Toss Up: Persons Unknown vs Pretty Little Liars

Though they have had success with reality shows, television networks have yet to come with a summer scripted season that anyone wants to watch. Yet on the cable side, from FX to TNT to even smaller stations like AMC have created buzz worthy shows most of last decade. The problem has always been for the major network, their summer show have always seemed like series they are burning off in the summer because they were not good enough during the normal television season, while the cable networks have such a small slate of show, most all of them are treated like flagship shows.

Two new shows debuted this week, one network and one cable, and look like they would have nothing in common. On the network side looking to buck the trend is Persons Unknown, The Prisoner meets Lost for NBC; while ABC Family offers up the Desperate Housewives for the Gossip Girl set Pretty Little Liars. On the surface the two shows would have nothing in common, but at the heart of both shows is an overarching mystery.

For Persons Unknown, the big question is why these people were brought to this deserted town and where exactly is this town. The show started out very much like it could have Lost but instead of an island, the castaways were landlocked in the middle of nowhere, but instead of waiting until the end of the second season to see anyone off the island, we learn of a reporter investigating one of the missing persons. “Others” also show up shortly in the form of a catering Koreans and a night bellman, neither of which give us much information so far.

For Pretty Little Liars, the big mystery is who is sending all the title characters messages that only their missing friend would know. All these secrets are pretty familiars for shows of this ilk: hooking up with a teacher, same sex attraction, hooking up with a sister’s boyfriend, eating disorder. Not surprisingly the end of the episode the body of the missing girl shows up dead because the title sequence features the girls gathered around a casket. Seriously, is this the first time a title sequence featured a major spoiler?


Another thing the show share is not a particular strong cast. It may not be a good sign when your show is headlined by Cameron Frye. As seen by his recent spot on Justified, he can make a decent guest turn, but he cannot lead a series like Persons Unknown. On the other hand, Pretty Little Liars is full of actors that can barely pass a college students let along sixteen year olds. C’mon, Bianca Lawson was playing that age thirteen years ago when she was on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when her current character was three years old.

In terms of a toss-up, I am going and call it a tie because Persons Unknown is the superior show with a better set up of its mystery. And being a thirteen episode miniseries, there shouldn’t be the too many to count loose ends that hampered Lost. But being on cable, Pretty Little Liars has a much better chance of extending past thirteen episodes.

Persons Unknowns airs Mondays at 10:00 on NBC. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Persons Unknown on iTunes. Pretty Little Liars airs Tuesdays at 8:00 on ABC Family. You can stream, recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Pretty Little Liars on iTunes of which you can download the Pilot currently for free as well as Amazon Video on Demand:

Feed Your iPod vol. XLVI: God's Gonna Cut You Down

Asides from my yearly countdown, I rarely talk about mash-up even though I am constantly search for new interesting combinations of songs. Here is one that topped my list of Best Mash-Ups of 2006 list which is unlike your standard mash up which typically takes the vocals from one track and puts it over the music of another one. On his version of God’s Gonna Cut You Down, DJ Schmolli takes the Johnny Cash vocals, but instead of one song to put it over, he stripped down four different songs to one part to create a new instrumental. The backing track included the drums from Led Zeppelin’s When The Levee Breaks, the bass from Beastie Boys Sabotage, the guitar from Ted Nugent’s Cat Scratch Fever, and the lead guitar from The Beatles Come Together. To download the complete product, head over to Mashup Town.

You Make Me Pull, I'll Put You Down

There may not have been a cooler beginning of a television show than having the protagonist walk up to a bad guy twenty-three hours and fifty-five minutes after telling said bad guy he had twenty-four hours to leave town or he would shoot him. Unfortunately for Raylan Givens of Justified, the shooting got him transferred from sunny Miami to the one place he didn’t want to: home. He spent his whole life distancing himself from his father and even when back in Kentucky stayed away from him until of course he got in trouble with the law. It didn’t help that his ex-wife moved back to the area with her shifty new husband.

Now there is a premise that Seth Bullock could get behind and thankfully Timothy Olyphant doesn’t seem to care about typecasting as Givens might as well be the great grandson of his previous Deadwood character. We even get a couple of Deadwood reunions in the first season of Justified most notably with Bullock trading wits one more time with Dan Dougherty who played an escaped convicted holding hostages in Bullock’s office.

Aside from former Deadwood cohorts, there was plenty of other great casting choices including Stephan Root as a judge who wears little under hid robe but a gun. Alan Ruck as an informant turned on the run dentist. And then there was MC Gainey as the local kingpin, father of the guy Raylan shot upon return to Harlan, and former father-in-law to the girl Raylan bedded upon returning home.

Aside from the casting, another strong point for the show was the case of the week that never sank into the same rut of “ripped from the headlines” of other procedurals. Some of which featured criminals of the week so stupid that some even tried to out draw Raylan even knowing of what happened in Miami.

But it was the overarching storyline of Raylan and the one person that survived his bullet, Boyd Crowder. After coming out of surgery saying he was a changed man, Boyd still straddled the line of morality the rest of the season using whatever means necessarily to get everyone on the right path. Even if that means blowing up a truck full of meth supplies meant for his father (and not so coincidentally shipped by an associate of the man Raylan shot in Miami and unsuccessfully tried to have him killed twice already this season).

Raylan may have 99 Problems, at least two of them are female thanks to Ava seeing his ex leave his room last week. Everything comes to ahead tonight when the first season comes to a close. The Givens and the Crowders have been crossing each other paths all season and with Bo’s shipment getting blown up by Boyd and Raylan wanting Arlo to wear a wire to bring the Crowder clan down, there are plenty of double crossings going down tonight.

Justified 1.x gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

Previewing Neighbors from Hell

Looking over the press release from Neighbors from Hell you have to wonder what is the odder paring: “Series from the producers of South Park and Madagascar” or the married couple being voiced by Mad TV’s Will Sasso and Saturday Night Live’s Molly Shannon. One you wouldn’t think in the same sentence and the other being rivals for many years (or at least their shows were). But anyways.

Neighbors from Hell, TBS’s first animated comedy, wants to be an animated version of an eighties sitcom. All the clichés are there, nuclear family, wacky uncle, wise sidekick, evil boss and of course neighbors from hell both figuratively, the neighbors are extremely annoying, and literally because the family depicted is actually demons from Hell.

See Balthazor Hellman is your regular, television loving demon (only in Hell could anyone enjoy Two and a Half Men) who is chosen by the Devil to go up to Earth posed as a normal family and get a job from a drill company and sabotage their most sophisticated drill from reaching their homes. Naturally Balthazor has his family watch shows life Growing Pains to see how to assimilate among the humans. Though watching Alf may have been a bad idea as the wacky uncle takes to eating cats.

Animated shows by nature are overthetop, but Neighbors from Hell takes it too far, the Hellman’s neighbor ia so annoying you hope that one of the demons actually kills her. And Balthazor’s above ground boss (That 70’s Show Kurtwood Smith) manages to be even more immoral than his one down under. The kids are just caricatures of teenagers today but with green skin and the ability to perform magic. The one bright spot is the dog like pet as voiced by Patton Oswalt.

Neighbors from Hell airs Mondays on TBS.

57 Channels and Only This Is On vol. CXXXIII

Quote of the Week: Yeah, come to think of it I do recall sitting for a couple hours in jail with someone by that name. I don’t know how I got there considering my friends were with me at the time. Kevin and wait, what’d you say your name was? JD McDick? (Luke, Friday Night Lights)

Song of the Week: 6th Avenue Heartache - Jeanne Newhall (Happy Town)

Big News of the Week: Death in more than Threes: It has always been a morbid game to group celebrity death into three (I have been guilty of this) even if you had to span months to make it work, but it seems in recent years it has been much easier and sometimes it is even hard to confine the list to three. Just in the past month we have seen the passing of Dennis Hopper, John Wooden, Gary Colman, Rue McClanahan, Ronnie James Dio, Jose Lima, Lena Horne, and the bassist for Slipnot. This is probably becoming the norm as before the sixties they were very few big name celebrities so celebrity deaths had been far and few in-between but celebrity became more popular when the baby boomer came of age who are now reaching retirement age they are starting to pass on at a quicker pace. Hopefully if that is the case, the truly talented get their just due and not just crammed together like I just did.

Justified: This was just one of those edge of your seats kind of episode. When I saw Boyd get his hands on another bazooka I could think of a number o places who could be targeting, but the one that didn’t cross my mind was papa’s truck of meth. Daddy cannot be to thrilled with how that happened (unless he has been pulling Boyd’s strings all along which I can see happening). Also something I didn’t see coming, Wynona knocking on Raylan’s door. This should make for an explosive finale even if Boyd runs out of ammo. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Justified on iTunes.

Happy Town: I wonder if the show if running too many concurrent mysteries. I could do without one or two of them even if it turns out they are intertwined as it really hurts the pacing of the show. Like I could care less about the creepy detective and whatever he is doing. But the cliffhangers like the hot6 chick just waltzing into the Haplin home with a bloody hammer will make me keep tuning (well that and nothing much else on right now). You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Happy Town on iTunes.

Friday Night Lights: I hate when promo monkeys proclaim an episode is a “powerful hour of television” but this was a powerful hour of television and every second of that Matt was on screen was heartbreaking (except when he slammed the door in the McCoy’s faces which had me applauding). But why did Lyla come back from Vanderbilt to attend the service? I do not remember one conversation she and Matt had in the previous three seasons. Not that I am complaining because I am for any screen time I can get with Lyla. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu.



I mentioned a couple days ago about the premiere of Expedition: Great White which is on tonight, but I would also like to add for anyone who is interested that the National Geographic Channel is giving away a chance to join the crew of Expedition Great White for a day. One lucky winner of the "Expedition Great White Big Catch" sweepstakes will receive a five day/four night trip, plus accommodation, to San Diego, California, and a one-day excursion with the crew of Expedition Great White. Your readers can enter the "Expedition Great White Big Catch" sweepstakes at http://www.natgeotv.com/bigcatch starting today.

Free Download of the Week: Always Will Be EP – Raining and OK: I was sent this video earlier this week and found it pretty cool and even offered the song for free on their free EP for you the readers. Check out the video below and for more on the band, head over to rainingandok.com.



Deal of the Week: DVDs as Low as $6.49 (Blazing Saddles, Wedding Crashers, Maria Full of Grace)

Video of the Week: It seems like all the World Cup ads this years have been really inspiring (though ESPN could bump their Bono spot down from one a half hour to less than once a day; you know an ad is overplayed when you can recite the script in full) but this Adidas ad may be my favorite as it combines sport with Star Wars and music. See if you can spot all the cameos.



Next Week Pick of the Week: Justified, Tuesday at 10:00 on FX: Everything is coming together in Harland for the season finale of Justified and it is hard to imagine everyone will be coming out alive as everyone seems to be conspiring against Raylan except for the guy he shot, who claims to be on the same side.

Around the Tubes vol. LIII

I have gotten a plethora of cool press releases have been flooding my inbox recently that you may find interesting. This post will include blurbs on Expedition: Great White, Drop Dead Diva, Robert Klein: Unfair and Unbalanced, and Neistat Brothers.

- If you remember the special I mentioned a couple months ago which featured Paul Walker as a deckhand for a sharking expedition, that special is now becoming a full series, Expedition: Great White premiering this Sunday at 9:00 with back to back episodes before the show settles into its regular timeslot at 10:00 the following week. Here is a preview of the premiere episode:



- For those that need a quick refresher of the first season of Drop Dead Diva before the premiere this Sunday, here it is:



- Fun fact: the very first HBO standup comedy special was Robert Klein. Thirty-five years later he is back with his ninth one man show Robert Klein: Unfair and Unbalanced Saturday June 12 at 10. Here is a preview:



- Tonight on HBO is the premiere of Neistat Brothers, an eight-episode series consisting of experimental short films from the art-world brothers of the same name. Check out a clip below:

I Want My Music Television vol. LXXXIII

There have been a couple of videos that have caught my eye lately so I thought I’d give them some love since the death of Musical Television left a void for a forum on the art form. If you are interested in buying the video through iTunes, click the title link (where available). If you are interested in buying the song, look for a link in the analysis.


The Ghost Inside – Broken Bells



The latest Broken Bells video just may be the greatest Outer Limits episode never to air and even stars Firefly vet Christina Hendricks who is no stranger to outerspace.


Half My Heart – John Mayer



I am really disappointed that with the absent of Taylor Swift we were deprived of some cheesetastic scenes that harken back to when Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks would share microphones during their duets. Instead we just get John Mayer sulking around as if he just got accused of being a racist.


Holiday – Vampire Weekend



Oh those wacky Ivy Leaguers of Vampire Weekend going all Victorian on us. Well done boys.


Rockstar 101 - Rihanna



If Rihanna is teaching Rock Star 101, who is the professor for 102, Pat Boone?

Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooal!

As much as I hate the laziness in Hollywood, I resigned that they won’t stop cranking out remakes because they have run out of original ideas long ago (though I still which I had a Hot Tube Time Machine so I could un-see The A-Team trailer). I even occasionally try to help them out with some casting ideas for remakes. Like isn’t it time for a Victory for a new generation? Instead of Allied soccer players betting their freedom against their German, a group of female soldiers get ambushed by the Taliban and have to show that woman are just as capable as them to secure their release. Get Mia Hamm to replace Pele, Queen Latifah to sub info Sylvester Stallone and Angelina Jolie take over for Michael Caine.

Maybe because of the sport depicted, Victory has gotten lost in the discussion of great sports movies of all time. But how can you not love a movie where the allied forces beat those darn dirty Nazis at a sport they love. Sure having a midget like Stallone as a goalie is one of the biggest stretches in sports movie history (it’s like having Carlton Banks starring in the Patrick Ewing story), but the eighties cheese of it more than makes up for it.

Though one of the scenes still makes me squeamish just think about it, where they break the current goalie’s arm just so they could have Sly play in the big game, probably not a scene anyone who is still in single digits in age should watch like I was when I first saw the movie in my youth. But the movie is still worth of being inducted into the Scooter Hall of Fame. Now can we have Victory in Afghanistan ready for the next World Cup in four years?

Life Is Sweet

There is really no better advertising for Life, the BBC Earth miniseries which recently aired on Discovery, then “From the Makers of Planet Earth” which is one of the things on top of the list of reasons you should upgrade to an HD television set. Where Planet Earth focused on ecosystems around the worst, Life, out today on DVD and Blu-Ray, takes a look at the species that inhabit them from the jungles of Africa to under the arctic shelf.

© Barrie Britton

The first episode of Life is a primer for the series with the closing one takes a look behind the scenes of the humans (who show up only once in the other episodes) that were given the tasks to film in such remote locations. In-between each episode is dedicated to Classes such as Reptiles and Amphibians, Mammals, Fish, Birds, Insects, Plants as well as some subsections including Hunters and Hunted, Creatures of the Deep, and Primates.

© Stefano Unterthiner

If there is one complaint I have heard about Life it has been the narration from Oprah Winfrey, which could get bland at time and lacks the emotion that corresponds with the beauty that is presented on screen. If you were one of those that thought that during the Discovery telecast are in luck because both the DVD and Blu-Ray feature a music only viewing option. Both sets are also available with original British narration from David Attenborough; in fact the DVD is actually two dollars less than the Oprah version.

©Neil Lucas

If there was another complaint I could come up with it would be dedicating a whole episode to plants. Sure the Venus Fly Trap and other insect eating plants are entertaining, but watching a vine taking days to climb up a tree: not so much. Even more disappointing is the Behind the Scenes companion for the episode that shows much of what made it to screen was actually a blue screen with most of the plants actually were film inside.

©Rupert Barrington

Oprah haters may also want to pass on the Behind the Scenes episode because there are extend versions of each segment presented as bonus features, a ten minute behind the scenes look at each episode on how the filmmakers got the shots that ended up in the show. We also get to see cameramen struggle with gets great shots such as a komodo dragon hunting a water buffalo who takes a week from receiving a poisonous bite from the dragon until he is sick enough to eat. Or another that took three weeks of squatting to catch on film two birds mating which in total took less than a minute. One camerman even gets too close to a school of flying fish that choose to spawn on him. Also included in the set is eighteen minutes of deleted scenes, most of which were cut from creatures featured in the original series as well as a new segment on grass.

© Hugh Miller

As the above mention of the water buffalo, animal lovers be warned, the hunting scenes do get quite graphic and you may want to watch the series with a finger on the fast forward or next chapter button and skip the Hunters and Hunted episode altogether. But it is worth it to check out the rest of Life for its awe-inspiring shots from around the globe of 130 (54 of which have never been filmed before) different stories of species and the mate, find food (and avoid being that for others), and adapt to their environment. All presented in an entertaining package that you will not want to turn your eyes away from, especially when it is presented in HD.

Previewing Are We There Yet?

Earlier this decade, UPN was the place for urban comedies, but it then closed up shop the two sitcoms that got grandfathered to The CW were quickly banished to the Friday death spot and then quickly canceled. Now TBS looks to be the spot for the niche genre with two Tyler Perry productions already on the air and on Wednesday it adds Are We There Yet?, a remake of the 2005 Ice Cube flick. Though the sequel got a name change (Are We Done Yet?) the new show doesn’t despite the family being domesticated in Seattle without anywhere to go.

It is easy to get your hopes up for the sitcom version of Are We There Yet? because of the involvement of Ali Le Roi who was the show runner for Everybody Hate Chris. And he even brought in the patriarch from that show Terry Crews to fill in for Ice Cube while his female counterpart, another UPN expat, Essence Atkins from Half and Half. And though Crews is as entertaining as usual (albeit even more tamed down than Julius) there is just something missing: actual funny lines. Even token white dude Christian Finnegan (Best Week Ever) fails to bring the funny.

The show does have its moments; mostly in next week’s 9:30 episode where Crews and his new son argue over what is the better football, American or European (what we call soccer) which leads to some entertaining physical comedy from Crews. And whenever Ice Cube shows up as his new SWAT officer brother-in-law is comedy gold just because Cube goes over the top in his acting as if he only watched eighties sitcoms to prepare for the role. But it is not enough funny to tune in every week.

Are We There Yet? airs Wednesdays with new episodes at 9:00 and 9:30 on TBS.

57 Channels and Only This Is On vol. CXXXII

Quote of the Week: You strike at the shepherd, and the sheep may scatter. (Boyd Crowder’s congregation, Justified)

Song of the Week: Blaze of Glory – Jon Bon Jovi (as performed by Jeffster, Chuck)

Big News of the Week: A Melancholy Happy Trails to Gary Colman: As a child of the eighties of course I watched Diff’rent Strokes, a show that could have only been made that decade (rich white dudes adopts two kids from the ghettos, if they did it now, it would probably be foreigners a la Angelina Jolie). I was really young at the time so I really do not recall much else about the series except of course for, “Whacha talkin’ ‘bout Willis.”

Gratuitous Token Hot Chick Picture of the Week:



Chuck: So Papa Bartowski gets shot near a laboratory where they were able to bring Shaw back to life (after being brought all the way back from Paris) and no one thought to give it a try for daddy. Keep in mind selectively using Claire’s blood on Heroes is one of very many things that made that show unwatchable. And how is a guy as paranoid as him not wear a bullet proof vest? But still it is hard to complain about am episode that included a Jeffster music video (except that they haven’t yet released a full version to the internets). Although the duo better not be on the run for very much next season in order to shed some budget. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Chuck on iTunes.

How I Met Your Mother: See my Parenthood review. You can stream recent episodes over at cbs.com. You can also download How I Met Your Mother on iTunes.

The Big Bang Theory: A female Sheldon is cool for a one off thing but I fear that Blossom may return again next season might be too much of a good thing. And I would have liked to see some failed matches before they got to the female Sheldon. Sheldon on a blind date with a normal person has to be the highest of high comedy. You can download The Big Bang Theory on iTunes.

Parenthood: Not so fun fact: I once dyed my hair black. I couldn’t wait long enough to get rid of that hair soon enough that I got a premature buzz cut so I had brown roots up the sides and the black still up top. Needless to say I got ridiculed as much as Ted dying his blond. Too bad the season ended before we could see Haddie’s dyer’s remorse. But my favorite part of the episode was when Zeke laid into Timm for having an extra latter in his name. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Parenthood on iTunes.

Justified: Good old Dewey, getting deputized. If he gets banished from the church again I wouldn’t mind seeing that as a spin-off. Though I was hoping that was going to Be Stephan Root coming to the VFW with a court order to come inside. But everything seems to be coming together (I wish the previously on portion was actually longer) and we may be looking at some big blowup between Raylan, Boyd, and Bo, and I would be surprised if all three are still alive by the end of the season. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Justified on iTunes.

Free Download of the Week: Matador Records - Intended Play 2010 (Amazon MP3): Artist included on the sampler include Cat Power, Pavement and Ted Leo.

Deal of the Week: Blu Ray Spotlight for Dad (Iron Man, Sin City, Planet Earth)

Video of the Week: It was pretty clear for a long time that Lost wasn’t going to answer all the questions it posed throughout it series run, and below is a rundown of a few of them. Keep in mind the video is produced by a site called College Humor, so some are asked for humorous effect, and some were actually answered if you were paying attention and of course they missed quite of few questions (but if you made that video with every unanswered question it would be a couple hours). But still a good watch. And of course you acn also check out my series review of Lost: Whatever Happened Happened.



Next Week Pick of the Week: It’s Memorial Day, turn off your television and enjoy the great outdoors.

Around the Tubes vol. LII

I have gotten a plethora of cool press releases have been flooding my inbox recently that you may find interesting. This post will include blurbs on Drop Dead Diva, Life, True Blood, Stadium Slugfest, Team Coco presents Writers Live, and the Worls Cup.

- Need something to watch this long weekend, Lifetime is running a Drop Dead Diva marathon of its first season Sunday starting at 10:00 AM. For those with an adverson to commercial, Drop Dead Diva season one comes out on DVD next Tuesday. Look out for season two the following Sunday. Here is a preview:



Also coming out on DVD, as well as Blu-Ray, June 1 is the BBC miniseries Life which you may have caught earlier this year on Discovery hosted by Oprah Winfrey. I should have a full rundown by then, until I do, check out this preview clip:



- Also next Tuesday at midnight (9:00 for you west coasters) HBO will host the True Blood Ultimate Fan Experience, featuring a live Q&A via satellite with creator Alan Ball and select main cast members, a screening of the True Blood: Season 2 finale episode and a sneak peek of what's to come with an extended Season 3 trailer. The event will take place simultaneously at movie theaters in 50 markets across the country. There are two ways to get passes to the screening event:

Win a VIP pass through the True Blood Ultimate Fan Facebook Sweepstakes at www.facebook.com/trueblood.

Register for general admission passes at www.truebloodultimatefan.com. Passes are available on a first come first serve basis.

Can’t make it; check out a two minute preview of the new season below:

Season 3 Clip Preview

- In other HBO news, the channel will be hosting the very first ever pro boxing match in Yankees Stadium next Saturday (6/6) at 10:15 between super welterweight champion Yuri Foreman and three-time world champion Miguel Cotto.

- Conan O’Brien fans in Chicago, tickets go on sale today at 10:00 AM for his one hour special tentatively titled Team Coco presents Writers Live and will also feature longtime sidekick Andy Richter. The special will be taped on Thursday, June 17, at 7 p.m. (CT), and premiere on TBS Sunday, June 27, at 10 p.m. (ET/PT).

- Are you ready for some football? No spring practices for the NFL, but the world’s football with next month’s World Cup. If so, you will want to check out Terra.com a bilingual digital media company catering to U.S. Hispanic soccer fans. There is even a fantasy game you can sign up for.

Feed Your iPod vol. XLV: Delicate

My head still hurts from the Lost finale and my lengthy write up of the show (see Whatever Happened Happened). While I have Lost on my mind, I thought I’d go back to one of my favorite song placements from the show, Delicate by Damien Rice that closed out a season one episode where Hurley humorously ran out of battery life. Below is the clip from the show and under that is the song as a whole.

Delicate – Damien Rice

Whatever Happened Happened

If Blogger allowed subtitles, it would be, “Unless of course it was all a dream then that didn’t really happen.”

Please, if you will, jump into the Hot Tube Time Machine all the way back to February 10, 2005, a mere week into the inception of the 9th Green and my very first mention of Lost here, Déjà Vu All Over Again. In the post I mention my first apprehension to the show going in the long run because it had just already in the first season utilized the second of the biggest clichés in television history when we learned that Claire had come down with a bout of amnesia. But I bring this up because of the first overused cliché they used, the “it was all a dream” sequence when Boone saw Smoke kill his sister until Locke said, “Psyche! It was all a dream Boone, she is still alive.”

There is always a lot of talk about if a series finale could tarnish a show and the answer is no. The Seinfeld was considered bad but is still regarded as one of the funniest shows in the history of television. The Sopranos ending created such visceral hatred but I still saw it on plenty of Greatest of the 00’s lists and even topped a few. These were like seeing Joe Montana in a Chief’s uniform, sure you do not want to see it, but it doesn’t disqualify him from the Hall of Fame.

While the series finale may not tarnish the show as a whole, it completely ruined the last season. As one of the few people that actually like the flash-sideways, to go back and realize that forty percent of the season happened in the dead minds of the castaways so they could have the lamest high school reunion ever really ruined that part of the season I had previously liked so much. And what was with everyone with a drinking the kool-aid look to everyone sported after they flashed. They were all way too happy to realize they were dead.

And who was and wasn’t invited was befuddling. Sure they could explain away Michael as being stuck Jacob Marley style with whispering chains (along, plausibly, with Eko, Nikki, Paulo and a few others) but what about Walt? Could have had some flashes at some time with Vincent? And who invited Ben? Did he really redeem himself that much as Hurley’s number two? And what happens to him outside the church? Couldn’t he have gone with Alex and or Rousseau? Speaking of children, where were Aaron, baby Charlie, Ji Yeon, and the spawn of Sawyer? Shouldn’t have Richard warranted an invite? Sure if the island was underwater, he never gets eternal life from Jacob, but if sideways was just make believe anyway, he could have made an appearance.

And the absence of Faraday and Charlotte could be explained away by Desmond respecting the request of Eloise Hawking, but as the “time cop” shouldn’t she know if a world created by a group that leaves, would that world cease to exist and she then was denying her son a chance to pass on? And why care enough to include Miles, Artz and Anna Lucia in you sideways world but not even invite them to your reunion? Sure they did not have some epic love story, but neither did Locke or Boone (did I miss a scene when Boone had his flash backs?). Neither did Sayid and Shannon for that matter. Seriously, Sayid pines over Nadia, cris-crossing continents trying to find her, watches her die, but his true love is a chick he dated for a week.

The big irony for me when it comes to Lost is when ABC shipped Monday Night Football I said there was nothing left on the All Broads Channel for guys to watch except for Lost. It wasn’t until the finale did I realize that Lost in fact fit right in with all the other televised chick flicks on the network. Lost was never a genre show, the sci-fi aspect of the show was no less a gimmick than a hospital or the suburbs. This is why we would never get some important answers to questions like: "Why was Sun the only living member of Oceanic 6 that didn’t flash back to 1977?" because it never matter. If you need and answer, it was just a way for the writers to keep Jin and Sun away from each other for another two seasons because it would make for a more emotional reunion and subsequent farewell.

The finale was for all the people who would annoyingly mash up character names and fights to the death arguing over if Kate should pick Jack or Sawyer and cried when Penny called Desmond on the freighter for the first time. Sure I enjoys the first couple flashes in the finale (to a point, they really went overboard with all of them) but that just isn’t me, I could have cared less who Kate picked as long as the writers found new ways to get her out of her clothes and didn’t well up during the phone call because I was still trying to figure out how present day Desmond was able to get nineties Penny to call him. It is probably not a coincidence that some of my favorite characters on the show, Ben, Locke, Hugo, Faraday, Miles, rarely got any sweet lovin’ if any.

A secondary irony is for the whole series all I ever heard about the show was, “I have no clue what is going on but I love it.” Well I almost always new was going on (I could never wrap my head around the idea of the Constant) I never thought the show was all that great since the second season. But in the end it may not have been a good idea to trust someone behind Crossing Jordan and Nash Bridges.

Lost: The Series gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

Times Change, We Need to Change as Well

I tend to avoid bio-flicks. Why would I want to watch the Fresh Prince pretend to be Muhammad Ali when I can watch Ali as himself in When We Were Kings? The problem with most bio-flicks is they try to cram a whole life’s work into under two hours. When bio-flicks usually work is when they take a small segment of a person’s life, especially a little know, but important, aspect that an audience can learn about. That is such the case with the latest Clint Eastwood (Gran Torino) directed film, Invictus.

The film takes a look at the life of Nelson Mandela shortly after taking the office of president of South Africa and trying to unite the country after years of apartheid. His unlikely solution was to get the country behind its rugby team for the upcoming World Cup being held in the country after realizing all the white people in the stands were cheering for their Springboks while all the blacks were cheering against them as they came to represent apartheid. A story most of us Americans have never knew of because the sport is not big here and we were too busy following the O.J. Simpson murder case in 1995. Had this been a normal Mandela bio-flick, we would have gotten a large chunk of him during his nearly three decades spent in jail, and the rugby portion would most likely been boiled down to one scene if it even got mentioned at all.

In Invictus, Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby) plays the newly elected president who reaches out the captain of the national rugby team played by Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting). I’m am sure some people could give grief to Damon’s accent in the film, but it really didn’t bother me as there are plenty of actors in the film that have natural South African accents that were hard to understand what they are saying at times.

Politics aside, Invictus makes for a pretty decent sports movie. Being about a sport that is so unfamiliar with American movie goers, it isn’t bogged down with sports clichés that you see over and over with to the point you expect them in overdone sports over here like baseball movies (though it still has some of the universal sports clichés that populate most sports movies). There are some amazing camera shots like a ground view shot of a scrum and a game that was played in monsoon type rain. And of course when the Springboks plays the All-Blacks of New Zealand we get treated to the Haka which makes you wonder why this hasn’t been imported into other team sports. Maybe if LeBron had done the Haka before games instead of clowning around with silly bowling skits or his cheesy WWE-style chalk throw, maybe he would still be playing.

For the special features on the blu-ray (in stores now as a combo pack and also separately available in DVD, On Demand and digital download forms) you get an in-depth picture-in-picture commentary with insight from the cast, crew and Clint himself. Two behind the scenes featurettes, a standard making of which includes Freeman and Damon meeting their real life counterparts and a separate one about turning the Hollywood star into a rugby play, along with the Invictus music trailer as well as access to BD Live. There is also a twenty minute excerpt from The Eastwood Factor which will be available June 1 individually or part of the blu-ray box set Clint Eastwood Collection which features 10 of his classics.

Invictus gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.



Full Disclosure Notice: This Blu-Ray was given to me on behalf of Warner Brothers Entertainment for the purpose of reviewing the movie.