First up 24. Fox announced they are not renewing 24. It’s not that its ratings were that bad (between 2.8 and 3.5 typically). It is just not high enough to justify the high production cost. Purportedly the producers are trying to get NBC, with its dismal lineup, to pick it up.

I think this season has been one of 24’s best (other than the silly hillbilly subplot with one of the techs). But part of me thinks they ought just put the show out of its misery.

In other news both Burn Notice and White Collar had their season finales. Both these tend to have a bit of problem in that they are trying to be both clever yet formulaic. I think Burn Notice in particular really suffered this last season. The “spy notes” were far more dubious than before. The formula wore out and it just lost a lot of the energy it once had. White Collar is new, but it is already suffering a lot of the same problem. I think both these shows have more difficulty than some of USA’s more comedic shows in that you don’t have the comedy to offset some of that bad plots. Burn Notice’s finale was quite good though and one hopes they are about to shake it up a bit more. White Collar I’m more dubious about.

House has been quite mixed this season. It started off amazingly strong but couldn’t maintain that level of writing.

The Office has also been pretty mixed. It just hasn’t had the quality of writing it once had. The bankruptcy was a clever plot but something just is off this season.

In other news Spielberg’s and Hanks’ new WWII series, The Pacific, starts this week. I’ve heard mixed things about it. Unlike Band of Brothers this is a mix of several books and reportedly is a bit more sentimental than the original series. Still, the reviews are pretty positive. I’m looking forward to seeing this. (I’ll wait until the series has finished airing and watch the whole thing)

Chuck has been great. After being on the edge of cancelation it has emerged as one of NBC’s stronger shows. Although there is a question of whether its ratings are strong enough. However given how dismal NBC performs overall I suspect it’ll be here an other year.

Aaron: I’m Already There
This was painful. I can’t believe the judges had such good remarks for him. And I agree with Kara, he was too young for this song.

Alex: Trouble
I’m rooting for Alex now. I don’t think he really quite pulled off this song (one of my fave songs of all time) but it wasn’t painful.

Andrew: Genie in a Bottle
I liked this a lot. I think the judges are being too hard on him. He did what they asked for and they complain about it. There’s been a lot of that this season so far.

Casey: You’ll Think of Me
I thought Casey did really well, but I don’t know this song and can’t remember it now. So Simon was right about it not being memorable. But Casey seems much more comfortable performing than most of the other guys.

Lee: Fireflies
I don’t really know this song either, but I thought he was smart to choose a softer song and use his rock voice on it.

Michael: This Woman’s Work
1. This is a Kate Bush song, Maxwell just covered it. (Hate it when they don’t be specific about stuff like that!) 2. Maxwell’s version is stupendous. 3. Michael’s was really good. Best performance of the night, and maybe the season.

If you’re not familiar with Maxwell’s version:

Michael didn’t do the whole thing in falsetto, I noticed.

Tim: Hallelujah
I was wincing hard when Ryan said he was doing Jeff Buckley’s version of this song. No one can touch Jeff Buckley. But I was surprised–I didn’t think it was horrible.

Todrick: Somebody to Love
As a general rule, never touch Queen. Unless you’re Adam Lambert. But I was surprised by Todrick–it wasn’t painful. He sang it well. My husband, the biggest Queen fan I know, kept complaining because when Freddie sings it, it starts out in the ground, and by the end, it’s up in the heavens. (His words.)

Crystal: Give Me One Reason
Whenever I hear Crystal sing I keep thinking she’s light years above the other girls. Her experience shows. She’s confident and ON KEY. Still my favorite.

Didi: Rhiannon
I thought this was going to be painful but it wasn’t. I’m glad, I like Didi and want her to do well.

Katelyn: I Feel The Earth Move
I wanted this to be good and it just wasn’t. Carole King is rarely a good choice.

Katie: Breakaway
Unremarkable.

Lacey: The Story
She’s finally starting to shine a little bit. I don’t know this song but thought it fit her voice well.

Lily: I Fall to Pieces
Patsy Cline? Really? Turning this song into a cutesy thing was not a good idea, IMO. But I like Lily.

Paige: Smile
Talk about painful. I couldn’t hack it, had to fast forward it. I think Paige is going home.

Siobhan: House of the Rising Sun
When she said this was a song her father taught her I thought, bad idea to do a song just because it has some personal meaning for you. Just because you have a history with it doesn’t mean it suits you or is a good choice for the competition. But I thought it was really good.

Who do you think is going home?

Spoilers from tonight’s episode and more after the break.

Links and miscellanea

• If you haven’t seen this already, Michael Emerson is wonderfully creepy as a corrections bureaucrat in this prison training video from 1992:

• Another Lost Slapdown video:
  
• I was pleased to see Michael Giacchino win an Academy Award for his Up score. Throughout the series of Lost, Giacchino has made the show so much better; his music is integral to the experience.
• There’s a new contest aimed at fans: create a promo for the series finale and it could be used by ABC.
• io9 has a piece on Damon Lindelof’s Twitter-based responses to fans concerned about how the series will wrap itself up.
• DK is publishing a Lost Encyclopedia, which can be preordered now. I’m doubtful. I can’t see it being any better than the one we already have, and will probably be a whole lot worse.
• More from Cuse and Lindelof at TV Guide, including this key quote from Damon about the sideways flashes: “People are saying [they] don’t need these stories and all we can say is they’re absolutely 100 percent necessary to tell the story of Lost, and hopefully by the end of the season it will be more obvious as to why.”
• And finally, this Flickr set contains some … um, interesting … Lost fan art, including renditions of the cast as Na’vi.
  

Observations and speculations

• As the episode opens, Ben is running from the Temple, where he has seen a murderous Sayid, and attempting to catch up to Ilana and Team Jacob. Ben’s position is precarious, as it has been since late last season. It’s not clear how he escaped the Temple, other than that Smokie apparently didn’t want him dead.
• Ilana shares something typical of a Jacob disciple: she doesn’t really know much about what’s going on. When Sun says to Ilana, “You said it was safe at the Temple,” she replies, “That’s what I was told.”
• Ilana and her crew head back to the Beach at Ben’s suggestion.
• In the LA-X universe, Dr. Ben Linus, European History teacher extraordinaire is teaching a class about Napoleon and, more specifically, his exile on the island of Elba. This calls to mind the famous palindrome, “Able was I ere I saw Elba.” In Ben’s words, “It was on this island that everything changed. That everything finally became clear. … What was truly devastating to him was the loss of his power.” LA-X Ben is talking about Island Ben with insightful accuracy.
• LA-X Ben is plagued by an uncaring bureaucrat of a principal. If Principal Reynolds looks familiar it could be because he’s played by William Atherton, who might be most remembered as the guy who shut off the power grid in Ghostbusters. More on-topic, there’s also a nice little inside joke buried in his IMDb profile. Atherton had a guest-starring role on “Nash Bridges” in an episode called “Key Witness” written by none other than Carlton Cuse. His character’s name? Yep, Dr. Linus.
• In the scene where Principal Reynolds is telling Dr. Linus about needing to cover detention, there is a mural on the wall fo the high school courtyard that says, “United we Stand, Divided we Fall,” perhaps an allusion to the season 2 finale, “Live Together, Die Alone.”
• LA-X Ben is the sort of person who eats grocery store sushi kept in the refrigerator with his name written on the package in Sharpie. He’s also the type of a person who might willingly socialize with Leslie Arzt. Recall that Arzt was always a science teacher, even in the Island universe. It won’t be long before Arzt has as much screen time in season 6 than he had in season 1, pre-blown-to-bits.
• Real (LA-X) Locke to LA-X Ben: “Maybe you should be the principal. It sounds like you care about this place. And if the man in charge doesn’t, maybe you should make a change.” This parallels the conversation that Not-Locke and Island Ben have later in the episode, in which Not-Locke suggests that Ben ought to be the one left in charge of the island after he leaves.
• On the island, hiking through the jungle by torchlight (a favorite pastime of Island inhabitants), Ben has totally lost his lying mojo. Ilana is onto him and he doesn’t do a very convincing job of convincing her that it was Smokie who killed Jacob. This leads to Ilana pulling out her satchel of Jacob remains and having Miles do his thing. Miles, always caustic, throws Ben’s line about Sayid back in his face, “Well he was standing over Jacob’s body with a bloody dagger so, yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
• Ilana tells Ben, “Jacob was the closest thing I ever had to a father.” Apparently, Ilana’s father figure is distant, manipulative and cryptic. Her chances of having a healthy relationship seem dim. Throughout this scene, Ilana’s face is lit in half light/half dark, evoking the black/white theme that has carried the film and perhaps suggesting that Ilana is in a state of moral ambiguity at this point.
• The beach, of course, is ruins. There are still pieces of the Oceanic fuselage visible, and even a few lean-tos.
• Meanwhile, in LA-X, Ben is making a microwave dinner for his father, now an invalid. (There’s no way he could throw a football over that mountain in this state.) As Ben changes his father’s oxygen tank, we’re reminded that Island Ben was responsible for gassing all the DHARMA people and killing his father.
• Roger Linus tells Ben that it was because he wanted something better for his son that he signed up for the DHARMA Initiative in the first place. “Imagine how different our lives would have been if we’d stayed.” Of course, we don’t have to imagine.
• Alex Rousseau shows up at Ben’s door, except that in LA-X, she’s his star high school student. Like on the Island, he clearly has a lot of affection for her.
• Back on the Island, Ilana reveals to Sun that she has been tasked with protecting Kwon, though no one bothered to tell her which one. One of them is a candidate to replace Jacob. She also tells Sun that there are “only six [candidates] left.” Presumably, the candidates at this point are Jack, Hurley, Sun or Jin, Sayid, Sawyer and one other—possibly Kate, though her status is in question. I suppose there’s still a chance that Vincent, too, is a candidate. At least, I hope so.
• In the next scene, half-asleep Hurley is mumbling about cheese curds. Not sure what that’s about.
• Richard Alpert appears in the jungle and pretends to lead Hurley and Jack to the Temple, but really guides him to the Black Rock. Jack: “Where did you come from?” Richard: “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Richard was probably answering that question obliquely by taking Jack to the Black Rock, where he came from. We now have almost positive proof that Richard arrived on the island aboard the Black Rock, probably as a prisoner, given the wistful way Richard looked at the shackles in the ships brig, and given Not-Locke’s comment earlier that, “It’s nice to see you without your chains.”
• Back at the Beach, Ben is looking through Sawyer’s stash of reading materials, which includes both a magazine called “Booty Babes” (“with bouncing beautiful buns”&dmash;clearly alliteration is a priority to the editor), Benjamin Disraeli’s Justice and Truth in Action (a book that is apparently rare, because Google doesn’t turn up much), and a copy of Chaim Potok’s The Chosen.
• Lapidus to Ben: “Imagine how different my life would be if that alarm had gone off” and he had flown Oceanic 815. This is an echo of LA-X Roger Linus’s comment about how their lives would have been different if they had stayed on the island. Ben, “The island still got you in the end, didn’t it?”
• Anyone remember where we saw that bamboo shovel before? Presumably, we saw the Oceanic survivors use it, possibly to dig other graves in the graveyard.
• In LA-X, Dr. Linus quizzes Alex about her upcoming European History AP exam, and mentions the East India Trading Company, with a book open depicting a ship that looks an awful lot like the Black Rock. Incedentally, the answer to Dr. Linus’ question is that the Charter Act of 1813 extended the Company’s control of all parts of India except Punjab, Sindh and Nepal (according to Wiki).
• Alex provides Dr. Linus with some salacious information about Principal Reynolds, presenting us with the question of whether LA-X Ben would use this information the same way Island Ben would use it—exploitation and manipulation. And he does, kind of, but not with the ruthlessness that we’ve come to expect from Ben.
• Island Ben tries to get Miles to free him by promising Miles the $3.2 million that Miles asked for when he and Ben first met on the island. Miles lets Ben know that if he wanted to, he could just swipe the diamonds that were buried with Nikki and Paolo. Later, we see Miles holding one of the diamonds. We know that Miles is not above using his gift for monetary gain, as we learned from his flashbacks.
• Miles tells Ben that “right up until the second the knife went through [Jacob's] heart, he was hoping he was wrong about you.” Interesting.
• On the way to the Black Rock Richard explains that he doesn’t age because “Jacob gave me a gift.” This was perhaps the biggest reveal of the episode (though it’s been hinted at for a while): once Jacob touches you, you can’t kill yourself, and perhaps can’t be killed either (except possibly by another candidate?). This may mean that Jack, Hurley, Kate, Sawyer, Sun and Jin cannot die. (Perhaps this explains how Jin miraculously survived the freighter explosion.) Richard cannot even kill himself.
• Jacob is a cruel guy. He made Richard wait hundreds of years until the “time was right” for Jacob to tell him about his plan, and that time never came.
• The bit with the dynamite on the barrel was a nice bit of storytelling. Nothing moves the incident along like a burning fuse.
• Jack tells Richard, “We go back to where we started,” which apparently means the Beach, the arrival point on the island.
• Not-Locke shows up and frees Ben from Ilana’s make-shift shackles, using some sort of Smoke Monster Fu. He tells Ben that he doesn’t want Ben to die, but instead wants him to be in charge of the Island after he leaves. Not-Locke tells Ben where to go to find a gun and tells him to not resist shooting Ilana, because she wouldn’t hesitate to kill him.
• LA-X Ben tries to blackmail Principal Reynolds, but is faced with the choice of sacrificing Alex to get what he wants. This is a direct contrast to Island Ben’s actions which contributed to Alex’s death, which is specifically referred to in the next scene in case anyone doesn’t remember. (If LA-X Ben was more ruthless, he would have asked for the job and the letter of recommendation for Alex, but apparently, LA-X Ben just isn’t there yet.)
• I didn’t quite buy it when Ilana forgave Ben. I kept expecting her to shoot kill Ben as soon as she got a chance. But Emerson did a hell of an acting job in that scene. And good acting by Zuleikha Robinson as well.
• There’s a fairly lengthy scene at the end of the episode heavy on music and featuring shots of quiet moments, followed by a reunion of friends. It seems like we used to get scenes like this a lot in the first few seasons, but haven’t had one in a while. A bit boring, really. But we do get something else we used to get often at the end of these scenes: a surprise development. Here, it’s the arrival of Charles Widmore in a sub. Nice. It will be interesting to see which side he’s playing on, which team he is aligned with. Probalby not Team Jacob, though that’s not at all a given, I don’t think.

For a Ben episode, this was awfully, I don’t know, introspective and sweet. We got a few key revelations that were not earth-shattering, but were interesting none the less. I was glad that Ben didn’t get killed (before the episode began, I was putting the odds of a Linus death at about 50/50), because he remains one of my favorite characters, even if he’s much less interesting than he’s been in the past.

Thoughts and impressions? Did you like it? Did I miss anything significant?

Last Friday I did my weekly run to the local Thrift Store and found the greatest treasure trove I have ever seen and perhaps ever will see. I walked down the aisle full of puzzles and boardgames (What did you expect? I’m the board game geek around here!) and found a neatly stacked row of old Avalon Hill games in pristine condition, just sitting there, all by themselves with no one to care for them. (Avalon Hill was the premiere game publisher for decades before the current renaissance instigated by the advent of the all powerful Internets) Being the cautious cheapskate that I am I quickly snapped a photo and sent it off to two of my gaming buddies. One of them promptly called me back and told me to grab them all quickly and without hesitation. I obeyed. Two games are missing some key components but otherwise they’re complete and in excellent shape.

Total price for 10 games–$30.

Total approximate value–$200-$250

Needless to say, I’ve been ecstatic even if a little unnerved that I have turned into my mother in a way I most hated as a child. However, what I want to know is what all of YOU think or have experienced with thrift shopping.

What’s your greatest find?

Is thrifting part of your lifestyle? Why or why not?

What’s the deal with our cultural obsession with finding a great deal?

Other thoughts?

Steve Poelzing, one of the main organizers (and a totally awesome guy) told me the goals they have for this event:

“We wanted the con to be about gamers, designers, and families. We have a two fold mission. 1. To be a Sundance of prototype games (the Ion Award). Jason Fullen was the winner…[and] there are companies currently considering [his] game for publication. Other finalists such as Carrie Ulrich and Phil Kilcrease had their games also taken back by publishers for further evaluation. So far, we’re averaging 3 of the 6 finalists are being considered for publication, and that’s exactly what we want.

2. We want the atmosphere of the convention to be comfortable. We want families as well as friends to know that when they come to SaltCON, the staff will be friendly, the other players will be welcoming, and if you want to learn a game, this is the place to learn it. We do offer tournaments for the more serious players, but those tournaments are secondary to the atmosphere of friendship and fun game playing.”

For me and everyone I’ve talked to who went, all of these goals were easily met, if not exceeded! Along with all this there was free stuff given out all day including a game I won early in the day called Chobolo (designed by Steve)! Many of us also got to play test some of these new games and give feedback to the designers.

I arrived at the convention (located at the Officer’s Club on the University of Utah campus) just after 8:30 AM. My first order of business was to drop off and pick my games from the math trade table. Done through bgg.com, a math trade is where a bunch of people list games they want to trade away along with what they’re willing to trade them for from that list. These are all put through an algorithm to tell who to trade what to whom. I made out very well this year, getting pretty much everything I wanted.

Next it was time to hit the tables! I met up with some friends from my regular gaming group and we started into Factory Manager, a part auction, part resource management game we only got two rounds into due to some players having other duties to get to. However from what I played I liked. Shortly thereafter a few other friends showed up and we all played a six player game of Fearsome Floors. This is a hilarious, easy to learn yet very strategic game of cat and mouse between your 3 character tokens and an ugly monster your trying to not get killed by and out of the building to safety. Since the monster and all your characters have differing,limited movement, there’s a lot of jockeying going on in hopes of getting your opponents killed in front of you. I didn’t do so well but the games a riot no matter what!

I and two buddies moved off to a quieter part of the room and played 3 games together. The first was Airships, a game I originally learned at the last con. The objective is to roll dice to improve your airship components which in turn give you better dice to roll for even better components, eventually rolling for entire airships that give you victory points. I ended up winning by one whole point! Second was Himalaya, the only game all day I didn’t particularly care for. You guide a Sherpa around mountain trails gathering supplies and using them in various ways building components that may result in victory points. The way and places the resources came out was just too random for me to feel I was doing anything useful to my cause. Conquest of Paradise was last before my buddy Chris had to leave. I bought this last year on sale and wanted to get a few plays in before deciding to keep it or trade it. An exploration game with a little wargame and resource management thrown in, the theme is somewhat unique in that it takes place in the South Pacific/Oceania area. I’ll keep it (at least till the exploration gets boring) seeing as I won by 4 points in the end;)

Played a very quick two games of Venison. One player is Santa’s reindeer trying to deliver presents to houses. the other is a hunter trying to shoot them down. All is done through flicking of discs. Quite awesome.

Some friends were kind enough let me make two sandwiches from their fixins so that I didn’t have to leave and buy something. This let me get in a rather quick game of Summoner Wars (an nice little fantasy fighting card game on a grid) and be around when they announced a play of Hagoth: Builder of Ships by Mike Drysdale and published locally by Mayday Games. LDS themed games have mostly been complete disasters over the years and the local designers have been attempting of late to find a formula to buck the trend. Here I believe they’ve succeeded. Quick play and easy to learn but much to think about and strategize, you draw cards that either add to your ship’s blueprints, roll for materials, build your ship, sail your ship or do something to slow your opponents. Between 4 players the score was a difference of 2 points in the end.

Afterward one of the other players named Mark showed us a design he;s working on for a collectible card game (CCG–like Magic: The Gathering or Pokemon) using the scriptures that, with a few ideas we through around, I think has great promise that also has potential as a teaching tool. (As a teacher, something I’m very much interested in)

Got in a game of RA (I lost that pretty badly, but it’s still one of my favorites) before ending the night with Perikles, an intense, complex 2-3 hour that’s Euro a Wargame hybrid I absolutely love but don’t get to play very often because of its length and complexity. My win here by 3 points was the most satisfying of the day because every decision was so crucial. Plus it capped off the night beautifully!

So all in all, I spent a total of 15 hours playing 10 games (and remarkably, winning 6 of them! However, though winning does help make it fun, I would’ve had a blast even had I lost all 10) The fun comes in simply comes in playing cool games in a friendly place with old friends and making new ones.  This, to me, is one of the greatest appeals of the hobby. You go anywhere a gaming group gets together and find almost everyone incredibly friendly. If there’s room in the game for another player as you wander near, well, you’re now part of the group! Fpr this and everything describe above, I give SaltCon two BIG thumbs up!

Thanks to Steve for the pictures (I, like an idiot, forgot my camera) and helpful insight, Dan Naylor for running a fabulous math trade, Seth Hiatt of Mayday Games for letting me play Hagoth, Phil Kilcrease, Scott Nelson, Dale Gifford, my buddies who put up with me winning so much (at least this time;) and anyone/everyone else who contributed to a fantastic convention I hope will be around and often for years to come!

The girls did better this week. Crystal ruled, so did Lilly. Didi did better than last week. Katelyn was good (I don’t mind slow, and I love Coldplay) but she needs to step it up somehow.

Funny how after years and years of this show contestants still can’t choose the right song for them. Maybe the time frame they have during the week makes it difficult for them to know how their song is actually going to turn out. Or maybe they just don’t have the experience to choose good arrangements. In general I think the band makes everything much cheesier than it should be. I noticed that for Crystal’s song, the band actually worked really well.

Anyone know what put Crystal in the hospital? I heard she has diabetes.

Spoilers from tonight’s episode, along with a bunch of other stuff, below.

Links and miscellanea

• I enjoyed these Lost Slapdown videos. (Warning: conspicuous Shake Shake advertising included.)
  
  
  
• The LA Times has a recap of a Lost panel at Paley Festival. MOst important bit: yes, we will get more information on the Hurley-bird. Other recaps can be read here, here and here.
• The Chicago Tribune’s Maureen Ryan asks the question: “When is wanting answers a bad thing? Or a good thing?” For the record, I share her equivocating approach.
• Ryan links to this introspective and skeptical post from Time Magazine’s James Poniewozik who has some doubts about who we’re supposed to be cheering. (“I do not so much care about two Island deities I met a half-dozen episodes ago who may not even be people in any strict sense of the word.”) Although I’m not as negative as Poniewozik, I did have a certain restless dread when Jacob and the Man-in-Black were introduced in the Season 5 finale, and I haven’t been able to shake it entirely. But, in the end, we may have to do what we’ve been doing for 5+ seasons now: trust the writers to tell a really good story.
• Here’s a nice blog post compiling some Lost-based fan art, some of which I’ve linked to before, but some that’s new.
  
• AOL TV has an interview with Emilie De Ravin about the emergence of Crazy Claire.
• USA Today has a quiz you can take to test your recall of last week’s episode.

Observations and speculations

• Sayid’s episodes tend to be dark, and this was no exception. His LA-X story was pretty stock film noir or western: the man trying to escape his past is called upon to use his learned skills one last time to protect the ones he loves from a greater evil. The Island storyline was more intriguing, and more morally ambivalent.
• You knew something was up when Sayid showed up at Nadia’s door and she was wearing a wedding ring. Nadia is with Sayid’s brother, Omer. The only other time Omer has appeared was in last season’s episode “He’s Our You,” where we learned about Sayid killed a chicken for his older brother when their father was angry at Omer for not doing it. Sayid, apparently, has a history of trying to get his brother out of trouble.
• LA-X Sayid tells Omer that he works “translating contracts for an oil company.” Pretty mundane work for Sayid, if in fact that’s his job. Omer, on the other hand, owns a dry cleaning business.
• Meanwhile, there’s a lot of unresolved tension between Sayid and Nadia, enough to make this family meeting extremely uncomfortable. When even the kids are picking up on the weird vibe, you know it’s palpable.
• The picture of Nadia that Sayid’s niece and nephew find is different than the one Sayid was carrying on Oceanic 815 when it crashed. In the original photo, Nadia is wearing a hijab. In the LA-X photo, Nadia is in Western dress, carrying what looks like a laptop.
• Back on the Island, Sayid gets confrontational with Dogen, resulting in one of Lost’s better fight scenes. Dogen tells Sayid that the machine/torture device is one that weighs the balance of good and evil in a person, similar to the scales we saw in Jacob’s sea cave.
• Dogen tells Sayid, “I think it would be best if you were dead,” yet Dogen appears to not be able to kill Sayid himself, only by proxy. Or perhaps he believes that if he kills a “candidate” it will prevent him from being able to return to Japan, or something will happen to his son. In any event, it seems that the baseball was what stopped Dogen from taking Sayid out.
• Cut to Crazy Claire and Not-Locke standing just outside the ash circle. Not-Locke sends Claire into the Temple to deliver a message. The ash circle still seems to be preventing him from entering at this point. Not-Locke has struck a (Faustian?) bargain with Claire—she’ll get Aaron back as long as she does what Not-Locke says. He tells her, “I always do what I say,” and though it sounds credible, there’s still an ominous tinge to his words.
• In LA-X, Omer reaches out to Sayid at 2:30 in the morning and tries to convince his brother to use some of his Sayid charm to get a loan shark to stop harassing him. Omer claims that he paid back all of the money he borrowed, but the criminal he borrowed from wants interest for as long as Omer owns the business. Omer tells Sayid, “I know what kind of man you are,” revisiting a theme that has run throughout Sayid’s storylines.
• Life inside the Temple is interesting. Stone benches everywhere in the courtyard, baskets filled with sweet potatoes, daikon radishes and mangos, and everyone barefoot and dressed in earth tones. Oh, and lots of guns.
• Is it just me, or is every single character using the exact same Boy Scout canteen this season?
• Miles tells Sayid, “You were dead, man. For two hours.” If anyone knows dead, it’s Miles. This revelation that it was not the Others, but something else, that brought Sayid back to life surely factored into Sayid’s decision to join Team Man-in-Black.
• When Claire arrives, Lennon tells the gunmen in the gunmen in the courtyard, “Stop, don’t shoot her.” Dogen instructs Lennon to put Claire in “the hole” until “this is resolved.” Despite everything, the Others do not attempt to kill Claire, just as they never really try to kill Sayid directly. I wonder why.
• Dogen describes the Man-in-Black as “an angry man” who was “for years, trapped, but now that Jacob’s gone, he’s free. This man will not stop until he has destroyed every living thing on this island.” Ben said the same thing about Widmore and his freighter folk at the end of season 3. In fact, we’ve heard it so many times, I’m starting to disbelieve it. According to Dogen, Not-Locke is “evil incarnate.”
• Dogen gives Sayid a metal dagger kept in a carved wooden box and hidden inside a planter. This seems to be all theatrics. I think Not-Locke is correct when he tells Sayid that Dogen knew all along that he couldn’t be killed and simply wanted Sayid to provoke his own death. Sayid, however, seems to be persuaded awfully easily to be an assassin. I guess it’s just his nature.
• Back in LA-X, Omer has been “mugged,” landing him in St. Sebastian Hospital for medical care. Jack makes a brief cameo as a surgeon walking down the hallway reading a chart.
• On the island, Kate runs into Sayid in the jungle. Kate’s always running into old friends in the jungle. (To be fair, Sayid just came from the Temple and that’s where she’s going, so this particular meet-up isn’t really that strange.) She’s carrying a pistol and hiking with her finger on the trigger. You’d think Kate would be practicing better gun safety than that.
• Miles makes the most of his scenes, even though his character doesn’t have much to do. I like how he describes Claire: “She just strolled in her, acting all weird. Still hot, though.”
• After Sayid plunges the metal dagger into Not-Locke, Not-Locke grimaces and pulls the blade out. “Now why’d you go and do that?” Notably, the dagger is not bloodied, neither is the front of Not-Locke. He’s a bloodless zombie, apparently.
• Not-Locke’s moral lesson for Sayid, “A guy tries to get someone to kill you once, shame on him. Twice, shame on you for getting talked into it so easily.”
• Not-Locke, “What if I told you you could have anything you want? What if I said you could have anything in the entire world?” In the moments that follow, it’s implied that Not-Locke is promising to somehow get Sayid back together with his dead lover, Nadia. Sayid enthusiastically embraces this possibility.
• LA-X Sayid understands that he’s not a good person, which is why he’s kept Nadia at a distance (yet close enough he can visit as an in-law). But he doesn’t “deserve” Nadia.
• The Man-in-Black’s message to the Temple Others: Jacob is dead. You are free and no longer have to stay here. The Man-in-Black is leaving the island forever, and those who want to go with him need to leave the Temple and join him, those who don’t, die.
• When Kate sees Claire in the hole, Claire is singing “Catch a Falling Star.” Remember that this is the song that Christian used to sing to her, and the song that she requested that her unborn child’s adoptive parents sing to her baby at night. Kate also sang it to Aaron during her Oceanic Six time.
• Crazy Claire is not happy to hear Kate talk about Aaron. A sane person would be relieved, but Claire is not sane.
• It’s interesting that there appear to be many Temple Others who are willing to abandon there sanctuary. Not all Others are loyal to Jacob and the cause. Some are more than willing to switch sides if it means survival. Even Cindy the flight attended is fleeing the castle. Note that Zach and Emma, the kids with Cindy, are carrying the teddy bear as they exit the Temple.
• It was nice to see Martin Keamy again playing the heavy, as he does so well. It seems for Keamy, both the Island timeline and the LA-X timeline lead to his death. When Sayid meets him and Keamy mentions his name, we see another of those vague deja vu looks on Sayid’s face, the kind that seem to pop up regularly in the sideways flashes.
• And, of course, inside Keamy’s walk-in refrigerator is none other than LA-X Jin. When we last saw him, Jin was having difficulty with the customs agents at LA-X because he failed to declare thousands of dollars in cash. Presumably, when we have the Sun-and-Jin episode, we’ll find out how he got from there to the gangster’s fridge.
• I’m glad that we got to know a little bit more about Dogen’s character before he died. Dogen, it seems, was somewhat conflicted about his situation. He felt guilt over the accident that nearly killed his son, but must have had some resentment for the exile that Jacob required of him.
• Dogen apparently played some role in keeping the Man-in -Black at bay, it wasn’t all the ash.
• Sayid drowning Dogen in the fountain was an interesting juxtaposition to Dogen holding Sayid under the water when he was first brought to the Temple.
• I didn’t feel that bad seeing Lennon go. With Dogen gone, Lennon didn’t serve much purpose.
• When Ben finds Sayid, the metal dagger is dripping with Lennon’s blood and Lennon and Dogen are lying face-down in the fountain. Ben doesn’t waste much time trying to convince Sayid to come with him. Ben: “There’s still time.” Sayid: “Not for me.” Sayid seems to have finally resolved the issue of whether he is a good person or not. And the answer is not.
• Ilana finds the secret exit to the Temple just in time to save herself, Lapidus, Sun and Miles. As I pointed out last week, the hieroglyph that she searches for means circle of protection. Certainly appropriate here.
• I wasn’t sure what to think of “Catch a Falling Star (reprise)” I don’t know if that was supposed to be part of the show’s score, or something that the characters could actually hear. Either way, it was sufficiently creepy. At the end of the episode, Sayid and Crazy Claire, along with a fair amount of Others and a very reluctant looking Kate are part of Team Smokie. The battle lines appear to be forming and people seem to be choosing sides.
• So far it looks like this. Team Smokie: Sawyer, Sayid, Claire. Team Jacob: Ilana, Hurley, Richard. Free agents: Sun, Ben, Jack, Lapidus. Team Smokie has to be the odds-on favorite at this point.

Yes, this one was pretty dark. The story is moving along briskly, as it must with only ten more episodes left before the finale.

Thoughts?

2.  The nature of the show is such that each episode is not as self-contained as episodes of BSG.  I will do a more comprehensive post when the mid-season break hits in mid-March.

3.  This week episode was quite cyberpunky.  Until now, it had mostly been family drama, with no action.  But Admiral Adama has an all powerful Neo-esque sister avatar walking around Caprican cyberspace, kicking trash and taking names.  Makes for an interesting tonal shift in the episodes, but it works.

4.  The Adamas are “Tauron” which apparently means Jewish-Italian-Arab-Greek-Hispanic.

5.  The actor playing Daniel Greystone has gotten a lot better since the pilot.

6. No wonder the Cylons wanted to destroy humans.  The Zoe avatar inside the first Cylon was forced to watch her parents have sex.  And she was ordered to rip her own arm off.  The Zoe avatar is also quite selfish and too willing to manipulate the best friend of the real Zoe.

7.  The Soldiers of the one practice bi-sexual group marriage.  Interesting.

8.  Ron Moore wants to include more gay characters in his shows.  That is fine.  Now, if he could just stop making them of a certain type.  So far, we have: Cylon Saboteurs and mentally insane Admirals (see BSG: Razor), mutineers (Gaeta), cold-blooded Mafia-esque hitmen (here in Caprica, one of the Adama clan), and cold-blooded fanatical terrorists (Soldiers of the One in Caprica).

9  Either way, this is a lot better than expected.  Nothing as good as the first two seasons of BSG, but loads better than the last two seasons.

10.  So go watch the frakking show.

2010 is shaping up to be a great year for music. New albums are scheduled from the likes of Natalie Merchant, U2, Arcade Fire, Blink-182, Coldplay, Interpol, Jack’s Mannequin, Jimmy Eat World, Kasabian, Kings of Leon, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Shins, Drive-By Truckers, Stone Temple Pilots, The Strokes, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, MGMT, Crowded House, Animal Collective, among others.

So what’s the best so far? There are a couple of standouts. The first is Spoon’s new album, Transference (see video above), which came out in January. Spoon was Metacriric’s top artist of the past decade and this new album continues their dominance.

The second album you may want to put in heavy rotation is Shout Out Loud’s Work. This Swedish band is on their third album and seem to really be hitting their stride.

Finally, for fans of Phoenix, like me, there is a wonderful video of them playing and discussing their favorite musical influences. Here’s the astonishing playlist:

MUSICVISION PHOENIX PLAYLIST
01-Blue monday people / Curtis Mayfield
02-Can’t let go / Evie Sands
03-Sell your love / Iggy pop & James Williamson
04-Flash forward / Serge Gainsbourg
05-I’m glad you’re mine / Al Green
06-Don’t turn the light on, leave me alone / CAN
07-Mesopotamia / The B-52’s
08-Ruby don’t take your love to town / Kenny Rogers
09-Slow night, slow long / Kings of Leon
10-Leur plaisir sans moi / Jane Birkin
11-In and out of the shadows / Dion
12-Victory garden / The Red Krayola
13-Escape from New-York main title / John Carpenter
14-We almost lost Detroit / Gil Scott Heron & Brian Jackson
15-Darlin’ / The Beach Boys
16-Peace like a river / Paul Simon
17-A song for you / Gram Parsons
18-The fairest of the seasons / Nico
19-Who was that masked man / Van Morrison
20-La smortina / Coro della SAT
21-City lights / Phoenix

Take a look, it’s fascinating:

MUSICVISION PHOENIX from Guillaume Delaperriere on Vimeo.