Thursday, May 25, 2006

Lost bids good-bye for summer and I miss it already

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Ah TV. How I hate it, yet how I love it.

In my opinion, this was a great year for season finales: Grey’s Anatomy, The Office and now Lost. And I love the trend of super-sizing the finales. I know it’s a ton of work for the producers, but how awesome was a three-hour Grey’s or a two-hour Lost or even a 40-minute Office? I can’t complain.

The one finale that I thought sucked was Will & Grace. A) I don’t want to imagine them old and B) I don’t want to imagine them not being friends for 20 years and C) having their kids get together in the end, much like Will and Grace themselves did, is retarded, as is the idea of Jack and Karen living together, as is their stupid duet of “Unforgettable,” which I believe should be looked at as a “next phase of my career” demo tape. Lame.

Anyway, let’s talk a little Lost, shall we? People who don’t watch this show need read no further because you will have no idea what the heck I’m talking about.

The show has gotten even more unbelievably complicated, something I think that J.J. Abrams and crew cannot avoid despite themselves (see Alias for confirmation). I love that the show is complicated and deep and messy and unexpected, but it’s not a great tactic for winning new fans or keeping old ones who feel they can’t pop back in if they miss a few episodes. The age of the DVR is helping that scenario, but with only 10% of TV households using DVRs, producers shouldn’t really be counting on that factor to preserve their shows.

Now on to the part where I act like the characters in this show are real people: I have to say that I agreed with Jack and then Locke that the whole pushing the button thing was utter crap, but now we learn that in fact, it’s the whole deal. Now that Desmond has gone to the measure of last resort and used the “system failure” key, where does that leave us for next season? Is the magic of the island that healed Locke’s legs, cured Rose’s cancer and got Sun pregnant now off? And where are Locke and Eko – fighting it out in the hatch?

More unanswered questions: Are Jack, Kate and Sawyer going to go live with The Others? For how long? And who the hell are these people? Are they in fact “the good guys,” as non-Henry Gale said they were? I am proud to say that I always thought Henry Gale was the leader and I was right about at least one thing.

Finally, did Michael and Walt really get away? It’s possible because Harold Perrineau is not signed on a season regular next year. While his return is not ruled out either, it looks like murdering Michael made a clean getaway for now.

Just as I expected, the finale opened more questions than it answered, but it did answer some very important questions, like “why did the plane crash?” and that was a big one. Overall, I thought it was a better season finale than last year’s.

While I was savoring every minute of "Lost," it looks like most of the rest of America was watching Taylor Hicks finally take the "American Idol" crown that should have been Chris Daughtry's. I know it’s a big deal, I know 500 million people voted, I know it’s the highest-rated show on TV, but still, yawn.

In a totally irrelevant, non-TV aside -- I’m going on a float trip (traveling in canoes, camping on the shore, drinking beer -- good times!) down the Gunnison River this weekend, which should be a blast. Blog on that next week.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend! It’s one of my faves – first weekend of summer, a day off and no presents to buy.

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