The Incomparable

"Royal Pains": Good for What Ails You

2009-06-30T14:21:46Z

My damned DVR is eating my life.

It seems like every free moment I have is now haunted by the notion that somewhere in the digital ether, episodes of good shows I haven't seen yet are waiting patiently for me to watch them. So very patiently. Staring at me with the TV-show equivalent of big, mournful, puppy-dog eyes. I never thought I'd miss boredom.

The situation's gotten so bad that I'm actually upset when good new shows hit the airwaves, and relieved to think that even terrific shows like NBC's Kings -- back on the air for a summer burnoff, and more eerie and eloquent with each passing week -- will soon be gone for good. If only so I don't have a Hulu queue and DVR hard drive groaning under the weight of Ian MacShane awesomely delivering quasi-Shakespearean dialogue and stabbin' folks Swearingen-style.

All the same, I just can't quit watching USA's Royal Pains. That's a testament less to its Burn-Notice-but-with-a-doctor premise, and more to its set of engaging characters brought to life by a really great cast. It's the kind of cheerful, breezy summer series USA seems to do better than any other network.

How closely does Pains ape its spy-show predecessor? Both shows feature a deeply principled, ultracompetent professional hero with a knack for cobbling together improvised solutions to life-threatening dilemmas. Unjustly cast out of the profession he loves, he finds himself stranded in a sunny, bikini-intensive locale, taking odd jobs that fall through the cracks of a broken and ineffective system, aided primarily by a sultry colleague/antagonist/love interest and a genial, loyal mooch of a best pal. Note to USA: In future, kindly avoid using the office photocopier as a source for new series ideas.

To its credit, though, Pains offers plenty of fun variants of its own. Unlike Jeffrey Donovan's measured, flinty performance as Michael Weston, Pains' Hank Lawson is an all-around nice guy with ironclad ethics and a great big heart. Notable Hey-It's-That-Guy Mark Feuerstein somehow keeps Hank grounded and likeable, even when he ought to be an insufferably perfect goody two-shoes. And he shares a definite zing! with Jill Flint's prickly but admiring hospital administrator, which makes their awfully sudden entrance into a relationship a bit more believable.

Paulo Costanzo never quite gets annoying as Evan, Hank's ambitious, skirt-chasing little brother and financial advisor. For all his superficiality, he's obviously devoted to his brother, and he's capable of the occasional thoughtful act or savvy business move to counter his grating dweebishness. (A scene in the second episode, in which Evan dances an impromptu ballet while whipping up a home-cooked meal for a ballerina he wants to impress, is also one of the most wonderfully, sweetly goofy things I've seen this side of Pushing Daisies.)

And Pains has a few aces up its sleeve that Burn Notice can't match. Reshma Shetty's Divya, Hank's unflappable PA, is a really cool character, with her icy wit and fully loaded super-SUV of medical wondergadgetry. I can't wait to see more of her currently offscreen family, from whom she's hiding her covert medical career, and I'm enjoying her amusing hate-hate relationship with Evan.

I'm also quite fond of several of the show's recurring characters. Tucker, the hemophiliac son of an often-absent playboy, is a really sweet and interesting kid, played with low-key charm by Ezra Miller. He makes a great comic duo with Meredith Hagner's Libby, Tucker's high-strung girlfriend, whose extreme hypochondria seems to actually be a touching response to Tucker's own fragile existence. And Campbell Scott owns every scene he glides into as the enigmatic Boris, a Bavarian zillionaire who's set himself up as Hank's benefactor for mysterious and possibly sinister reasons. The growing hints that Boris may in fact be some sort of James Bond villain add a weird and welcome kick to the show, like a shot of Tabasco on scrambled eggs.

This great collection of fun characters -- and really likeable actors -- do a lot to bandage up Royal Pains' more feeble elements. The medical mysteries can be interesting, with some nifty attention to technical detail, but the show's still working on making them feel particularly urgent or suspenseful. Or novel, for that matter. Thus far, every medical plotline seems to run something like this:

PATIENT: I think something may be wrong with me.
HANK: Yeah, you're sick.
PATIENT: But not that sick!
HANK: No, you really are. I'm going to give you a bunch of reasonable, practical advice that you can then proceed to ignore for the purposes of drama.
PATIENT: I can't get help within our broken health-care system!
HANK: Yeah, our system really sucks, although I'll content myself with just saying that in broad terms, rather than addressing specific flaws or offering any solution beyond the sort of magical feel-good stuff you only see on TV.
PATIENT: [suffers life-threatening emergency]
HANK: [does something awesomely MacGyvery]
PATIENT: Yay! I'm all better! Thank you, Dr. Awesome!
HANK: Aw, shucks. I'm just a regular old brilliant trauma surgeon trying to help. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my palatial guest house so that I can get ready for my date with my superhot doctor girlfriend. [Also, if patient is rich:] Will you be paying me in a check so large, I won't mention the actual amount, or just an entire bar of gold?

The pilot in particular, for all its charms, indulged in some pretty hilariously lazy writing. I especially rolled my eyes at the scene in which Hank, while canoodling in bed with his previous superhot girlfriend, talks about how everything is so wonderful in his life, and nothing will ever, ever happen to disrupt it. And then the phone rings...

Still, Royal Pains is undeniably fun, with a bunch of great characters I've come to look forward to spending an hour with every Thursday night. Which doesn't mean I'm not looking forward to the end of its season, if only so that my DVR will quit sulking there in the middle of my entertainment center. Waiting. Watching. Judging.

Pleasant Valley

2009-06-26T20:15:40Z

A couple of times in the past few weeks I've heard the Monkees' rendition of the immortal Goffin and King's "Pleasant Valley Sunday". It's got a brilliantly shimmering pop melody, but aside from that it's also a sharp criticism of life in suburbia, an indictment of shallow materialism, a warning about succumbing to a numbing life in Status Symbol Land where you're surrounded by the smell of burning charcoal from all the backyard cookouts.

I'm nearly forty now. I don't consider that I've acquired wisdom for the ages but I have picked up the wisdom of a forty-year-old, for what that's worth. And I was thinking about this today. I once again found myself somehow, after seeing television commercials for miracle cleaning products since 1971, on all fours on my bathroom floor scrubbing with a brush.

When I was younger I agreed with the Monkees wholeheartedly. This was no simple adolescent revolt against one's elders, either. In fact my parents weren't all that interested in Pleasant Valley. They never collected status symbols: No fancy new cars, big beautiful house, expensive TVs. At one point my father drove a tow truck, not professionally, but as his regular commuting vehicle. No, my parents didn't care about appearances. They always looked -- they still do -- to just getting by. Making their way, day by day, climbing over whatever obstacles arose, occasionally grabbing what happiness they could: That was, and is, their way.

So I wasn't rejecting my parents when I turned away from Pleasant Valley. I'd made a definite decision to avoid what I saw as so much worthless and mirthless junk. For me, true value lay in the things I'd pursue all my life: Science and philosophy and art. I spent my time reading Kant, Hume, and Buckminster Fuller. Learning to play chess and studying engineering. Painting.

Well, I managed to avoid Pleasant Valley, yes I did. I don't have a status symbol to my name. I live in the suburbs, sure, but the one I live in is nothing like Gerry Goffin's lyrics, even if he wrote them about a place less than 20 miles from my house.

What I realize now is that a Sunday in Pleasant Valley looks pretty good. All those things I've invested in my whole life thus far -- all the thinking and the understanding -- haven't gotten me anything. I don't need philosophy. I need something to clean my goddamn bathroom floor.

Re-watching Lost, Season 1, Episode 1: "Tabula Rasa"

2009-06-18T06:04:13Z

In this, the first “real” episode of “Lost,” we learn how Kate came to be in the company of the U.S. Marshal, how to construct a dog whistle when you’re stranded on a haunted island, and how not to put someone out of his misery. A full report on “Tabula Rasa,” written by series co-creator Damon Lindelof, right after I search the fuselage for B-O-D-Y-S…

“I got trust issues.” - Kate

Months after Lost’s remarkable pilot episode was shot, the series was picked up for series and it was time for the show’s writers and producers to figure out where the story was going and what the series’ format would actually be.

Although “Tabula Rasa” is the first true episode of the first season, the show is still a work in progress. In many ways, “Tabula Rasa” is the missing final third of the pilot, dealing with the immediate aftermath of where that double-length episode left us off. Some quirks in this episode show us that the producers still hadn’t quite figured out the rhythm of the show and all the conventions of the format. And of course, it wouldn’t be until the show’s next episode, “Walkabout,” that Lost would truly become the show you talked about around the water cooler at work the next day.

Obviously in a Kate-centric episode, the most important aspect of paying off the pilot episode is dealing with the fact that Edward Mars, the U.S. Marshal who had been transporting Kate back to Los Angeles from Sydney in handcuffs, is awake and able to communicate the truth about Kate.

(Hence the name of the episode, literally “a blank slate,” suggesting Kate’s desire to not be burdened by her past. Of course, the title is more than just about Kate. It’s a nod to every character on the show and the entire premise of the show, which is that this is a group of people, most of whom have never met before, who are now stranded on a maybe-not-so-deserted island. They can lie about who they are. They are, like the new kid moving into your school from out of state, a blank slate. Of course, as Lost’s flashback storytelling format rapidly makes clear, every decision you make in the present is indelibly colored by the events of the past. If there’s one theme to the series as a whole, it’s that: The past is not dead. It’s not even past.)

Since this is her big time to shine, let’s talk about Kate. This episode is perfect in that it does what the show will do for several more Kate flashbacks to come — tease you with the idea that you’ll learn details of Kate’s crime, only to leave you unconscious by the side of the highway next to your flaming vintage farmer truck.

I do enjoy the flashback involving Ray Mullen, the recently-widowered one-armed Australian farmer, who knows that “Annie” is on the run from something but is compassionate enough (and maybe needy enough) not to care. Hey, if you were on the run from the law in a foreign land, wouldn’t you want some nice local to befriend you and give you a place to stay? I especially enjoy the scene where Ray discovers Kate removing her money from her hiding place in anticipation of making a break for it. You can play that scene back and watch it from his perspective as a surprised host, then from Kate’s perspective as a paranoid fugitive, and then a third time once you realize that Ray’s not just keeping her around for hospitality’s sake — he’s realized that she’s a fugitive and wants to collect his $23,000 (Australian). (Also, I love that Kate poses as a Canadian, given that Evangeline Lily actually is a Canadian.)

In the end, Kate tries elude Mars by crashing poor Ray’s truck. And what a good job she does of it, turning it into a real CHiPs-level event, complete with multiple rollovers and a nice burst of flame. Turns out Kate’s got a heart of gold, too, because she pulls Ray from the wreck to save his life, even though — as Mars taunts her about — she might have gotten away if she hadn’t stopped to save one-armed (and now truckless) Ray.

Later, after a gratuitous replay of plane-crash scenes from the pilot episode (a trick that the show simply doesn’t do anymore, replaying scenes without providing new information), we learn that all Kate was trying to say to Mars before the plane crash was a request for poor old Ray to get his $23,000 Australian dollars for turning her in. Can you blame her? She wrecked his ride. Talk about guilt.

In the end, of course, the Marshal doesn’t make it. He’s around long enough to provide Jack (and Hurley) with her mug shot, allowing Hurley to declare “She looks hard core!” (So much for Kate’s blank slate, eh?) But before the Marshal gets busy dying, he gets to be a part of some memorable and important scenes. His screams of torment enliven the very first real one-on-one scene between Sawyer and Kate.

Of course, Kate can’t put him out of his misery because she’s as far from an impartial person as possible — even though she might be the best qualified person to do the job. Instead it falls to Sawyer, who reveals that he might not be the tough guy we all might have assumed he was by botching the job, leaving Mars in even more agony and facing a long, slow death. Jack has no choice, then, but to clean up Sawyer’s mess and end it. Thus begins the Kate-Jack-Sawyer dynamic.

But before Jack does lord knows what to finish Mars off, he’s got one piece of advice for Jack. With the hindsight of 100-plus episodes, it’s amusing to hear what the Marshal tells Jack about his future would-be girlfriend: “No matter what she does, no matter how she makes you feel, don’t trust a word she says. She will do anything to get away.” The way I read Kate’s character, she’s actually the opposite of how the Marshal views her: she’s one of the most trustworthy characters on the show, as well as one of the least likely to flee a difficult situation.

Fortunately for Kate, Jack appears to immediately disregard everything the Marshal says as the rantings of a madman. I mean, can you blame him? She’s so purty. Especially in that orange shirt.

The rest of this episode is largely society-building stuff, necessary to the concept of the show — you’ve got to at least pay lip service to the idea that they’re setting up a society on this island now that they’ve heard the French transmission and realize they might be here for a long time. So we get Sayid exhorting people to collect fresh water, for example. Jack goes into the fuselage (populated by “B-O-D-Y-S,” as Hurley says, not realizing that the whole spelling-out trick doesn’t work on kids older than six) to find medicine and runs into Saywer, who is scavenging for later use. And then there’s Jin, who is once again shown to be a real dick, despite the fact that in all his flashbacks he doesn’t seem quite so boorish.

This episode provides Charlie’s first real act of chivalry for Claire, setting those characters on a path that will have plenty of ups and downs, leading to one of them drowning and the other, uh, disappearing into a ghost shack. By the way, if you’ve watched the episode, did you notice how Charlie helps Claire with her suitcase? He puts it on a conveniently located wheelchair. I wonder who that chair belonged to? We haven’t seen any paralyzed people on the show. Oh well. I’m sure it’s not important.

Speaking of John Locke, in preparing us for next week’s Locke-centric episode, we get a lot more of him in this episode than in the pilot. But he’s still treated as a bit of a weirdo. “Mr. Locke said, a miracle happened to him,” Walt tells Michael, revealing the “secret” Locke told him in the pilot episode. But Michael, ever the bad parent, figures that Locke is too creepy and tries to keep Walt away from him.

As it turns out, the mysterious Mr. Locke is an old softy who has been carving a dog whistle so that he can coax Vincent out of the jungle. And once he’s got Vincent, Locke brings the dog to Michael to present to his son. It’s a really sweet moment, showing that not only is Locke a decent person, he’s got a level of industry that might come in handy.

And yet with all those good feelings, how does the episode end? (I mean, other than the musical montage — as heard through the headphones of Hurley, in another sign that the show is still working out what it wants its overall vibe to be.) With Michael bringing Vincent back to Walt — under the staring eyes of John Locke. Cue creepy music!

Well, which is it, Lost? Is John Locke some creepy guy or is he misunderstood? Why do you go to great lengths to show us that he’s a thoughtful, friendly guy, only to give us as the episode’s parting shot a full pan around his dome and close in on his face as he looks at Walt and Michael while menacing music plays. Yeah, I know, Locke is a mysterious guy. But when you have characters behaving in one way, and then the show’s technical tools — camera moves and music cues — push you in a totally different way, it’s disconcerting. As if the music and camera angles are trying to negate the script.

The guy carved a freakin’ dog whistle and then gave the kid’s dad the chance to look good by returning his dog as if the dad had found it himself. And for that, he gets creepy music and a weird panning shot? Dirty pool.

Skippable? Not really, but this episode is not quite as essential as you might think. There’s a lot of extension of the pilot episode. Still, how can you not want to see how it was that Kate was captured? Though if you want to see the crime she committed, you’ll be waiting a while.

Superfluous: There’s a scene where Michael accidentally finds Sun topless. This is the beginning of a very strange plot thread in which Jin becomes jealous of Michael, putting them at odds during the building of (and torching of) the first escape raft. I kind of got the feeling that the writers were halfheartedly trying to create a love triangle between Sun, Jin, and Michael. In hindsight it seems kind of dumb. But it seemed dumb at the time, too.

Up next: Get your brochures and a comfortable pair of I’m-not-actually-walking shoes. It’s time for a “Walkabout” with John Locke. And if you see John Locke, just for kicks, tell him what he can’t do. He loves that.

Got a comment? Feel free to join in.

Mister, we could use a leading man like Walter Matthau again

2009-06-15T17:20:44Z

Did you see the Taking of Pelham One Two Three remake this weekend? Me, neither. And why should you? By most (but not all) accounts, it's a by-the-numbers Tony Scott picture that borrows the title and a few other conceits from the 1974 original, but lacks the humor (and the score) that made the first film a cult classic. (This was entirely predictable, of course.)

Christian Toto picks up a theme that Joel Mathis raised in our podcast a few weeks back: Could a guy like Walter Matthau, the hero of the original Pelham One Two Three, ever get cast as the lead in an action drama today? Toto explores some possibilities in his latest article for BoxOffice.com. Fact is, Toto writes, "Few of today's biggest stars look like the guy or gal one might find sitting next to them on a subway."

Are there exceptions? Sure. Toto mentions some. We discussed some in the podcast, and even named our candidate for the 21st century's Walter Matthau. Hint: He's never played an action hero, but he was the villain once.

Hunger of memory

2009-06-06T03:25:42Z

Our friend Jimmy J. Aquino at the mighty Fistful of Soundtracks blog has begun a new series of posts he's calling "Lacuna Matata." His mission is "to preserve the fading memory of TV shows (or in some cases, comic books) that no one except me remembers watching because the networks somehow Lacuna'd these things from everyone's noggins." Part one deals with the short-lived Fox series, Tribeca. Part two is everything you would ever want to know about Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. Check it out.

What's the score?

2009-06-03T05:30:43Z

I love film music. Love it. One of the first LPs I ever bought with my own money was a John Williams soundtrack (although I'm embarrassed to admit which one.) I'll often buy soundtracks to movies I haven't seen or have no plans of seeing anytime soon. Carter Burwell's score to Twilight, for example.

So it was only a matter of time, I suppose, before my collaborator Joel Mathis and I did a podcast about movies and their soundtracks. We had a lively and wide-ranging discussion this weekend with Washington Times critic/Denver film maven Christian Toto and Fistful of Soundtracks host, blogger and fledgling comics writer Jimmy J. Aquino. I read Toto's reviews religiously and I've been a fan of Aquino's Internet radio show for years, and so it was a real treat to talk to them both. Among the topics we discussed:

Whether Drag Me to Hell is suitable for toddlers and why Sam Raimi should be admitted to the Overrated Artiste Club;
How the symphonic tradition up and moved to Hollywood and whether soundtracks deserve more respect than they get;
Why Ed Asner should be made into an action figure and Walter Matthau was a great if unlikely action hero;
Who deserved to get the Matthau role in the upcoming Taking of Pelham One Two Three remake;
"And much, much more!"

Alas, none of us had seen UP when we recorded this episode, but if we had, I might have confessed to bawling through half the movie. Because I'm a sap. But I would also have made the point -- as if it really needed to be made -- that much of what makes UP so memorable and poignant, especially in the film's opening scenes, is Michael Giacchino's score. Giacchino, of course, gave us the music to the Star Trek reboot. And he also did the soundtrack for the upcoming Land of the Lost. (Ah well, two out of three ain't bad.)

After you've listened to the podcast, I hope you'll visit What Would Toto Watch and A Fistful of Soundtracks. And graphic novel fans may want to check out Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology, which feature's Aquino's story, "Sampler."

Re-watching Lost, Season 1, Episode 0: "Pilot"

2009-06-02T06:11:08Z

With the ending of the penultimate season of “Lost,” I had a wacky idea. In early 2010 — seven months from now — ABC would begin unspooling the final 17 episodes of this wonderful show, which I would provisionally place in my all-time top 10 TV series list.

“Lost” is a show with plenty of narrative twists and turns, some (just how many depends on who you ask) planned, some unplanned. The realities of creating a weekly TV show that’s got aspirations of being a “novel for television” mean that, over time, some threads simply go nowhere. (Hey, novelists don’t have characters demand that they get out of their contract halfway through the story. At least, not sane novelists.)

In any event, to celebrate the coming conclusion of this story, I decided to go back to the beginning. Between now and early 2010, I plan on watching every episode of “Lost,” in the order they aired. And, inspired by Alan Sepinwall’s retro-recap blog entries about series such as “Freaks and Geeks,” “Cupid,” and “The Wire,” I’ve decided to blog about those episodes as well. (I’m hardly alone; find more people doing this same thing here.)

While Alan Sepinwall was kind enough to do two versions of “The Wire” recaps, one for veterans and one for newbies like myself, currently my plan is to blog only based on full knowledge of the show’s entire run up through mid-2009. (If someone out there really wants to watch “Lost” from the beginning, let me know in the comments and I’ll consider creating a newbie version.)

With that said as prologue, and powered by those Sepinwall watch-alongs that I’ve done the past few summers, more about the extraordinary pilot episode of “Lost” as soon as I find an assortment of pens…

“Two players. Two sides. One is light, one is dark.” — John Locke

I’ve seen this jumbo-sized (total running time: 82 minutes) episode of “Lost” more than any episode of the series. I watched it twice in its original, leaked-on-the-Internet form (which differs significantly from the final product only in the sequence of some beach scenes, which were pushed back in order to create a proper ending at the one-hour mark, with the death of the pilot) and have seen it at least three more times since.

It’s the most expensive TV pilot ever made. But is it the best? Well, it comes close. Certainly it looks like it cost a fortune (which it did). And it introduces us to a slew of characters and provides a set of mysteries that kick-start the series ongoing storylines.

Most interesting to me is the way the pilot handles the plane crash. The first shot of the series, a close-up of Jack Shephard’s eye as he awakens in the jungle, is not only the series’ most iconic and re-used image, but a bold storytelling choice. This show, which might be more conventionally told by following these characters onto the plane and then showing them crash-land on this strange island, instead begins with the crash already completed.

When we finally do see the crash, it’s in three flashbacks — introducing us to the show’s unique time-fractured style, though without the sound-effect conventions that the rest of the series will use. Each flashback provides slightly more information, starting with Jack’s slightly mundane one, moving on to a somewhat more diverting one involving Charlie and his heroin, and ending with Kate’s — at the very end of the episode — actually showing us the money shot of the plane’s tail section shearing away from the fuselage. (Hmm… I wonder what happened to the people in the tail section? Oh well, I don’t suppose it’ll ever come up.)

Anyway, back to the opening sequence, a masterful seven-minute scene that begins in the relative calm of the jungle and ends with screaming crash victims, a whining jet engine running on the last remnants of its fuel, and of course the explosion of said fuel. (I love how the first thing Jack sees once he opens his eyes is Vincent, apparently unharmed, walking through the undergrowth. Vincent seems like a hallucination or even a ghostly visitation in his appearances in this episode, and it’s a fun moment when Jack realizes that he didn’t imagine that dog he saw in the jungle, and is able to tell Michael that Vincent is alive and well.)

If there’s a scene that’s etched in my mind from this episode, it’s the steadicam shot in which we follow Jack out of the jungle and on to the beach. The sounds of horror are slowly getting louder, but as the shot pans to the right, there’s nothing but gorgeous, peaceful tropical sand stretching off into the distance. It’s like an advertisement for a Hawaiian resort. Then the camera whips around to follow Jack to the left, and into the hell of the crash site. I love the contrast — we’re in paradise, but under the most unfortunate of circumstances.

Once he reaches the crash site, the first thing Jack does is try to save a guy trapped under debris (helped by John Locke). Fitting that Jack, whose entire character is built around his compulsive need to fix things, jumps at the opportunity to save people at the crash site. In the moment, it’s quite heroic. With the distance of 100-plus episodes, though, it’s easy to see this character trait for all its strengths and weaknesses. In the heat of the moment when surrounded by flaming wreckage, yes, Jack’s a hero. The rest of the time, those same traits can make him insufferable and screw up his life.

I will admit that after the fifth season of “Lost,” I found it a lot harder to watch the opening scenes on the beach. And I suspect this feeling will trend throughout the first season, when we spend a lot of time with the castaways as a whole. Because here’s the thing. As terrible as this plane crash was, there were 48 survivors from the main section of the plane. And out of that group, do you know how many of them survived to see the end of season six? I count ten. The other 38 characters — mostly “socks,” as the producers refer to the interchangeable generic survivors — all end up dead, either killed by Ethan or crushed by a drugrunner’s plane or buried alive or shot by flaming arrows or strangled to death by Benjamin Linus.

Knowing that for all of Jack’s heroism, the only people to survive the crash of the main fuselage are Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sawyer, Sun, Jin, Sayid, Walt, Rose, and presumably Claire, is pretty depressing. If I have a major complaint about the execution of season five, it’s the massacre of all the remaining beach survivors (at the hand of flaming arrows). I know, I know, it was simpler to kill ‘em off. But it does chip away at the whole story of a bunch of people surviving this terrible plane crash.

Speaking of future events ruining nice moments from the pilot, I always liked Jack’s story to Kate about how after making an error during surgery, he allowed his fear in for five seconds, then got past it and took care of the patient. It’s a nice scene with a great callback, when Kate counts to five after the intial attack by the Monster on the episode’s title character, Gregg Grunberg’s Pilot.

But now, thanks to the final episode of the fifth season, we’ve seen that scene. Jack nicks the dural sac and his father, Christian, tells him to count to five. Wait, what? You mean it wasn’t Jack’s own clever rule to compartmentalize fear, but rather his father forcing him to do it? Drag. That scene was better in my imagination.

In hindsight, it’s funny to realize that in that memorable scene where Jack has to save someone from Boone’s bad lifeguarding skills, it’s actually Rose who’s being saved. (And while at the time I was touched with the tragedy of Rose’s husband dying because he was in the bathroom when the tail section fell off the plane, now I’m amused because I know that Rose and Bernard will eventually be reunited and live happily ever after in the 1970s. I wonder how Bernard experienced the crash, locked up inside the head?)

There’s so much to cover here, so much that’s fundamental to the mythology of “Lost”. The French transmission on a loop for 16 years. (Left by Danielle Rousseau.) The polar bear. (Part of the Dharma research stations on Hydra island.) Sawyer taking the marshal’s gun and badge because he “thought it was cool.” Sayid’s gulf-war unit being the Republican Guard. Hurley’s first “Dude”. (“Dude, I’m not going anywhere!”) Sun and Jin talking exclusively in Korean, with Jin alternately barking orders at Sun and offering small slices of fish to Hurley and Claire. Michael’s first line of dialogue. (“Waaaaaaalt!”) And even those first tantalizing and familiar sounds of the monster, rumbling around in the jungle and giving everyone on the beach something to think about.

And then there’s John Locke. Locke ends up being one of the most important characters in the series, but in this episode he only really has two notable scenes. And yet, what an impact those two scenes make. First, he turns and looks at Kate and smiles, his mouth full of orange peel. When she looks at him, he then turns the orange into a makeshift frown, sticking his lower lip out. It’s such a very odd scene, and it makes no sense by itself, though knowing that Locke has just experienced a miracle certainly puts it in a different light.

Locke’s one proper scene is even creepier. It’s just him and Walt. Locke is setting up a backgammon game, and explains to Walt that the game goes back 5,000 years to ancient Mesopotamia (and it’s a “much better game than Checkers”). He then lays down a line so clearly intended to foreshadow the series’ story arc, there might as well be a flashing neon sign next to a copy of Stephen King’s “The Stand.” “Two players. Two sides. One is light, one is dark. Walt, do you want to know a secret?”

We won’t hear the answer, or find out what the secret is, for a couple of episodes yet. And as for the suggestion of an ages-old struggle between light and darkness, you’ll need to wait 100-plus episodes for a scene on this very same beach between a man wearing light clothes and another wearing dark clothes.

Skippable? Some episodes will be skippable, and I’ll tell you which ones you can avoid if you want to save time. But no, sorry, you’ll need to watch this episode or you won’t know what the heck is going on. (“What’s all this about a plane crash? When did that happen?”)

Superfluous: I will also chronicle things that I see that seemed important at the time, but ended up being superfluous due to the meandering story and casting issues that go on when you’re making a TV show for six years.

I know we’re going to be seeing more of them throughout the first couple of seasons, but let me tell you, all the scenes between Boone and Shannon made me die inside a little bit. They just don’t matter. Yes, it’s sad when Boone dies suddenly later on this season, and even tragic when Shannon is accidentally killed by Ana Lucia. But you know what? Lift them out of the story and it all goes on fine without them. They are truly the appendix, the vestigal third (and fourth?) nipples of “Lost.” Sorry, Rutherford family. Shannon fills out a bikini well and I’m sure the ladies find Boone dreamy, but in the end they’re just socks with extra lines of dialogue.

Up next: The series properly begins with “Tabula Rasa,” in which we learn much more about Kate.

Got a comment? Feel free to join in.

Up

2009-06-01T18:34:48Z

Up is really, really good. Go see it. I cried.

The history of the decline and fall of a TV series, volume 1

2009-05-28T06:34:48Z

"The history of a TV series, like the history of a nation or an art movement, falls into four periods," writes Robert Fulford in the National Post, "primitive, classic, baroque and decadent."

For example: Without A Trace. (Hat tip: Arts & Letters Daily.)

Hell is a place not unlike Rockville

2009-05-28T05:42:26Z

For reasons he can't begin to justify or explain (and yet somehow does), Reihan Salam at The American Scene stayed up incredibly late Tuesday night to write a column -- and he wound up watching all 20 installments of the WB's new web series, Rockville, CA.

"Wow," he writes. "That's really embarrassing."

And how. I haven't seen the show, but Reihan's post -- which is really quite long -- delves into the particulars of what sounds like a uniquely irritating program. On the upside, it has Veronica Mars and Freaks and Geeks-ties, so I'm sure it will make Nathan happy.

Why I should be writing comic-book movies instead of the savants on YouTube

2009-05-26T03:00:18Z

So I saw this fan trailer for “Green Lantern” on YouTube, which is basically an “Oh, Nathan Fillion, you’re so heroic!” love letter, and to each their own, but man, oh man, please do not make “Green Lantern” as the cult of Hal Jordan’s personality.

Comic movies as origin stories are played out and boring, and I really think any Green Lantern movie should take a cue from J.J. Abrams’ rebooting of the “Star Trek” franchise, toss all eleventy-billion decades of backstory out the window — fanboys, simply knowing all this minutiae is reward enough — and make a straight-up action flick. Call it “Lantern Corps” And make it thusly:

Hal Jordan (Dennis Quaid) and Guy Gardner (Bruce Campbell, playing the comic relief for sure) are tasked with training Earth’s two newest Lanterns, Kyle Rainer (Josh Hartnett) and Jon Stewart (Tristan Wilds). Kyle is, of course, an artiste and super-sensitive and oh, how he sees Hal Jordan as a respected father figure. Jon is straight out of the stint in the Marine Corps he planned on using to pay for architecture school. He is not so jazzed to be a Lantern, and unfortunately, Hal doesn’t know how to get through to him.

Even more unfortunately, Hal doesn’t get a chance to figure it out, because Sinestro (Clive Owen) kills him. All the new recruits know is that Sinestro was the guy who trained Hal. And if Hal couldn’t take his old teacher what chance do they — incompletely trained by the perpetually hung-over Guy — stand?

And so the movie unfolds. Extraterrestrial Lanterns come in to help out (including Kilowogg, as played by Duane Johnson), Kyle keeps his girlfriend from getting stuffed in a fridge, Jon eventually comes around because he’s secretly one hell of a guy, there’s a big battle with Sinestro, and at the very end — we have two new Earth Lanterns who have managed to hold off Sinestro Corps. Perhaps there’s an Easter egg at the very end of the movie where we see both Lanterns walking into a Justice League meeting.

(The sequel gets called “Green Lantern” and it tracks Kyle and John’s falling out. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

My main point here: a movie is not a comic book. It’s not a validation of years of fandom and storytelling, it’s not a multimillion-dollar valentine to the fewer than one million people who read comics in the U.S., it’s not a chance for the self-reinforcing nature of fandom to impose its taste on a wider audience. It’s not repeating the same old story over and over again. A movie is a chance to pick up some of the best beloved aspects of a story from another medium, and to make them dance within the confines of a finite running time, gilded by the sheer gigantic scope of special effects.

So let go of the past. You have nothing to lose but your inherently contradictory continuity.

Why "Dollhouse" Struggles and "Fringe" Soars

2009-05-13T13:50:12Z

Last night's exhilarating, ambitious season finale of Fringe plunged the show headlong into fantastical territory, after a season of gingerly dipping its toes into that end of the pool. Viewers as a whole supposedly don't like the sort of straight-up science fiction the Fringe finale embraced, as evidenced by the fan-lamented apparent death of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the low ratings suffered by Joss Whedon's Dollhouse.

But if anyone can sell sci-fi to folks who just want to leave the TV on for a bit after American Idol, it's J.J. Abrams, who currently stands athwart the entertainment world like a bespectacled, Apple Store-loving colossus. After comparing Fringe's season-ender to Dollhouse's murkier but equally excellent wrap-up to its season's main story, I think I might know why.

Here are a few reasons why the same folks who shrug at Dollhouse seem to embrace Fringe -- and one way in which Whedon's latest creation definitively thumps Abrams'.

Warning: SPOILERS follow for Fringe and Dollhouse's finales.

1. A simpler concept
On Fringe, bad, icky stuff is happening, and good (and good-looking) people have to stop it. That's easy for anyone from Joe Sixpack to Jane Radcliffe to grasp. The series' mission statement is just that -- a statement. Dollhouse, in contrast, has more of a mission question. What makes us us? If you separate our minds from our bodies, does any part of us remain behind? If you allow us to overwrite our identities, and swap our bodies at will, could you destroy civilization? And seriously, how hot is Eliza Dushku in dominatrix gear?

OK, maybe that last one is less central to the series (answer: profoundly). But in general, Whedon is a philosopher who also likes to entertain; Abrams is an entertainer who dabbles in just enough philosophy to make his work look cooler. He's not interested in the ethical implications of a mutated monster smashing up an airplane -- he's interested in the awesomeness of a mutated monster smashing up an airplane.

Fringe did veer briefly into meatier mental territory with the finale's revelation that mad scientist Walter Bishop abducted an alternate universe's version of his dead son, who's since grown up never knowing his true origins. But in general, the only question Abrams' work invites the audience to ponder is a simple and admittedly brilliant one: What's gonna happen next?

2. Clear-cut good and evil
Mind you, I'm not saying we'll have any idea who the various factions in Fringe's world are working for, or what ends they ultimately serve -- not until the end of the third season, at least. But we're pretty sure that the hot blonde FBI lady, her hunky brooding surrogate brother-slash-love-interest-and-all-of-a-sudden-this-just-got-a-little-freaky, and his wacky lovable weirdo genius dad are the good guys. (Maybe not so much the wacky weirdo genius, but we're constantly reassured that he means well.) Meanwhile, the slyly evasive lady with the robot arm? And that freaky English dude with the bandaged-up face and the one creepy eye? Yeah, they're pretty much evil.

On Dollhouse, no one's quite so cut and dried. The white-knight FBI agent out to rescue the girl is paranoid, slightly creepy, and ultimately putting her in danger. The bodyguard who keeps her in her cage also loves her like a father. The icy mommy figure is secretly ravaged by guilt and regret. The lovable wacky nerd is a self-loathing sociopath. The doctor with the scarred-up face is kindly and compassionate -- right up until she isn't. And the damsel in distress herself is in no particular hurry to be rescued, and may actually be the most powerful one of all. With the possible exception of Dushku's Echo and the other dolls -- who are literally different people every week -- there's no one on Dollhouse you can feel entirely comfortable rooting for. And we all know how much viewers love that sort of confusion.

3. Overdogs vs. Underdogs
Joss Whedon cannot help letting his geek flag fly. Part of the reason his work attracts such vocal, enthusiastic, and, well, bugnuts psychotic fans is that it's centrally concerned with oddballs, outcasts, and underdogs. On Dollhouse, the titular organization is quite literally underground and off the grid, and the closest thing the show has to a conventional hero is a renegade with a threadbare career, mocked and despised by all but a handful of his coworkers -- and possibly for very good reason.

Fringe, in contrast, has a sexy, lovable blonde knockout working with the full support of one of the nation's most powerful law enforcement agencies, and nearly everyone around her telling her at every juncture how totally right she is about everything. For someone who works in a basement lab with a disgraced mad scientist, she's got it pretty darn easy. Indeed, one of this past season's lamest elements was the introduction of a cookie-cutter antagonist who threw roadblocks in Olivia Dunham's path simply because he didn't like her. And because she'd busted him for sexual harrassment that one time. And, oh yes, because he was evil. (And then he got set on fire by this one lady's brain.)

To some extent or another, we're all underdogs. The geekier among us may dream of being accepted (and powerful) without giving up our outsider status. But I suspect most of us would rather pretend that we're one of those fortunate and often fictional people for whom everything goes right.

4. That dude with the melty face could be me!
The horrible (and, compared to the spooky elegance of The X-Files, often tiresomely gory) things that happen on Fringe happen on playgrounds and buses and oh, so very many airplanes, to regular people -- for a given upper-middle-class, mostly-white, 18-to-34-year-old demographic value of "regular," at least. The notion of paranormal threats takes on extra urgency when you can easily picture yourself as the person spontaneously combusting.

On Dollhouse, in contrast, only the super-ultra-rich can generally afford to hire the Dolls' services, which leads to a lot of plotlines about horse-loving heiresses, evil millionaires, spoiled pop divas, and a lot of other people to whom viewers not only cannot relate, but actively dislike. A lot of the series' strongest moments have come when the Dolls deal with more regular people -- most notably the pro bono case in which Echo counsels a horrifically abused little girl, which led to one of Eliza Dushku's most appealing and compelling performances of the entire season. And the single best client of Dollhouse's season, by a country mile, was Patton Oswalt's regular-joe Internet millionaire, still quietly grieving for the one thing his money can't recover for him.

Combined with one heck of a great lead-in from American Idol, I suspect those four reasons explain why Fringe is coasting easily into a second season, while Dollhouse remains tenaciously on the bubble. (I'm heartened by word that it may get a second season after all; it's become a great show, and more than deserves a long and healthy run.) And in season two, let's hope that Fringe takes a page from Dollhouse in remedying its greatest weakness:

5. A boring central character
As Olivia, Anna Torv's got all kinds of ridiculous charisma -- which is good, since her character's as dull as a post. True, the show's hinted that there may be reasons for Olivia's drabness; a fellow veteran of the childhood experiments that may have given her dimension-hopping superpowers talks about living a quiet life and "wearing the black and gray," which sounds eerily like Olivia's own wardrobe. (Wait! Does this mean Ned the Piemaker from Pushing Daisies also got dosed with Cortexiphan?)

But for the most part, Olivia's spent the entire season frowning, delivering exposition, and occasionally kicking people's asses. She proved entirely superfluous to the events of Fringe's season finale, accomplishing absolutely nothing that drove the plot forward. Walter hung out with the Observer (hey, Abrams, the estate of Jack Kirby is waiting for its royalty check) and dug up his dimension-sealing device. Peter used said device at the last minute to stop the diabolical David Robert Jones from crossing between worlds. Olivia, uh, stuck pins in a map, shot some guys, and took an elevator ride to a chat with Leonard Nimoy in the CGI World Trade Center. When you can't give your central character something vital to do in the season's big concluding chapter, you've got serious problems.

Dollhouse seems to have the opposite problem. Echo's evolved into a fascinating character, albeit one that Eliza Dushku only occasionally seems capable of pulling off. Her perfomances as Echo's various incarnations seemed a bit too samey throughout the season, with a few notable exceptions. But the actress and the character really came into their own in the finale; the newly integrated Echo bolting up from her brain-wiping chair like a big damn superhero was an even more striking and iconic moment than Fringe's delightfully ballsy concluding image. And her pipe-assisted beatdown of the series' Big Bad gave Echo more power and conviction in a matter of minutes than Oliva Dunham and her FBI badge and gun have mustered in an entire season. (Also, no offense to the wonderful John Noble, but Alan Tudyk's jaw-droppingly awesome guest shot on Dollhouse wins the crazy-off hands down. Give the man an Emmy already. Possibly five.)

In the best of all possible worlds -- a concept Fringe has become only too familiar with -- next fall will herald more spine-tingly popcorn thrills from Abrams, and more head-bending metaphysics from Whedon. And if we're really lucky, Fringe will put a little more meat on Olivia Dunham's bones, characterwise, and Dollhouse will emerge from the basement and hang out with the popular kids a bit more often.

Where I Stand: Lost, Fat

2009-05-11T03:13:35Z

After a night of catching up with the most recent episode of Lost, my wife and I were drifting off to sleep in our bed, that raft of marriage from which couples weather the storms and calm waters of life together.

"G'night, Kate," I said.

"What?" Dawn asked.

"I called you Kate. I just wanted to see if I'm Jack or Sawyer."

"Oh." A moment spun out in silence. "G'night, Hurley."

Sit Down, Shut Up, Tune In

2009-05-08T22:29:57Z

One of the joys of Hulu is discovering shows you might never have given a shot on broadcast television. (You hear that, networks?) I loved Mitchell Hurwitz's Arrested Development, but early news of Hurwitz's new series, Sit Down, Shut Up, left me lukewarm at best. Reuniting Arrested alums Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Henry Winkler -- and adding the likes of perky, Muppetish Broadway pixie Kristin Chenoweth -- sounded interesting enough. But an animated sitcom about disaffected high school teachers, based on a live-action show from Australia, and featuring smugly jokey names like "Larry Littlejunk" and "Miracle Grohe"? Yeah, not exactly burying the needle on my potential laugh-o-meter.

I was so very, very wrong to doubt. Three episodes in, SDSU doesn't quite hold the promise of being the next Simpsons or Futurama -- or Arrested, for that matter. But it's still got the razor-sharp wit and brilliant writing I loved Arrested for, which automatically makes it funnier than anything Seth MacFarlane ever has or ever will do.

Like Arrested, the show takes a while to grow on you. But give it a few episodes, and you'll start to see the same knack for great, subtle sight gags, the same ingeniously constructed plots, and the same delight in verbal gymnastics that made Hurwitz's previous series such a hoot. ("Has anyone ever told you you're completely oblivious?" "Not to my knowledge!") At SDSU's Knob Haven high, the halls are plastered with posters warning students not to shack up with teachers ("I May Look Worldly, But I'm Completely Broke," reads one), and the school sign welcomes the weekend with "T.G.I. Friday," only to herald the new week with "O.F.I. Monday."

There's also an unusual but welcome reliance on self-referential humor, as the characters occasionally acknowledge they're in a TV show. Weirdly, it's lame the first few times it pops up, but steadily gets funnier and funnier, from a driver's ed car with the license plate B PLOT, to a truly inspired joke about effective editing, to the the bisexual drama teacher who sighs, somewhat poignantly, "Yeah, I'm not going to test well."

The one thing SDSU lacks is likeable characters. Sure, they're funny; some of them, including Arnett's macho numbskull jock and Winkler's miserable, porn-loving, Gollum-like German teacher, are hilarious. But they're all horrible, horrible people with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Bateman's Larry, the hapless gym coach, is supposed to be "the nice guy," but thus far he's a creepy, selfish dweeb pathetically obsessed with getting under the free-flowing skirt of Chenoweth's hippy-dippy science teacher. And she's pretty awful, too, whether she's neglecting her infant son in hilarious ways, or spouting nonsense like "Medicine is just something the Jews made up to get us to pay for it." (When Larry does take a turn for the better in episode 3, it feels more like a callback to Arrested's Michael Bluth than a convincing part of his character.) The Bluth family was a collection of horrors, but you did feel for them once in a while. I can't say the same for this collection of sad sacks, nitwits, and scumbags.

Still, you may not like any of these people, but you'll probably laugh like a hyena at their sweet, delicious pain. I don't feel like braving Fox's Sunday night -- I'd rather not get any stray MacFarlane on me, thanks -- but with Hulu, I don't have to. Although really, if Fox wanted to recapture the hilarity of Arrested Development, maybe they could have, I don't know, not cancelled it in the first place.

You could watch Sit Down, Shut Up Sunday nights at 7 p.m. ET on Fox, but really, don't you have better things to do with your life? Go watch it on Hulu instead.

Should you own a television?

2009-05-05T01:17:26Z

The answer most readers here might offer would be along the lines of: "Yes. Duh." But Peter Lawler at No Left Turns raises the question -- pointing to an essay by Mark Shiffman that argues the negative -- and the discussions in the comments sections of both sites are spirited and interesting.

Writes Lawler: "Reflections like these, at first, make me feel guilty, but finally I'm just annoyed. 'You think you're better than me,' I think, 'just because you don't have a TV.' How much of this reactionary crunchy complacency can one person take?"

A few years ago, I would have been more comfortable in Shiffman's camp, having wasted so much time in front of the idiot box. Now I tend to agree with Lawler that "maybe I'm just a restless American in the midst of prosperity, envious of those content without electronic stimulation." Probably should be reading more. (Or writing for money, as opposed to blogging for nothing...)