Lost Season 4 Spoilers

I haven’t been into ‘Lost’ before, but as ABC was kind enough to put all three seasons online in HD for free, I’ve kinda caught up, and I’m somewhat interested in how the whole thing plays out.

That said, I’m not ready for a string-along season that has me sitting still for an hour to watch a show that refuses to answer any questions before posing more and more new ones. Some find this tactic intriguing – I find it frustrating. And I get frustrated enough day to day without doing it to myself on purpose.

So I think I’m going to wait until the season is over, and just catch up with the answers then. Considering the writers strike, this may mean no new programs for me this season (other than Survivor), but that’s OK – I watch too much TV anyway.

Spoilers (what there are of them):

• (future) Jack becomes a bearded (really ugly beard, in fact) pill-popping drunk. He says he needs to go back to the island, and that he never should have left. (We knew that last season.)
• (future) Hurley goes nuts, gets in a car chase with the 5-0, and then begs the cops to put him in the funny farm. Charlie (still dead, but looking better than he did all last season) visits Hurley at the funny farm, smacks him in the face, and yells in his ear that “They need you!”
• (present) Naomi eventually dies from the knife sticking out of her back (yes, yes… we get it already!), but not before Kate finds her, hands her the sat phone, and she’s able to change some numbers so now her buddies really are on the way. Naomi told her buddies that she got hurt jumping in to the island, not that Locke threw a knife the size of Crocodile Dundee’s between her shoulder-blades.
• (present) Hurley can see and hear Jacob. He finds the experience, um, disconcerting. Running away does no good, and Hurley keeps ending up back at Spooky Cabin, until Locke shows up.
• (present) Jack would have shot Locke in the face, had there been any bullets in the gun. Poor planning on Jack’s part. Good luck on Locke’s.
• (present) Everyone chooses sides – Claire, Rousseau, Alex, Karl, Ben, Hurley and Sawyer go with Locke to the Other’s barracks. The rest stay with Jack.
• (present) Helicopter lands. Dude hops out and sees Jack and Kate. Asks, “Are you Jack?”

See? Not too many answers here. I wonder, if I were to make a chart of questions asked vs. answered (throughout the series, not just tonight), what it might look like? I mean, three years later and we still don’t know what the smoke-monster-thingy is. I haven’t got the patience for that nonsense, however. I’ll just let somebody else do it.

 

Beowulf

Hubby and I saw Beowulf this weekend. Uh, not so much.

It probably would’ve been better in 3D, but even that wouldn’t change the most basic flaw: none of the characters is worth caring about. (Except maybe Grendel. I ended up feeling sorry for him.) The movie may not be as tedius as the original poem, but it’s a bit tedius nonetheless.

 

Crazy Person, Nerd Queen, and Heroes FanGirl

Heroes Season 2 premiered last Monday night. Couldn’t friggin believe how excited I was. Couldn’t think of anything else for a good portion of the evening. ‘Three hours to Heroes’ says my internal monologue as I’m shampooing the rug (again) (goddamn dog). ‘Two hours to Heroes!’ sings my inner child as I’m developing dishpan hands. ‘One hour! Almost there!’ shouts the sci-fi dork extraordinare lurking beneath my hausfrau veneer, as I’m praying I’ll fold enough little-boy socks from this basket to save me from doing it again this week. Then – der Tag! It’s finally HERE!

And I was so annoyed with my life and distracted by my family at this point that I couldn’t focus, and missed ALL the subtitles. I had to catch it online after the kids went to bed the next night. 

I think I understand that Peter’s alive, Nathan’s a drunk, Mama Patrelli is evil incarnate (which of course we knew), and HRG is the big-billy-bass-ass I always knew he was. Maya kills people in a really gross way, even if she doesn’t want to (I half expected to see Grissom slipping on gloves in that scene). Mohinder may not actually be a wuss. This Midas guy has potential (I liked him in Sneakers). Claire’s new boyfriend can fly (He’s called Emotard on TVGasm, which I don’t know is a fair assessment, though all that “robot” or “alien” nonsense was such an obvious demographic grab I was really disappointed in Kring.)

So here are my questions: why is Molly with Parkman and not Niki/Jessica and D.L.? (I had some cutesy ideas about Molly and Micah when they grow up.) Who’s the guy that killed George Takei? How did Nathan hit the wall so hard so fast?

These and other pressing questions will maybe be answered tonight, maybe answered this season, and maybe turned into something else entirely.

 

Burn!

Hubby has a new show he enjoys. Burn Notice on USA. Hubby says he likes the home-improvement tips (yuk yuk). I think he’s OK with the T&A aspect of a show based in Miami, too. Lots of bikinis. (That was the only thing that kept him watching that stooopid show with David Caruso.) (But of course he wouldn’t admit that to me.) It’s James Bond with snark. I have to admit, I liked it, too. Not as much as the Hubby did, but I liked it.

So we’re sitting on the couch, chuckling at the Ocean’s 13-esque dialogue of Jeffrey Donovan (telling the guy whose car he just jacked that he has to get the visor fixed because it’s ‘really annoying.’ *smirk*) when hubby laments that Burn Notice is a summer fill-in show. As is his other favorite show, Eureka. As is one of my favorite shows, The 4400. And Monk. And Psych. And Dead Zone.

So what does this say about us as people? Hubby and I apparently are summer fill-in kind of people. Respectable enough, but never going to make it to mainstream prime-time. And we seem to really like USA Network and the SciFi Channel. And our young kids know who Stan Lee is. And Gene Rodenberry. Before too long they’re going to know who Robert Heinlein is (actually, Eldest Son already does, as he’s perused some of the juviniles).

When people who don’t know us well learn these facts about us, they seem surprised. Not by Hubby, of course, as he’s always been a bit of a geek (occupationally), and so people somehow expect an interest in speculative entertainment from him. From me, though? The HausFrau? I drive a mini-van and boor people to tears with mundane anecdotes about my family. Who would think that my favorite stories are those with aliens or set in alternate universes? That I can quote most of the Star Trek movies (I veer away from I and V, and try to avoid IV)? That many (OK, most) of my political, social, and religious opinions have been infuenced by Asimov, Atwood, Bradbury, Bradley, Card, Clarke, Dick, Heinlein, Herbert, LeGuin, Verne, and Wells? My good friends know this about me, and generally smile indulgently when I go off on a tangent about books, authors, and the state of current literature, with a look that suggests they’re about to pat me on the head and tell me everything will be OK. But when an acquaintance drops a comment about space opera while looking at a magazine ad, and I respond with a quip about David Weber and ‘missles screaming through the void,’ the look on their face is full-on shock.

I guess we haven’t moved as far from the stereotypes as I thought. I must be a pimply-faced, Spock-ears wearing, no girl kissing dweeb in another life.

Along those lines, Ursula LeGuin wrote this about genre fiction. I was choking with laughter. Way to go Ursula!