Lost: Missing Pieces - "King of the Castle"

It looks like Christmas came a little early this year, in the form of a sweet Lost: Missing Pieces this week. Merry Christmas to all of us!

http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/missingpieces/index?pn=index

Taking place during the timeline of "The Man From Tallahassee", this episode features a few bits of Losty goodness packed into two mintues of video. The two main points?

1. Ben comments that he "won't prevent Jack from getting home", but that he can't vouch for the Island doing the same. Although Jack laughs him off, questioning how the Island could "sink the sub", it turns out to be horrible irony since that's exactly what happens.

If you think about it, John Locke (a member of Team Island - remember that theory from months ago) is basically acting as the body for the desires of the Island / Jacob / Whatever The Heck is Going On. Locke blowing up the sub is the equivalent of the Island blowing up the sub - so Ben was absolutely right.

However, I don't think it was so much that the Island wanted Jack to stay - as much as it didn't want Jack's departure to lead to others finding the Island... but we all know that didn't work out so well either. Perhaps the Island would have been better off letting Jack escape on the sub - it may have at least bought a little more time before Jack and his inevitable search party returned, as opposed to Jack swiping Naomi's walkie-talkie and calling the calvary.


2. Ben hints that even if Jack does leave, he may regret it - wanting to return to the Island someday, but not being able to. Again with the irony, this is precisly what we saw during the flashforward of "Through the Looking Glass". How did Ben know that this could potentially happen? Did he truly realize the paradise of the Island, or had others made this same mistake in the past?

Either way, it seems to lend some weight to the theory that Ben was the person in the coffin during the Season Three finale. Ben represented someone who understood the power of the Island, and warned Jack about leaving. Jack, living what looks to be a miserable post-Island existence would have totally regreted his decision to leave the Island, proving Ben right... and Ben's death just might spurn Jack to drastically and suddenly reach out to Kate about going back.

Good stuff.

(Also, allegedly Ben cheats at the game of chess with his last move. I'm no Deep Blue, but I'll take Lostpedia's word for it. Just goes to show that Ben appears to be a man of his word, but is really someone that would cheat in order to win. Juliet was right, he is a liar!)

Lost: Missing Pieces - "The Adventures of Hurley and Frogurt"

Another Monday, another embarassing Bengals loss, another Lost Mobisode!

http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/missingpieces/index?pn=index

This week brings the ridiculously titled "Adventures of Hurley and Frogurt". For those who don't remember (like me, before I checked out Lostpedia), Frogurt is the nickname for a Lostie who apparently used to sell frozen yogurt before the crash. He was referenced once by Bernard as someone who was helping him build his giant rock "S.O.S" on the beach, but never seen... until now.

It turns out his real name is Neil, and he is about as freaky looking as Ethan!



Could this be the introduction of a new Survivor? Perhaps, but I'm hoping it's actually meant to serve another purpose.

This scene takes place right before the dual-murders of "Two for the Road", and shows that the pseudo-cute Libby had more than one potential suitors in the Lost Camp. For me, this two minute scene serves not to introduce Frogurt - but to remind the audience of Libby.

If you think about it, Libby is the only Survivor to die that didn't get a proper conclusion to her story. There is still a ton that we don't know about her, but the Lost producers have promised that someday we would get to know why she was in the mental institution with Hurley and her possible connections with Dharma.

Here's hoping those answers come this season (maybe even in the 8 episodes already in the can?), and that "The Adventures of Hurley and Frogurt" serves as a mini-reminder of Libby for all the die-hard fans out there.

(PS - here's also hoping that the resumed talks between the writers and studios today lead to progress, and Lost gets its full 16 episode season in the spring! Please!)

Lost: Missing Pieces - "The Watch"

I didn't really know what to expect from these "mobisodes", and I guess I shouldn't have really had any high expectations for them since I knew they were only going to be a few minutes long and were originally designed to be viewed on cell phones - but after watching the first one, "The Watch", color me pretty underwhelmed:

http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/missingpieces/index?pn=index

In a nutshell, we learn that Christian Shepherd approves of Jack's marriage - something his father didn't do for him - and that the watch Jack wears actually has some significance. The fact that Jack is still wearing it today, on the Island, where time has no meaning, might prove that Jack still isn't over Sarah - a year after their divorce... or that he's wearing it out of dedication to his recently deceased father... or that it's a really nice watch and he likes to flash a little bling now and again.

And that's really the big question for us watching these mobisodes - should we even be trying to dig into some deeper meaning? Or to just take them at face value, as simple vignettes that help flesh out some character's pasts? To me, they feel like a "deleted scene" from an episode, similar to what you see on a lot of DVDs - the production value isn't as polished (didn't it seem like the camera work was a little jumpy?) and not viewing it doesn't detract at all from the final product, but for the ultra-obsessive (me), they're required viewing to know the characters inside and out.

Here's my hope - remember how we got those "Lost Moments" last year before Season Three started? And the first few were laughably lame, but then a few were pretty mind-blowing reveals? Maybe we'll be lucky enough to have the same thing happen here.

If not, at least it's good to see our old Lost friends again, if only for two minute intervals tossing rocks into the ocean.

I'm Alive!

Hi guys.

Remember me? I used to write about a little TV show called “Lost”. Then the scheduling gods decided to put it on hiatus for nine months (or more?), resulting in this Blog becoming a desolate wasteland used for the sporadic TV rant / wedding proposal. Do you realize that I only posted ONE TIME in the months of September and October? That’s unacceptable, and I apologize.

But somehow, you guys have stuck with me. Somehow, I’ve still gotten twenty thousand hits over the course of the past two months (crossing the 400,000 mark!). This either means you guys need a hobby, or you are desperate to talk television.

I’m going to assume it’s the later, and am here to do something about it. We’ll see how this goes.

With the ongoing writers’ strike, we may be only a few weeks away from having absolutely no original scripted television on TV – a frightening thought. The good news is that those Lost “mobisodes” (mobile episodes – not mob / mafia episodes) start up this Monday, providing us the first fresh tastes of Lost that we’ve had in ages!

Expect them to be posted, and commented on - even if they are only three minutes long. Hey, at the very least, it’ll give us something new to talk about.

For now, I leave you with this priceless picture. This pretty much sums up why we should all be behind the writers in the strike: