I watched Leverage last season. I started losing interest when Nathan Ford's story line dipped into alcoholism.

I might just have to check out the pilot to see if I'm interested in Leverage.

Why is it that every US station seems to broadcast things like the State of the Union? There aren't any commercials to earn money from it, are there? Why not let it ride and show your regular programming while your competitor is showing the presidential address? I have my thoughts on which way the ratings would swing...

Besides, didn't the president know that Steve Jobs has his own announcement scheduled tomorrow?

Is everyone ready for Lost? I've been making jokes for the past 1.5 weeks about tonight's season premiere. Mostly to my wife. The type of jokes that imply I'm some crazed Lost junky.

Like last night when she asked if I would bathe our daughter, I told her it was going to have to wait while I synchronized myself and meditated for a little while to prepare for the night's sleep ahead of me where my mind and fantasies would be filled with dreams of Lost. And unicorns.

But seriously, I'm like mega super so looking forward to it. I even skipped Heroes and 24 last night just so I wouldn't dull my senses in preparation for tonight.

I am also super excited. At this point I don't even care if they answer all the questions (has anyone seen that song set to "Downtown" where they sum up many of the unanswered questions?). I'm just going to enjoy it.

The reason I'm posting so much today is because basically I'm just wasting time until Lost comes on. Customers and work be damned.

Somehow I managed to be too busy to watch Lost Season 1, and now I don't want to jump in and be behind. Should I just get the DVDs and work my way forward?

Dan... Or something like that. How much of Lost is available on Hulu?

It had a weak period, but that weak period is still vastly superior to the strong periods of many other shows.

Yeah, I really think you need to start from the beginning. I believe the first few seasons at the very least are available for Netflix streaming, too, if you have Netflix.

Frankly, I think you can tell whether you're going to be into the show by the first episode. It really grabbed me and I was hooked.

And Bruno is right, there's a bit of a lul (I think most of season 2 and the first several episodes of season 3, but after that I don't have a single complaint.

Damm, I'd not consider nor recommend to anyone watching any of Lost out of order. I'd also recommend strongly against attempting to jump in anywhere but at the start. Even if you like what you see, you're doing yourself a disservice by not following the whole story arc.

*continues to try and resist watching Lost until it's done*

You people aren't helping. I do not need to be sucked into it right now. :-P

I guess I'll save Lost for the summer lull, when all the world's in reruns. Then I'll do Hulu or whatever...

The season premiere wasn't what I was expecting (in terms of the difference in how they presented their usual dual time-line), but it hints at a possible story line I did discuss with someone last year. Needless to say, it didn't disappoint, even though I'm not sure I'd actually like to see the direction previously discussed.

I'm trying not to give anything away about the episode nor this season in the form of spoilers, but it's basic knowledge about Lost and how their episodes are structured. Each episode generally has two complimentary time lines and you're treated to flashes of the second time line mixed within the episode. That's been the case since episode one.

A number of my hypothesis played out in this double episode as well. It was a good way to tie a few answers/plots points together and they weren't answers that were especially difficult to see coming.

The most glaring point had nothing to do with the plot of Lost, but it's something we've touched on here. It was actually comparing Lost to Heroes which I watched later last night. Putting them back to back firmly nailed down what I've been thinking for a little while.

Where one can say that Lost is molded in the fashion of a quality hollywood level series of films (good dramas, mysteries and action adventures), Heroes has been stuck emulating (to a T) daytime soap operas in every way. It's a dull convoluted mess where absolutely nothing happens in any episode. I dare to say that more happens in one single episode of Lost than over the course of an entire season of Heroes.

The other prime time TV show firmly molded around what daytime soaps have been doing for over 30 years? 24. Snore-fest.

Yeah, oddly enough I found myself kinda digging this season of Heroes, despite hating the others. Yes, I kept watching - I can be sucked into any story if super powers are involved. Of course, that's one of the things I always hated about the show: they almost never freaking use their powers.

But I digress. This week's episode was a low point for me. Here are some reasons why (spoiler if you haven't seen the latest episode):


Ugh, the show is crap again. I'll still maintain that this season has had the strongest story arc of the series, but the writing is still terrible, especially the dialog.

It's a huge problem I have with Heroes and 24. Too many story lines. In Heroes they try to link them together, but they don't succeed. In 24 they mostly go all over the place as filler. That show, even without any other changes, would be so much better if they just focused on a single story line (the "Jack" story line). The main character is barely in any scenes. He could probably get all his shooting done in a couple of weeks.

Someone may argue that there are many story lines in Lost, but there really aren't. The characters in this show are all weaved together nicely to make one nice line, even if it in the form of a braid.

For similar criticism, see the 7-part Phantom Menace review from that slow-speaking dude on YouTube you don't like.

I had all the same complaints as your 1-3 points. But I'll further say that #2 was just completely useless. Plus, it was done in such a cliche/cheap way. Black and white? Really? This is just more made up on the spot, definitely not planned ahead of time, back-story that we don't need.

It's a daytime soap only with fewer episodes. Nothing but people sitting around talking all the time, never getting anything done and never aspiring to anything. It's a real comment on how dull the creator and writers must be in real life. And proof of what Kring mentioned when the show premiered, that he wasn't a big comic book fan/guy. At least I recall that being said.

If you could find proof of that quote I'd be very pleased. I can't believe he might have said that, but it certainly shows. My issue with it is that if he's not a comic book fan, then what is he in it for? The entire reason I watch the show is for the brief glimpses of comic book type stuff (you know, the 10 to 15 seconds out of 45 minutes an episode where powers are used). If he's more interested in the character development, there's far more of that in comics than in his show.

Perhaps he doesn't realize that I could rattle off at least 5 superhero comics this second with better writing than anything on Heroes, and that doesn't count the non-superhero stuff. There's a reason that Brian K Vaughn is working on Lost now - because he's an incredible writer. Kring wishes he had someone of Vaughn's caliber working on Heroes. Though, even Bryan Fuller could only marginally improve an episode or two of Heroes.

I can't recall where I read that about Kring, but it would have been around the time the show premiered. Maybe an interview with TV-Guide or similar.

Lost came in second place last night for every time slot. It lost out to both CSI NCIS LA and The Good Wife. I suppose that's to be expected, certain shows really command the ratings these days, especially derivative ones.

You wouldn't know that however trying to find any Lost news on the net however. There are probably at least a dozen Lost forums and sites, and practically every one of them is next to impossible to reach today. Servers are busy with too many people causing long page load times or load failures. Forums that shut down non-menber viewing for a day or more after each episode airing, forums that are registration-only, forums that you have to pay to access and forums that only let you read a certain number of messages before you're forced to register.

These are clearly people who aren't being polled by Nielson. Clearly there are also some crazed and rabid fans out there. Many of them too difficult to comprehend in written expression.

Damn, that was easier than I thought. This isn't the original interview I read, so it must be mentioned numerous times and you should be able to find additional references.

Interview from 2006 with Tim Kring:

http://www.ifmagazine.com/feature.asp?article=1757

He also worked on Misfits of Science back in the day, which was also a superhero show, even if not quite named that way.

Courtney Cox was lucky to get out of that with a career still on the horizon. I watched that show in its original run back in 1985.

BTW, IMDB claims Kring's involvement with that show was limited to writing a single episode.

Anyone interested in entertaining/discussing a few Lost points about this and past seasons?

I'll come back and post some thoughts in spoiler tags. The points I'm most curious about may well get answered as the show goes on, but the creators did say that a number of questions posed by the show won't be.

If we were going to discuss Lost here, I think it would necessitate a separate thread. Though, I'm wary of such discussions, because I'm the type of person who likes to analyze what I've seen already, rather than speculate what will happen, particularly when it comes to bringing in things the creators have said. For some reason it feels a little spoiler-y to me

Perfect! That's exactly what I want to discuss, not what may happen later - I can wait for that.

The latest trailer for the real Avatar movie.

Naturally, nothing will appease my concerns over character treatment and faithfulness to the spirit of the series, but one thing is clear: this film looks like it will have some wicked special effects. I'd worried how they would handle the bending of the elements, and it looks pretty amazing.

Let's hope the movie doesn't disappoint. I'm a fan of Shyamalan (including The Happening) and I'm a huge fan of Avatar, hope two positives don't make a negative in this case.

BTW, the linked video is still what I'd call a "teaser."

Yeah, I agree. Lots of extremely quick cuts so it's hard to really see anything.

The Happening? Seriously? That movie was awful.

Here's what I'd consider to be a typical trailer.

Apparently in one of these you can spot Appa, but I haven't been able to see him. This latest one gives a glimpse of the glider, though, in a scene that looks like the one that takes place on Zuko's ship in the first few episodes of the series. And most of these make it looks like the trio will end up in the north pole, and lead the epic battle there.

I think I need to keep my expectations for this really low, though. One of my absolute favorite aspects of the show is the spectacular character development, and there just isn't enough time to do much of that when you condense an entire season into a two hour movie, even if you cut out all the "extra" stuff (I put that in quotes because I believe there is little if any "filler" in Avatar - I cherish every episode).

When I think about it, there are only two characters from the show that I would have a hard time being seen played by actors. Iroh is one, so we'll see how well he's done in this film. The other is Toph, who I'm assuming will be in the second one (if there is one).

IMO, there was plenty of filler in the Avatar series. It's probably the only thing, apart from a shorter series than I'd hoped, that I had a problem with.



I agree about Toph, easily my favorite character of the whole series, BTW. But Iroh shouldn't have been too hard to cast better than the actor I saw in the trailer. They really should have had a more portly actor in the role.

As far as Zuko goes, they could have hired Dante Basco, the same guy who did the voice work in the animated series. I think I would have preferred his look in that role.

Has it been confirmed that they're doing three movies, one per book?

Well, if they're doing that epic battle at the north pole, I'd imagine that will be the climax of the film. I'm pretty sure the hope is for a trilogy, but of course there's no guarantee of it so they're just seeing how well the first movie does. After all, you can see how well those sequels to the Golden Compass did

Well, I guess we disagree on the filler. It's true that there are plenty of episodes that are inessential to the main story, but I can't really think of any bad ones. IMO, there isn't a bad episode in the three seasons. That's what I would call filler. I just meant that I cherish every minute I could spend with those characters.

And yeah, Toph is a bad-ass. Another example of why I love the show so much. When they introduced her, I expected her to be pretty annoying, basically a Poochie, but she turned out to be my favorite character.

I suppose the only reason I think it's hard to cast Iroh is because Mako was just so brilliant in that role. I get a little teary-eyed when I watch "Iroh's Story." Sure, they could cast someone who looked more like him, but that has nothing to do with whether they'll be good in the role. Maybe this guy will have the chops to pull off the part. It's pretty complex emotionally though.

*edit*
Dude! I just looked up Dante Basco, because I couldn't picture what he looked like (I know his voice, of course), and I can't imagine why the didn't cast him! Sure, he doesn't look much like Zuko, but that doesn't matter! RU! FI! -- OOOOOHHHHH!

Oh, I didn't think any were bad. I guess we aren't on the same page as far as what we consider filler in this series. Some were definitely weaker than others and some of the ones I consider filler are the ones where you can move them around in the story line and they don't seem out of place. I'm sure they were there for the ease of syndication and being able to air repeats when necessary.

Like I said, I wished the series had had a longer run with possibly some additional episodes per season as well as a fourth season. It would have necessitated changing up the existing three seasons of course. I felt they rushed a few things and I would have loved to see a few more two or three part mini arcs.

I don't know anything at all about the fiction, but the movie appears to be about a four year old who can throw tornadoes. That about right?