Muppets and Lost? Sign me up.

Kimmell spoofs Across the Sea (kinda)

Thanks to www.docarzt.com.

Across the Sea

Much better, Lost. I admit that my love for backstory probably inflates my opinion of this episode, but even without that, this was a pretty well-done story.

Dragging index: 1 out of 10. I was enthralled pretty much the entire time.

Learning!

Reality A

1. Jacob and Esau are twins, and I feel even more validated calling Esau Esau. Man in Black just makes me feel like Will Smith is around here somewhere, playing a Johnny Cash cover. It's a bad name.

2. Jacob and Esau were born to a Latin-speaking woman who shipwrecked on the Island.

3. Real Mom was unaware she was carrying twins, and only had a name ready for Jacob. After Esau is born, Real Mom asks, "Can I see him?" and not "Can I see them?"

4. Kidnap Mom kills Real Mom and raises Jacob and Esau as her own children. They are kept from even knowing the rest of the world exists, and for around 14 years they only have each other and Kidnap Mom as company.

5. Young boy appearing to Esau/Locke in the jungle? Jacob.

6. Jacob can't lie, and Esau is a natural deceiver.

7. Jacob and Esau discover the rest of their people, wrecked on the Island with Real Mom.

8. Kidnap Mom keeps to her xenophobic ways and asks them not to make contact with the men. She shows them the Light, which she says is the source for all Light in the world. No one can take anything from it, or it will be extinguished. Kidnap Mom has been the Protector of the Light for a long time, and one day she'll bestow that responsibility on one of her kidnapped sons.

9. Esau sees his dead Real Mom; Jacob cannot see her. Real Mom informs Esau that the men are his people, and that Kidnap Mom killed her. Having acquired this new information, he leaves, and wants Jacob to come with him. Jacob refuses, and a fistfight ensues. Jacob wins.

10. It's Kidnap Mom who creates the conditions whereby neither twin can kill the other.

11. Esau lives with the men for 30+ years. Jacob visits, and they play Esau's game, which looks more like checkers than backgammon. Lostpedia says it is Senet.

12. Esau is building the Frozen Donkey Wheel, and plans to harness the Light to get off the Island. The specifics of this plan are fuzzy, but Esau's convinced it will work. He believes he is special.

13. Esau and his people build the wells in the locations of electromagnetic weirdness.

14. Kidnap Mom finds out about Esau's plan to leave, and pleads with him to stay. After it's clear he has every intention of completing the Frozen Donkey Wheel, she knocks him out and somehow kills all of his people, burning the village. She also fills in the well.

15. She bestows the work of Protector of the Light on Jacob, who was under the impression that she wanted the job to go to Esau this whole time. She says it's always been for him, and he complains that he doesn't want it. In the end, he accepts, and drinks some wine that Kidnap Mom has blessed in Latin.

16. Kidnap Mom tells Jacob to never go down the tunnel to the light, and that doing so will bring a fate worse than death on him.

17. Upon discovering his men are all dead and the well is filled in, Esau wrecks Kidnap Mom's camp, destroying the tapestry she was weaving. She arrives at the scene and Esau stabs her in the back, killing her. Kidnap Mom thanks Esau with her dying breath.

18. Jacob arrives, refuses to listen to Esau's explanations, and a fightfight ensues. Jacob wins again. I'm seeing a pattern.

18. Jacob, knowing he can't kill Esau, and also knowing that going down the light tunnel is bad news, determines to subject Esau to this unknown fate. Messing with powers he doesn't fully understand? Great call, buddy.

19. Esau floats into the light. An earthquake happens. Smokey comes roaring out of the tunnel.

20. Jacob finds Esau's body not far away. It is dead for dead.

21. He buries Kidnap Mom and Esau in the caves. Lost explicitly tells us that they are the Adam and Eve Jack and Kate found in the pilot episode of the series. I feel really talked down to.

Reality B

1. Absolutely nothing.

Phew. That's a lot of questions answered. Some of my thoughts:

1. Jacob is really naive and trusting. I imagine this has changed since 1600-something, but it affects my perception of who he is.

2. How messed up are Jacob and Esau psychologically? They're raised by Kidnap Mom, only to find out she killed their real mother. That alone is enough to cause major issues for anyone, but then Esau kills Kidnap Mom and Jacob turns Esau into some smoke monster abomination. Good grief. Any therapist would see either one of these guys as a giant bag of money.

3. Was Smokey created from Esau's soul? Or had Smokey already been in existence, and merely combined with Esau's soul to become what he is now?

4. As Protector of the Light, Jacob is obviously allowed access to the Light to stay alive for a really long time and bestow the same gift on others (Richard). Also might have allowed him to bring Locke back from the dead after getting pushed out the window and falling like 20 stories.

That's it. One more episode before the series finale. My faith is restored, and I feel like these last few hours will be amazing.

Let's do this.

Smokey to star in Lost spin-off series

Ah, The Onion. You are so brilliant.

BURBANK, CA—Executives at ABC announced Monday that the network will premier a new Lost spin-off series this fall based around that show's popular smoke monster character.

Enlarge ImageThe smoke monster, a fan favorite.

The new series, a half-hour family-oriented comedy called Where There's Smoke, is touted by ABC as the new anchor of its Thursday-night lineup.

"Somewhere between the smoke monster's first appearance on Lost— when it was depicted as a strange unseen force uprooting trees—and that episode in season three where it grabbed Mr. Eko and smashed him against the ground until he was dead, this character became the breakout star of the show," said Stephen McPherson, president of ABC Entertainment. "And that's exactly why we're so excited about Where There's Smoke. We get to see the monster's light comedic side in a show about life, love, and good friends having good times."

"Because after all, Where There's Smoke, there's laughter," McPherson added.

Just awesome. Captures everything stupid about spin-off shows and ABC comedies in general.

The Candidate

I am annoyed. I was underwhelmed enough with "The Last Recruit" that I didn't even bother writing a post on it, and "The Candidate" was even worse, in my opinion.

Here's what we got from Tuesday's episode:

Reality A

1. Esau maybe really kinda does want to kill the candidates maybe.

2. Maybe he can't kill them directly so perhaps he's kinda hoping to get them to sort of kill each other.

Reality B

1. Locke is responsible for his paralysis and his father's vegetative state. Locke feels really, really guilty about it.

2. Christian left Claire a music box.

That's it? Really? With two episodes to go, that's what they give us?

The whole thing kinda cheapened Sun and Jin's deaths in my view. It's like the writers realized they'd written a crap for crap episode, so they threw in 10 minutes of Sun and Jin tragically dying just hours after being reunited to tug on our heartstrings and make us forget what we'd just watched.

Ugh.

In other news, the Lost series finale will be 2.5 hours long.

I'm hoping these last 4.5 hours of Lost will be mind-blowingly awesome. Abrams, Lindelof, Cruse, etc. all set the bar ridiculously high, and now they have to clear it.

Because no one wants to see this on May 23.

Response to "Everybody Loves Hugo" Post

Ok, I started this as a direct response to Brandon's last post, but it got way too lengthy, so I'm putting it up as a post. Don't have a heart attack, Brandon. I am actually posting. :)

This sounds a little gruesome, but my favorite part of this episode was when Ilana blew up. She totally deserved it, with the way she was treating the dynamite. I saw it coming with her behavior, but was a little surprised when it actually happened.

I think Desmond is still alive in the well because Locke, like everyone else, still needs him for some reason. Just don't know what that is. As noted in an earlier post, though, Desmond seems to be pretty complacent to do what *anyone* asks him to, so maybe Locke's gotta keep him in a place that others perhaps won't find him? I'm kind of wondering if he is keeping him in the well so Widmore will have to search him out (thus allowing Locke to move more freely towards the plane?)... just thinking out loud here. Locke said something about the well making compass needles spin--what would Desmond's ability to withstand massive amounts of electromagnetism (or whatever it was) do to that/because of that? Very interesting stuff going on with Desmond, I think. Actually, now that I think about it, I think he's just hiding Desmond so he can use him if he needs to get past the electro-fence thing into Widmore's camp... doesn't that seem like something Desmond could withstand?

On that note, I think Desmond tried to kill Locke (succeeded? not sure) either because:
A.) He remembers the island, and what a jerk Locke was to him. Also, if Locke were to remember the island, like everyone else seems to be doing, the potential ramifications there are scary.
Or
B.) Maybe Desmond is trying to recreate his own remembrance (remember how Charlie nearly killed him and that's how he remembered?) to get Locke to remember his role? Again, not sure.

I'm confused about why all the candidates need to leave together. They got off before without everyone, and came back (though that time it was claimed that they all needed to be together, too...but Eloise seemed somewhat willing to make an exception?).

It kind of bugs me when questions are answered so bluntly (like the whispers thing)--we've been waiting for years for these answers, and then they just throw them in our faces? Lame. Also--why can everyone hear the whispers, but only Hugo *see* the dead people? Other people have seen the dead in the past, but they've always been the smoke, right? But Locke is stuck in his body now, so the dead people are something else? Also, Miles can hear people's last thoughts--what's with all the dead people gifts?

I don't hate Michael, either. My feelings towards him are similar to those towards Ben. I think part of the show is just the idea of how even the "worst" people aren't necessarily bad, and the good ones can be... Hugo being one of the few exceptions there (he does seem to genuinely be good... though his $$ definitely cursed a lot of people in Reality A). Just lots of shades of gray within the characters.

That being said, it seems like Michael may be working for Esau. Or at least he's working towards getting everyone off the island (since they all have to go together...). Does he maybe get to leave with them? And what would happen if they *did* make it off the island? Their existence is still continuing in Reality B while they're living in Reality A--what if they collided? I'm thinking that's maybe where the cracks in Reality B are coming from--the closer they get to leaving the island in A, the more cracks people are seeing in B. Also, does it seem like the dead (Libby and Charlie, specifically) break through the realities a lot easier? Perhaps because they're not on the island anymore?

Sorry this is so disorganized. I still have a lot of questions. Hope you guys don't mind me thinking out loud.

Go season go.

Everybody Loves Hugo

First things first, and I have to say my favorite part of last night's episode was the 30-second preview for next week's episode. Not that "Everybody Loves Hugo" wasn't any good, but holy smokes was the preview brilliant.

Here it is (and for those of you who avoid these because of spoilers, there really aren't any):

Whoever had the brilliant idea to combine Willy Wonka's creepy tunnel scene with Lost should get a raise. As my wife pointed out last night, we all watched that movie as kids, and we were all terrified of the tunnel incident (and rightly so). Tapping into that part of our shared subconscious was genius.

Dragging index: 3 out of 10. As the episode title implies, I love Hurley and am never bored when he's around. The only problem was that at the end, I realized not much at all had really happened.

The learning:

Reality A

1. Messing with that Black Rock dynamite is never a good idea. Though the way Ilana was tossing stuff into the bag and throwing it around, you'd have thought she was suicidal. At least Arzt was being careful with his when he blew up.

2. The Island IS Purgatory after all! Kind of! Apparently if you did bad stuff on the Island and then died, you're stuck there. That's what the whispers are. Thanks for answering a question we've had since Season 1, writers!

3. Michael appears to Hurley with some unhelpful advice. "I'm here to keep you from getting everyone killed," doesn't do much to clear anything up. Stupid ghosts.

4. Esau ascertains that Widmore wants something from Desmond and promptly chucks Desmond down a well. After establishing that the well isn't deep enough to cause instant death, this plan seems weird for Esau. Why not just kill Des and be done with it?

5. That ghost boy keeps messing with Esau, though Esau is determined to just ignore him. I think this is hilarious. The boy seems to be older than he was the first time we saw him, and his arms are no longer covered in blood. Or it might be a different boy altogether. Who knows?

6. Richard's assertion that "Jacob never tells people what to do," was not entirely accurate. Jacob did appear to Hurley once already this season, and he gave Hurley a very specific set of instructions.

6. Hurley leads a group to join up with Esau's crew. Jack, Sun, Kate and Lapidus join him. Richard, Miles and Ben go off to destroy the Ajira Airways plane. Jack finally comes to terms with his savior complex through following Hurley's lead. Whether this is a good thing or not, we don't know.

7. Esau states that to get off the Island, the candidates all need to leave together. Assuming the plane doesn't blow up anytime soon, Esau is now most of the way there.

Reality B

1. Libby's Matrix is cracked by merely seeing Hurley on TV. Hurley's Matrix is cracked when she kisses him, though he feels something when they first meet.

2. Desmond is actively getting involved in the lives of passengers from flight 815. For some reason he feels pushing Hurley towards Libby is enough to help him see the truth, but Locke needs to get smashed by a car. Maybe this is because Locke doesn't have any romantic relationships in Reality A. Also, he's dead.

In other news, in talking with my wife last night I realized that the writers have done everything in their power to make us really like Hurley and really dislike Michael.

Hurley never does anything remotely cruel. He never hurts anyone, intentionally or otherwise. He only wants what is best for everyone. He is acutely aware of his own shortcomings, but isn't super emo about them. He even forgives Michael for killing Libby. In short, he's borderline unbelievably good.

Meanwhile, Michael's only focus while he's alive is Walt, to the detriment of everyone around him. And he even fails at being a good father. He betrays the Losties, kills two of them, loses his son and then tries to kill himself. Thanks to the direction of Mr. Friendly, he does manage to somewhat redeem himself by freezing the bomb on the Kahana for a while, but when he reappears, he only berates Hurley, further giving us a negative impression of him.

And the thing is, even with all that, I don't see Michael as a bad person. I see him as a good person who is forced to make terrible decisions (terrible as in extremely difficult) and recognizes that fact.

That's enough amateur psychology from me.

Feel free to chime in with anything I've missed. Go Willy Wonka boat go.