There's plenty of stuff going around that you'd have to be living in cave to miss the fact that the show LOST premieres its fifth season tonight. This is a show that sucks you in and keeps you. Even through the dodgy second season and other mid-season hiccups and unlike the betrayal of pale imitations (I'm talking about you Heroes) that go completely off the rails, LOST so solidly juggles convoluted plots and multiple story lines and characters with compelling writing and chilling performances that it only keeps getting better. Poignant, dramatic, scary, mind-boggling, adventurous, and romantic, in five years I've rarely been disappointed (see mid-season hiccups above). And this penultimate fifth season is set to blow the doors off everything that's come before.
I confess, I am Very. Excited.
The fact that there's an end date to the series has opened up the opportunity for the show's writers and producers to buckle down and answer all their faithful viewers questions and dangling plot points. Also, per Entertainment Weekly, Sawyer will be much more in play this year.
As if I needed even more of a reason to watch.
It begins tonight with what I've heard is two shockingly revealing episodes, the first focusing on the Losties still on the island in 2004 and the second dealing with the Oceanic Six, the only characters to leave the island who are now existing in 2007 - and some of whom are desperate to return to the island. If only they can find it.
Ooooooooo.
I, for one, plan to hustle my mother out of choir rehearsal tonight so that I can plant my fanny in front of the screen for the nearly uninterrupted duration. (Who am I kidding? There will be endless interruptions. Go DVR!)
The fact that Sawyer is shirtless for nearly the entire first hour has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with it.
A-hem.
All will begin to be revealed tonight 9 - 11 pm on ABC (local channel 7).
Oh my giddy freaking aunt.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Inauguration Juxtaposition
My brain seems stuck in two places this morning. "Only two?" you say? Actually, that's a pretty good day for me.
I keep juxtaposing between today and January 20, 1995 with a side blip of the inauguration of Matt Santos final episode of The West Wing.
OK, maybe my brain is in more than two places today after all.
In 1995, I was in my last semester of the extended, five-year undergrad plan at Gordon College. I was spending Winter Break on campus that year to rehearse as co-lead in the Winter Miracle theatre production of Marvin's Room (I rocked, BTW). That January 20th day, I had the TV in my Bromley apartment tuned to Bill Clinton's inauguration, the first important election I'd voted in, the first time I really cared what was going on there or felt invested in the process, the first time I hoped for change. I still can picture the Clintons and Gores on stage after winning the election whenever I hear Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow. This was post-Regan and Bush the First and their combined twelve years of Republican rule and before Whitewater, before Lewinsky, before all the disappointment.
I've always been cautious of putting my hope on a single person (matters of faith being the exception to the rule) because it opens up so much capacity for disappointment and failure. I'd rather a public figure exceed my realistic expectations that fail any grandiose, romantic ones. I'm more cynical now than I was in 1995 and yet as I watched the Obama fervor reach its pinnacle today (just shy of trotting out the donkey, as one Facebook contact put it) I recognized the same hopeful enthusiasm I'd felt myself thirteen years earlier.
Now I know it's enough to get me drawn and quartered these days to say that I remain undecided regarding President Obama. I've neither liked nor voted for George Bush and am oh so glad to see the back of him and his puppeteers. (Did you see Cheney on the dais in a wheelchair? I gather he'd hurt himself on Monday or something, and I wouldn't wish ill on - well - but I still was thinking Aw, poor boo boo and not in a kind way.) Still, I'm waiting to weigh in on the new president. I'm hardly endeared by the prevailing sentiment that making any objection regarding him is as verboten as declaring my pro-choice opinion within the evangelical fundamentalist community of which I'm a part. (Don't scream at me about that now guys, okay? I'm already on an express elevator to hell for plenty of other things; I'm sure that'll be tossed in there too.) All the blogs I read, everywhere I turn, it's Obama ballyhoo. Except in my church community where resigned "well we lost, so let's pray for this guy and see he will do" optimism is tempered with end-of-the-world ballyhoo.
Basically, there's just a lot of ballyhoo going around.
My general middle -of-the-road, talk-to-me-after-the-first-100-days mehness doesn't really fit in either place.
Today I sat in our newly renovated conference room here at the office, surrounded by the smart, creative, clever people I work with who still Get It enough to stand for the national anthem, even if it's only being played on the television. (Our CEO had the tech department set up three different plasma screens in conference rooms and on the promenade so that we could gather and watch the events.) I found myself of those aforementioned two (or three) minds, struck by the echoes of 1995 (though that poet today was no Maya Angelou, that's for sure) while comparing the naive hopes of my 22-year old self with the jaded optimism of today's 30-mphrm-year-old. And it is, without question, a historical event as our first African American president is sworn in. Personally, I long for the day when the skin color or gender of our leader isn't even worth mentioning, but it is exciting to see this event and all that it could yet mean to our country and our leadership occur in my lifetime.
I am hopeful. I really am. (Try not to faint.) I want change for our country and our circumstances and our outlook. My dwindling idealistic core can still be moved by good rhetoric, the subtle, unrecognized deeds and sacrifices of good men and women, and a Maxwell House Christmas commercial. I heard the reprimand of the Bush the Second years in the inauguration speech and the stated intent that this administration will do things differently. I heard a lot of things in that speech, much of which intrigued me but some of which made me go, oh, yippee, and not in a good way. But my shattered rose-colored stained glass lenses are twinkling a bit anyways, possibly in spite of myself.
However, I am now officially in Obama exhaustion, so can we please stop talking about it and just let the man do something before his extreme acolytes start cutting palm fronds?
Go ahead.
Wow me.
I keep juxtaposing between today and January 20, 1995 with a side blip of the inauguration of Matt Santos final episode of The West Wing.
OK, maybe my brain is in more than two places today after all.
In 1995, I was in my last semester of the extended, five-year undergrad plan at Gordon College. I was spending Winter Break on campus that year to rehearse as co-lead in the Winter Miracle theatre production of Marvin's Room (I rocked, BTW). That January 20th day, I had the TV in my Bromley apartment tuned to Bill Clinton's inauguration, the first important election I'd voted in, the first time I really cared what was going on there or felt invested in the process, the first time I hoped for change. I still can picture the Clintons and Gores on stage after winning the election whenever I hear Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow. This was post-Regan and Bush the First and their combined twelve years of Republican rule and before Whitewater, before Lewinsky, before all the disappointment.
I've always been cautious of putting my hope on a single person (matters of faith being the exception to the rule) because it opens up so much capacity for disappointment and failure. I'd rather a public figure exceed my realistic expectations that fail any grandiose, romantic ones. I'm more cynical now than I was in 1995 and yet as I watched the Obama fervor reach its pinnacle today (just shy of trotting out the donkey, as one Facebook contact put it) I recognized the same hopeful enthusiasm I'd felt myself thirteen years earlier.
Now I know it's enough to get me drawn and quartered these days to say that I remain undecided regarding President Obama. I've neither liked nor voted for George Bush and am oh so glad to see the back of him and his puppeteers. (Did you see Cheney on the dais in a wheelchair? I gather he'd hurt himself on Monday or something, and I wouldn't wish ill on - well - but I still was thinking Aw, poor boo boo and not in a kind way.) Still, I'm waiting to weigh in on the new president. I'm hardly endeared by the prevailing sentiment that making any objection regarding him is as verboten as declaring my pro-choice opinion within the evangelical fundamentalist community of which I'm a part. (Don't scream at me about that now guys, okay? I'm already on an express elevator to hell for plenty of other things; I'm sure that'll be tossed in there too.) All the blogs I read, everywhere I turn, it's Obama ballyhoo. Except in my church community where resigned "well we lost, so let's pray for this guy and see he will do" optimism is tempered with end-of-the-world ballyhoo.
Basically, there's just a lot of ballyhoo going around.
My general middle -of-the-road, talk-to-me-after-the-first-100-days mehness doesn't really fit in either place.
Today I sat in our newly renovated conference room here at the office, surrounded by the smart, creative, clever people I work with who still Get It enough to stand for the national anthem, even if it's only being played on the television. (Our CEO had the tech department set up three different plasma screens in conference rooms and on the promenade so that we could gather and watch the events.) I found myself of those aforementioned two (or three) minds, struck by the echoes of 1995 (though that poet today was no Maya Angelou, that's for sure) while comparing the naive hopes of my 22-year old self with the jaded optimism of today's 30-mphrm-year-old. And it is, without question, a historical event as our first African American president is sworn in. Personally, I long for the day when the skin color or gender of our leader isn't even worth mentioning, but it is exciting to see this event and all that it could yet mean to our country and our leadership occur in my lifetime.
I am hopeful. I really am. (Try not to faint.) I want change for our country and our circumstances and our outlook. My dwindling idealistic core can still be moved by good rhetoric, the subtle, unrecognized deeds and sacrifices of good men and women, and a Maxwell House Christmas commercial. I heard the reprimand of the Bush the Second years in the inauguration speech and the stated intent that this administration will do things differently. I heard a lot of things in that speech, much of which intrigued me but some of which made me go, oh, yippee, and not in a good way. But my shattered rose-colored stained glass lenses are twinkling a bit anyways, possibly in spite of myself.
However, I am now officially in Obama exhaustion, so can we please stop talking about it and just let the man do something before his extreme acolytes start cutting palm fronds?
Go ahead.
Wow me.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Appointment Television - FNL and BSG
Tonight marks the premieres of two of the best shows on TV: Friday Night Lights and Battlestar Galactica.
Friday Night Lights IS the best show on television. Yes, its second season fell off the wagon a bit, but that first glorious season is as near to perfect television as it gets. The continuing story of the Texas-based Dillon Panthers high school football team and the lives that revolve around it is so much more than just about football. Anchored by the mesmerizing and as yet cruelly unawarded performances by Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton as Eric and Tammy Taylor (otherwise known as Coach and Mrs. Coach), it is an entrancing, enriching, funny, and at times achingly heartbreaking show about small town life and big time dreams.
FNLs third season debuts tonight at 9 pm on NBC (channel 4) after completing its full and exclusive run this week on DirecTV's channel 101. I wasn't fazed when it was announced that DirecTV would have exclusive fall rights to FNL in return for sharing production costs as I had DirecTV in my Weehawken apartment. I became slightly less sanguine about it when the trees sheltering my new apartment prohibited the installation of DirecTV, but it was this arrangement or no FNL at all, so I sucked it up and waited the delay out.
The news from the DirecTV front is that FNL is fully back in the awesome saddle. Do yourself a favor. Make your peace with the jumpy camera work, dive into the rare and phenomenally executed organic filming process (multiple cameras floating around the scene so the actors have to be fully "on" all the time. Such. Good. Work.), and discover the glory of Friday Night Lights.
Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can't Lose.
A world away in content and yet neck in neck for quality is Battlestar Galactica. I adored the original version of this program that ran from 1978-1979 and for awhile (and to my mother's horror) insisted that any girl children my future might hold would be named Cassiopeia Athena. I remember Jane Seymour's short-lived role as Apollo's wife Serina before I ever knew who she was. When she was killed off, my mother commented that it was probably because she cost too much.
That lovingly time-capsuled show is highly outclassed by the reincarnated masterpiece that showrunner Ron Moore has created in today's BSG.
At its core are the career performances of Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell who are mind-blowingly fantastic as the admiral of the ragtag fleet and the president of the surviving colonists respectively. It's a master class of acting every week surrounded by a show that is never simply science fiction. The Star-Ledger's television critic Alan Sepinwall puts it thus:
Friday Night Lights IS the best show on television. Yes, its second season fell off the wagon a bit, but that first glorious season is as near to perfect television as it gets. The continuing story of the Texas-based Dillon Panthers high school football team and the lives that revolve around it is so much more than just about football. Anchored by the mesmerizing and as yet cruelly unawarded performances by Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton as Eric and Tammy Taylor (otherwise known as Coach and Mrs. Coach), it is an entrancing, enriching, funny, and at times achingly heartbreaking show about small town life and big time dreams.
FNLs third season debuts tonight at 9 pm on NBC (channel 4) after completing its full and exclusive run this week on DirecTV's channel 101. I wasn't fazed when it was announced that DirecTV would have exclusive fall rights to FNL in return for sharing production costs as I had DirecTV in my Weehawken apartment. I became slightly less sanguine about it when the trees sheltering my new apartment prohibited the installation of DirecTV, but it was this arrangement or no FNL at all, so I sucked it up and waited the delay out.
The news from the DirecTV front is that FNL is fully back in the awesome saddle. Do yourself a favor. Make your peace with the jumpy camera work, dive into the rare and phenomenally executed organic filming process (multiple cameras floating around the scene so the actors have to be fully "on" all the time. Such. Good. Work.), and discover the glory of Friday Night Lights.
Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can't Lose.
A world away in content and yet neck in neck for quality is Battlestar Galactica. I adored the original version of this program that ran from 1978-1979 and for awhile (and to my mother's horror) insisted that any girl children my future might hold would be named Cassiopeia Athena. I remember Jane Seymour's short-lived role as Apollo's wife Serina before I ever knew who she was. When she was killed off, my mother commented that it was probably because she cost too much.
That lovingly time-capsuled show is highly outclassed by the reincarnated masterpiece that showrunner Ron Moore has created in today's BSG.
At its core are the career performances of Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell who are mind-blowingly fantastic as the admiral of the ragtag fleet and the president of the surviving colonists respectively. It's a master class of acting every week surrounded by a show that is never simply science fiction. The Star-Ledger's television critic Alan Sepinwall puts it thus:
"What I've always admired about "Galactica" is the way that it goes back to the roots of science-fiction. We've grown accustomed to the "Star Wars" model of sci-fi, where we want adventure stories with space battles, and robots and aliens, and time travel. "Galactica" has all of that - the outerspace dogfights, when they still do them, are as thrilling as you'll find, especially given the modest basic cable budget - but at its heart, it's using all the familiar sci-fi tropes to tell stories about people, who we are now and how we might react to a fantastic situation.
The series began as an allegory for 9/11, and over the years, it's been able to tell stories about Iraq, and religious fundamentalism, and abuse of power - all dressed up in sci-fi drag, to make the subjects more palatable, and to remove enough present-day context that it might make you question your own beliefs. It's one thing to be horrified by insurgent suicide bombers, but what if you're watching a show where the characters you root for have been placed in a situation (as they were a few seasons ago) where they're the insurgency?
And regardless of politics, what makes "Galactica" so gripping is its emphasis on character over hardware. The explosions and the killer robots are cool, but they don't stack up to seeing fully-drawn people - brought to life by a great writing staff led by producer Ron Moore and an astonishing cast led by Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell - grapple with these life-or-death, genocide-level decisions." (See Alan's complete review here.)
Sure there have been missteps along the way, episodes not as up to par as others and characters that I happily would have thrown out of the airlock. And while I was horrified when it was announced that the producers had made Starbuck a woman (in the classic version of the series, Dirk Benedict played Starbuck pre-A-team), I wound up really liking what they did with that dynamic even as I increasingly hated the character (Shut UP Starbuck!)
On a whole, this show cannot be beat and has only grown more apropos and eerily allegorical to the world around us with each passing week.
Over this past summer as the first half of season 4 rolled out, my moving madness prohibited me from working my way through the DVRs saved episodes. Plus I was fed up with Starbuck's whining and screaming (i cheered when she blew up in the fighter and then they had to bring her back. Pooh.) I always figured I'd get settled in the new place and have myself a BSG marathon, but that was before the above mentioned DirecTV installation disappointment when my saved episodes went the way of the dodo with an assist from the UPS guy. Thankfully, the SciFi Channel is running a marathon today of all season 4 part 1 episodes and my new DVR is memory cleansed and ready to go (frankly, it's the first time I've seen the DVR memory at under 50% since I moved in.)
Tonight's season 4 part 2 premiere at 10 pm on the SciFi Channel (check local listings) is the final one for this series as the saga winds its way through the final 10 episodes to a conclusion that will no doubt showcase some of the best drama and performances ever.
I Can't Wait.
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