“She’s not my daughter. I stole her as a baby from an insane woman. She’s a pawn, nothing more. She means nothing to me.”

Yesterday I began analyzing Lost season 4.  Here are some of my favorite and least-favorite moments from that over-all terrific season!

“Is he talking about what I think he’s talking about?”  ”If you mean time-traveling bunnies, then yes.”

Favorite Episodes:

4.2 “Confirmed Dead” – A great episode that begins to introduce us to the “Freighter-Folk” and raises a whole heck of a lot of new mysteries.  We see Daniel Faraday watching the discovery of the Oceanic 815 wreckage and crying.  We see Charlotte investigating an archaeological dig in Tunisia, where the skeleton of a polar bear (with a Dharma collar!) has mysteriously been found in the middle of the desert.  We learn of Mile’s ability to communicate with the dead.  We see Laipdus, who was also watching footage of the Oceanic 815 recovery, at which point he becomes convinced that the bodies are not actually those of the survivors, and we learn that he was supposed to have been the pilot of 815 that day.  We see Naomi being recruited by the mysterious Abbadon.

4.5 “The Constant” – A phenomenal episode, without question one of the very best of the series. Leaving the island, Lapidus is forced by a storm to shift slightly off the precise bearing that Daniel gave him. As a result, Desmond’s mind is somehow thrown back in time and exchanged with that of his younger self, still serving as a soldier in the Scotts Royal Regiment. Over the course of this mind-bending hour, we are given an enormous amount of information about Daniel Faraday’s time-traveling experiments (information that will prove critical to our understanding of season 5).  We also see, in an intriguing scene, Charles Widmore at an auction, bidding on the first mate’s log from the Black Rock (the ship we know is beached on the island), which we learn had formerly been in the possession of Tovar Hanso (an apparent ancestor of the founder of the Dharma Initiative).  Suddenly we are forced to reconsider Mr. Widmore — he’s not just Desmond’s troublesome potential father-in-law, he’s a man with some sort of connection to the island.  But, of course, none of this fascinating back-story would matter at all if not for the episode’s emotional center: the star-crossed love story of Desmond and Penny.  Their tearful reunion, when Desmond calls her from the freighter’s radio room after having obtained her phone number in the past, is wonderfully powerful stuff, and a highlight of the season (and the series).

4.9 – The Shape of Things to Come – In one of my favorite flashforwards of the season, we see Ben appear (wearing a Dharma parka!) in the middle of Tunisia. (We’ll soon learn that this is where he went after turning the island’s wheel in the season 4 finale – and this explains how the Polar Bear skeleton that Charlotte found in Tunisia in “Confirmed Dead” wound up there.) Ben kicks the ass of some locals (using a weapon familiar to readers of Y The Last Man – a nice nod since this episode was written by Brian K. Vaughan), and then sets out to recruit Sayid’s help. It seems that poor Sayid finally found and married his love, Nadia, but that she was soon after killed when she was hit by a truck. Ben tells Sayid that Charles Widmore was responsible. Desperate for vengeance, Sayid agrees to work with Ben to kill all of Widmore’s men.  The story-line on the island is every bit as tragic and compelling.  The dead body of the freighter’s doctor washes up on the beach, an apparent result of more island-related time dilation, since when they radio in to the boat they learn that the doc hasn’t died yet!  Keamy and his men attack the barracks, killing most of the castaways hiding there,and blowing up Claire’s house. Keamy demands that Ben surrender or he’ll kill Alex. Ben refuses, and in a shocking moment Keamy shoots Alex in the head. A furious Ben enters a secret compartment in his house and summons the smoke monster, who decimates Keamy’s men.  At the episode’s end, we see Ben off the island, paying Widmore a visit in his bedroom and vowing to kill his daughter, Penny, in exchange for Widmore’s killing his.  Filled with I-can’t-believe-that-just-happened moments, this episode is a great example of season 4’s renewed narrative intensity.

“You’re more lost than you ever were.”

Least-Favorite Episodes

4.6 “The Other Woman” — In flashback, we meet Harper Stanhope, the Others’ psychiatrist, assigned soon after Juliet’s arrival on the island to meet with her regularly. The two women seem to take an instant dislike to one another, exacerbated when Juliet begins an affair with Goodwin, Harper’s husband.While the humanization of Goodwin is interesting, Juliet comes off looking pretty poor here (sleeping with a married man).  I also found this episode’s depiction of the cruel love-sick Ben (who declares to Juliet “you’re mine”) to venture too far into over-the-top moustache-twirling villainy, far less interesting than the more subtly manipulative Ben we have previously seen.

4.8 “Meet Kevin Johnson” – This is a fun episode, and it’s great to have Michael back on the show. But I have serious problems with the events portrayed in Michael’s flashbacks. It seems to me that the events depicted would have had to have taken place over MONTHS. When we first meet up with Michael in this episode, he is already suicidal over his guilt and his split from Walt – the implication is that Michael has already been home for a while. And it must have taken additional weeks for Michael to prepare for his task of infiltrating the freighter and then travel to the port in Fiji, and then we must consider the time it would have taken for the freighter to find the island. As I wrote, all of that seems like it would have taken MONTHS. But if you think about it, Michael left the island during the season 2 finale. The freighter has already found the island two-thirds of the way through season 3 (when Naomi parachutes onto the island). Since every episode of Lost pretty much takes place during a single day, that means that only 2-3 weeks, maximum, elapsed from the time that Michael left the island until the time that he returned, disguised as Kevin Johnson on the freighter. I don’t think that tome-line works at all, and it really undermines this episode. I also hate the ending, in which Rousseau and Karl are gunned down in the jungle (by Keamy’s men, which we’ll learn later) and Alex is taken prisoner. I can’t believe how easily the tough, cunning Rousseau – who survived all by herself on the island for 16 YEARS – walks right into the trap set by Keamy’s men. That’s pretty weak.

“Those things had to happen to me. That was my destiny. But you’ll understand soon that there are consequences to being chosen. Because destiny, John? Destiny is a fickle bitch.”

Favorite moments from the season:

4.3 “The Economist” — Daniel Faraday’s rocket experiment that clues us in on the mysterious bubble of time-dilation surrounding the island.

4.4 “Eggtown” — Hurley’s response when he realizes that Kate has tricked him into revealing where Miles is being kept: “You just totally Scooby Doo’ed me, didn’t you?”

4.8 “Meet Kevin Johnson” — Libby’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-her split-second appearance in Michael’s nightmare!

4.9 “The Shape of Things to Come” —  Keamy forces Alex to deactivate the sonic pylons, which causes a phone to ring in Ben’s house, something which really perplexes Locke & the gang! They ask Ben about it, and Ben immediately realizes what has happened – so, in another great moment, Ben quickly whips out the gun he’d apparently been keeping hidden in the seat at his piano!

4.11 “Cabin Fever” — Richard Alpert’s enigmatic visit to the home of a young John Locke.  (Eagle-eyed Lost viewers couldn’t have missed the young Locke’s drawing hanging on the wall, of what appears to be the smoke monster!)

4.12 “There’s No Place Like Home” Pt. 1 — At the memorial service for his father, Jack meets Claire’s mother and learns a staggering secret: that Claire was his half-sister.

“I’m here to tell you that the island won’t let you come alone. All of you have to go back.”

I’ll see you back here next week for my thoughts on Lost: Season 5!

My season-by-season analysis of Lost continues!  Click here for my thoughts on season 1, here for my thoughts on season 2, and here for my thoughts on season 3.  SPOILERS ARE AHEAD, gang, so beware!

“Rescuing you and your people… I can’t really say it’s our primary objective.”

There were times, watching seasons 2 and 3 of Lost when they originally aired, when I must admit that my faith in the show wavered.  There were so many mysteries raised but not answered, and after the terrific first season there seemed to be many times when the show was spinning in circles, narratively.  But season 4 firmly established Lost, in my mind, as one of the greatest TV series of our time, as opposed to a show that started off brilliantly but then slowly settled into mediocrity (cough 24 cough).

The writers brilliantly reinvigorated the show by abandoning their signature story-telling device, the use of flashbacks.  Instead they began presenting us with tantalizing flash-FORWARDS that hinted at what would befall to our castaways in the time between the on-island events of 2004 and what we glimpsed of 2007, when we met the desperate, suicidal off-island Jack in the season 3 finale.  That finale set up all sorts of questions: How did the castaways get off the island?  Why did only SOME of the castaways leave?  What happened to everyone else — were they dead, or did they decide to stay for some reason?  What happened to Jack (and the other Oceanic Six) in their three years off the island?  What drove Jack to become the destroyed, shell of a man that we saw in the season 3 finale?  Whose body was in that coffin??

One of the great strengths of season 4 is that way that, in decidedy un-Lost fashion, every one of those above questions were answered by the end of the season.  Season 4 feels like the most complete of all the seasons of Lost, with a distinct beginning, middle, and end, and in which all of the major questions raised at the beginning of the season (well, really by the finale of season 3) were answered by the end of the season.  That all this was accomplished despite the fact that the season was truncated due to the lengthy writers strike is quite astounding.  (Season 4 was scheduled to be 16 episodes long — much shorter than the 24 episodes-per-season that seasons 1-3 were — but it was shortened to only 13 episodes because of the strike.)  In many ways, I suspect the shortened length of the season turned into one of its greatest strengths.  There’s no flab in season 4 — with only 13 episodes to play with, the writers didn’t have a moment to waste.  As a result, every single episode of the season seems critical to the narrative, and the story rushes forward like a freight train from start-to-finish.

“I’m here, Charles, to tell you that I’m going to kill your daughter. Penelope, is it? And once she’s gone, once she’s dead, then you’ll understand how I feel, and you’ll wish you hadn’t changed the rules.”

I love that, in a surprising change of pace, the first episode of season 4 gives us a spotlight on Hurley!  I enjoyed meeting Matthew Abbadon (played by Lance Reddick, who played Cedric Daniels from The Wire!), though I wish we’d seen more of him during the year.

While season 2 introduced us to the Tailies, and season 3 spotlighted the Others, here in season 4 we meet the “Freighter-Folk.”  Looking back, it’s interesting to contemplate just how critical these characters (Daniel Faraday, Miles, Charlotte, Lapidus) have become to the show.  (This is in contrast to the Tailies, who were pretty much all dead — except for Bernard — by the time season 2 ended.)  Lost’s writers have repeatedly noted how the Freighter-Folk were the ones most impacted by the writers’ strike shortened season — we’d have to wait until season 5 to have many of our questions about them answered.  But this doesn’t weaken their story-lines in season 4 for me at all.  If anything, now having seen season 5, during my Lost rewatch project I found myself even more hooked by the intriguing glimpses we got into these enigmatic Freighter-Folk (such as the weird scene when Charlotte tests Daniel’s memory with playing cards in “Eggtown”).

“You people had therapists?”  ”It’s very stressful being an Other, Jack.”

As the season progresses, there is great fun to be had in watching all the pieces fall into place on the island for the events that we know, from the flashforwards, will be happening to our castaways.  Much of season 4 has a tragic inevitability, and watching Jack & co. struggle mightily to get off the island while we know of the misery that awaits them makes for powerful, compelling viewing.  In the two-part finale, “There’s No Place Like Home,” we see the moment we’ve been anticipating for 4 years – the castaways (some of ‘em, anyways), disembark from their rescue plane and are joyfully reunited with their families (some of ‘em, anyways).  We see the press conference in which they tell their (made-up) story.  (Note that in the cover story, the castaways left the uncharted island on which they had been stranded 108 days after the crash.  That’s a familiar number!!)  Then we get a fascinating series of glimpses into how the Oceanic Six spent their 3 years off the island, scenes that help put into context many of the flash-forwards we’d seen all season long.

Then, finally, we circle back to the Jack/Kate “we have to go back!” scene from the end of season 3. Kate angrily tells Jack that she’s spent the last 3 years trying to forget all the horrible things that happened to them the day they left the island. Jack returns to the funeral parlor, where he meets Ben and we see that the “Jeremy Bentham” in the casket is actually John Locke. Ben tells Jack that they ALL must go back to the island.  Bring on season 5!

“I’ve heard you tell that story so many times I’m starting to think you believe it.”

I’ll see you back here tomorrow, for more specific thoughts on my favorite & least-favorite moments from season 4.

Yesterday I began my look back at season 3 of Lost.  Click here to check out my thoughts on season 1, and here to read my thoughts on season 2.

“This is future crap, isn’t it?”

Favorite Episodes

3.7 “Not in Portland” – Juliet gets a terrifically juicy flashback as we see her performing secret (and somehow unethical?) research on her sister, who Juliet is able to help get pregnant despite her being stricken with cancer. Richard Alpert makes his first appearance as a well-dressed representative of Mittelos Bioscience who tries, repeatedly, to recruit Juliet to come work for him in Portland. We see a few glimpses of Ethan, who has apparently been hanging around Juliet’s place of work, and who is perhaps the one who brought her to Richard’s attention. We see Juliet frustratedly confess to Richard that she can’t work for him because her ex-husband (and boss) would never allow her to take her research elsewhere, and she hysterically wishes that he’d get hit by a bus. Which he does. At which point Alpert tries again to convince Juliet to come work for him, admitting that they don’t really have offices in Portland…

3.8 “Flashes Before Your Eyes” — Click here for my detailed thoughts on this bombshell episode!

3.10 “Tricia Tanaka is Dead” – Oh my goodness do I have great and powerful love for this episode.  Hurley finds an overturned, rusted old Dharma van.  Convinced that the gang needs a win, he sets out to repair it, with some help from Charlie, Jin, and Sawyer.  And repair it they do.  In flashback, we meet Hurley’s dad, played by Cheech Martin. He apparently left Hurley’s mom when the kid was about 10, but she doesn’t seem all that sore about it, as she welcomes him back into her life after Hurley wins the lottery. I guess he’s a jerk for ditching them all those years ago, but he seems like a good-hearted fellow who is genuinely concerned with the depressive spiral that Hurley has fallen into because of the curse he feels is upon him. We see good evidence for that curse early in the episode, when an unfortunate reporter, the titular Tricia Tanaka, perishes when an asteroid (or meteor?) smashes into the Mr. Cluck’s that Hurley purchased. D’oh!  There are so many great moments in this episode. All the silliness with the head of Roger, Workman (who, in a terrific turn, we later learn is none other than Ben’s dad, Roger Linus). Jin and Sawyer drunk on decades-old Dharma beer, and Sawyer teaching him the English phrases he’ll need to keep a woman happy. Hurley looking death in the face. Fantastic.

3.14 “Expose” – Oh boy, another FANTASTIC episode.  The wildly unpopular Nikki and Paulo get their own flashback, and we learn they’ve done some pretty terrible things in pursuit of diamonds.  In a terrifically clever series of sequences, we track back through the events of the first two-and-a-half seasons of the show and see how what Paulo & Nikki were doing weaves in and out of the events we’ve witnessed.  And , of course, we see them ultimately turn on one another and wind up being buried alive.  Rough!  The episode is filled with self-referential fun (Nikki’s line: “I’m only a guest star, and we all know what happens to guest stars”), and other silliness (Billy Dee Williams’ guest appearance!), but the highlight for me is the clever return, during the flashbacks, of many familiar faces (Shannon!  Boone!  Ethan!  Arzt!!).

3.20 “The Man Behind the Curtain” — Benjamin Linus gets a flashback episode.  In learning about Ben’s youth growing up on the island, we get our first real glimpse of the Dharma Initiative and what they were doing on the island in the ’70s.  We meet Horace Goodspeed for the first time (who will be a major player in season 5), as well as Ben’s father Roger (”workman”, who we already met as a corpse in the Dharma van in “Tricia Tanaka is Dead.”)  We see Ben’s first meeting with Richard Alpert (who we learn in this episode is apparently ageless).  And finally, we see at last “the Purge,” in which the Others eliminated the Dharma folk on the island.  This is a tremendous episode, and it fills in some big blanks of the story for us.  And I haven’t even mentioned all the goings-on in present day on the island, such as Ben & Locke’s enigmatic visit to Jacob’s Cabin!

3.21 “Greatest Hits” – This is one of my favorite episodes of the series.  Charlie makes peace with his impending death by listing the five greatest moments of his life, which we experience with him through flashbacks.  It is poignant and powerful, and a wonderful farewell to a beloved character (even though he’s still breathing by the end of the episode).  Attention TV writers: THIS is how you make the death of one if a show’s main characters have impact.

Least-Favorite Episodes

3.11 “Enter 77″ — There’s some intriguing stuff to be found in this episode, and it’s notable for introducing us (in person, at least, as opposed to on a screen in the Pearl) to one-eyed Mikhail.  But the episode is undone, for me, by Locke’s out-of-character behavior.  Locke acts like a total buffoon throughout the episode, becoming obsessed with the computer and allowing Mikhail to escape while his attention has wandered, and then entering 77 and destroying the Flame station.  In light of what we’ll learn in the next episode about Locke’s desire to destroy any methods of communicating with the outside world, I can sort of understand why he destroys the station – and that he did that on PURPOSE, as opposed to as a buffoonish accident.  But I cannot understand how/why he becomes so obsessed with the computer chess game in the first place, before he knew that beating the game would lead to his having an opportunity to destroy the station (something there’s no way he could have possibly known in advance).

3.12 “Par Avion” – 3.10 Claire gets pissed off at Charlie and Desmond for the weird way they’re acting, the result of Desmond again trying to keep Charlie from death.  Things worsen when Desmond messes up (he claims by accident, but clearly on purpose) Claire’s plan to capture a tagged bird that she sees, so she can fasten a message to the bird to be eventually found by the scientists tracking the birds’ movements.  This episode is undone because Desmond’s actions make no sense.  He says that he saw Charlie die on the rocks.  So why did Desmond STOP Claire and Jin from capturing a bird on the beach, when Charlie wasn’t around??  Desmond and Claire only had to go to the rocky area at the end of the episode BECAUSE Desmond had screwed up the first attempt.  This installment isn’t helped by the depressing flashback, in which we see that Claire apparently caused her mother to be terribly injured when they get into a car accident while in an argument.

Favorite Moments from the Season

3.1 “A Tale of Two Cities” — Tom Friendly tells Kate she’s not my type.  Such a bizarre little moment that must be seen in an entirely different light after the events of season 4’s “Meet Kevin Johnson”!

3.8 “Flashes Before Your Eyes” — Desmond sees Charlie singing on the streets of London during his flashback.  And what is Charlie singing when Desmond sees him?  ”Maybe… you’re gonna be the one who saves me…”  Brilliant.

3.13 “The Man From Tallahassee” — After being crippled by his father, we see Locke’s terror at going in the wheelchair.  He says he can’t do it, at which point the orderly replies with the phrase that will become Locke’s motto: “I don’t want to hear about what you can’t do.”

3.20 “The Man Behind the Curtain” — In an early scene in the episode, Ben tells Richard that it’s his birthday and says: “You do remember birthdays, don’t you, Richard?”  That the writers chose to place this scene in the show before we’d learned of Richard’s mysterious age-less nature is a mark of how well-made this show is, and how well-designed it was for repeat viewings.

“You know something about boxes, don’t you John? What if I told you that somewhere on this island there’s a very large box…and whatever you imagined…whatever you wanted to be in it…when you opened that box, there it would be. What would you say about that, John?”  ”I’d say I hope that box is big enough to imagine yourself up a new submarine.”

I’ll be back next week with my thoughts on Lost season 4!

Click here for my thoughts on Lost season 1, and here for my thoughts on Lost season 2!  Remember, there are LOTS OF SPOILERS ahead, so be warned.  OK, let’s dive into Lost season 3!

“The man from Tallahassee?  What is that, some kind of code?”   ”No, John, unfortunately we don’t have a code for ‘there’s a man in my closet with a gun to my daughter’s head’.  Although we obviously should.”

Whereas season 2 broadened the canvass of Lost to include the characters of the Tailies and their stories, season 3 expands the focus even further to begin shedding light on the heretofore enigmatic figures of the Others.

In many ways, season 3 represents a mid-series turning point for Lost.  Towards the end of the original airing of this season, it was announced that the show’s producers had come to an agreement with the network on an end-date for the show.  I don’t think I’m exaggerating to say that this announcement (quite unprecedented for a successful network TV series), literally saved the series.  There were points in season 2 that felt like treading water, and I got that same sensation more than once in the early going of season 3.  But the announcement that the series had a definite end date restored narrative thrust and energy to the show, and allowed the writers to begin parcelling out answers to long-held questions and moving forward on the storylines and plot-twists that they had intended for the end-game of the show.

“Pushing that button is the only truly great thing that you will ever do.”

Season 3 began with a “pod” of six episodes.  When watching these episodes originally I found them to be excruciating, as all sorts of weird things seemed to be happening with no explanation whatsoever.  At this point in the run of the show I was long-since ready for some answers, and I had hoped that this batch of episodes — in which Jack, Kate and Sawyer found themselves held captive by the Others and so we were at last taken inside the Others’ community — would give us some insight into just what the heck had been going on for the first two years of the show, but that was not to be.  To say that this was frustrating would be putting it mildly.  In addition, over the course of these 6 episodes we continued to have to suffer through watching our beloved characters treated incredibly cruelly (something that I mentioned that I found bothersome during season 2 as well), abused mentally and physically by the Others.  This is tough to watch, and as I commented in my write-up of season 2, the Others’ continued cruelty towards our castaways continues to perplex me, particularly if there is some nobility to be found in their attempts to protect the island.

On the rewatch, though, I enjoyed those early season 3 episodes a lot more.  Knowing where the story was going, I had a lot more patience now to watch things unfold, and I gained a lot more enjoyment from noticing all the intriguing little clues that the writers worked into those early episodes about the Others and the way their little society was run.  I’m also a lot more patient with the flashbacks now, and find myself able to enjoy the subtle textures these pieces of back-story add to our characters.  (When season 3 originally aired, I found myself often thinking of the flashbacks as wasted time that could have been better spent giving us some straight answers about the Others.)

What did bother me during the rewatch every bit as much as it did when these episodes originally aired was the ludicrous lack of follow-up to the momentous events of the season 2 finale by the characters on the show.  Why is Charlie so unconcerned about what went down at the hatch when he returns to the beach? Why is no one on the beach at all curious about what happened to Locke or Eko? Why aren’t there search parties out combing the jungle? Why does no one seem at all to care that the entire hatch has IMPLODED?? If the failsafe device was powerful enough to somehow “detonate” or seal the electromagnetic force unleashed by the incident, how did Locke, Eko, and Desmond survive unscathed? What the hell happened to Desmond’s clothes??? None of this makes a lick of sense, and it undermines the stories being told.

Then there is the sad story of Nikki & Paulo.  It’s funny, when season 3 first aired on TV I was every bit as annoyed by Nikki & Paulo as most fans were. I thought it was awkward how they were introduced out of nowhere, and I resented the time taken away from the other characters’ stories.  As a result I, like most fans, was THRILLED when the writers got rid of them in “Expose”.  But rewatching the show on DVD it’s stunning to me just how little screen time these two characters actually had before their demise in this episode.  As a result, watching this season again, I really didn’t mind Nikki & Paulo’s presence as much.  It feelt like they had barely been introduced before getting killed off.  It’s an interesting example of the difference between waiting painfully from week to week when the show aired on network TV versus experiencing Lost on DVD.

“You sure its an Island?”  ”Well what else is it?”  ”Little hot for heaven isn’t it?  They found your plane on the bottom of the ocean. One minute I’m in a car wreck and the next minute I’m in a pirate ship in the middle of the jungle.  If this isn’t hell, friend, then where are we?”

In the second half of the season (as was the case with season 2), things really pick up steam and we get a tremendously compelling run of episodes that lead us into season 4.  Naomi parachutes onto the island with a photograph of Desmond & Penny, and the possibility of rescue by the “freighter-folk” is tantalizingly raised.  Locke begins his journey towards becoming one of (and eventually, possibly the leader of) the Others.  Sawyer (and the audience) are struck by the astounding revelation that the original Sawyer who ruined his life is the same con-man who was Locke’s father, leading to an astoundingly powerful confrontation in the brig of the Black Rock that packs an enormous emotional punch.  We pay our first visit to Jacob’s cabin.

The season finale represents a total game-change for the show, and is probably my single favorite episode of the series.  There are all sorts of dramatic events on the island, as Jack and the gang set their trap for the Others, and then attempt to find the radio antennae on the island in order to deactivate Danielle’s repeating message so they can contact the freighter; Charlie heroically attempts to deactivate the jamming signal in the underwater Looking Glass station; Ben begs Jack not to leave the island and threatens to murder Sayid, Sun and Bernard if he won’t relent; and Locke and Jack have a showdown as rescue appears imminent.  But, of course, the center-piece of the episode is in what we think is a flashback (and the show is put together fiendishly well, so that on a first viewing one could never guess the switch-ending), as we see Jack at his lowest point.  He’s a drunken mess, and only happenstance stops him from committing suicide.  It’s only at the end, of course, that we learn that this isn’t a flashback but a flash-FORWARD.  Jack has been off of the island for THREE YEARS.  It is a devastating gut-punch to see how completely destroyed Jack’s life has become back home – this is far from the happy ending that he (and we!) had been hoping for.  But the real clincher is the final scene, in which Jack finally regains some of the passion that he used to have, declaring to Kate: “WE HAVE TO GO BACK!!”  Brilliant.

“I did not ask for the life that I was given. But it was given, nonetheless. And with it… I did my best.”

See you back here tomorrow for my favorite and least-favorite moments from Lost season 3!

Hope you enjoyed my thoughts about season 2 of Lost! Here are some of my favorite and least-favorite moments:

“Boy when you say beginning, you mean beginning.”

Favorite Episodes:

2.3 “Orientation” —  What a wonderfully bizarre and perplexing episode.  While the opening courts my annoyance by showing us (for the THIRD time!) the held-at-gunpoint scene between Jack, Locke, and Desmond, we finally get some tantalizing new pieces of the story of the hatch and the larger back-story of the show.  We get to watch our first Dharma video (the Swan Station Orientation video) which is a tour-de-force of hints and questions.  We learn that the Swan is only one of several Dharma stations on the island.  We learn that the Dharma Iniviative was funded by Danish Indistrialist Alvar Hanso.  We see the model of the swan station that we’ll see Radzinsky building in season 5.  We hear about “an incident” that lead to the button-pushing being necessary.  Awesome.

2.7 “The Other 48 Days” —  A genius episode, in which we follow the Tailies from the crash of the plane right up through Ana Lucia’s shooting of Shannon. We get lots of information on what happened to this group of survivors (who had it a lot tougher than our castaways), who they are and what makes them tick, and also some intriguing hints about the mysteries of the island and the Others.  (I love that they find an old-style army knife on the body of one of the two Others killed by Mr. Eko. A souvenir of the army team supervising Jughead, I presume?)  I also love that we learn that Bernard was on the other side of Boone’s radio call from the Nigerian plane.  Didn’t see that one coming!

2.10 “The 23rd Psalm” – I love this episode.  It blows my mind.  Eko gets a flashback and we discover how he used to be a violent mercenary, and it was his brother who was a priest.  Eko gets his brother killed and, when he’s then mistaken for a priest, steps into that role.  We learn that the plane carrying drugs in Virgin Mary statues that crashed on the island was actually sent by Eko (though his intention wasn’t for the plan to crash on any mysterious island, of course!!), and his brother’s dead body is aboard.  Crazy.  In this episode we also get our first full glimpse of the monster, and see it’s black-smoke-like nature.  Eko stares it down, and as he does the camera passes tantalizingly THROUGH the monster, thus giving a work-out to the pause button on DVDs world-wide.

“Don’t Mistake Coincidence for Fate.”

Least-Favorite Episodes:

2.11 “The Hunting Party” — I mentioned this episode yesterday.  It’s a particularly frustrating example of middle-season Lost storytelling, in which our characters’ (and our) desperate quests for answers are continually thwarted.  Making matters worse, in this episode Jack behaves in a completely unhinged manner (notice how his crazy-quotient is always dialed up to 11 in his flashback episodes??).  He pushes Kate away with his arrogant, dismissive attitude.  This is something that has really annoyed me during my re-watch.  Also, if the Others aren’t really “bad guys,” as later seasons seem to suggest, I am beyond confused as to why they are so brutally cruel to our castaways here (and in their kidnapping of Walt in season 1’s finale).

2.11 “Fire + Water” — Coming right on the heals of “The Hunting Party,” this is one of the low points of Lost in my opinion.  Charlie takes a walk off the deep end.  Desperate to repair his ralationship with Claire, he’s also haunted by dreams (visions?) that Aaron is in danger. His increasingly manic attempts to convey this to Claire only puts him further on the outs with her and the rest of the castaways. Eventually he becomes convinced that Aaron needs to be baptized, so he starts a fire to lure people away and then grabs Aaron and brings him down to the beach. Locke figures out what’s going on and beats up Charlie. The only thing I hate more than seeing Charlie reduced to such a sad, pathetic state here is the needless cruelty of Locke’s beat-down of him.  I can’t believe none of the other castaways speak up when that happens!!

“So what do you think’s the story with that Libby chick? She’s kind of cute, right? You know, in an I’ve-been-terrorized-by-the-Others-for-40-days kind of way…”

Favorite Moments from the season:

2.1 “Man of Science, Man of Faith” – Jack’s meeting with Desmond as they both jog up and down the stadium steps is one of my very favorite Lost scenes.  It’s fascinating, now, to hear Desmond speak of how he’s training for a race around the world, and the twinkle he gets in his eye when Jack talks about his issues with his female patient (since we now know that Desmond is doing it all for Penny).  Then there’s his parting line: “See you in another life, brother.”  Sure enough!

2.16 “The Whole Truth” — The episode ends with a terrific Ben moment that provides a powerhouse of a cliffhanger.  Having finally been allowed to leave the armory, which has been his prison cell in the hatch, and have breakfast with Jack and Locke, Ben has this to say: “Of course, if I was one of them — these people that you seem to think are your enemies — what would I do? Well, there’d be no balloon, so I’d draw a map to a real secluded place like a cave or some underbrush — good place for a trap — an ambush. And when your friends got there a bunch of my people would be waiting for them. Then they’d use them to trade for me. I guess it’s a good thing I’m not one of them, huh? You guys got any milk?”

2.23 “Live Together, Die Alone” — I will forever love the enigmatic moment, in Desmond’s flashback, in which we see that he met Libby in the past, and that she actually gave him the boat that he used to compete in Charles’ Widmore’s race (and eventually crashed on the island).  But what shoots this scene into the stratosphere is the revelation that Desmond’s boat was named for Libby, something none of our castaways will ever learn.

2.23 “Live Together, Die Alone” — Also from the series finale, I have to mention the final scene, in which we get our first ever present-day glimpse off the island — Penny Widmore’s arctic monitoring station.

“I’ve read everything Mr. Charles Dickens has ever written — every wonderful word. Every book except this one. I’m saving it so it will be the last thing I ever read before I die.”  ”Nice idea, as long as you know when you’re going to die.”

I’ll be back soon with my thoughts on season 3!

Last week I began my look back at Lost with my thoughts on Season 1.  Time now to move on to season 2!

“This is not your island.  This is OUR island.”

There’s a whole heck of a lot to enjoy in season 2 of Lost.  I had a great time revisiting this season during my rewatch project, but I strongly remember how tough this season was to watch, at times, when I first saw it week-to-week on TV.  There are a number of reasons for this, I think.

Season 2 of Lost goes to some dark places.  Many of the characters find themselves regressing and forced to continue struggling with the demons that we might have thought they’d conquered in season 1.  This is realistic storytelling, in which one’s issues can’t necessarily be put to bed so easily, but it also lent season 2 a feeling that we were treading water, narratively.

The same held true for the flashbacks.  This innovative storytelling device (that is so easy, looking back now, to take for granted), is a big part of what gave season 1 its narrative power.  But in many of the season 2 flashbacks, I didn’t feel that we learned much new about our castaways.  (For example, what did we learn in “Adrift” about Michael and his wife that we hadn’t already learned in “Special” from season 1?  What did we learn in “Everybody Hates Hugo” about Hurley that we hadn’t already learned in “Numbers” from season 1?)

Also, in this season the writers expanded on the fractured story-telling style they had played with at times during season 1, in which often they would only give us one piece of what was happening, making us wait to get the rest of the pieces until later episodes.  This is in evidence right from the start of the season, in which, for instance, in each of the first 3 episodes we get a different character’s perspective on what happened down in the hatch after Locke and the gang went down.  Re-watching the show now on DVD, this splitting up of the narrative makes a certain amount of sense, as it enables each episode to have a focus, as opposed to feeling the need to jam updates on every single character into every single episode.  However, I clearly remember watching these episodes when they aired weekly on TV, and this storytelling style was TORTUROUS.  I was desperate throughout the season premiere, “Man of Science, Man of Faith,” to learn what happened to the folks on the raft, and I was desperate throughout the second episode, “Adrift” (and, frankly, throughout the entire rest of the season) to learn more about just how the heck Desmond wound up pushing that button in the hatch!  In both cases, I was out of luck.

I must also comment, here, that I was disappointed that the misbegotten Sayid/Shannon pairing continued into season 2.  I just don’t buy that Sayid’s tough, pragmatic character would fall for vapid, selfish Shannon. (Yes, we learn in her final flashback that she has more depth than that, but nothing in her behavior on the island would have demonstrated that to Sayid.) Plus, Sayid’s two flashbacks to this point have been all about his devotion to his love Nadia. When he declares his love to Shannon in episode 2.6, “Abandoned,” and swears to her that “I’ll never leave you,” I just had to laugh.  Luckily this storyline came to a gruesome end pretty early in the season.  Bravo, brave (and bloodthirsty) writers for your fearlessness in continuing to off main characters, showing us that the death of Boone wasn’t a fluke.

Finally, what makes this season tough to watch in places is the way the castaways (who we have grown to know and love over the course of season 1) are continually stymied — in their efforts to get any concrete answers to anything that is happening on the island, in their efforts to rescue Walt, etc. etc.  Episode 2.11, “The Hunting Party,” is a particularly brutal example, when Tom Friendly refuses to release Walt and insists that there’s a line in the jungle that our people cannot cross.  It’s hard watching our characters continually running into proverbial brick walls — and of course we, the audience, are every bit as disappointed each time that the answers to our questions remain out of reach.

But enough about the negatives!  This is still a terrific season of television, ambitious and challenging, with so much to enjoy.

“Do you not hear me, brother?  I crashed your bloody plane!”

I loved the introduction of the “Tailies” in the beginning of the season, and the way that their stories were slowly integrated with those of the original castaways over the course of the season.  This was a great way in which the writers broadened the canvass of the show, and it allowed us to get to know some phenomenal new characters: Mr. Eko, Libby, Ana Lucia, and Bernard.  There was some dislike, amongst Lost’s fans, of Ana Lucia when she was first introduced (perhaps because of the way that she seemed to be positioned as a new love interest for Jack, in place of Kate), but I always enjoyed her character and did so even more upon the rewatch, when all of her appearances were colored by her tragic end.  (Same goes for Libby, times ten.)

When “Henry Gale” (Benjamin Linus) is introduced in 2.14, “One of Them,” things really kick into high gear, and the show has a great run of episodes leading up to the finale.  Benjamin Linus is one of the great television creations of all time, and he is creepily wonderful right from his first appearance, playing head games with Locke & co. while being locked inside the armory in the hatch.

As the season draws to a close, we get a lot of intriguing morsels of information about the island and what sorts of strangeness has apparently been going down there for decades.  In “Lockdown,” we see the invisible map.  In “?” we discover The Pearl, a Dharma station designed to monitor the goings-on in the Swan station.  In “Live Together, Die Alone,” we get a glimpse of the ruins of an enormous, four-toed statue.  I love that the season begins and ends with Desmond.  His flashback in the season finale, “Live Together, Die Alone,” is one of the most interesting and perplexing of the show’s run.  As we watch scenes of Desmond’s three years on the island, we are given an overload of hints and references to things we don’t yet understand — mentions of vaccines, infections, Radzinsky, etc, — many of which are a lot clearer upon rewatching, while some remain unexplained.

This is a complex season of television storytelling, and I must applaud the writers and craftspeople behind Lost for their towering ambitions, even if I feel that they occasionally missed the mark in this sophomore year.  It’s fascinating, while rewatching these episodes, to see how brave the writers were to pepper these episodes with story-points that wouldn’t become clear until well into the future of the show.  (If I have an overall complaint about Lost as a series, it’s how many of these questions remain unanswered.  Hopefully by the time we get to the end of season 6 we’ll have a lot more clarity on some of these issues.)

Case in point: I am still bothered, somewhat, by something I mentioned in my lengthy list of Lost’s unanswered questions: I feel like we never really got the true story behind the button in the Swan Station. I suspect the Lost writers think they have adequately explained this, but I’m still left scratching my head.  Was the button-pushing really necessary in order to stop the electromagnetic whatever, originally tapped/unleashed in “The Incident”, from getting out of control and destroying the world?  If so, why such a bizarre method of containment (with the weird numerical code and the Egyptian symbols)?  Or was it just a twisted psychological experiment?  The button was such a major part of this season, I’d really like to see some stronger resolution to these questions.  If we’d gotten those answers, I think I’d have more positive feelings overall about season 2.

C’mon back tomorrow for more of my favorite and least favorite moments from Lost season 2!

Yesterday I gave my over-all impressions on Season 1 of Lost.  Today I’m going to get a bit more specific about some of my favorite and least favorite episodes and moments of the season!

“There’s a fine line between faith and denial.  And it’s much better on my side.”

Standout Episodes:

1.3  ”Walkabout” — Our first spotlight on John Locke.  The ending, in which we learn the truth about his “condition,” still packs an emotional wallop even knowing what’s coming (and totally blew me away the first time I saw it).

1.14  ”Special” – Michael and Walt get their flashback and it is HEARTBREAKING. It’s one of the strongest, most poignant flashbacks the show ever did, in my mind. Poor Michael gets screwed over by the cold, cold Susan (Walt’s mom) who leaves him, taking Walt and moving out of the country and eventually shacking up with her boss. Contrary to what we had assumed so far, we learn that Michael desperately wanted to be a part of Walt’s life but that Susan shut him out, going to the point of not even giving young Walt all the letters that Michael wrote him over the years. Then there’s the scene in which Charlie wrestles with himself over whether or not to read Claire’s diary — this is comic gold, and a terrific example of what a brilliant performer Dominic Monaghan is.

1.18 — “Numbers” – At last, a Hurley flashback!!  And it rocks.  If the purpose of the flashbacks is for us to learn things about the castaways that we wouldn’t otherwise expect, and to set the stories on the island in a dramatically different light, then this episode succeeds in spades.  The whole scene in the insane asylum (when Hurley goes to visit the fellow, Lenny, who gave him the numbers) plays a whole lot differently now that we know that Hurley was an inmate there.  (That also explains Hurley’s angry reaction here when Charlie tells him that he’s acting like a lunatic.)  It’s great to see Hurley succeed in finding Rousseau (and getting her to give them a battery to use for a radio in Michael’s raft) despite everyone’s disbelief that he could do so.  Hurley can charm anyone!!

1.23 “Exodus” Part I – A terrific, terrific episode. Through a series of flashbacks we get intriguing glimpses of each of the castaways (including Boone, back for this episode!) in the hours before Oceanic flight 815 launched. We also meet Ana Lucia (who will be such a key character in season 2) for the first time! (It was very clever of the writers to introduce her here, at the end of season 1.)  There are a ton of great character moments in this episode, as Michael prepares to launch the raft. I was impressed by what a nice job the writers did, here at the end of season 1, of bringing a lot of their story arcs to a good end-of-the-year conclusion. Sawyer begins to soften, going into the woods on his own to chop down a bamboo stalk large enough to serve as a mast for the raft (to help repair the damage that happened when they tried to move the raft into the water). Sun and Jin reconcile, and we see Jin being more accepted by the other castaways. Michael and Walt seem to have found a comfortable understanding of one another. Meanwhile, Walt gives Vincent to Shannon, as he can see she is still struggling with Boone’s death, because he says Vincent was able to help him after his mother died. It’s all very nice stuff. Then there’s the dramatic reveal at the episode’s end, in which we learn that the Black Rock is no rock at all – but the name of an old galleon slave-ship that is somehow washed up in the middle of the island. Awesome. I remember being so delighted by that clever twist when first seeing this episode.

“We’re in Hell, huh?”  ”Don’t let the air conditioning fool you, son.  You are here, too.”

Episodes that could have used another rewrite:

1.6  ”The Moth” — Charlie’s flashback (dealing with the corruption that comes from fame and fortune) is overly-simplistic, and all the goings-on with Jack trapped by a cave-in interested me not at all.  The whole thing felt like a writerly device (we need something to keep Jack and the gang busy this week while Kate/Sayid/Sawyer work on triangulating the Frenchwoman’s signal) as opposed to the natural unfolding of the story.  I’m also not clear on why Jack, whose body was entirely pinned by the boulders that piled on top of him when the cave collapsed, wasn’t crippled, with his bones broken in ten million places…

1.11  ”All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues” — This episode contains my least-favorite moment in season 1: the fake-out with the death of Charlie.  Kate and Jack find Charlie “dead” — complete with sad music and a long camera pull-back, which are clearly meant to convey to the viewers that he’s deceased — before learning that, hey guess what, he’s just mostly dead and Jack is able to revive him.  This is an annoying narrative trick that I hate when shows do.  (The Lost writers will do the very same thing to us a few episodes later, in “Hearts and Minds,” when Boone watches Shannon die in his arms before realizing it’s just a hallucination.)  Luckily by the end of this season the show will actually start killing off castaways, thus restoring important “you never know WHAT could happen” tension to the series.  In this episode, though, it’s just annoying.

1.15 — “Homecoming” — Charlie Pace has always been one of my very favorite characters on the show, but for some reason I rarely found myself at all interested in his flashbacks (with the exception being the superlative “Greatest Hits” in season 3).  Here we see Charlie being a total jerk to a woman he gets into a relationship with as a means of ripping off her rich father in order to get money for drugs. Sawyer he is not, and his con blows up in his face and everyone winds up feeling terrible. Yuck.  (Really the only thing I liked in the flashbacks was the joke in which Charlie’s girlfriend Lucy mentions that her dad is looking into purchasing a paper company in Slough. Hello, Ricky Gervais’ The Office!)  But what really lands this episode on this list is that Claire reappears and we discover that she has amnesia.  Ugh.  If there’s a lazier, more overused TV plot device out there, I don’t know of it.  OK, the writers aren’t yet ready to spill all the beans on what Ethan was up to with Claire, but using amnesia as a means of keeping the castaways (and the viewers) in the light is just dumb dumb dumb, and I have little patience for it.

1.21  ”The Greater Good” – In Sayid’s flashback, we learn how he allowed himself to betray a former friend (now a lost soul preparing to be a suicide bomber) in Sydney in order to get information from government agents about the location of his lost love, Nadia.  On the one-hand, it’s one more heartbreaking flashback as we continue to see just how screwed up all of the castaways were before landing on the island.  On the other hand, while I have sympathy for Sayid – who is emotionally lost at this point – it’s hard to muster up too much sympathy for his buddy Asam who, despite the tragedy of losing the woman he loved, is, after all, plotting to blow up innocent civilians.  I also find it a bit hard to square the Sayid we see in this flashback (which takes place RIGHT before his boarding the ill-fated Oceanic flight, as he gets his tickets at the very end of the episode) who is willing to do ANYTHING for even a hint at the location of the love of his life, Nadia, with the Sayid that we see on the island who is mooning over Shannon.  While I’m picking apart this storyline, let me say that my eyebrows raised at just how much the CIA seemed to know about Sayid.  How on Earth did they know that Nadia was the lost love that he’d been searching for??  I am dubious about this plot-point.

“Dude, you got some Arzt on you.”

Favorite Moments from the season:

1.16. “Outlaws” — The mind-bending scene in which we see that Sawyer met Christian Shephard at a bar in Australia.

1.17 “In Translation” — The scene at the end of Jin’s flashback, when he goes to see his father (who is NOT dead as Jin has been telling everyone, even Sun).  Without any boring exposition, the dynamic is clear: Jin has been ashamed of his poor fisherman father.  Yet this man has great dignity, and a heck of a lot of common sense.  His comment to his son: “It IS a good world” is such a simple, heart-felt declaration, that effected me powerfully (as it does Jin in the episode).  What a wonderful moment.

1.22 “Born to Run” — Kate’s reunion with her dying mother doesn’t quite go the way she’d planned when, instead of a tearful reconciliation, Kate’s mom calls the cops the moment she sees her daughter.  It’s a stunning, tragic moment that really surprised me (in the best possible way) when I first saw this episode.

1.22 “Born to Run” — In one of my favorite Lost moments, ever, we see that Charlie is working on a new album and that he has named track two “Monster eats the Pilot.”

1.23 — “Exodus” Part 1 – I also absolutely adore the “I guess this is goodbye” scene between Jack and Sawyer in the jungle. Jack gives Sawyer a gun to take on the raft, “just in case,” an extraordinary gesture of trust on the good doctor’s part. Sawyer responds by finally telling Jack that he met his father in Sydney before he died, and that Christian loved and respected his son. After Sawyer chose not to reveal that to Jack back in “Outlaws,” I had assumed that story point would never be referred to again, that it was another of the enigmatic connections that the castaways all had with one another prior to boarding Oceanic flight 815 that they’d never know about. So I was really, really happy to see this brought up again here, and the scene is a lovely burying-the-hatchet moment between Jack and Sawyer. The two actors have never been better.

1.24 - “Exodus” Part 2 — Arzt blows up.

I’ll see you back here soon with my thoughts on season 2!

As I’ve mentioned in my recent posts about Lost (my discussion of the implications of Desmond’s time-traveling in the season 3’s “Flashes Before Your Eyes” and my voluminous list of the burning unanswered questions still hanging at the end of season 5), my wife & I have been engaged for several months now in a massive (and massively entertaining) project of re-watching the entire series in preparation for the beginning of the show’s final year.  (I am pleased to say that we just made it in under the wire, finishing the season 5 finale mere hours before the airing of the season 6 premiere!!)  Over the coming weeks I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the series, in a season-by-season run-down.

As with all of my Lost posts, these articles will be replete with spoilers — there’s just no way to discuss the series without mentioning some of its plot twists — so anyone who hasn’t seen the show should read on at their own peril.

OK, here we go!

“Guys… Where are we?”

It’s extraordinarily impressive to me just how well the show’s pilot and early episodes fit with the show today.  Those early installments all “feel” like true Lost episodes, unlike many shows whose first season episodes bear little resemblance to what their shows ultimately became.  The biggest difference, of course, is the amount of time spent with characters who are no longer around: Michael, Walt, Charlie, Boone, Shannon, Claire (though hopefully she’ll be back in season 6!).  Also surprising is just how little screen time John Locke has in the pilot – though his “do you want to know a secret” line to Walt remains a powerful and mysterious introduction to that compelling fellow.  I am also impressed how nothing that we’ve learned about any of the characters in the subsequent seasons makes anything in the pilot not work (because the writers hadn’t figured out “x” aspect of any character’s back-story yet).  Rather, the iconic character traits of many of the castaways are established right from the beginning — Jack’s desire to always fix things, Kate’s instinct to run away, Locke’s mantra of “don’t tell me what I can’t do,” etc.

It is interesting, though to see how far John Locke has strayed from the person he was when he first crashed on the island.  I really like the Locke that we see in the first half of season 1 — I miss him!  This Locke has great moral certainty, he’s very helpful (keeping his cool when Charlie stumbles onto the hornets’ nest; trapping, killing, and cooking boar for everyone to eat) and I find myself agreeing with him a LOT in these early episodes.  (The castaways SHOULD focus on surviving as opposed to waiting around for a rescue.  Charlie SHOULD face up to his drug addiction.  Etc.)

But the character who has changed the most is without question Sawyer.  Whereas Jack, the purported “hero of the show,” has seemed unable to shake his core issues (still claiming desperately to Kate “I can fix this” even in season 5), Sawyer has really grown from the angry, closed-off person we see in the pilot.  But what’s also fascinating to me upon rewatching the show is how much my opinion of Sawyer has changed.  Like most people, I hated Sawyer when I first watched season 1 — I thought he was a big jerk, selfish and insensitive.  But when watching these episodes a second time I find myself thinking MUCH more favorably of his actions.  Yes he is selfish, and yes he can be mean (with his nicknames and his biting comments).  But Sawyer in many ways is also the most HONEST character on the show (except maybe for Hurley).  He’s one of the only castaways who doesn’t seem to play games, and who really says what he thinks.  (Could you really say the same about Jack, Kate, Locke, or Sayid?)  I also think that Jack and Kate really act like pricks towards him, constantly ransacking his stuff and always walking up to him to angrily demand that he do this or give them that.  (As an example, check out episode 12, “Whatever the Case May Be.”  Both Kate and Jack, at various points during this episode, DEMAND that Sawyer give them the case, without even bothering to ask nicely.)  I can’t really say I blame Sawyer for not usually wanting to help them out.

Meanwhile, I find Jack to be much less heroic upon this rewatch than I did the first time around.  Though he seems like a totally centered, altruistic guy in the pilot, it isn’t long before he slips into frantic, assholish behavior.  (See episode 11, “All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues,” in which Jack frantically rushes headlong through the jungle trying to find Claire and Charlie and basically acts like a total jerk to Locke, Kate, and everyone else.)  He’s also extraordinarily condescending to Kate. His behavior is inconsistent – at first it seemed like he didn’t care about Kate’s past (in episode 2, “Tabula Rasa,” he told her not to tell him what she did), but by episode 12 (”Whatever the Case May Be”) he gets totally pissy with her for not spilling her guts to him about everything she’s ever done. It makes Jack surprisingly unlikable to me during the rewatch.

The other character who I really thought differently of during the rewatch was Boone.  When I first watched this show I remember thinking that Boone was a nice guy who tried his best, but upon re-watching these episodes I find his incompetence to be STAGGERING.  Take “Homecoming,” for example, in which Boone falls asleep on guard duty, which allows Ethan (or another Other) to sneak in and kill one of the castaways.  Nice going dude.  What a maroon.

“If you guys are finished verbally copulating, we should get a move on.”

Some of Lost’s central questions are introduced right away (like what the heck is the monster?).  But for a show renowned for its mysteries, it’s sort of amusing how quickly we got an answer to the question raised by the pilot of who on the plane was in the hand-cuffs.  (We get our answer in the very second episode, “Tabula Rasa.”)

We also begin to see many of the show’s central narrative themes.  One that comes to mind is the idea that the emotional baggage of most of the characters comes down to their struggling with having become the thing they most loathed.  The young boy whose life was ruined by a confidence man named “Sawyer” eventually becomes Sawyer.  Charlie becomes the drug addict he hated his brother from being.  Sayid is drawn to torture despite having sworn never to do so again.  Jack will eventually become an alcoholic like his father.  I love this about the show — I like that the writers clearly have something they want to say, and themes they want to explore, above and beyond just telling a story about island castaways and monsters.

These early episodes also quickly introduce Lost’s greatest narrative weakness: the consistent and annoying tendency of all the characters to withhold information from one another, for no clear reason.  In “Walkabout,” the third episode of the show, Sayid expresses frustration that he can’t tell anyone what he’s working on (his devices to triangulate the Frenchwoman’s signal).  Well, why the heck not?  Then there’s Locke, who in that same episode lies about having seen the monster.  Why exactly?  Usually these sorts of things happen because the writers aren’t yet ready to reveal certain key pieces of information — but I found this as annoying on the rewatch as I did when initially viewing these episodes.

I also find myself wondering, as I did upon my initial viewings, why the castaways don’t spend more time having to deal with the basic needs of surviving on a desert island.  We see Locke kill a couple of boars, and Jin do some fishing, but just what are they all eating all the time?  No one seems at all hungry, and we see Sayid walk off into the jungle seemingly never to return (in “Solitary”) without a mite of food on him.

“You’re a man of science. I’m a man of faith. Do you really think all this is an accident? That we, a group of strangers, survived, many of us with just superficial injuries? You think we crashed on this place by coincidence?  Especially this place? We were brought here for a purpose, for a reason — all of us. Each one of us was brought here for a reason.”

Overall, season 1 is a terrific season, one of the best of the show’s run.  One can clearly see, right from the beginning, why this show got such attention and acclaim when it first aired.  The extraordinarily level of craft on display (from the writing to the acting to the incredible sets, costumes, visual effects, etc.) is staggering.

I was really surprised and impressed by how great the first batch of episodes were.  Things get a bit wobbly towards the middle of the season, as the writers seemed to struggle a bit with how the keep the story moving forward while also keeping us in the dark about various mysteries and pieces of the characters’ back-stories until later seasons.  Sometimes there were episodes that seemed like time-wasters.  I had also forgotten just how much time was spent, in the second half of the season, on the forced Sayid/Shannon pairing.  Blech.  I found that just as ridiculous a storyline on the rewatch as I had originally.  Things really pick up, though, towards the end of the year, as Locke’s discovery of the hatch began opening up a whole new aspect of the “world” of the show.  The death of Boone was shocking, and seemed to free the writers to embrace an “anything can happen” mantra on the show in which even beloved characters weren’t safe (sniff, Charlie).  This brought a terrific intensity to the show, and created a sense of danger and dramatic heft which made the show so engaging to me.

C’mon back tomorrow for more specific thoughts on some of my favorite and least favorite moments from Lost season 1!

Yesterday I began my list of the Top 10 Episodes of TV from 2009.  Click here for numbers 10-6.  Now here is the rest of the list!

5.  Lost: “The Incident” (season 5, episodes 16/17, aired on 5/13/09).  Everything comes together, questions are answered, and (of course) new questions are raised.  We finally get to meet the oft-discussed Jacob, and we see how this apparently ageless man has interacted with the lives of many of the castaways long before they ever crashed on the island.  In the ’70s, Jack seeks to change the future by detonating a hydrogen bomb, thus destroying the island.  This once again puts him in conflict with Sawyer, who believes that “what’s done is done.”  In 2007, Locke, Ben, and the mysterious other survivors of Ajira flight 316 converge in the shadow of the statue, we learn the true final fate of Jeremy Bentham, and a shocking murder is committed.  The cliffhanger ending leaves us in the dark as to whether Jack’s audacious plan has succeeded, or whether he has just caused “the incident” that we’ve been hearing about since “Orientation” in season two (that necessitated the construction of the Swan Station and the button).  Either way, this was a magnificent two hours of television.  It’s been a great delight watching the makers of Lost weave together the show’s many characters and story-lines as we prepare for the show’s final year.  I have high hopes for what’s ahead!

4.  Parks and Recreation: “The Hunting Trip” (season 2, episode 10, aired on 11/19/09).  I thought that Parks and Recreation was extraordinarily mediocre in its first season, but just as NBC’s The Office only found its footing during its second year, Parks & Rec has really turned things around this season.  Many weeks I consider it — are you sitting down? — the strongest of NBC’s Thursday night comedies.  ”The Hunting Trip” is a prime example as to why.  Ron prepares to take the men in the office out on their annual hunting trip, but Leslie (Amy Poehler) wants the girls (and Tom Haverford) to be included too.  Since Ron is legally forbidden from excluding them from what is tenuously a work-related outing, the whole gang heads out to the woods, rifles in hand.  What follows is an escalating series of madness that culminates in poor Ron getting shot (not fatally, of course!!).  The whole episode is a riot, in which every member of the ensemble gets a lot to do.  But Leslie steals the show when she realizes that she cannot reveal the identity of the person who shot Ron to the ranger who comes to investigate, so she tries to take the fall by putting on a “daffy woman who knows nothing about guns” act.  This montage had me in hysterics.  It begins with her saying “I got that tunnel vision that girls get” and just goes from there. Comedy gold.

3.  Battlestar Galactica: “The Oath” (season 4, episode 15, aired on 1/30/09).  BSG’s final run of episodes certainly had its flaws, but this astonishing, nail-biting hour was exactly the type of intense episode that made this series so frakking phenomenal.  Outraged by the alliance with the Cylon rebels, an embittered Felix Gaeta throws in with Tom Zarek and stages a mutiny on-board Galactica, taking control of the ship right out from under Adama.  Old grudges are paid off and long-gone chickens come home to roost as the survivors of the Pegasus take their revenge on Helo, Sam Anders is beaten and tossed in the brig, Tigh and Adama are escorted out of CIC at gunpoint, and Kara and Lee find themselves back to back in an impossible situation one final time.  The whole tapestry of the show comes into play as characters we haven’t seen in a while return (such as Laird, the engineer from the Pegasus, and Kelly, who was one of the Galactica crew-members back in the original miniseries), and some of our beloved characters (Racetrack!  Skulls!  Seelix!) make shocking choices.  In an episode stuffed to-the-brim with fantastic moments, I have never-ending love for the scene in which old men Adama and Tigh kick the asses of a bunch of armed marines.  I’ve seen mutiny episodes on ship-based sci-fi shows before, but never anything like this.  As always, BSG plays for keeps.

2.  Curb Your Enthusiasm: “The Table Read” (season 7, episode 9, aired on 11/15/09).  The glimpses that this episode gives us into the Seinfeld Reunion that we’ll never see would be enough to get this installment a spot on this list.  I loved seeing actual events of Larry’s life (from previous seasons of Curb) acted out by Jerry & the gang, and I loved the storyline the Larry created for George.  (”George, are you marrying her for YOUR money?”)  I really enjoyed all the Seinfeld supporting cast cameos.  But what is amazing is that this episode has far greater pleasures than all of the Seinfeld reunion fun.  There’s Marty Funkhouser’s painfully awkward interactions with Jerry.  There’s Larry’s inability to shake his new nine-year-old texting friend (that leads to the great last line of the show that had me on the floor with laughter).  And there is the incredibly ballsy, heads-on manner in which Larry & co. tackle Michael Richard’s infamous outburst.  Once I glimpsed Leon Black dressed in that Nation of Islam get-up, I knew we were in for it, but I never guessed just how far things would go.  Unbelievably brilliant.

1.  The Daily Show.  Day in and day out, there is nothing funnier or more piercing on planet Earth than Jon Stewart and The Daily Show.  Wondering why this is at the top of my list?  Check these out:

My list of my Top 10 DVDs of 2009 is coming later this week!  See you there!

Hi everyone!  It’s that time of year again — welcome to the first of my four Best of 2009 lists!  We’re kicking things off today with part one of my list of the 10 Best TV Episodes I saw in 2009!

Let’s dive in, shall we?

10. Lost: “Jughead” (season 5, episode 3, aired on 1/28/09).  The craziness of Lost’s superb time-hopping fifth season kicked into high gear with this episode, and all sorts of fascinating connections were made.  Trapped in the past, Locke meets a young Charles Widmore and Richard Alpert and we finally get an explanation for Alpert’s weird childhood visit to Locke (that we saw in “Cabin Fever” ).  Meanwhile, Daniel Faraday discovers that the American army came to the island in the 1950’s to test hydrogen bombs, explaining a lot of tiny references that have been layered into the show since back in the second season (such as Ana Lucia pointing out to Goodwin that the Other they killed carried an army knife from decades ago).  But this episode gets the nod because of its focus on one of my very favorite Lost characters: Desmond, who spends the hour attempting to unravel the secrets of Daniel Faraday.  Mind-bending Lost at its best.

9.  Dollhouse: “Belonging” (season 2, episode 4, aired on 10/23/09).  Oh Dollhouse, we hardly knew ye.  Though Joss Whedon’s short-lived series was frustratingly hit-or-miss, episodes like this make we wish fervently that the show was continuing.  This episode spotlights Sierra, one of the “dolls” (men and women regularly programmed with completely new personalities in order to meet the whims of the Dollhouse’s wealthy clients), and we learn how the young woman once named Priya came to be a doll.  It is a twisted, heartbreaking story, and an absolutely riveting hour of TV.

8.  The Office: “Broke” (season 5, episode 23, aired on 4/23/09).  I’ve been a bit let-down by The Office this year, but the mid-fourth season run of episodes centering around the Michael Scott Paper Company were classic, and this episode provided a note-perfect culmination of that storyline.  Michael & co. have finally succeeded in cutting into Dunder Mifflin’s business by undercutting their prices, but that action has also left Michael’s company penniless (and unable to afford even a delivery van for the paper they’re selling, as we see in the episode’s opening).  Luckily, David Wallace decides to try to buy Michael out.  The negotiations that follow are hysterical — and also a stunning moment as Michael rises to the occasion by serving as a surprisingly sly negotiator.  Also, Charles Miner (The Wire’s idris Elba), who has been running the Scranton branch in Michael’s absence, is finally undone by his ill-chosen support of Dwight.

7.  30 Rock: “St. Valentine’s Day” (season 3, episode 11, aired on 2/12/09).  Liz foolishly insists that she and Drew (guest star Jon Hamm from Mad Men) have their first date on Valentines’s Day, while Jack’s new girlfriend Elisa (Salma Hayek) insists that he celebrate the day with her in church.  The escalating chaos that befalls Liz and Drew on their first-date-from-hell is a riot, but what earns this episode a place on this list is Jack’s prayer/phone call to his assistant while sitting next to Elisa in church: “Our Jonathan, who art in the office, hallowed be thy reservation…”  Oh, and I should also mention the waiter’s reaction to Jack sitting alone in front of an enormous dessert at his favorite restaurant: “I’m sorry, is this a Sixth Sense thing?  Should I bring a place setting for your friend?”  Genius.

6.  Curb Your Enthusiasm: “Officer Krupke” (season 7, episode 8, aired on 11/8/09).  Larry’s plot to reconcile with Cheryl by casting her as George’s wife in the Seinfeld reunion is imperiled when another actress (Elisabeth Shue) auditions very well for the role.  Jeff is in hot water with his wife Susie because she found another woman’s panties in his car, so Jeff desperately begs Larry to tell Susie that the panties are his — which leads to the classic moment: “I’m Larry David, and I happen to enjoy wearing women’s panties.”  Larry gets into an argument with the fellow behind the counter at the department store where he left a pair of his pants, as they debate the difference between “lost” and “gone.”  (I’m with Larry on this one.)  Larry meets a police offer with the same name as the famous character from West Side Story.  All of those story-lines are terrific, but what elevates this episode beyond the rest is the phenomenal closing moment when Jeff shows up at Larry’s door wearing a neck-brace: “you’ve got to tell Susie I was in a car accident!”  (I won’t spoil the meaning of that gloriously dirty joke for those of you who haven’t yet seen this episode.)

Click here for numbers 5 through 1!

A little over a year ago, I wrote that I was excited to have begun watching the newly-released (and long-anticipated) DVDs of Spaced: The Complete Series.  Well, I can’t believe how long it took me a while to finally finish the set (despite there only being two seasons of seven episodes each, Steph and I decided to draw out our viewing to savor the enjoyment — we didn’t want the series to end!), but I’ve finally done so.

I am happy to report that the series is every bit as wonderful and weird as I’d been hearing for all these years!!

Spaced was a short-lived British TV show that had two seasons (or “series,” as they like to call them across the pond) of seven episodes each (with the first batch coming out in 1999 and the second in 2001).  It was written by and starred Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and now Scotty in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek) and Jessica Hynes, and was directed by Edgar Wright.

Simon and Jessica played Tim and Daisy, two mismatched North Londoners who pretend to be married in order to qualify for renting an affordable flat that they both had their eye on.  The series follows the misadventures of Tim and Daisy and their small and bizarre group of friends: the military-loving Mike, the delightfully daft Twist, the depressed conceptual artist Brian, and Tim and Daisy’s droll, alcoholic landlady Marsha.

What’s so wonderful about the series is the way that it doesn’t idealize the lives of these sort-of-lost (mostly) young people.  This isn’t Friends, where everyone is perky and lives in extraordinarily large and beautiful apartments.  Tim and Daisy are both unendingly lazy and unambitious, and their flat is endearingly small and believably cluttered.

But the series isn’t depressing — rather, it is a ridiculous amount of fun.  Though each character is filled with quirks, they all quickly become surprisingly lovable, and it is great fun watching them go through their little day-to-day adventures.  Also, the series is practically built around an ever-increasing number of rapid-fire references to (and parodies of) a wide variety of movies, TV shows, and all sorts of other aspects of sci-fi, comic books, and lots more geeky stuff.  The closest thing I could compare all of this silliness to is the fantasy sequences found in Scrubs — though the fantasies here are much more elegantly done and more intricately woven into the narrative.  It is great fun spotting all of the little winks and nods included in each episode.  (There’s even an homage-o-meter included as a special feature on the DVDs.)  Some of the references are a little dated (there are a lot of jokes about The Matrix and Star Wars: Episode I, for instance) but that’s not really bothersome — and for any joke that’s a little old there is another gag just around the corner that is bound to tickle your funny-bone (a brilliant One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest gag from one of the final episodes is springing to my mind).

I should also praise the show for the wonderfully cinematic style of the show as directed by Edgar Wright.  Rather than the familiar sitcom set-up, Spaced was filmed with only one camera and utilized rapid-fire editing and a constant array of different sets, locations, and camera angles.  Those techniques have become much more common in TV today (in shows like Arrested Development, Scrubs, 30 Rock, the American version of The Office, and others) but which were extraordinarily groundbreaking back in 1999.

The DVD is also filled to overflowing with terrific special features.  The most notable is a phenomenal feature-length documentary on the entire series entitled “Skip to the End.”  This is exactly the type of making-of documentary that I wish could be found on EVERY TV-on DVD release.  It is an extraordinarily exhaustive look at all aspects of the making of the show, featuring interviews with all of the show’s key players (and many of its not-so-key players — they got interviews from EVERYONE!).  It is also notable for its inspired closing minutes (hence the doc’s title) that provide a wonderfully sweet epilogue to the series that is not-to-be missed.

The DVD set is also filled with an array of deleted scenes, out-takes, a cast reunion from the 2007 Comic-Con, and many, many episode commentaries from the cast and crew and notable fans of the show such as Kevin Smith, Diablo Cody, and Quentin Tarantino.

Spaced is a unique, hysterical show that is not-too-terribly well-known here in the States, and that’s a shame.  It’s fantastic to see the show finally get an American DVD release — and the fact that the DVD package is so spectacular is a terrific bonus.  Any fan of this web-site will love this show, I have no doubt.  Check it out!

One of my earliest posts for this blog last year was a list of a bunch of DVDs on my “to-watch” shelf that I hoped to get to some time in the near future.  One item on that list was the first set of DVDs collecting The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones.

Well, it took me quite a while, but I am pleased to report that almost a year later I have made my way through that DVD set!  (It’s the first of three sets that collect the entire run of the series.)

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones was a TV series that ran, somewhat sporadically, from 1992-1996.  Alternating episodes would follow the adventures of 10 year-old Indy (played by Corey Carrier), and teen-aged Indy (played by Sean Patrick Flanery).  In each episode, Indy would find himself in adventures in varying parts of the globe, each time running into many real-life historical figures, Forest Gump style.  ABC cancelled the series after its second season in 1993, but the USA network picked it up and aired a number of new episodes in two-hour mini-movie formats until 1996.

For the 1999 release of the series on VHS, the entire series was re-edited chronologically, with each episode paired with the next one in sequence to form a two-hour mini-movie (similar to the way the episodes were aired on USA).  In so doing, all of the framing device scenes with a very Old Indy (93 year-old Indy was played by George Hall) that used to start and end each episode were completely removed.  These are the versions that have been released on DVD.  Also in 1999, Lucas, ever one to re-name his work (Star Wars eventually becomes Episode IV: A New Hope; Raiders of the Lost Ark eventually becomes Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark), at this point also changed the name of the series from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles to The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones.  (And thank heaven for wikipedia for that little tidbit.  Writing this whole review I kept writing The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, but I could see that the title on the DVDs was The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones.  I had no idea why I kept getting the title wrong!  Well, it’s because I always knew this show as The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles! Sheesh!)

(By the way, here’s another amusing tidbit.  Does anyone but me remember how, when this series was released on VHS in 1999 in the form of 22 mini-movies, each labeled “chapter 1″ through “chapter 22,” Lucas also re-released the Indy movie trilogy, labeling the movies “chapter 23″ through” chapter 25″??  This got me so worked up at the time, but now it just makes me laugh at its ridiculousness.  The man just has a thing about numbering the episodes of his adventure serials!)

I watched this show when it originally aired.  I remember sort-of enjoying the episodes with teen-aged Indy (particularly the episodes that took place during World War I), although I was rather bored by the adventures of 10 year-old Indy.  Even as a kid I knew mediocrity when I saw it.  Since these DVDs contain the episodes re-edited chronologically (rather than by their original air-date), this first set of DVDs contains mostly the adventures of 10 year-old Indy (10 episodes, divided into 5 mini-movies), and only a few featuring Sean Patrick Flanery as teen-aged Indy (4 episodes, split into 2 mini-movies).  Nevertheless, I hadn’t seen any of these episodes since the mid-90’s, and many of them I hadn’t ever seen at all, so I was curious to revisit the series.

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones is an interesting endeavor.  It was designed to focus more on education — teaching kids about history, geography, politics, and different peoples and cultures — than it was to be a whiz-bang action adventure.  I can appreciate that more now, as an adult, and as I re-watched the episodes I also didn’t have the immediate dis-interest in 10 year-old Indy that I had as a kid.  That being said, the show is, for the most part, pretty boring.  This is exacerbated by the mini-movie format, as sitting through two episodes in a row is a bit of a chore.  After the first movie, I started putting the episodes on, periodically, while I was drawing.  If I just sat down to watch one, I’d get bored, but having one on in the background while I worked suited me just fine.  (Most episodes didn’t require 100% of my attention in order to follow!)

What I found myself enjoying on the DVDs more than the episodes themselves were the ENORMOUS quantity of documentaries.  Each mini-movie is accompanied by up to eight documentaries (many of them around 30 minutes in length) that provide further detail about the people, places, and historical events covered in that particular adventure.  I found these documentaries to be FASCINATING in the extreme.  As with the episodes, these would probably be dull if I just sat down to watch a few straight through… but playing in the background while I was drawing, they were phenomenal.  I often was eager to get through an episode so that I could check out the accompanying documentaries.  An enormous amount of time, effort, and money must have gone in to the creation of these documentaries.  Again, it is clear that Lucas’ goal with this project is education, and I have to commend him for that.

Other thoughts:  I was pleased to see the number of famous guest-stars who popped up in the episodes in this first set (although some of them weren’t quite so famous at the time).  These include Max von Sydow as Sigmund Freud in “The Perils of Cupid,” Michael Gough as Leo Tolstoy in “Travels with Father,” and Elizabeth Hurley as Indy love-interest Vicky Prentiss and Vanessa Redgrave as Mrs. Prentiss in “Love’s Sweet Song.”  Young Indy is also notable in that it was one of the first TV shows to utilize digital effects in order to create some of the far-off locales in which the different adventures were set.  (In many ways, this was a test-bed for the techniques that Lucas would eventually use for the Special Editions of the Star Wars Trilogy in the late 90’s and then, of course, for the Prequel Trilogy.)

I think I would have preferred if the episodes had been released on disc as originally aired.  I do like the chronological presentation, but the transitions half-way through each mini-movie (where one episode originally ended and another began) are very awkward.  Often-times the episodes, although chronologically in sequence, were shot many months apart.  This resorts in some awkwardness in which 10 year-old Indy seems to age by a year or more between one scene and the next!  Also, as noted above, sitting through two of these episodes in a row can be a bit rough.  Another nit-pick: while I understand the decision to excise all of the Old Indy framing-device scenes (my recollection is that, even to childhood-me, those scenes were lame in the extreme), for completeness’ sake I was really disappointed that they’re not included on the DVD set as a special feature of some kind.  That’s a pretty enormous omission.  Also, while I understand that Lucas and co.’s focus was on all of the educational documentaries, I would have really liked to see some sort of making-of documentary or featurette that dealt with the creation of this show itself.  I bet there are some interesting stories to be told, and it’s a bummer that there’s nothing like that on the set.

So there you have it, folks.  In the end, the episodes are about what I expected, and the documentaries are fascinating (if you’re interested in that sort of thing, and have a lot of time to kill or the need for something mildly-diverting to watch/listen-to as you work on something else).  But I’ll tell you this, though: the lamest Young Indy adventure on this set is still better than the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull!

At last!  The conclusion to my list of the Twenty Greatest Episodes of Star Trek!  Click here for numbers 20-16, here for numbers 15-11, and here for numbers 10-6.

5.  Cause and Effect (ST:TNG season 5, episode 18) — The Enterprise blows up.  Over and over again.  What a great idea for an episode!  This is a classic Next Gen spatial anomaly mystery/mind-bender, as the Enterprise gets caught in a temporal loop in which the ship meets with terrible catastrophe over and over again.  I know some people find this episode to be boring (it basically depicts the same events, five times), but I absolutely adore the way subtle differences start to emerge with each repetition, as the crew slowly realizes what is happening to them and try to come up with some sort of way out.  From the intense opening tease (where the Enterprise is annihilated right in the middle of Picard’s desperate cry for all hands to abandon ship) right up through the end (with Kelsey Grammer — Frasier!! — guest starring as the unfortunate Captain Morgan Bateson), this is one of my very favorite hours of Trek.

4.  The Inner Light (ST:TNG season 5, episode 25) — Captain Picard is struck by a beam from an alien probe and awakens on an alien world.  As months and then years pass, Picard eventually gives up hope of escape or rescue and settles into a life with the friendly people of that planet.  Right away it is made clear to the viewer that all of this is happening only in Picard’s mind (as there are occasional cut-backs to the Enterprise crew, trying to awaken their Captain, in which we can see that only minutes are passing for them while years pass for Picard).  While there is a mystery aspect to the episode as the viewers wonder what exactly is going on, the real focus is on the wonderful, touching story of Picard finding for himself the peaceful family life that his devotion to Starfleet has always prevented him from having.  In the end, Picard comes to realize that the probe contains the records and memories of an alien culture that has long-since been wiped out by a terrible natural disaster.  The people who Picard (and we) have come to love — his friends, his wife, his children, and his grand-children — are all long-since dead.  It is a sad, haunting episode, and one that has colored the character of Picard ever since.  The mournful flute melody that Picard learns, and that plays over the final moments of the episode, is one of my favorite musical motifs of the show, and a not-to-be-overlooked key to this episode’s beauty and power.

3.  Duet (ST:DS9 season 1, episode 19) — Odo arrests a Cardassian who he recognizes as “The Butcher of Galitep,” a wanted war criminal.  There is a mystery about whether this Cardassian is in fact Gul Darheel, and if so, how and why he came to be on DS9, but that is secondary to the power-house confrontations between Darheel (played by the wonderful Harris Yulin, who I’ll always know primarily as the judge in Ghostbusters 2) and Kira Nerys.  The “Duet” of the episode’s title is the back-and-forth between the Cardassian and Kira, which takes place in a number of lengthy conversations that are the beating heart of this episode.  As Kira confronts Darheel with his war-crimes, he questions her: “How many Cardassians did you kill, Major?”  She answers angrily, “I regret a lot of what I had to do during the Occupation.”  ”How convenient for you,” is his reply.  There are a lot of Big Ideas on display here, questions about identity and about the necessity of violence, and they’re wrapped up in one of the sharpest and most compelling scripts of any Trek episode, beautifully performed by Yulin and Nana Visitor (Kira).

2.  Yesterday’s Enterprise (ST:TNG season 3, episode 15).  The Enterprise comes across an anomaly is space, some sort of rift out of which appears the Enterprise C, believed destroyed 22 years earlier.  As the Enterprise C passes through the rift, history changes — and suddenly we find ourselves on the darkened bridge of the Warship Enterprise, in a universe where Starfleet is embroiled in a losing war with the Klingons.  One of the first — and by far the best — of the modern Trek time travel/alternate universe stories, Yesterday’s Enterprise was a revelation when it first aired.  The dark, alternate version of our familiar characters on the Enterprise D was compelling, the visual effects were superb (though it looks quaint now, when it was made this was by far and away the most action-packed episode of the series), and the reappearance of Tasha Yar (still alive and serving as the Enterprise’s chief of security in this universe) was an enormous surprise.  And the Klingon attack at the end in which, well, pretty much everyone dies, was a jaw-dropper!  As is always the case in the best of Trek, great action and sci-fi ideas are combined with strong character story-lines.  Guinan’s friendship with Picard is tested as she struggles to figure out how to handle the changed time-line, Yar’s universe falls out from under her when she discovers that she’s “supposed to be dead,” and the Enterprise C’s helmsman, Richard Castillo (Christopher McDonald), must decide whether to set history right by taking the Enterprise C back through the rift, thus accepting certain death for himself and his crew. I can’t tell you how many times I have watched this episode — it is one of my absolute favorites.  ”Let history never forget the name… Enterprise.”

1.  The Best of Both Worlds, Part I (ST:TNG season 3, episode 26) — As the Enterprise investigates evidence of destroyed colonies that resemble those wiped out along the Romulan Neutral Zone two years earlier (in the first-season episode, The Neutral Zone), it becomes apparent that the day long-feared has arrived: the unstoppable Borg (introduced in the second-season episode, Q Who?) have arrived.  As the Enterprise crew braces for their impending battle with the fearsome enemy that they may not be able to defeat, Riker comes into conflict with the hot-headed, ambitious Lt. Shelby (guest-star Elizabeth Dennehy), causing him to question his decision to turn down a command of his own in order to remain first officer of the Enterprise.  In the episode’s shocking cliffhanger, Captain Picard is kidnapped by the Borg and assimilated into their collective, and Riker, now in command of the Enterprise, must give the order to abandon any attempt at rescue and try to destroy the Borg cube, which would kill Picard.  Next Gen — and Star Trek as a whole — was never better than in this intense, nail-biter of a season finale.  What a cliffhanger!  Crazy “to be continued” endings are, I feel, quite the norm these days for TV shows, but Trek had never done anything like this before.  I still remember that summer of questions and desperate anticipation for the show to return and the story to be resolved.  But there’s a lot more to this episode than just a great cliffhanger.  The sense of jeopardy is palpable right from the opening moments, helped along by a fantastic score by composer Ron Jones (which was eventually released as a sound-track CD).  The Next Gen crew is finally faced with a truly dangerous opponent, and there are great character moments for almost every member of the ensemble.  Dennehy’s Shelby is a great addition to the cast, causing sparks with almost everyone that added to the intensity of the story.  (I was really disappointed, after part II, that she didn’t become a regular member of the cast.)  This episode appeared  in TV Guide’s list of the 100 Most Memorable Moments in TV History, as well as their list of the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time.  And with good reason.  Say it with me, now: “Resistance is futile.”

My list of the Twenty Greatest Episodes of Star Trek continues!  Click here for numbers 20-16, and here for numbers 15-11.

10.  All Good Things (ST:TNG season 7, episode 25) — The two-hour series finale of Next Gen is not just a phenomenal finale but also one of the greatest episodes of the series.  Picard finds himself moving back and forth through time, bouncing between the present day, a time just before he took command of the Enterprise D (in the series premiere, Encounter at Farpoint), and 25 years in the future.  It’s fascinating to take a look back at the show’s early days (the mimicry of the costumes from that first season is particularly fun, as is the reappearance of deceased security officer Tasha Yar), but it’s the peek at the future of the Next Gen crew that, I think, really captured the fans’ imaginations.  A wonderful reappearance by Q further strengthens the “full circle” connections to the show’s premiere.  The episode boasts some terrific visual effects and a wonderful sci-fi paradox mystery makes the whole enterprise (sorry, couldn’t resist) truly compelling.  Finally, there is the magnificent last scene, which ends the show and the series on a perfect note.  The sky’s the limit, indeed.

9.  Sarek (ST:TNG season 3, episode 23) — In its early years, the Next Gen writers strove to avoid any mention of characters or storylines from the Original Series in an effort to make sure this new show could stand on its own.  But fans were delighted when, in this third season episode, Mark Leonard reprised his role as Spock’s father Sarek.  That guest appearance alone would make the episode a winner, but it’s shot into the stratosphere by a terrific storyline about Sarek being affected by an Alzheimer’s-like disease that begins to weaken his mental controls, and by the absolutely amazing performances by Mark Leonard and Patrick Stewart.  Stewart’s monologue (after Picard has mind-melded with Sarek and is being affected by the ragingly intense emotions that the elderly Vulcan has kept bottled up for almost two centuries) as the camera slowly circles around his face and Picard is pummeled by a roller-coaster of rage and grief is absolutely magnificent.  My favorite moment:  Picard/Sarek’s one subdued, lonely cry for his estranged son: “Spock.”

8.  The City on the Edge of Forever (Star Trek season 1, episode 29) — One of the most well-known episodes of Star Trek, and for good reason.  Harlan Ellison wrote the script for this, one of the most powerful and moving episodes of the original (or really ANY) Trek series, one that is also filled with a lot of terrific, unique sci-fi ideas.  The Enterprise discovers the existence of the mysterious Guardian of Forever.  When a crazed McCoy (driven mad by an accidental drug overdose) leaps through the time portal and changes history, it is up to Kirk and Spock to follow him back and set things right.  This has become a much over-used sci-fi TV storyline these days, but not so in 1967.  The episode is also raised above and beyond all of the time-travel imitators that have followed by the moral dilemma at its core: Spock discovers that, in order to set history back on track, Kirk must let the woman with whom he has fallen in love, Edith Keeler (guest star Joan Collins), die.  The morose, somber ending is a heart-stopper.  ”He knows, doctor.  He knows.”

7.  Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges (ST:DS9 season 7, episode 16).  Julian Bashir attends a medical conference on Romulus (tentatively allied with the Federation against the Dominion), and finds himself embroiled in a web of political intrigue and treachery.  The episode has a wonderfully mind-bending plot, as the viewer races with Julian to figure out just what the heck is going on, and who can really be trusted.  Like all the best Trek episodes, it also poses a fascinating moral quandry.  The latin quote means “in time of war, laws fall silent,” and Bashir must discover how far he is willing to go during a time of desperate struggle.  Ron Moore’s clever script is filled to the brim with lots of little references to past DS9 episodes as well as episodes of the other Trek series and movies (Bashir travels to Romulus on an Intrepid class starship like Voyager, and many scenes take place on the Voyager sets; in several scenes the characters wear the new dress uniforms introduced in Star Trek: Insurrection; the Romulans ask Bashir about the deadly Quickening disease, which Bashir and O’Brien encountered in the 4th season of DS9; etc. etc.).  I loved the way the writers in the later DS9 seasons weren’t afraid to slide in those references (which all of the other Trek series seemed to avoid) — it really made the Trek universe feel like a cohesive whole.

6.  Call to Arms (ST:DS9 season 5, episode 26) — The season 5 finale is another stand-out DS9 episode.  The show is filled with great little character moments for so many members of DS9’s enormous supporting cast (Rom and Leeta’s wedding; Garak and Ziyal’s burgeoning relationship, etc.) as well as terrific, energetic visual effects action sequences as the Dominion/Cardassian fleet attacks and captures DS9.  This episode marked a major turning point for the show, as war finally breaks out between the Federation and the Dominion, and our characters are forced to flee the station.  Extra points go to the terrific final shot in which the Defiant meets up with the enormous assembled Starfleet, heading back to DS9 to kick some ass.  In all of the Trek shows and movies that had come before, we’d never really seen a fleet of Federation starships assembled (the writers always found some excuse not to go that route — even in this episode, we hear of Starfleet’s attack on a Dominion shipyard but don’t see it), so this moment was a jaw-dropping one that made fans desperate for season 6 to arrive.

Come back tomorrow for the end of my list, numbers 5-1!

Yesterday I began listing the Twenty Greatest Episodes of Star Trek.  (Click here for numbers 20-16).  Let’s continue, shall we?

15.  Treachery, Faith, and the Great River (ST:DS9 season 7, episode 6) — The title of this episode sums up everything that DS9 was about — character, faith, and politics.  It’s a small episode, with little of galactic import happening, and yet it is a critical episode nonetheless.  A familiar Vorta offers Odo important information about the Dominion in exchange for Odo’s protection if he defects, and back on the station Nog utilizes all of his Ferengi wiles to help Chief O’Brien track down the equipment he needs to repair the Defiant despite shortages caused by the war.  In this seemingly minor episode, we learn an enormous amount about the cultures, history, and beliefs of the Ferengi and the Vorta, as well as so much about many of DS9′s regular characters.  

14.  The Measure of a Man (ST:TNG season 2, episode 9) –Not only is this one of the few watchable episodes from Next Gen’s first two seasons, it is also (as you can see by its inclusion on this list) one of the finest Trek episodes ever crafted.  A Starfleet scientist wants to disassemble Data in order to learn how his positronic brain works, in order for Starfleet to construct more androids like him.  When Data refuses to submit, he is ordered to do so.  What follows is an emotional, thought-provoking examination of what makes someone a sentient being. Is Data a man, or is he a piece of property?  Witness tour-de-force performances by Brent Spiner and Patrick Stewart as well as Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan (in one of the best Picard-Guinan scenes of the entire series).

13.  The Way of the Warrior (ST:DS9 season 4, episode 1) — After three somewhat uneven seasons, DS9 reinvented itself with this amazing two hour episode that turned the show around and set the stage for the ground-breaking storytelling of seasons 4-7.  The Klingons send an enormous task force into the Bajoran sector, ostensibly to help defend against the Dominion.  But several troubling incidents make clear to Captain Sisko that the Klingons have a hidden agenda.  In order to help him  ferret out the truth, Starfleet assigns Worf (without a posting after the destruction of the Enterprise D in Star Trek: Generations) to DS9.  Worf’s discovery tears apart the Federation-Klingon alliance (which had been a centerpiece of the 24th century Trek shows), and leads to what was by far the best sci-fi action sequence ever televised at that time (and still one of the greatest today) in which the Klingon fleet brutally attacks the station.  But the best thing in the whole show?  Well, that would be Garak and Quark talking about root beer.

12.  Necessary Evil (ST:DS9 season 2, episode eight) — One of the first episodes that made me sit up and take notice of how amazing DS9 could be.  An incident on the station seems to connect to a murder investigation from years prior that Odo had never solved.  The episode tells parallel stories of Odo’s present-day investigation as well as a series of flashbacks that shed light on life on the station during the terrible years of the Cardassian occupation.  We learn how Odo first stepped into his role as head of station security, and we get to see his first meeting with Kira.  It’s a great character-building episode and also a terrific mystery, suspenseful right up until the brilliant, hauntingly open-ended final scene.

11.  The Trouble with Tribbles (Star Trek season 2, episode 15) — This comic romp was, right from its original airing, rightly considered one of the finest hours of the Original Series, and it is also one of the original Trek episodes that holds up the best today.  Kirk and the Enterprise are summoned to Space Station K-7 where they must confront a Klingon plot, a disreputable merchant, poisoned grain, an irate politician, a double agent, and lots and lots of tribbles.  David Gerrold’s sharp, hysterical script is absolute gold — each and every scene is a gem filled with memorable one-liners (such as the results of McCoy’s analysis of the tribbles: “They reproduce at will.  And brother, have they got a lot of will!”).  Special note also goes to William Ansara for his terrific guest-appearance as the Klingon Captain Koloth.

Come back tomorrow for episodes #10-6!

I have watched a lot of Star Trek in my day.  A LOT of Star Trek.  And quite a lot of it was pretty damn good!  Here’s what I feel is the best of the best.  (Hmm, no episodes of Voyager or Enterprise to be found on this list…!)

20. Unification Part I (ST:TNG season 5, episode 7) — A high-ranking official of the United Federation of Planets is believed to have defected to the Romulans, and Captain Picard is sent after him.  The individual in question?  Ambassador Spock.  Having Leonard Nimoy reprise his role in this Next Gen two-parter was an astounding moment, something the fans never thought would happen.  But as great as all the Spock-Picard-Data stuff is in part II, I’ve chosen part I (in which Spock only actually appears at the very end) for the brilliance of its gripping build-up in Picard’s, ahem, search for Spock.  My favorite moment?  The late great Mark Leonard’s show-stopping scene as Spock’s father Sarek, at death’s door and suffering from a debilitating neurological disease, who delivers a monologue that is one of the most powerful and emotionally devastating things I have ever seen on television.

19.  Rocks and Shoals (ST:DS9 season 6, episode 2) — In the middle of the Dominion War arc, Sisko and his crew have commandeered an enemy Jem’Hadar warship behind enemy lines.  In the exciting opening moments of the episode, they are shot down on a desolate planet.  But a small group of Jem’Hadar have crashed on that planet with them.  The focus of this episode isn’t on the action — it’s on a fascinating exploration of the Jem’Hadar.  Phil Morris (most famous as Jackie Chiles on Seinfeld) is fantastic as the central Jem’Hadar character.  (”Then we will hold this world for the Dominion.  Until we die.”)  But what really gets this episode onto this list is it’s cold, tragic ending.

18.  Penumbra (ST:DS9 season 7, episode 17) — Deep Space Nine’s “final chapter” (the last nine episodes of the show’s final series) begins with this engaging installment, in which so many long-running character story-lines and plot developments begin to weave together for the show’s denouement.  Worf is lost in the Badlands after a Klingon attack group is destroyed by the Jem’Hadar, and Ezri Dax sets off on a desperate mission to find him.  The female changeling in charge of the Dominion’s forces in the Alpha Quadrant succumbs further to the plague that has stricken the Great Link.  A weary Damar sinks further into a daze of alcoholism, but is spurred into action by a visit from Gul Dukat.  And Captain Sisko finally proposes to Kassidy Yates, although a warning from the Prophets states emphatically that such happiness “is not for [him] to have.”  Every minute of this episode is important, right up to the heart-breaking ending.  ”Stay on the path, Benjamin.”

17.  The Defector (ST:TNG season 3, episode 10) — One of the first scripts by Ronald Moore (the man who would go on to be a major writer for Next Gen and DS9, and the creator and show-runner of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica), this episode is a tense, taut thriller.  The Enterprise rescues a high-ranking Romulan military official, who claims that he wants to defect to the Federation.  Can he be trusted?  What are his real motives?  This twisty story is a highlight of Next Gen’s early years, and one that has aged remarkably well.

16.  The Siege of AR-558 (ST:DS9 season 7, episode eight) — One of the best things about the later seasons of DS9 was the way that the show explored the idea of a terrible WAR in the Star Trek universe, such as had never been done before.  A lot of times this meant episodes about politics and strategy, and large-scale starship battles.  Those were cool, no question.  But one of the real stand-outs is this gripping episode about a land-based stuggle for a tiny, uninhabited planetoid valuable only for the piece of Dominion technology placed there that Starfleet has captured and the Dominion wants back.  A terrific ensemble of guest-stars including Bill Mumy (Lost in Space, Babylon 5), Patrick Kilpatrick (Minority Report), and Raymond Cruz (NYPD Blue, 24, The X-Files, Clear and Present Danger, Training Day) brings to life the Starfleet “grunts” assigned to defend AR-558.  The depth of their characterizations lends great power to the episode, as does the terrible injury that befalls one of the DS9 regulars.  No Trek episode ever tried to tackle the horrors of war like this one.  

Come back tomorrow for numbers 15-11!

I was excited, last month, to finally sample one of the best-reviewed new shows of the past several years: Mad Men.  No surprise, Steph and I made pretty short work of the 13-episode first season on DVD.

Mad Men depicts the lives of the men and women who work at Sterling Cooper, a Madison Avenue advertising agency in the early 1960’s.  It’s a tough business, but one in which the successful have the opportunity to taste great wealth and privilege.  It’s also a rapidly changing world, as social mores shift and the concepts of traditional “family values” and the strictly defined roles of men and women begin to adjust.  

Mad Men is notable for its sharply-written dialogue and its extraordinary ensemble of actors.  Jom Hamm plays the lead character, Don Draper, a enormous success both as an ad man in the office and with the women in his life, although as the season progresses he finds himself struggling to cope with the secrets of his past and to adjust to the new world of the 60’s.  The aforementioned women in Don’s life include his wife Betty (January Jones), who is devoted to Don but also beginning to chafe at the edges of her housewife life, and Rachel Menken, one of the few Jewish clients of Sterling Cooper to whom Don finds himself immediately attracted.  Much of Mad Men focuses on the hierarchical structure of the Sterling Cooper ad agency.  There are the men on top, like Don and Roger Sterling (the absolutely terrific John Slattery, a real stand-out).  There are the younger executives beneath them, looking to get ahead in any way that they can.  These include Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis), Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Stanton), Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) and the head of the design department, Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt).  Then there are the secretaries.  The show’s pilot takes us through the first day at work of Don’s new secretary Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss, Zoey Bartlet from The West Wing).  One of the first people she meets is the queen bee of the office, Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks, a familiar face to fans of Firefly).  The complex interactions between these characters (along with a variety of supporting players and guest stars), each fighting in some way against the confines of his/her job and obligations, each looking for some way to get ahead, and each flawed in his/her own way, make up the meat of the show’s drama.

Of course, along with the talented writers and actors, we must also praise the amazing production team for the great success of the show.  From the sets, to the wardrobe, to the hairstyles and make-up, Mad Men is extraordinary in its ability to capture the unique feel and flavor of this particular time in this particular place.  The attention to detail is astounding, and really helps sell the reality of the show.

It was interesting, as the first season unfolded, to pick up on some of the topics that the writers were interested in exploring.  Certainly, it is clear right from the first moments of the first episode that the show was designed to paint a picture of the changing roles of women and men, both at home and in the office.  But I was also intrigued by other themes that became apparent as the season progressed.  One of these was the idea of repressed homosexuality, which we saw in the character of Salvatore (something that came to the fore during his dinner with a client in “The Hobo Cobe”) as well as Joan’s roomate (in “The Long Weekend”).  It was also interesting to see the way the writers kept bringing Judaism into Don’s world — first through his interactions with Rachel, then through devices such as the arrival of potential new clients from the Israeli Tourism Bureau (in “Babylon”).  Judaism kept sneaking into the show to such a degree that I half expected that we’d find out by the end of the season that one of the deep dark mysteries in Don Draper’s past would be that he was Jewish!  (Spoiler alert: that did not turn out to be the case.)  Nevertheless, it’s always rewarding to watch a show that has serious things to say and interesting issues to explore.

If there is any place that this much-lauded show fell short for me, it is that I found pretty much every single character to be, well, pretty much completely unlikable!  Now, it is certainly not a requirement of good TV that all the characters on a show be heroic and noble.  Quite the opposite, really.  It’s great for characters to have rough edges, to be the types of flawed human beings that all of us really are, no matter what we might prefer to think.  (And the idea of making characters more “likable” has the mark of cowardly network executives — in a recent interview about Observe and Report, Seth Rogen and his interviewer from HitFix.com scoffed at the very notion of being worried about whether or not one’s characters are “likable.”)  But I don’t think that having characters who are terribly flawed, and having characters who are likable for an audience, are two mutually exclusive ideas.  Look at the terrificly flawed,imperfect characters of Battlestar Galactica — or, even better, the many scumbags on The Wire — for great examples of how audiences can fall head-over-heels in love with even the worst of characters.  But with Mad Men, I never felt that affection for any of the characters.  (Well, maybe for Roger Sterling, but that’s pretty much it.)  And I think that hurt the show, ultimately, for me.  It prevented me from really engaging with the stories being told.  

I respect Mad Men as a truly well-made show, and I definitely want to get my hands on the second season.  But beloved, at least by me, this show is not.  Not yet, anyways.

In my review of season one of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles as well as my review of the season two premiere, I indicated that while there was a lot that I enjoyed about the show, I also felt that it was far from living up to its potential.

Now that season two has drawn to a close with the airing of “Born to Run” this past Friday (which just might turn out to be a SERIES finale, not just a season finale, as the Fox has not yet announced whether it will renew this ratings-challenged show), do I still feel the same way?

There is so much to enjoy about this exploration of the Terminator franchise.  The acting is solid, both amongst the main cast (particularly, to my great surprise, 90210’s Brian Austin Green as Derek Reese, brother to the ill-fated Kyle Reese from the first Terminator film) and a high caliber group of guest actors that includes Richard Schiff (Toby from The West Wing), Dean Winters (Oz, 30 Rock) Stephanie Jacobsen (Battlestar Galactica: Razor) and, in the finale, Joshua Malina (Sports Night, 30 Rock).  The action and special effects are terrific, quite consistently impressive for a weekly television series.  We got to see a lot of great Terminator-on-Terminator combat, and some exciting peeks into the post-Judgment Day devastated future.  

The writers were ambitious in their story-lines, bringing back all sorts of characters and story-threads from the first two Terminator films (the show’s continuity ignores the third one), and taking viewers along on some fascinating explorations of the Terminator world and mythos.  I was overjoyed when the very first episode of season two introduced a new liquid metal T-1000 (like Robert Patrick’s fearsome character in T2).  That was a development I never expected to see.  One of my favorite episodes of the season also had one of the show’s most direct ties to the Terminator films — “The Good Wound,” in which a grievously wounded Sarah Connor hallucinates visions of the long-dead Kyle Reese. I mentioned above that we got some fascinating looks at the post-apocalyptic future that was briefly glimpsed in the two Terminator films, and I loved that the show wasn’t afraid to explore that time-line along with Sarah and John Connor’s adventures in present-day.  Stand-outs in this respect would be the episodes “Allison from Palmdale” in which we learned some of the background of Cameron, the female Terminator played by Summer Glau, as well as the really excellent two-part “Today is the Day,” which depicted an ill-fated submarine expedition lead by a Terminator that had been reprogramed by John Connor.  Or so everyone thought.

What was neat about the show was its central conceit that Skynet’s mission of eliminating Sarah and John Connor (which was the focus of the first two Terminator films) was but a small piece of a much larger puzzle, with lots of machines and humans traveling to various periods of time with all sorts of competing agendas.  I find formulaic, everything-resolved-at-the-end-of-the-hour shows to be pretty boring, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was anything but a show like that.  Yes, most episodes did have a central theme or focus to that week’s story that would come to some sort of resolution by the episode’s end, but each episode also seemed to fit into a much larger mosaic (with only a few exceptions, such as the terrible waste-of-time Sarah-goes-to-a-sleep-clinic episode “Some Must Watch, While Some Must Sleep”).  That is very cool, and gave the show great momentum throughout the 22-episode season.

But this is also the show’s greatest weakness.  As season two (and, if the show is not renewed, the entire series) drew to a close last week, I found myself left with a frustratingly lengthy list of unanswered questions.  Just whose side was the mysterious Weaver (Shirley Manson) really on?  What was she hoping to accomplish with John Henry (Garret Dillahunt)?  Was she the same T-1000 that turned down John Connor’s offer on the submarine in the future (as seen in “Today is the Day”)?  What exactly was John Connor’s offer to her/it?  Who was the entity that hacked John Henry’s systems?  Was it the missing son of Miles Dyson (who was mentioned briefly in the finale)?  Is that mysterious individual (or group) the one responsible for the ultimate creation of Skynet, or is it Weaver?  Will John  Henry become Skynet, or will he become the key to its ultimately defeat?  How exactly did Derek’s girlfriend Jessie manage to access a time machine to travel back in time?  We were given glimpses, over the show’s two seasons, of the machines in the future working on some sort of project — was it just stuff that we already knew about from the films (the creation of Terminators that can masquerade as human beings; the creation of a time machine that John Connor and the resistance will ultimately capture), or was something more going on?

I could go on and on.  So many questions remain, and so many of the characters on the show had motives that are still unclear.

While I have been thrilled by the way that a number of great dramas of the last few year have really broken away from the old-school style of formulaic, episodic story-telling to embrace longer-running, serial stories (shows like Lost, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, etc.) I wonder if shows like Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles aren’t showing us a bit of the dark side to that sort of serialized TV writing.  I love a good long-running, inter-connected tale, but I found myself getting frustrated, all season long, by the many questions that this show would pose and then never answer.  (These are problems that I must admit to having with Lost, and with season 4 of BSG, as well, and those are shows which I otherwise adored.)  It’s one thing to have story-lines continue from episode to episode, so that viewers feel like we’re watching adventures that could happen in someone’s real life, with events one week having repercussions in the weeks to come.  But it’s quite another thing to be so obtuse and obscure with one’s story-telling that a viewer seldom really understands why any particular character is doing what he/she is doing.  And that, I think, has been the biggest problem with The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

The season ended with a bang, no question, in these last few episodes.  A lot of the season’s story-lines came together, several characters that I didn’t expect to see again re-appeared, one character met with a SHOCKING demise (and high praise to the show, by the way, for catching me totally off guard with that particular twist), and there were a lot of really exciting moments.  And the finale’s cliffhanger ending was a stunner, providing what would be a fine oh-my-god-I-can’t-believe-that’s-the-end conclusion to the show, but also presenting a delicious amount of story-telling possibilities should we get to see a third season.  But if this is the end, I will admit to being, on the whole, a bit disappointed with this enterprise.  With so many questions still hanging, these first two seasons of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles don’t feel like a complete story — they feel like the first acts of a much longer tale.  I hope that, should Fox choose to renew the show, the writers take advantage of the opportunity to bring some closure to the show’s many hanging story-lines.  If they can do so while continuing to give us some great Terminator future-war action, then I’ll definitely be along for the ride.

I’d been reading about it for months now, so I was very pleased to watch this Sunday’s episode of Family Guy, “Not All Dogs Go to Heaven,” which featured the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The episode opens with the Griffin clan attending a Star Trek convention at the Quahog Convention Center.  Unfortunately, this leads to a number of very obvious “Star Trek fans are hapless geek” jokes, which was a little disappointing.  In all of the interviews leading up to this episode’s release that I have seen and read, Seth McFarlane and his team seem to genuinely be big fans of Star Trek.  There have been a lot of Trek references and jokes (and Next Gen references in particular) on Family Guy even before this episode, many of them quite obscure references that could only be dreamed up by serious fans.  (My favorite was the ending of the “Stewie Kills Lois” cliffhanger, with ended with the words “to be continued” reproduced in the exact same font, with the exact same music, as the end of Next Gen’s season three-ending cliffhanger “The Best of Both Worlds.”  How many people in the world got that joke??  Me, I loved it.)  Anyways, all of that made it a bit of a let-down to see the writers go for the easy, lazy jokes at the expense of Trek fans in these opening minutes.

Things pick up from there, however, when Stewie — angry that he didn’t get to ask a question of the assembled Trek cast members — constructs a working transporter in his room and beams in the entire Next Gen cast, so that they can spend the day together.  The cast are portrayed as amicable but with about the intelligence of a kid Stewie’s age.  This leads to some fantastic scenes in which Stewie attempts to corral the hapless gaggle of actors into a trip to a fast food joint and a bowling alley.  There are some funny Trek jokes (such as Stewie’s immediate execution of Denise Crosby, whose character Tasha Yar bought it during Next Gen’s first season; the revelation of what Levar Burton really sees through that visor of his; and Stewie’s inability to properly pronounce Wil Wheaton’s name) mixed with the usual Family Guy style of random lunacy (Patrick Stewart’s refusal to remove his loafers at the bowling alley; Michael Dorn’s insistence on ordering a McDLT).  

The other story-line of the episode, in which Meg finds God after watching Kirk Cameron on TV when she’s home sick with the mumps, sounds like a funny idea but in execution I found it to be a bit slow.  I kept waiting for them to cut back to Stewie and the Next Gen gang.

In a cosmic bit of TV cross-pollination, this episode also featured the involvement of Family Guy Executive Producer and writer David Goodman, who also authored Futurama’s Classic Trek reunion episode, “Where No Fan Has Gone Before.”  While that 22-minute masterpiece (featuring the voices of all the surviving members of the Original Series) is one of the most loving (and also brutal!) pieces of Trek parody that I have ever seen, filled with brilliant gags and a million in-jokes and references, Family Guy’s “Not All Dogs Go To Heaven” is a lot broader.  There are some good jokes to be found, and while it is a blast to see (or hear, I guess) the entire Next Gen cast reunited, I can’t really say this is a home-run episode of Family Guy.  Still, it was fun!

Last week I waxed poetic about my favorite TV series finales.  Today let’s examine the other side of the coin — what I feel are the three WORST series finales that I’ve ever seen!

One quick note, before we begin: St. Elsewhere is renowned for having one of the most ludicrous series finales ever, in which it was revealed that the entire show was just the dream of an autistic child.  However, since that wasn’t a show that I ever watched, it’s finale isn’t on my list.

So what is?

The West Wing — “Tomorrow” — I thought the show would be lost after the departure of Aaron Sorkin at the end of season 4, and the limp season 5 didn’t do much to discourage me of that notion.  Season 6 started off just as badly, but about halfway through that season the show completely reinvented itself.  Suddenly the story focused on the race for the White House, following a variety of characters, new and old, through their involvement in the primaries and, ultimately, in the Presidential election.  Not only did this change bring a lot of new energy and intensity to the show, by moving the show outside the confines of the White House and into new territory, it made it easier for viewers to stop comparing the new episodes to the Sorkin classics.  I got really into the show again, and was very excited for the finale to wrap things up in grand style.  Sadly, what we got was a tepid, boring hour in which nothing really happened.  The much-heralded return of Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) turned out to be barely more than a cameo.  Many long-running characters and storylines were ignored entirely (Toby doesn’t appear at all??  No resolution to the long-simmering Charlie-Zoey romance?) or handled in an entirely trivial, superficial manner (Gee, President Bartlett sees Charlie as his son?  That was obvious ever since the first season!).  Most disappointingly, the first episode of season seven had opened with an intriguing “three years later” flash-forward.  It had seemed clear to me that the questions raised in that scene would be addressed in a book-end scene at the end of the finale.  And yet, nothing!  Why include that scene at all in the season premiere if they weren’t going to go anywhere with it?  What a let-down.

The X-Files — “The Truth” — Although the show definitely should have ended after the seventh season, when David Duchovny (who played series lead Fox Mulder) left, I’m not one of those fans who thought the final two seasons to be entirely without merit.  There were still a lot of great spooky adventures to be had, and I thought that the two new leads, Agents Doggett (The T-1000 himself, Robert Patrick) and Reyes (Annabeth Gish) were both surprisingly compelling.  Like The West Wing, The X-Files was a show that was clearly past its prime in its final couple of seasons, but I still found it solidly enjoyable from week to week.  Until the staggeringly boring final episode, that is, in which Mulder returns and is put on trial by the military.  The extended trial is a pretty feeble excuse to show a lot of clips from previous episodes of the show.  The idea of putting all of the weird and mysterious events that we’ve witnessed into some sort of context is a good one — but unfortunately, by this point the mythology of the show had grown so convoluted that even attentive viewers like myself had grown disinterested in all the talk of alien-human hybrids, abductions, shape-changers, genetically engineered bees, and all of rest of that stuff.  Worse still, the trial and its accompanying clips just re-showed us events that we’d already seen, and pieces of the puzzle that we, the viewers, had already put together for ourselves.  There was nothing NEW learned — no surprises, no revelations.  My attention did perk up, for a brief moment, when series villain the Cigarette Smoking Man re-appeared towards the episode’s end.  I had hated the way he had been apparently killed off in an earlier episode, and was thrilled to see that event undone.  But, after 5 minutes, they went and killed him off again!  What a waste.  So sad to see this amazing, ground-breaking show end with such a pathetic whimper.

Seinfeld — “The Finale” — Here’s another example of a show that made the terrible decision to hang the story of its finale around a clip-filled trial.  Ugh.  There was some fun to be had in the first twenty or so minutes, as some old story-lines were revisited (Jerry’s pilot, the contest, etc.) and they played with the audience’s expectations for a dramatic series finale (There’s ALMOST a plane crash!  Elaine ALMOST professes her love for Jerry!).  But once the gang found themselves stranded in Massachusetts and get arrested, things came to a screeching halt.  The lengthy trial is entirely without humor, and all the clips just serve to remind viewers of how much funnier the show used to be.  I love the idea of bringing back a lot of familiar faces from the run of the series, but I found the trial to be a pretty clumsy way to do it.  It just got very dull, very quickly, to watch one old character after another walk through the courtroom doors.  Furthermore, sending the characters to prison at the end seemed to be quite an outlandish break from the show’s famous “show about nothing” mantra.  And frankly, the whole idea of punishing the characters for all of their pettiness seemed like something developed by someone who’d never actually watched the show.  Of course I know that the finale was written by Larry David, but had he forgotten that the characters seemed to suffer at the end of every episode for their mis-deeds??  Did George’s schemes not always blow up in his face?  Was Jerry not dumped repeatedly by beautiful women like Sidra (”they’re real, and they’re spectacular”) or Mulva?  Did Elaine not continually drift from job to job and weird boyfriend to even weirder boyfriend?  No additional punishment was necessary!  Sending them to prison just seemed ludicrously excessive.  But of course I would have forgiven that device had the lengthy finale actually been any funny.  Which it was not.  What a disappointment.  I much preferred the wonderful retrospective “The Chronicle” (filled with wonderful montages of clips as well as out-takes, etc.) that aired right before the finale.  Now THAT was a nice send-off to this classic series.  

Do people agree?  Disagree?  What other series-ending clunkers have I neglected to mention?  Let me know!