Television Thoughts

A few thoughts on television over the last couple of days.

I watched Lost last night (as I do every week), and I am quite upset that this week was the last new episode for 6 weeks. I've complained about this before, but come on ABC, 6 weeks? Really? This is one of the reasons why the DVD is one of the best things to happen to TV series (especially the serial dramas) in quite some time. When you watch on DVD you control when the episodes air. Of course, you have to wait about six months from the end of the season for the DVD set to come out. Another benefit of the DVD is the rapid catch up. Hear good things about 24 or Alias but haven't checked them out before? You wouldn't want to jump into the middle and be confused, but you could go out and rent the DVDs and catch up and be just like the other addicts that have been watching since the beginning. If this had been around when X-Files was on, I imagine many more people would have joined in the later years rather than just saying, "It's too late now. I'm completely confused."

Anyway back to Lost (If you don't care about Lost, do care but haven't seen last night's episode, or just feel like skipping this section, jump down to the next paragraph...or not.). Last night's episode, "Numbers", focused on Hurley, the last of the 14 major players to get his own episode. We found out that (1) he's rich (2) he's been in a mental institution, but we don't know why (3) has had some remarkably bad luck since winning the lottery (4) won the lottery using numbers that originated from the island, though he didn't know it at the time (5) won the lottery using numbers that are found on the side of the mysterious hatch that Locke and Boone stare at but never do anything about (6) was probably Locke's boss (They didn't specify that it was the same company, but Locke lived in Tustin and worked for a box company and Hurley's accountant mentioned him being the owner of a box company in Tustin. Everyone is connected, and nothing is a coincidence on this show.). Unfortunately, the show also raised almost as many questions. The problem they are going to run into is that the longer the show goes on raising new questions, the better the payoff must be when they finally get to it. I did enjoy the way the first portion of the episode was done in a tragi-comic way, playing off the personality they had established for Hurley before becoming more serious as we learned more about his situation. One final Lost thought, is anyone else bothered by the fact that when they needed someone to play an Iraqi on the show they went out and hired an Indian actor? I like Naveen Andrews. I think he is a good actor, but that seems very odd to me.

Tonight, I was sitting at the computer, and I actually had The O.C. on the TV in the background. I don't typically watch the show, and I really didn't want to see it tonight either, but I had a specific reason to watch. It wasn't until about halfway through the show that I realized that the premier of the Star Wars Episode III trailer was during next week's O.C. The lesson: Pay attention to what you read, or you might have to watch 35 year olds pretend to be in high school (how old is the guy playing Ryan on that show, anyway?).

Until later...