"We've got to give them more time!" Nikki and Paulo, that is. Because they're not dead.

Yeah. The creative team behind Lost actually went there. They had the heroes of the show inadvertently bury alive two unpopular guest stars. They buried them alive!

And that was only the tail end. The entire episode was bizarre. Billy Dee Williams popped up in a cameo playing himself. Four dead characters -- Boone, Shannon, Arzt, and Ethan, all being supremely good sports -- appeared to say hello. The episode played like a murder-mystery. Or a campy, self-aware ode to television guest stars. Or an inside joke. It was the most self-contained episode that Lost has ever had. It was either brilliant and entertaining, or it failed miserably.

Hey, that gives me an idea. Time for a little Point/Counterpoint:

Side A: Talk about jumping the shark. What did this episode add to the show? Nothing. In fact, its only redeeming quality is that it buried (literally) an entirely pointless subplot that took up precious Season 3 screen time and shouldn't have existed in the first place. It also showed how the writers are dangerous slaves to popular opinion. They take the time to (awkwardly) introduce two new characters, Paulo and Nikki, as two survivors who have been there all along but haven't been in the spotlight. But when they find out that fans of the show almost universally hate the additions, they go to elaborate lengths to appease the masses and get rid of them. This episode gave us no answers, did not tie into the overall mysteries whatsoever, and took us away from the suddenly-much-more-interesting plot on the other side of the island. Thanks for wasting our time.

Side B: This was a fun departure that took a risk. Let's relax. This is an episodic network television show. It's allowed to deviate from the main storylines. Every plotline doesn't have to reveal answers or Mean Something. And let's face it -- it was very clever and very entertaining. The bit of in-jokey dialogue in the beginning with Nikki and her producer about being a guest star set the tone for the episode and was quite funny. The entire Nikki and Paulo plotline essentially explained, with a wink to the audience, why we never seem to meet any of the other plane crash survivors. Splicing them into the plane crash scene and other past beach scenes was done beautifully, and it's always great to see Boone, Shannon, and Arzt again. The murder-mystery plotline was intriguing, and the whopper of an ending proved that the writers have a sharp, if twisted, sense of humor. It was black comedy at its finest.

There's no surprise here - I myself am much more aligned with Side B. Although I have to say, I had my surpreme doubts up until the ending. I figured the writers would pull a 180 on Nikki and Paulo and redeem them by tying them into the main plot, falling in with the Others and becoming sleeper cells or something. But no, they're just wildly self-involved bad people obsessed with stealing diamonds. Some viewers might have balked at their utter disinterest in their strange encounters on the island - finding the Pearl hatch, overhearing Ben and Juliet - but I found those moments to be quite telling of their characters.

Still, I was beginning to feel like the episode didn't quite earn its aberrancy until the aformentioned ending, when we realize that Nikki and Paulo are actually just paralyzed (thanks to Nikki), not dead, and her eyes open just as Sawyer begins to pour dirt on her face. It was horrifying and wickedly amusing at the same time, since the episode's well-put-together structure took pains to show just how unlikable Nikki really was. Paulo was a little more sympathetic - he actually seemed to believe in their relationship - but hey, they're both still greedy murderers.

That was driven home when Nikki put the final nail in her coffin - she decided to bury her precious diamonds before letting anyone know her and Paulo were just paralyzed. If she hadn't, she would've had not much, but still enough time to explain things to Sawyer and Hurley before she collapsed.

But no; as I previously stated but can't help repeating, the New Cast Members Who Weren't To Be were BURIED ALIVE by our unsuspecting heroes. Sweet.

Two things...

1. I think I've finally satiated my appetite for mucking around with the look of the site. It's something I'm happy with now. (Like the blue-to-gray sidebar fades? I do. I did that all by myself, by the way.) Plus, I really have to stop using it as a way to procrastinate from working on my thesis screenplay.

2. A bunch of people have told me they've wanted to write comments to posts but haven't because they don't have a Google or Blogger account -- you don't need one. Anybody can post on this site no matter what. When you go to the page where you can post a comment, under "Choose Your Identity", click either "Other" or "Anonymous." When you do, you'll see that you can post a comment without a problem.

A few days after TMNT is released (and according to preliminary numbers is on its way to #1 at the box office - cowabunga indeed), I bring you a spotlight featuring some of the cast members. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Patrick Stewart, and Laurence Fishburne, to be more specific.

This would've been up on Friday, but the press kit the studio sent with some of the sound bites on it was this badly burned DVD that didn't work the first couple of times I put it in my computer. Anyway, enjoy.

(I'm sure all of you immediately got the title reference, but just for the sake of clarity, it's a line borrowed from the beginning of the original 1990 Ninja Turtles movie. You know, Mikey orders pizza, but the pizza guy can't find the address cause it's in the sewer, so - oh, nevermind.)

Man, what a great title. "The Man from Tallahassee." It's mysterious and important sounding. It also took its name from the whopper of the episode's big final twist. Although it was easy to predict a few minutes beforehand -- Ben wasn't exactly being subtle -- it shakes up the foundation of the show fairly heavily, or at least takes us a big step closer to understanding the island. Locke's dad is on the island. In the flesh.

Is this just another type of mysterious appearance from the past, like Jack's vision of his father, or the horse that Kate saw? What is going through Locke's dad's head right now? All these questions...

This came at the end of a stellar episode of Lost, which I'm happy to say has been nearly continuously excellent since its low-rated return in early February. It's a pity the media has decided to rag on the show thanks to its diminished ratings and the fact that it's no longer as "hip" as a newer show like Heroes, but for those of us who've stuck with the show, it's been very good to us after the ill-advised six-episode fall run. (By the way, the show's ratings have steadied quite nicely after their initial dip post-hiatus. It still doesn't get numbers like it did in the first and second seasons, but the past six episodes have all posted nearly identical numbers, meaning that it's no longer losing viewers; everyone who followed it to 10pm is sticking with it.)

Anyway, enough business talk. Let's get to the plot. Here are some things I either learned or were reinforced to me over the course of the episode.

1. I guess Jack's not brainwashed. I guess. That was certainly what Kate thought at the end of the previous episode, in which Jack was found playing a happy-go-lucky game of catch with Tom, who, may I remind you, used to be known as The Crazy-Creepy Guy Who Kidnapped Walt. Turns out Jack is just appeasing the Others by playing the nice guy until he can leave the darn island on the submarine. I never really assumed he was brainwashed per se, although I stand by my assumption that Ben has always intended to slowly pacify Jack until he didn't think the Others were "bad" anymore. Heck, Ben told Jack that himself back before the surgery.

2. Ben is a sneaky bastard. Or, Locke is forever doomed to be the sucker. So Locke finally revealed why he had been acting so weird to Sayid and Kate, and why he had brought along the dynamite to Othersville: he was never after Jack, he just wanted to blow up the submarine. (He wants everyone to stay on the island because it "brought them here for a reason" and healed his legs, remember?) He told all this to Ben, who was able to contain his delight until after Locke went ahead and did it. See, Ben didn't know what to do with Jack: letting him go home would be a sign of weakness in front of his people, but killing him would be going against his word -- which would make his people distrust him. Now that Locke destroyed the only means of departure, Ben doesn't have to do either.

This, in my eyes, was a huge reveal of what kind of guy, exactly, Ben is -- a leader with a keen focus on his people and what he needs to do to stay in charge. To be honest, I think it somewhat diminished Ben as a character -- he went from creepy and unsettling to just plain power-hungry. Still, it was sharply illuminating for more than just that reason. Ben admitted to Locke near the end of the episode that he didn't know how Locke's connection to the island worked, and he seemed just as clueless about the "box" the Others seemingly possess. (A box, remember, was only Ben's way of explaining it to Locke -- I wonder what it really is.)

What I'm getting at is that Ben, and the Others, don't know the secrets of the island any better than the castaways do. In other words, they're a "surface mystery" -- not a part of the otherworldly aspects of the show. From a structural standpoint, I've noticed the show is very keen on creating season-long story arcs, answerless though they may be. I remember co-creator Damon Lindelof once said that the Others would be the focus of season three in much the same way the Hatch was the focus of season two. Does that mean they'll fall by the wayside in favor of the "deeper" island mystery by season four? Pure conjecture, sure, but it makes the focus of season four seem all the more tantalizing. Will we delve into the nature of the mysterious Jacob? How about the Black Rock? Or the smoke monster? Is Jacob the smoke monster? Or my personal favorite -- is Jacob one of our beloved castaways who doesn't even know it? (And no, I have no idea how that would work, either. But it might involve time travel.)

I could ruminate like this for hours. Onto the next bit...

3. Wow, so that's how Locke ended up in a wheelchair. His dad, con man extraordinaire Anthony Cooper, pushed him out of a freakin' window. Locke plummeted eight stories to the ground below and, as he told Ben, "felt my back break." I read somewhere online that said Locke's survival wasn't plausible, which is BS of the highest order -- I once saw a documentary about a guy who survived a 100+ foot free-fall. I don't know how worse your chances get when you land on your back, but it's called artistic license, folks. You're watching a show with a smoke monster in it.

Anyway, the details: Cooper was about to marry a woman when her suspicious son dug into his background a little bit, found Locke thanks to the kidney transfer, and showed up to ask Locke if Cooper was on the up-and-up. Instead of just telling the poor kid, Locke lied and later went to confront his dad himself. Bad move -- the kid soon ended up dead, and when Locke went to ask Cooper if he had done it, Cooper pushed him out the window. Wow. Everybody knows the guy's a complete jackass now, but I didn't quite believe he was that capable of murder.

Turns out we may get to find out plenty about his psyche now, because somehow he's on the island and in the Others' captivity. Again, Ben said he got there by coming through a box in which anything you wanted to appear, would. Just think about the possibilities that has for the show. Also, anybody want to bet that Locke, his dad, and Othersville won't be in the next episode at all?

So you know how I'm a big Ninja Turtles fan, and there's a Ninja Turtles movie coming out this week? Wait, just to remind you, here's one of the darn cool posters (and oh yeah, I'm not crazy, they moved the release up a week to the 23rd):



Okay, anyway, point is, I've seen it and I reviewed it for TheCinemaSource. Check it out here. It's far from a perfect film, but to my great pleasure, it has heart. And you know...you gotta have heart.

Spotlights for a few of the more famous voice actors might be coming soon.

I guess the title explains it all. The site is back to looking normal again, although now -- if I've done everything right -- it should take up the entire window. And have a sidebar on the left and right. I don't know why I'm explaining this, though, you can clearly see it for yourself.

You might see some other minor changes in the near future but they won't affect much. I might change the color scheme -- I settled on red and green 'cause it was my high school colors (and NYU is all purple, so that wasn't gonna do it for me). It's not quite harmonious, and it looks like Christmas, but oh well. Time to get back to actual content instead of laboring over minor details.

Hey, if my website looks pretty screwy over the weekend, it will all get sorted out soon. I'm testing some things out.

That's all.

Goodbye, Bakunin. The sneak previews for this new episode of Lost clued us in to the fact that Bakunin might not be long for this world, and it turns out they weren't leading us on. What we didn't know, however, was that Locke was the one who caused it. The crew reached the perimeter of Othersville to find a bunch of tall obelisk-type posts surrounding it; cross through, and you get zapped and die, but not before doing a really cool foam-at-the-mouth routine.

Luckily, turns out all you need to do is hop over the defense system in order to evade certain death. But more on that later.

No, this episode belonged to Claire, which was quite fresh. If you can believe it, we've actually only ever gotten one single real flashback episode from Claire. And that was all the way back in the first season - the one in season two was her flashbacks to when Ethan kidnapped her. So this was cool, and it also answered the question that everybody had as soon as Jack's dad took that fateful trip to Australia last season: turns out Claire is Jack's half-sister. Not that either of them have any way of finding out. (Yeah, it's another connection that seems pretty pointless. But wouldn't it be cool if the Others pointed it out to them at some dramatically appropriate point? Because with all they seem to know about our castaways, you know they know that.)

Of course, there was another reason why her flashback was cool. I'm sure this is a bone of contention, but for my money, Claire was pretty darn adorable as an angsty semi-goth teen. Yeah, we can make fun of her for screaming about her baby all the time, but I still contend that Claire's the most attractive girl on the island.

(I just noticed my computer has pointed out to me that "angsty" is not a real word. It should be. Somebody get that fixed.)

Anyway, the main present-time plot - Claire's idea to tag an SOS message onto a migrating bird - was basically an excuse for her to get caught up on the whole Charlie's-Gonna-Die thing. But I still liked it a great deal, mostly thanks to the effortless charm of both principles involved. There was no real reason to hide it from her in the first place, but whatever.

In fact, the Charlie's-Gonna-Die thing has reinvigorated the drama on the original side of the island, which has lately seem to have been used for comic-relief B-plots. Charlie and Claire had both gotten pretty boring, so my involvement in their conflict this time is - my thing for Claire aside - a good indicator of a well-done job in the writer's room.

How do I want this storyline to be wrapped up? To put it quite frankly, I don't want Charlie to die and I think it will be bad for the show. Yeah, his character had gotten a little stagnant because they didn't know what to do with him after finally resolving the heroine thing. But he's one of the original staples, and I continue to disagree with the creators' rationale that people need to keep dying in order to make the stakes seem real. If he's killed off, it would be because he's an expendable character whose only really has one ongoing storyline (his relationship with Claire). That reasoning is stupid - it's the peripheral characters that give the show its color. Focusing only on central characters like Jack, Kate, and Sawyer was what most people think caused the ratings slide in the first place.

Of course, now you're saying, "but wait, it was Desmond's premonition, and that woman already told him that destiny was predetermined, so Charlie has to die." Wrong. If he's not killed off, it would be great for the show - that would mean Desmond's premonitions were unreliable, which could potentially mean that there are different possible timelines parallel to each other, or maybe it would mean that fate isn't predetermined after all. I'm a sucker for a good rumination on time travel and fate. When Claire said "we can beat this," I felt like cheering.

Her letter she attached to the bird, by the way, was also remarkably poignant. I've been a viewer since November 2004, so her little rumination on how everyone has adapted to life on the island really made me feel the weight of the remarkable journey they've all had. Not to get heavy on you, but I was amazed at how touching it was.

But I must end with some of the juicier stuff. Kate, Sayid, Locke, and Danielle get past the Death Fence and discover Othersville - that fun little neighborhood that we glimpsed at the beginning of the season. And lo! Jack's playing a fun game of football with Tom. This, of course, begs the question: is it an act, or is he brainwashed? Split-second theory: I think it's neither - well, not totally. Jack doesn't think there's any way to escape, so he's adapted to their way of life. Of course, that seems to be what the Others were going for all along (remember Ben's speech about how he wanted to convince Jack to honestly like them?) so maybe you can call that brainwashing. And of course, I could just be totally wrong.

Next week it looks like we find out why Locke has been acting a bit strange: he's not there to save Jack, he's there to seek revenge on Ben. (At least, that's what it seemed like.) Chances are, the reason he's pissed off is because Ben was all false-nice to him during his Henry Gale days (and particularly during the hatch lockdown). Plus, Ben told Locke he was one of the good ones, and had a higher sense of purpose, and Locke probably wants to know what, exactly, he means by that.

Final points that I haven't squeezed in yet:
-It seems that this episode confirmed, via Bakunin, that Ben is definitely not "Him", the real leader of the Others. My money's still on the mysterious Jacob.
-I liked how Kate forced Bakunin to keep talking about the Others, by the way. Too many people seem to totally accept their way-too-vague answers, so her "try me" line to Bakunin's "you wouldn't understand" shrug-off made me smile.
-Apparently, next week we find out what happened to Locke that put him in a wheelchair! Sweet. Hopefully it's cool.

First of all, an apology - I really should've done this recap last Thursday. See, on Friday I went from NYC down to Maryland to visit a near and dear friend of mine for the weekend. Then, on Monday, I went back to New York to meet up with a few college friends, and from there we went to New Jersey, and then Massachusetts to hang out in Cape Cod for a bit. Then, yesterday, I was on a few buses all day going from there to Marcellus, NY, my hometown. I got home in the evening, and before I knew it, the next episode of Lost was on already. There. Like how I turned an apology into an indulgent paragraph about my life?

So this recap concerns last week's Lost - when Sayid, Locke, and Kate first met our dear friend Mikhail Bakunin, aka Eye Patch Man, who lives in a large house on the middle of the island. And by the way, what a great temporary character. He's a brute and a weasel at the same time. "I am the last survivor of the Dharma Initiative," he tells them at nearly the beginning of the episode, and already: wow. This is going to be a good episode.

Of course, the twists were far from over. After he reveals some backstory about how he got on the island, the whole thing turns out to be a ruse, thanks to the perception of our dear friend Sayid: he's actually a member of the Others. Or, as Dharma people tended to call them (including, if you remember, Kelvin Inman of the Swan hatch), the Hostiles.

What followed was a fun trip through one of the best episodes of Lost this season: Sayid and Kate found Dharma records in the basement, along with some dynamite; Locke discovered a hidden message on the computer; and that MIA Other, Ms. Clue, reappeared. Briefly. Kate and Sayid find her in the basement - by the way, nice punch, Kate - and bring her upstairs, only to find Bakunin holding Locke hostage. A standoff occurs in which a lot of Russian yelling is involved, which ends with Bakunin shooting Clue dead.

Of course, while that was the climax, the kicker at the end was Locke's discovery on the computer of Creepy Asian Dharma Guy (of Orientation Videos fame), who told him to press 77 if the station had been overrun by the hostiles. He did, and poof - the place friggin' exploded. (Good thing it gave him enough time to leave, eh?)

So how about a round of "Cool Things In the Episode"/"What We Learned":

-Sayid had a glorious return! This was his episode, and his flashbacks luckily only took up a little bit of screen time: they made their point and got out of the way of the main action. They were actually pretty cool. I guessed the reversal at the end - Sayid really did torture the woman - and was really glad when I turned out to be right. Sayid's the only guy who can be tied up on the ground begging for forgiveness of a woman he tortured, and still seem like a really cool, stand-up guy.

-More Dharma and Others history. This, of course, depends on how truthful Bakunin was about his exposition, but I can reasonably assume he was; I doubt the writers would throw that much out there as just red herrings. His personal history was obviously a lie, but we can deduce that the Others were once directly at odds with the Dharma folks (and apparently won the war), and that the Others were there beforehand. The cynics will say that actually leaves us with another dead end - we now have even less of an idea of where the Others came from, since even the Dharma folks didn't know - but I actually think that's pretty cool. It confirms, sort of, that the Dharma Initiative isn't as central to the mysteries of the island as we may have believed before - actually, at this point they seem to be just as clueless as the flight survivors. But we also know that the Others are connected to some shadowy group too, thanks to Juliet's flashback - one more than a little interested in fertility.

-Finally, I have to mention the B plot - Sawyer's big game of Ping Pong with Hurley. The outcome was a foregone conclusion (obviously Hurley's going to beat him) but the outcome was perfect: since Sawyer lost the bet, he can't call anyone by a nickname for a full week. In show terms, that could be until almost the end of the season. I was getting a bit tired of the whole obscure-nickname-reference anyway - and it seems the writers were, too - so it was cool.

Hey, here's my other review of the weekend, for the quite well-done family drama The Namesake. I also have two spotlights up that, for the first time, I actually participated in the interview for: for star Kal Penn and director Mira Nair. Check it all out.

Well, my last-ever college spring break has begun, and I'm starting off by celebrating with lots of content going up this weekend. The first up is a review of the independent film The Ultimate Gift. While I didn't like it, it certainly makes an interesting study.

Also coming up directly are a whole heaping load of materials for the new independent film The Namesake, and my Lost recap. (The two-word version: Sayid rules.) Hopefully soon I'll get back to posting the commentaries the day after they're posted.

Meanwhile, over spring break my plans take me from NYC to Maryland to Massachusetts to upstate NY. Yes, I'm foregoing the type of money-burning extravagance at some MTV-christened locale to see a bunch of my closest friends and family. Oh well.

This week's episode of Lost was 80% fluff and downright enjoyable. We didn't have to worry about whether the show would live up to the idiotic advertisers at ABC ("Three of Lost's biggest mysteries will be revealed!" Uh, no). We didn't have to worry about whether or not Jack will continue not asking the Others the questions that everyone else would be asking them ("So guys, uh...who are you?") It was just about the characters we've come to love, on the island we've come to love. Sayid even had more than one line. Shocking!

So despite the lack of heavy mythology and mystery in this episode (which I'm sure plenty of internet "fans" were complaining about), it was good. After a flashback introducing Cheech Marin as Hurley's dad, we're treated to the big guy sitting on the beach, talking. The pull-back to reveal Libby's grave was delightful -- in that heartbreaking, love-lorn, sad-Hurley kind of way. Point is, I was into it.

The main plot of the episode -- Hurley trying to breathe life into a decrepit Little Miss Sunshine bus (complete with decapitated Dharma head inside) -- was basically just an excuse to feature Hurley, play Southern rock music, and tell some jokes. His flashbacks dealt with his father's return after winning the lottery, and while they weren't as successful as the main story, it did help shade Hurley a bit. His dad telling him he'll be there when Hurley gets back from Australia seemed like a moment straight out of season one.

And by the way, the non-sequiter title, of course, refers to the funniest moment of the episode, when bitchy reporter Tricia Tanaka (always include the first and last names) gets owned by a meteor. (Actually, a meteorite.)

In other news, Charlie's still alive, Kate and Sawyer are still on the outs, and our unbalanced friend Danielle Rousseau is back. That's right, Kate takes off into the jungle -- hm, I've missed those "somebody heads into the jungle" plots -- to get her help when Sayid and Locke are standing right there perfectly capable. Burn. They, of course, follow her to point this out to her, while also mentioning that Eko's stick can lead them to Jack...somehow. The logic is a bit fuzzy, but if it lets Locke and especially Sayid do something again! then I'll go with it.

So who's excited about a showdown between Danielle and Ben ("No, I'm her parent!") Who else was strangely satisfied by the horrific death of a fictional TV reporter? And who grimaced a little when Sawyer started drinking the flat, warm, twenty-year-old Dharma beer?