Or don't care. Anyway, I hope that when the show returns, it returns to form. The big "mid-season ending" cliffhanger left me caring very little what happens next.
One strength of LOST's first season, even its second to a lesser degree? You have no idea who will survive from one week to the next. They were absolutely unafraid to knock off a character you knew and loved, unexpectedly, and without leaking it beforehand to Access Hollywood or some other outlet. It was truly unpredictable. One sign that LOST has grown its cajones back? Let the guy kill Sawyer. Don't let us see it coming. Of course, that might be too predictable.
I fear that the show may have lost its way, but I still think it's very well-written and a step in the right direction for television. Problem is, well, I've been hurt before. I watched THE X-FILES. I was so done with it by the end of the series that I had long ago stopped making the effort to record or watch it in years. I have the DVDs, somewhere, up to season 8. and my fear now is that, ike the showrunners of X-Files, the creators of LOST did not have a full overall story arc... just a great premise. One thing X-Files continued to do well, though, even after you knew its "mythology" was going nowhere, was to keep producing good episodes that were unrelated to that. Up to a point, only 5 or 6 episodes a year would deal with the "conspiracy" in any major way, the rest were just damned good spooky and/or supernatural detective stories.*
I have to admit, having to sit around for nearly a month in a place with a DVR has helped me catch some good stuff. If you are like me and usually have limited ability to catch TV, I have to recommend two shows... one of which has the potential to be an all-tie favorite at this point. HEROES, on NBC. Seriously, get it on itunes or find it online somewhere and catch it from the beginning. It is on track to be REALLY good.
And.. JERICHO, on CBS (I think) I have no idea what shows are successful and what aren't, but I'm afraid this interesting little show might not last. Look into both of them -
Okay, my disgustingly stereotypical blog posting which includes my long-winded opinions on television shows is over. You can safely read my blog again, this will not be a habit. For your patience, here is a picture of a monkey smoking a cigarette.
A too-close flash on Christmas night. I don't know who I was or where I was, but I was wearing a Santa hat that did not belong to me. 
The beach: without surfing, a dull place where sand meets water. Most beaches are fundamentally the same, but I have to admit that these particular beaches really don't suck. This was me at Grand Turk Island, which left me... 
A shadow of my former self.
Singer's night out in Ft. Lauderdale, the first escape fromt he ship after our hellish monthlong drydock. We sit here at CHILI'S, which if you know my love for such chain sit-down restaurants says something of my desperation, and afterward we went to Wal-Mart. We know how to party. That's Joe, Corinne, Mallorie, and some jerk.
A couple of pop show pics here... the above from the Mrs. Robinson number, and the below from the number that surely makes all my male ancestors roll in their graves. My Elton John costume. I place this here by request, for my enemies to use against me later.
