Entries in the Category "lost"
New digs
"Stop all this arguing! We have to keep moving!" - every episode of Lost, ever
It's time to abandon Cereal Monogamist and head off into the jungle in the direction of my new blog, Cultural Civilian. Follow me (or my helpful link) to my new presence at Wordpress.
(And for God's sake, keep moving! They could be right behind us. And it's gonna be dark soon.)
BREAKING NEWS!
Attention, readers of Cereal Monogamist! This blog is changing houses.
Now that I have (amicably) ended my association with Case, I am moving to Wordpress. I'm still figuring things out over there, customizing and whatnot. When it looks how I want it, I will point everybody in that direction.
So, in short, here's what's on the horizon:
- New blog address
- New blog look
- New blog title!
- Same old prattle about Lost and cookies
In the meantime, keep checking me out here! For lack of anything else substantive to say, let me leave you with this video of Parks and Recreation's Leslie Knope filling time at a telethon by talking about classic 90s sitcom Friends.
Snow and Helplessness
Feeling a little out of control this week! Over the weekend one of my cupboards was infiltrated by grain beetles. (EEEEWWWWWWWWW.) We are buried under a mass of snow (and recently named "worst snow city" in the country! aces!) plus the weather has knocked out my cable and internet since Monday.
Thus, this quotation that I read the other day feels particularly apt.
"An absolutely certain way in those days to draw down on one a wretched fate was to claim superiority in anything over any deity; nevertheless, people were perpetually doing so."
Edith Hamilton, Mythology
I get it, universe! Plagues, storms and deprivation have done their jobs. I AM YOUR PAWN. (Now can I have my cable and Internet back? I'm really wondering what happened on Lost.)
LOST! TONIGHT!
I had a busy, busy day, but it was all worth it because now it's mid-afternoon and I basically have no responsibilities to the world at large until tomorrow. Turned in a paper this morning, my lesson plans for the week are set. That all means that I can--and WILL--spend the next four hours watching Lost! The last few episodes of the fifth season (that's where they left off last spring) and then at nine o'clock (eight central!) the first episode of the final season begins!
Yeah, I'm excited.
Here's the schedule again:
8pm-9pm: They're doing one of their classic catch-up hours (for the casual Lostie).
9pm-11pm: 2-part season opener!
Here's the first part of an awesome 3-part interview with (Lost creators) Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof by Maureen Ryan at the Chicago Tribune. Lots of interesting discussion about satisfying television finales (they really liked how The Sopranos ended, if that tells you anything) and how there would be no Lost if not for Nash Bridges.
Also, Lost characters explain how to make a sandwich.
More Lost madness after the jump!
Continue reading "LOST! TONIGHT!"
The Lure of Lost (and TV in the Modern Era)
I am one evening marathon away from finishing the fourth season of Lost—I say this as a person who just started watching it, from the first episode of the first season, in September. I’m averaging approximately two weeks per season; at this rate, I will be more than caught up when the sixth season hits broadcast television in February.
I’m not sure I will watch it, though.
Netflix Instant View has been my source for catching up the first five seasons of Lost. Any episode is viewable as quickly as I can connect to the Internet. (For those of you STILL not on board with Netflix, ABC.com has all the full episodes as well.) I can watch twelve episodes in a row while on the couch, but I can also watch one in the library between classes, and I can watch two in bed before going to sleep. In short, I have integrated Lost into just about every aspect of my daily life.
I’m hooked. I liked the story when it was smaller—the forty-odd plane crash survivors trying to build a life on this mysterious island that is both tropical and riddled with polar bears. Then things spread out—there were bands of scientists that had died of some mysterious plague, there were murderous, mysterious “Others,” there were a whole group of people on the other half of the plane who somehow crashed on the other side of the island. This crew fought that crew, that side kidnapped this person. People were continually knocked unconscious while someone escaped. The “others” began to mix with the castaways, then a whole new crew swept in on some ship with a whole new set of loyalties.
And THEN they started mixing flash forwards in with the flashbacks, and now they're suggesting that the island which we already knew had healing powers also appears to be set in some kind of time warp. (Comparable to the one in my living room? Maybe...)
But here’s the thing—a lot of people who stuck things out from the start of the show were really tiring of this show by the third and fourth seasons. I like to read old episode recaps from Television Without Pity, and while these episodes were airing, people were really getting cranky. The show had been on for more than three years, and people were getting impatient, needing answers. Watchers were also frustrated with what was then the standard TV airing schedule: a handful of new episodes scattered across September, reruns in October, sweeps eps in November, reruns through December and January, another sweeps in February, and so on. Two weeks, six weeks between episodes and people were forgetting what was supposed to be keeping them on the edges of their seats. (It’s worth noting that now networks recognize what they didn’t know in 2006: shows like Lost and 24 are now airing mostly uninterrupted for half seasons, lengthening the time that passes between seasons but shortening the time that passes between new episodes.)
Experiencing a show when it’s new, you get to be a part of the cultural phenomenon. I can talk to people about Mad Men the next day because Joan hit her hubby over the head, or jump on the Internet and read everyone’s reactions to the guy who got his foot run over by a lawnmower. (I didn’t write about that episode, but the AV Club did!) You think there’s anyone who wants to talk to me about Lost now? It’s like I’m walking around saying to people, “Can you believe these iPhones? Fan-cy!”
But watching with the broadcast, you also have to deal with those problems. Everything that bugged people about Lost back then has not bothered me at all. I am impervious to cliffhangers—I just click “Play next episode”! I’ve not tired of the layering of the mystery yet because it’s still all new to me. This past summer, I watched season two of Mad Men in just a couple weeks. This fall, I watched season three, but it took thirteen weeks. You get less immersed in a TV show when it’s a short weekly appointment than when you spend an entire week watching it every night (especially a show like Mad Men, which builds up steam SO SLOWLY, although the last three or four episodes of the season were incredible).
I vividly remember my first experience with TV on DVD, when the Best of Friends video discs (not even DVDs yet!) came out, Christmas of 1999 or 2000. My parents bought my sister and I each our own set, because we were spoiled. I…watched all twelve episodes in one night. Really. I don't know if at that time I had seen those episodes recently—it’s possible that Friends was already in syndication, airing at 6pm on TBS or whatever—but having the ability to just pop a tape in and watch “The One Where No One’s Ready” was incredibly novel. (I also brought those videos back to college with me, where on one occasion my roommate and I watched “The One Where Everyone Finds Out” three times in a row.)
It’s fun to think about how much the experience of TV viewing has changed, even just within my lifetime. They didn’t even have VCRs when my parents were kids! TV shows aired, and then what? They dissipated into the air? The other night, I set up my DVR to record The Office while I was in class, but it didn’t pick it up for some reason or another. I shrugged it off, because, you know what? I knew I could watch it on Hulu the next day.
Talk about being spoiled!
When What You Think You Know is Not What is True
Today I took the bus onto campus to do a little work, and, to my relief, I actually did some work (mostly related to Toni Morrison, two of whose novels will provide the textual basis for my paper about the function of gossip and the sharing of superstition in communities of African American women). Yesterday, I admit I lived a bit of a cliche, facing my recent life changes by wallowing in bed all day and watching half the first season of Lost on Netflix Instant. Work is going to have to be extremely important to me for the next few months (though, I daresay Netflix Instant will be a big help, too).
Today on the bus, a guy in the seat in front of me was reading a self-help book. There was a list of "things we tell ourselves" and my nearsighted self could mostly make out what it said. I did not lean in too close, because the guy was a bit smelly.
Anyway, one of the entries on the list really spoke to me. It said, "I think because I am good to people that people are good to me." Wow.
Don't misunderstand the diction here, which is a little ambiguous. The writers of self-help manuals do not tend to be masters of the linguistic arts. What the statement is not saying is, "one reason people are good to me is probably because I am good to them in return. Basic cause and effect."
No. The book is saying, to people like me, and probably like this smelly guy, and anyone else who needs self-help books and therapists and cathartic blog-writing, "Just because you treat people well does not mean that they respond in kind. You may get along well with everybody, and proceed generally without conflict. DO NOT MISTAKE THIS FEELING FOR THE KNOWLEDGE THAT YOUR RELATIONSHIPS ARE MUTUALLY SUPPORTIVE."
Some of us are putting good things out there all the time, trying to be selfless, trying to make other people feel better. Eventually, you have to ask yourself, "Who does this for me?" When you realize that the answer is, "Nobody," then you know you have a problem.
Emmys Day-After Recap
I’ve got my Emmy food (pizza and mint creme Oreos) and I’m ready to go!
The Host
Neil Patrick Harris is totally cool. He’s singing and dancing, he’s wearing a white dinner jacket, and I think he just insulted Two and a Half Men. (Theme songs are getting so short, next year’s theme to the show will just be "meh." HA!) Later: I love the way he keeps introducing people from their obscure early credits (“from the 1987 Afterschool Special…”).
Click ahead for much much more!