You’re Either On or Off the Island

8:25 pm. When we got our iPad, one of the first things we tested was the streaming-video Netflix app, and we decided to test that with the Lost pilot. We’ve never seen the Lost pilot. We heard it was really good. But as they say, hearing is the second thing to go.

At some point over the past six or seven or eleventy years, we must have seen an episode. It was so padded with filler and flashbacks, we never watched another. Until tonight.

Why tonight? We don’t want to write about Rand Paul again, so we need some gimmick.

Also, we grew up on television. Among our earliest memories is watching the Fugitive finale at our aunt’s house. The Fugitive finale was stunning. He caught the One-Armed Man. The End.

Everyone was shocked. There had never been a The End on an American television series. There wouldn’t be another until Mary Tyler Moore’s Traveling Group Hug. These days, of course, we get 150-minute specials.

8:47 pm. TheStarterWife, one of our old Defamer pals still active on Deadspin, tweeted the other night that The Empire Strikes Back would never have survived the Twitter era. Which is why we’re avoiding the Internet right now. New York and Chicago know too much.

8:54 pm. When was the last time we watched ABC? The Oscars. And the time before that? The Oscars. And the time before that? The Barney Miller finale.

9:02 pm. They’re loading up the jet for its Fateful Flight. Looks like we didn’t miss anything!

9:08 pm. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Did somebody just say that? Really?

9:11 pm. Hey, look! A Hobbit!

9:17 pm. “Yes, Desmond. You will.” Annnnnd, commercial. Is every act break this hacky? Is that supposed to be part of the fun?

9:27 pm. Leo DiCaprio is playing a grown-up again. He’s so adorable when he dresses up!

9:32 pm. Did we miss the episode where they arranged logs on the beach to spell SOS for an overhead astronaut, only a log got bumped and it ended up spelling SOL, which was the astronaut’s name? Are we the last viewer in America to attempt a Gilligan’s Island reference? Does anyone know the Professor’s first name?

9:41 pm. We’re actually not confused by the alternate-reality scenes. Some things you learn through cultural osmosis.

9:54 pm. Ladies and gentlemen, the first commercial we’ve seen for the Pill. Introducing Yaz! Which is the sound you make when the indicator stays blue.

10:05 pm. Note to self: Never uncork an island.

10:13 pm. Wimp. Sarah Palin could hold it for three flights.

10:25 pm. Chicks with AK-47s: Guaranteed awesome.

10:34 pm. We were told there would be a debate about Faith & Reason. Where’s the debate about Faith & Reason?

10:35 pm. “I love you!” “I love you!” “I know!” Harrison Ford was right.

10:40 pm. Box score: iPad 2, Droid 2. The Geek Showdown might go into overtime!

10:47 pm. Weird. The barista was handing us change the other day, and we had a sudden mutual flashback to Splash Mountain.

10:55 pm. Watch out for the falling Styrofoam!

11:14 pm. Mein Fuhrer! I can valk!

11:19 pm. Church? Check. Baptismal pond? Check. Crying Virgin? Hold on, must still be in the prop shop.

11:24 pm. Ah. This entire series was based on a rejected plotline for Six Feet Under.

11:27 pm. A little creepiness before we go: And the baby? Dead too.

35 Comments

Never saw it and plan to keep it that way.

When we got our iPad… Is our dear noje secretly Joan Collins?

@Benedick: Either Joan Collins or Queen Elizabeth.

I’ve also managed to pass up every episode of Lost, just like 24 and American Idol. I’m completely out of touch with contemporary television with the exceptions of Bill Maher and Project Tim & Heidi. Have I missed anything?

@Dave H: No. I see bits of this when I travel. What’s worse is tuning in Discovery Channel and National Geographic and seeing that they are presenting programs on Nostradamus and ancient astronauts.

So Lost was a six season Twilight Zone episode? Glad I didn’t care nor watched it.

@Dave H: It does sound like a queen. Just not sure which.

@al2o3cr: Lord. Next up: Rumsfeld accuses Obama of being in bed with the Saudis and Cheney accuses him of being in bed with puppies and virgin boys.

@Dave H: You’re a Rungay follower yet you haven’t chimed in when we dissect the contestants or discuss whether Heidi’s outfit was short/tight/shiny enough? For shame!

Okay, a moment to brag, such as. It’s my bday (officially older than Jeebus now) and I get to celebrate by having dinner with SFL and HF tonight! Whoo hoo!

@al2o3cr: Presenting the GOP dream team: Palin-Paul 2012. That’s my GOP dream team.

@flippin eck: Oh I don’t watch for the fashions. I prefer the whining and back-stabbing among the designers. This season I got a bigger kick out of the models because so many were so bitchy. I kept hoping at least one would get tossed out a window.

Man! I wasted SIX YEARS OF MY LIFE FOR THIS?

JNOVJr’s and my immediate reaction: Awwwww.

My reaction this morning? What bullshit! Emotionally satisfying (sort of — never bought into the Sawyer/Juliet thing – hoped he’d end up with Kate).

Flashback to last week: Jack is King of the Island? LOST is now PREDICTABLE?

Back to last night: They’re all fucking going INTO THE LIGHT?

Blargh. BULLSHIT! Double blargh.

I should have stopped watching two years ago.

Fucking magical islands. How do they work?

Interesting article about the background of the sheriff that appears with McCain in the “danged fence” ad. Turns out he’s a Masshole.

HaHa, I never watched a single episode. I spent the evening watching Avatar and re-runs of old Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes. The musical one was on!

You guys are nerds.

nothing to offer this thread. never seen an episode of Lost.

well, maybe that is something in itself.

@FCS: Haha! The real question is why he never lost any weight.

@tomcatt: Still haven’t seen Avatar, prolly never will, but District 9 was AWESOME!

@JNOV:
wasnt District 9 awsum. I have been having this running argument with this idiot over at TL who can not be convinced it is not “racist”

and btw you missed nothing with Avatar. I finally saw it on DVD. crap. pure eye candy crap of interest to no one except effects geeks like me.

@JNOV: At all? Thing was on for years, wasn’t it?

I read about these desert island reality shows and wondered why they were based on people being randomly cruel to each other. I figured they could have made them interesting and maybe realer if they’d just weighed in the teams and, after three months, weighed them again. Best maintenance or increase in weight gain wins.

And cuz series endings are on the mind, Six Feet Under probably did it best. Ecotone (not the series finale) was a great episode overall, and adding Strawberry Letter 23 was a special treat.

and FTR Spartacus is continuing while the star undergoes therapy for cancer with a season of prequel.

excellent.

@howdy: mos def *not* racist. Frigging *antiracist* writ large.

@FCS: the show was best when they were fucking each other over, then the writers introduced The Others, and it kind of went downhill after that. When the threat to their survival became external, there was no Piggy-on-a-spit business. The writers stole from everyone except the most obvious source.

@JNOV: The Others? UFO land, aliens jump out and starting snacking on the cast?

@JNOV:

indeed. so clearly.

but I argue because stupidity bugs me. and this amazing, totally antiracist, film doesnt deserve that crap.

@fcs: The Others is this mishmash of people who have been on the island for millenea, some from the rear of the plane, one for a few centuries, some for decades.

@JNOV: Extraterrestrial snackers would have been far more believable.

Oh, and the thing about the dead baby – the show was jack’s journey, and the folks at Lostpedia (quit that snickering) think the people in the church, that is also a Dharma Initiative building called The Lamppost (helloooo C.S. Lewis!) are the same age they were when they left the island, even if they died many years later. Jack and Kate raised the baby for several years before they gave him to his Aussie grandma and went back to the island.

I saw a grand total of 45 mins over six years, which was all last night. That’s where I got the line I posted, which I found very appropriate to our little operation here: “This is the place you made so you could all be with each other.”

The last show I got into to the point I was learning the mythology etc was the X-Files, and even then I quit watching after Mulder dropped out even though I have been known to watch just to gaze at Scully (yowza!). THAT finale was totally fucked up. I can’t watch any other shows other than 30 Rock and Big Bang Theory because I’m too busy having a life; Rachel, Keef, Stephen or Jon is on; or I’m watching my Wednesday Night at the Range line up on the Outdoor Channel.

@Capt Howdy, JNOV: My kid has a Prawn stenciled on his snowboard. Avatar was OK. Blowing shit up is always great in my book. The picture was better on my TV than on the non-digital non-3D screen I saw a clip on for the DVD when we saw the somewhat disappointing and unfulfiling Iron Man 2.

@redmanlaw: Cubbie mentioned a bar in Atlanta awhile back where all the local politicos hang out, and I thought, That’s it!

@redmanlaw: I quit the X-Files somewhere around the time Scully realized her eggs were stolen and she found one of her “children” or something. And people had black goo in their eyes. And The Smoking Man was Mulder’s dad. Yeah. Their whole Faith/Reason thing broken down as did LOST’s. It was such a central theme, but then the writers blew it up or got lazy or ran out of ideas or something.

And I call Bullshit on the writers who claimed that Jacob (the “good” guy) didn’t rob people of their free will. He was the reason their plane crashed in the first place, and he let decent people die willy nilly. I was totally on Team Smoke Monster for a few weeks.

GAR!

Related: Law and Order ends tonight. S. Epatha Merkerson’s character was soooooo awesome! I hope she and Jeremy Sisto find work. I’ve loved Sisto since White Squall and that stinker he made with Jeff Goldblum (whom I also love dearly — oh! He’s on L&O: Criminal Intent with a really bad hairdo). There have been some awesome actors on that franchise. I was pretty upset when Annabella Sciorra left. And I loved L&O: Trial by Jury, but I think I’m the only one who watched that spin off. Alas, I don’t think I’ve watched any L&Os for the past three years. I might catch the end tonight.

@JNOV: I was good with X-Files right up until the movie. And then I found something else to do.

Oh, and 24 ends tonight as well. But only Season 5 counts, so no loss.

@FlyingChainSaw: It was just so stupid – the whole thing. And I was stupid to think it would make sense at some point. I’m still stuck in Blargh.

@nojo: I quit 24 midway into the second season. The first season was pretty good. I mean, they killed his wife! That was pretty cool. After that, it’s like the scripts were being written by John Yoo (minus the black president business).

I think X-Files lost me because I wasn’t paying enough attention.

@JNOV: I started with Season 5, which was an over-the-top wild ride. It helped a lot that I didn’t know the show’s cliches — Who’s the Mole this week? — and it helped that Prez and Mrs. Prez were camping up a storm.

I then backtracked through the seasons, and yeah, meh. As were the seasons that followed. But Season 5? Marvellous fun, as Ms. Kael says.

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