Finally got around to watching "Battlestar Galactica - The Plan"...

... meh.

Lost: "Dr. Linus" [Spoilers, m'kay?]

I've been a rabid fan of Lost for several years and with the final season upon us, I've been talking about Lost a lot with a few of my coworkers and friends who are nice enough to suffer my rantings. I've been coming in and shooting off an e-mail with notes and questions about the previous night's episode for a few weeks now and figured these would also make good blog posts and maybe elicit some discussion from all 3 of you out there who read my blog.

So without further ado, my notes for last night's episode. To help understand some of my ramblings, any characters name with an "X" after it refers to the version of them in the Flash-Sideways reality (the one where the plane never crashed on the island). I'm also abbreviating Flash-Sideways as "FS" in some places.

• So, it looks like my friend Terry was right after all that the “chains” Richard were in were the chains on the Black Rock and that he was most likely on that ship when it came to the island. Good call. (I'd been thrown by Ilana's reference to Richard as Ricardus and thought that maybe he'd been from the Roman era... not too crazy an idea given all the Egyptian artifacts on the island.)

• I’m sooo completely retracting my thoughts about how the character episodes lined up with Season 1. Ben wasn’t even in Season 1. (There was a theory that the Season 6 episodes were paralleling the Season 1 episodes, at least regarding which character was being focused on... the past 2 episodes have refuted that theory).

• While we’re on BenX, some more hints as to what happened on the island after “the incident”, or at least the hydrogen bomb version of the incident that we saw last season. BenX’s dad had an interesting choice of words, saying “if we hadn’t left”. Seems to imply that there was choice in the matter. “If we hadn’t had to leave” or “if we hadn’t been forced off” or “if we hadn’t been sent back” would have implied no choice. So what exactly did happen after the whiteout that the inhabitants didn’t have to leave unless they wanted to? Does this imply that the sinking of the island wasn’t an immediate effect?

• BenX’s dad isn’t mad at him for killing his mother. Does this imply that there was a forgiving moment at some point after the incident or perhaps that she died in some other way and the alcoholic bitterness never existed. If that’s the case, I’ll wonder again if the incident changed events from 1977 forward only, or if it had further reaching impact in the past.

• While we’re on fathers… BenX didn’t kill his dad and seemingly wasn’t hated by his dad. JackX has a son and is a much better father than ChristianX, though it would seem that ChristianX was still a bad dad. LockeX’s father presumably didn’t factor much into his life, otherwise Helen wouldn’t still be with him. It remains to be seen how he was paralyzed in the FS timeline. Next week is looking to be a Sawyer episode… will we find out that SawyerX’s mother was never conned by LockeX’s dad and both his parents are still alive or died from other causes that didn’t result in him wanting to seek vengeance on “Tom Sawyer”? It seems that all the “father issues” in the original timeline are non-existent in the FS timeline. Though much more pedestrian, the FS timeline inhabitants lives are seemingly better. Lends some weight behind my theory that the FS timeline will become the dominant timeline at the end.

• Exception to the father issue theory would be AlexX… she doesn’t seem to have a dad (RousseauX has 2 jobs) or maybe he’s just a deadbeat. Perhaps since she’s one of the few who had a father that gave a damn in the original timeline, her FS self is the one with father issues? Also her being at BenX’s school reinforces the thought that somehow all the island inhabitants in the FS reality are going to join up at one time in one place like some Close Encounters moment and their gathering will shape the end of the game. Remember that Ben told Lapidis that the island got him anyway? Foreshadowing by the writers?

• Last word on Ben (for now). In both timelines, even though he’s an insufferable manipulative bastard, you kinda feel sorry for him now. It was good to see his “redemption” last night. And was it just me or did anyone else notice the soft focus lens they used on everyone when he got back to the beach after being forgiven by Ilana? It fringed the picture with a white haze. Almost like he was entering some heavenly place. Just coincidence of lighting?

• Curious to find out what’s up with Widmore. Is he going to park the sub at the Dharma dock or the Looking Glass or join up with Locke at the Hydra? Is he bringing Wallace with him? You don’t need a lighthouse if you’re underwater… this could be that “other way” that Jacob referred to.

• For that matter, I’d love to find out about WidmoreX, EloiseX & FaradayX. Also RichardX.

• The number 6 keeps appearing. 6 numbers, Oceanic 6, 6 candidates (6 seasons?). Strange that Ilana would say that there are 6 candidates left when she knows that Locke is dead and believes that “Kwon” means either Sun or Jin but not both. Who’s the 6th? Wallace?

• I would have liked more of a soliloquy moment form Jack last night. His conversion from man of science/fact to man of faith/hope was almost too sudden. It would have been nice to have heard a little more of his reasoning about why he’s suddenly putting his life in Jacob’s hands. It wasn’t as bad as some of the sudden character changes in Heroes that drove me away, but it was close. A few sentences about not being able to explain all the crazy things he’s seen would have reinforced his conversion. Saying that he’s decided that he wants to either end it by dying or end it by finding out why Jacob chose him but either way he was tired of the game and wanted it to end… that would have been good too. I’m waiting to see the “Let go and let Jacob” bumper stickers.

What’d I miss?

Second Anniversary

Misha and I celebrated our second anniversary today. We've actually been together for almost 6 years now. Sometimes it's hard to believe.

We celebrated by feeding Connor dinner, playing some Addams Family pinball and eating the dinner I made (New York Strip steaks, mashed potatoes and veggies) while watching an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent on the TiVo.

We're going to wait for the weekend to get out and really celebrate. Labor day weekend was spent doing things around the house and besides... EVERYONE's out and about Labor Day weekend, so we'd rather wait until attractions and restaurants have calmed down.

It's been an amazing and wonderful 2 years... here's to many, many more.

Cheers!

Connor's New Trick

Connor surprised us both with a new trick this evening:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klfVSZJpHJI

Yup, he's crawling.

And yup, that's me saying "we're in trouble".

And yup, that's the TiVo remote. Chip off the old couch potato.

All Good Things...

One of our favorite things to do when we lived in California was to go to Las Vegas. And one of my favorite things to to at Vegas was to ride on Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton.

I've been a fan of The Experience since it first opened and enjoyed it immensely. The practical effects were second to none. I mean, c'mon: they completely redress an entire room as you're standing in it (with the lights off) in about 20 seconds. And not only is the room different, it's seemingly inconceivably bigger based on the dimensions where you know you just were moments ago. I was lucky enough to take the "backstage tour" when they started offering it and got to see the workings of that effect with the lights on and it's still breathtaking.

The highlight for any Next Generation fan was a stop on a reproduction of the bridge of the Enterprise-D. (And if you're a TNG fan, you'll recognize the title of this post and its relevance.) As a special treat, the facility also hosted weddings on the bridge, something that was always a secret dream. (Ok, not so secret if you know my love of Star Trek.) I know my wife would never go for our actual wedding on the bridge, but she'd agreed it might be fun to do one day to renew our vows. Have I mentioned lately how much I love my wife?

But, alas, all is for naught, for The Powers That Be have decided that after 11 years, The Experience will be serving it's last patron on September 1, 2008. I can't believe it, and yet somehow I can see that it was inevitable. The Experience sits in a large section of the hotel and is attached to a Space-themed casino (complete with a mock-urinalysis when you used the men's room urinals) that was largely vacant most days. And the price of The Experience kept going up. And they gutted one half of the attraction to build an updated Borg 4-D adventure that was pretty cool but not nearly as groundbreaking as the original Next Generation ride (which was still there thankfully). Heck, they even Borged-out one of the fancy new Monorail cars to try to advertise the ride and get more traffic.

A lot of time and effort and money went into keeping that place running and there was apparently not enough to show for it so the hotel's owners decided that they could make more money with that space (no pun intended) if they got rid of The Experience and put something else there.

I'm sure we'll be back in Las Vegas one day soon. I hope whatever they decide to replace The Experience with is worth it. And a small part of me hopes they're able to save the sets and I'll still be able to renew my vows on the bridge of the Enterprise-D with my beautiful wife and some guy presiding who looks vaguely like Patrick Stewart.

Hey, a guy can dream...

The Whatever Channel

Why don't they just say "Heck if we know?..."

TiVo is the new Erasermate

The erasable pen was a wonder invention of Papermate. In the bygone days of 1979, one could suddenly do the impossible, erase the un-erasable: Ink. From a pen. It was truly, truly, truly outrageous.

But this amazing feat came with a price. Sure, there was the obvious blue, black, or red smudge where you had erased a word or the smear where you had accidentally run your hand over some of the not-quite-dry-yet ink (oh, just wait until Gel pens you innocent children of the 70s). No, this was a far more insidious evil that exacted its toll on your very being: Imprecision.

Now I'm not talking about how neatly you wrote or whether you stayed between the college lines of your Trapper Keeper's notebook paper. Oh no, I'm talking about mistakes. With a pen that you could erase, there was no longer any need to pay attention to what you were writing. You could make spelling errors with impunity and then just brush them away without a care and without having to use that unprofessional pencil.

Of course, the more you used your Erasermate, the worse your spelling became. And you didn't care. At least not until you were forced to resort to barbarian methods and use a regular pen for any reason. Only then was the folly of your hubris fully realized as you struggled to spell "dog" without screwing it up.

Now, there have been many similar evils since that time. Spell-check comes to mind and is the reason that wordvomit like "she could of tried harder" and "my interest is peaked" exist in myriad internet chat rooms and text messages today. (I'm sorry, we were looking for could've and piqued. Thank you for playing.) Be that as it may, I believe the erasable pen has finally met its equal:

TiVo

You see, this new evil - this succubus of sanity - by its very nature of allowing you to rewind LIVE television is eroding what little attention span we had left after watching too many reruns of Remote Control and Robot Chicken. You see, it used to be that if you missed it; too bad it was gone and if the show wasn't going to be on again until summer reruns then you just had to wait. Sure, there was the VCR, but why tape it when you're already watching it and even then you can't watch what recorded on the VHS tape without stopping the recording.

But now with TiVo, you don't have to worry. Heck you don't even have to pay attention. What was that? Go back and watch it again right now. The rest of the show? Don't worry, it's still there, you can catch up to it during the commercials. Damn. Now isn't that cool. No. Not when the ultimate price is so high.

Forget the inability to spell, TiVo promises the inability to listen. And for those of us with ADD this is some bad juju. I find myself wishing that my radio had a TiVo functionality. I sit there waiting for the traffic report and just space off and only realize I'm spacing once the monotone traffic guy on the radio is wrapping things up and I've completely missed the report. Got to wait another 10 minutes now. Damn. Where will this lead? The inability to listen to regular conversations? Your friends & family? Your boss? Your spouse? I shudder to think of the possibilities.

Ooh, My TiVo just found Breaking the Magician's Code 4. Sweet!

Too many new shows, too little time

My wife and I have been trying to take in some of the new shows this fall season and while a few have fallen flat, there are some surprises.

First, a dud. "Life" kinda turned us off with the whole "zen" thing the lead character does, rambling to himself about being detached from the world around him. The big problem for us was that there's really no good hook that grabbed us and we saw it turning out pretty much the same way as "The Evidence" and "Blind Justice": Interesting but Canceled.

However, "Journeyman" has turned out to be a nice surprise. About 40 minutes into the first episode there's a "whoa!" moment that really piques your interest and by the end of that episode, you're thoroughly invested. The whole time travel angle brings a lot of possibilities to the table but the core of the show isn't really sci-fi, it's really about following your instinct to do what's right.

Another show that's got potential is "The Big Bang Theory" which is kinda like a version of "Friends" retitled "Geeks". It's surprisingly funny thanks to a mix of awkward and physical comedy and it helps that I'm sadly familiar with some of the more geeked out jokes that pop up.

My wife's new find is "Dirty Sexy Money" about a lawyer just starting out working for a rich New York family (complete with all the socialite stereotypes) while also trying to figure out who killed his dad, who was the previous lawyer for the family. It's like a soap opera in prime time, but with a lot of shock value moments like the live lions brought in for the family photo shoot or the polite blackmailer who sold a sex tape to a higher bidder but hopes that this won't affect any future business they might conduct. It's got Peter Krause from Six Feet Under and Donald Sutherland and William Baldwin, so it's got a stellar cast that plays well against one another.

"Pushing Daisies" is a unique show to be sure. First, is the fact that it's narrated story-book style. In fact, the whole thing plays off like a fairy-tale in a slightly twisted land of make-believe. It's got hints of Tim Burton, Roald Dahl, Jeunet & Caro and Terry Gilliam, except not as dark on all accounts. One wonders though, how long the premise can be maintained, considering that if the male lead touches the female romantic lead in any way, she'll die.

Finally, I've been happy to see that "Bionic Woman" has taken off well. Borrowing actors from another successful sci-fi series - Battlestar Galactica - has helped them, but at some point they're going to have to cut that umbilical. Katee Sackhoff, who plays (played?) Starbuck on BG does a great job as a damaged anti-hero; the first Bionic Woman who lost control and a piece of her humanity in the transformation. So far, every episode has included either another actor from BG or a reference to the show. In the pilot, a prison guard was played by a BG actor and in the third episode, the unethical doctor who created the bionics for Sackhoff's bionic woman is played by another recognizable BG actor. Amusingly, the second episode had no BG actors, but featured a clip of the show playing on a television in a house they were walking through.

Our Tivo is working overtime.