Lost for the Last Time

Two years ago (wow, really?) I wrote this post about how I felt about Lost. I don’t really say what I was expecting for the finale, since that was a way off, it’s just how I was feeling about that series as it aired, and how it compared to the earlier ones. I haven’t watched all the seasons again since they aired, so I’m not sure how they hold up now, but the first is still my favourite, for the reasons I give there. And it’s one of the reasons I was worried about the finale. The last season had seemed to focus more and more on that end-game, the answers, telling us the why. And yeah, that’s fine, but it wasn’t why I was watching. I was there mostly for the characters, I was interested in their end-game, how they would finish up. I worried that the finale wouldn’t give me what I wanted, which was more than a sense of closure. I wanted to feel.

Happily, I got exactly what I wanted. As the credits rolled I sat with tears streaming down my face, sobbing away, but happy about it. The ending had touched me. It took me back to how I felt watching the season one finale, when all those strangers are sitting on a plane with no idea what awaits them, or what they will come to mean to each other. It broke my heart. I haven’t really felt like that since. There’s been snippets of it, mostly with Charlie probably, but not as a whole like that. I wanted those moments, those reunions, the recognition.

Was it prefect? No. The ‘sideways world’ revelation is cheesy, sure. And I can understand why some people will hate it, feel duped in some way, because it doesn’t give all the answers. There’s still a lot left unresolved, and if you’ve been watching for the mysteries then I can see being extremely disappointed with it. I know that feeling, when you’ve invested time in a series you love and it doesn’t end the way you’d hoped (BSG, I’m looking at you). And if I think about it too much there’s probably things that’ll drive me mad. I don’t know if, on watching it all again, it won’t hold up as well on second viewing. But right now I don’t care. I got the ending I wanted.

This Post Goes Nowhere

• Last week I went to see Wicked, the musical, and although I enjoyed it and liked it much more than the book (story-wise I mean), it didn’t rock my world. Which is a shame. Still, very entertaining. Both leads were very good, although more so individually, since when they sang together I found their voices didn’t really mesh well. And when the chorus was singing it was very hard to tell what they were saying, it was just noise. The set was really good though, and everyone in the cast was excellent. My ice cream however was a bit of a disappointing rip-off.

• Lost has started up again. I think it may take me a while to get back into it, as I wasn’t feeling very invested. Also, Sawyer is getting fat. Not that this has anything to do with me being invested, since he was never a favourite of mine really, it is just something I noticed.

• I’ve been watching BSG again and had a proper marathon over the weekend. I had forgotten how awesome the second season is, really, it’s fantastic. When Pegasus shows up? Those episodes rock. As does the finale.

• I’m sure I had something else of slight interest to say…and yet I have no idea what it was. That’s annoying.

• Oh yeah! It was more boring weather talk about how we have had snow again. Pathetic little flurries of snow and yet I get all giddy about it. Or fed up, in case it shuts down our whole transport system again. It has stopped now.

• Yeesh this was exciting, wasn’t it?

Lost Again

I am a Lost fan. I’m not one of those people who can tell you every single bit of trivia about the show, or what it all means, but I look forward to watching it. I enjoy it. I think it’s damn good television. And when I meet people who say they don’t get it, or that it’s boring or slow or a load of crap even, I will admit that I judge them, just a little. I want to say, ‘Have you even watched it?!’ And not just one random episode in the middle of a season, because of course you won’t get it then, it won’t make any sense, you won’t care about anyone. But watch it from the beginning, watch a few of the episodes from the start. And then if you hate it, well ok, we can’t be friends or anything… I’m kidding. We all different tastes and yadda yadda. But I get like this with shows I love.

I’d been really looking forward to the new season, after the ‘Oh my God’ ending of the last one. And I thought they were really good. It’s on form. Until I went back and started watching season one again. It’s been a couple of years since I saw it. And I’ve been surprised by how different it is. The tone, the pacing. It was a lot slower back then. I suppose it had to be, there was a lot to set up, and a lot of characters to introduce.

But now, it’s a lot less about the ordinary lives of these people who have been thrown together, and how they’re going to survive with all this bizarre stuff going on, and it’s more about that bizarre stuff, the great mystery of the island. Obviously it had to change, but since the ‘game-changing’ episode of last season, or maybe even before that, there has been less down time for the characters, less time to process and more ‘go go go’, do it now, ask questions later. Fewer sweet moments between characters. Reactions to deaths have been minimal as the story pushes on. I think it’s lost a little something along the way.

I was very touched at the end of the first season. That damn montage of them all on the plane, the sentimental music playing over it all. These people had no idea what was in store for them, what they were going come to mean to each other. They were just strangers on a plane.

Originally Lost gave us snapshots into their lives, how they were connected, without knowing it, and we got to know and care about them. Now it seems it’s more about the end game, of getting answers. The hatch, the others, their future. And this is no bad thing. It’s still excellent television, and I have been enjoying these latest episodes a lot. But it would be nice to be able to touch base with how they are all feeling about the changes that have been made. Less of a rush every episode to get to the next cliffhanger moment.

The first season didn’t always end its episodes with cliffhangers or big moments. Often it was a sweet moment instead. People sitting together, sharing their stories. A little more of this would be nice. And maybe when it settles down it’ll go back to that. I’m excited to see where Lost is going, but I hope all the hoopla doesn’t take away from what for me is the core of the show, and that’s the people, the characters and how their lives are changed by Oceanic 815 crash landing on that island, by being survivors. Not by what amazing plot device can be unveiled every week, not by what can cause the greatest shock to viewers.

Lost!

Argh! This trailer for Lost has left me more excited than for Christmas almost! I cannot wait for 31st January…oh bollocks I’ll be on a plane to New York. Hmm…what time do we land and will our hotel have the right channel so I can watch it when it is shown for once? These are the really important questions.

So yes, this is a proper trailer. But if you haven’t seen season 3 (and why not I ask you? So the first few eps were a bit shaky, it more than made up for it with the later ones. Go rent it now!) then don’t watch it cos it gives a hell of a lot away. And you should really watch 3 knowing as little as possible for the surprises.

Oh man…cannot wait.

A Fangirl Obsesses

There seems to be a thing about making top lists for things, especially when it comes to TV shows and films. Said lists define you and your tastes and make it easy for other people to pin you down, figure you out. I am hopeless when it comes to these lists. There are far too many fantastic shows and films over the last…oh, I don’t know, how long have they been in existence?, for me to begin to pick favourites. That’s why it’s nice when someone does it for me, and then I can simply go, ‘Yeah, that’s spot on,’ or, more usually ‘Are these people nuts, do they not have any taste whatsoever?’ and walk away before I say something mean and remind myself that differences make the world go round and everyone is entitled to their opinion.

So here’s a list of something very close to my heart. EW.Com’s top 25 of the last 25 years I’m all about the Sci-Fi. I’m such a fangirl. How can you not love it? When done well, Sci-Fi rocks my world. It takes everything that’s great about human nature and magnifies it, putting us in situations we can only dream of and seeing what we do while we’re there. It shows the best and the worst of us, the good guys are better in SF (and often a little morally grey themselves), the bad guys more evil. I’ll admit, there’s some shoddy stuff around, but the good, man, the good is just awesome.

So I’m loving that this list has some of my favourites on there and isn’t just a homage to Star Wars. (Hey, I love Star Wars as much as the rest, but let’s have some other stuff in there once a while, shall we?) It has films I adore – Aliens (seriously, if I have to make a list of top films, that film is on it. Bizarrely it’s a film that reminds me of my childhood and I can watch it over and over and it never gets old), Total Recall (the effects might look a little worse for wear these days but watching Arnie pull a huge beaming device out of his nose is always worth it), Galaxy Quest (if ever I need a chuckle, that’s one of the top films I go for, ‘Don’t open that, is there air, you don’t know!).

And TV shows – Quantum Leap, a show I can still repeat the opening words to ‘Doctor Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator, and vanished.’ Brilliant! Lost, Battlestar Galactica (at number two no less, and I think it’s deserved. Season 2 of that show was truly kick ass), and of course, the one that is so very close to my heart, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Now, apparently there is a little less love for TNG than there used to be, which I just don’t get. It gave us the Borg! It gave us Picard, and an android who showed more humanity than many humans. Show it some love people.

I could go on and on about these films and these shows, and I probably will at some time (especially when/if (sob!) BSG finally comes back on air, but I’ll stop before this becomes pages and pages of ramble, and say go read the list. Does it do the genre justice?

Addiction

I am a TV addict. I know there are people who may say ‘And?’ because they have long thought so, but I don’t think it became truly official until just recently, when I started writing the dates of the next episodes of my shows in my diary. Yep, there they are, all marked out. Or should I say, there they were. For now my carefully researched dates are off. And why? Because of the writers’ strike. Prison Break is on hiatus until January, with only five episodes left, Grey’s Anatomy has three left. Heroes just the two. My favourite Pushing Daisies just three. If this strike isn’t sorted soon, I will be TV show-less. It’s like the opposite feeling of counting down to Christmas as a child. Every new week that passes means one less episode for Carrie.