Seven Ways Flashforward Resembles Lost

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TV addicts already knew that one of the fall season’s most anticipated shows, Flashforward was going to have some similarities to Lost, since ABC desperately needs to find a way to fill the hole left by Lost when it ends in 2010. And they aren’t being shy about the hat tip, either; we saw a couple of Lost references in the form of an ad for Oceanic Six, the doomed airline. We’re sure there were more but we watched it online very late. 

We had a serious case of deja vu watching the show, which is set in Los Angeles and based on a sci-fi novel of the same name by Robert J. Sawyer.

1. Two of the Same Awesome Actors. We’re watching and enjoying ourselves and then thought we saw a familiar face. Um, OMG, “What’s Penny doing over there? Where’s Desmond!” Sonia Braga plays a doctor Olivia Benford (she’s Mark’s wife); meanwhile, her accented brethren, Dominic Monaghan (long lost Charlie) is signed on for two eps.

2. The Chaotic Opening with Things Exploding and Fireballs Nearly Missing our Beloved All-Knowing-Must-Save-Everyone-Fearless Leader, Jack Mark. 

As FBI agent Mark Benford makes his way in what looks like downtown L.A. —which appears even more apocalyptic than usual, what with the exploding gas tanker trucks, and cars that have piled on top of each other—Mark hears people screaming and crying and runs erratically in all directions trying to save everyone he can find. He’s nearly taken out by an exploding fireball, but survives so that he can become the series leader, telling a bunch of confused people to stay calm and directing them to help while looking kind of frazzled and purposeful.

3. The Character Who We Already Know is Going to Die. 

Like Charlie, John Cho’s character Demetri Noh  is aware that he might not make it to the fateful date on April 29, 2010, because unlike everyone else, during the blackout, he didn’t see scenes from the future. He saw nothing at all. Desmond in Lost, of course, predicted Charlie’s demise, and tried fruitlessly to prevent it, until Charlie realized that in order for the events on the Island to unfold correctly, he had to die. Will Demetri have a similar realization or will he try to fight it?

4. The Flash Forwards as a Plot Device:

We have to wonder if the Lost folks weren’t given a hefty chunk of change for this bit of intellectual property. Lost fans will recall the  finale of Season 3 that revealed the first flashforward was a doozy, totally turning the whole show upside down. (“We have to go back!”) The mystery wasn’t just what happened, but how everyone got there. Flashforward is a little different. People have vague clues that they are piecing together collectively from snapshots in their future memory. However, with Lost, part of the problem is that once we  could see how the puzzle was going to be finished, it took the air out of the reveal. 

5. The Weird Animal Sighting.

In the downtown is on fire scene, Mark is basically harried, but normal, considering that hell has just frozen over, until he comes across something that literally stops him dead in his tracks. We waited as the camera panned over and thought, “SMOKEY IS THAT YOU? (Smoke monster!)” Nope, just a kangaroo, which apparently either hopped itself all the way over from Australia or was transported in a time traveling wormhole ala the polar bears in Lost. Also: the kangaroo/Australian connection is another hat tip to Lost, which is where flight Oceanic 815 was headed when it crashed in the Island. 

6. The Previously Hopeless Character with a Renewed Sense of Purpose (and Maybe Even a Second Life).

 At the beginning of the ep, we see a young doctor, Bryce Varley, played by Zachary Knighton, standing on a pier by the beach, holding a gun up to his chin about to shoot his head off. Then everyone goes blackout and he wakes up to see that a little boy in the water needs help, and jumps to his rescue. Later, he confides to Sonia Braga’s character Olivia, that he was about to commit suicide, but during the blackout, he saw his future and it was good, very very good. If we were the betting types, we’d call this the John Locke character. When Locke arrived on the Island his paralysis was miraculously cured, and the formerly depressed man had a renewed sense of life and vigor. And like Locke, Bryce seems to be game to save people; will he be the one to challenge Mark in the future? And what does Locke-tk say to Braga during his confession: “Whatever I was thinking about doing, obviously wasn’t meant to happen.” To which we say, “Uh-oh. This feels awfully familiar.”

7. Fate and Destiny vs. Free Will.

 Remember when Hurley explains to everyone that the future can’t be changed, that no matter what they do, what is supposed to happen will happen. Mark and his sobriety sponsor Aaron have nearly the inverse conversation. Mark wonders if because he saw himself in his flashforward as being a drunk again, if there’s nothing he can do about it, and  demurs. “Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. Maybe because you saw it, you can change it. What if you can, you know ghost of Christmas future crap.” Ever the skeptic, Aaron answers, “What if I can’t?” Well, we’ll say this: that’s not very Jack-like of him.

 

In Memory of My Dad

Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of his death. In honor of Father’s Day, which is coming up, I thought I’d post the obituary I wrote for him. I remember, I tried to make it a bit more substantial.

RONALD ROMANO

Ronald “Harpo” D. Romano, 60, of Henderson, died June 16, 2003. He was born on September 10, 1942 in Morristown, New Jersey. He resided in Las Vegas for 30 years, for 20 of those years he worked in the gaming industry, most recently at the Sunset Station in Henderson. Prior to his employment in casinos, Mr. Romano was a bass guitarist in numerous jazz bands and still occasionally played gigs around town. He was married and divorced three times. His first wife, Patricia, and the mother of his daughter, died in 1980. Though he moved briefly to the Seattle area, he made Las Vegas his home for most of his adult life. He loved fishing and dreamt one day of living on the Florida coast. He was preceded in death by his father, Patrick. He is survived by his daughter, Patricia Anne of New York City; his mother, Antoinette Caruso; his older brothers, Anthony and Carmine; and his younger sister, Patricia Linfante, all of New Jersey. Services at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 21 at the Chapel of the St. Rose Dominican Hospital, Sienna campus on Eastern and St. Rose Parkway (Pecos). Father Lou will officiate the service.

My Cat and Her Many Looks

Via L’emploi du temps via http://lucylou.livejournal.com/

I Hate NY—As Told By Andy Brooks.

Andrew Brooks gives us an intelligent reasoned argument for hating New York.

Favorite bit:

“Welcome to spending half your cash on rent for a horrible apartment with headaches your head cannot imagine, and spending the other half at bars to forget how miserable you are.”

I Hate NY

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I Hate L.A. (Not Really)

Extremely profanity-laden stream of consciousness diatribe about L.A. courtesy of comedian Suzi Barrett, friend of Sarah Silverman (of course.). Suzi tries to convince her friend not to move here by telling her how “awful” it is, against the backdrop of total awesomeness that is my current city. “Fucking pleasant weather, fucking pretty houses, fucking pretty trees.”

Yeah, L.A. sucks,  it’s totally filled with vapid Hollywood people, and it’s completely boring having perfect weather 360 days a year (yeah, we suffer for about five days). Stay in New York or whatever shitty East Coast town you live and feel superior for doing so. More for me and my friends.

Reverse psychology’s a bitch, man.

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Mobbed Up, Yo.

The best part of the Real Housewives of New Jersey are the Defamer/Gawker wrap ups. Even better are the comments.

 

Source: Gawker.

real housewives of new jersey, mobbed up, guidos, goodfellas

How To Get Killed By Your Cat

So these two crazy people work out with their mostly docile cat. My animal is about 10 pounds heavier and 60 x meaner. I would get about one rep out of her before being beheaded.

more about “How To Get Killed By Your Cat“, posted with vodpod

Related funny: Gavin McInnes uses his ultra-cute babies for weight lifting.

Why the Pre Treo Won’t Keep Me From Leaving Sprint

I have a been a Sprint PCS customer since 1997 or 1998. In 2007, after being absolutely pissed off at Sprint PCS’s piss-poor customer service, their unbelievably crappy phone selection, their death-grip contracts, and my Treo breaking so many times I lost count, I wrote a completely unhinged, totally adolescent, obnoxious letter to all the top executives at Sprint that ended like this:

“your company is bleeding customers and losing stock value an unprecedented rate because:

—your outsourced customer service is crap; the agents take days to respond to emails and the experience of being on the line with them is like falling into a vortex. bring it back to America for a few extra dollars.

—your phone selection is garbage.

—your website is a buggy piece of crap; it is often unviewable, with broken links, and failed several times during my recent attempt at inputting information for your security upgrade (thanks for that) to accept or save the information.”

I ended diplomatically: “Are you running a multibillion dollar corporation or a lemonade stand on the side of the road?

In the letter, I made childish demands: I wanted either a brand new phone of my choosing–the latest Blackberry or Treo—for nothing, and I wanted no changes or re-upping of my contract. If neither one of those things were met to my satisfaction, I informed these very big powerful people at the top of the food chain, they were going to let me out of my contract gratis, and buy me an iPhone or a Blackberry from one of their competitors.

I hit send and figured that I’d never hear from anyone and that I’d fulfilled my need to vent about the incompetence of the company to the ether.

Big surprise. The next day I received something like four or five phone calls from people who handled larger accounts at Sprint. It was somewhat overwhelming. I had a personal connection with someone in New York who got me a new Blackberry and set up my new account, and removed the two-year contract restrictions on my account. I had gotten everything I asked for. Whenever my phone died or broke, I had a rep who would helpfully replace it immediately.

Everything was going swimmingly until I moved to Santa Monica.

You know that Verizon commercial where the dude walks around to different areas of a room and asks, “Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?” That’s me, every time you call me on my cell phone. I literally drop every single call. Every. Single. Call. The rest of the beach area is completely spotty, as well. Text messages don’t always arrive. Important phone messages go straight to voice mail, and then I don’t notice them for hours. I’ve stopped bugging my personal connect at Sprint about how awful it is, because my year of being treated like a Very Important Person is over, and because asking Sprint to spend a few million dollars on towers in my neighborhood just because I have dropped calls, doesn’t seem very fair.

Sprint had a tough time after its merger with Nextel, and it’s doing the worst of all the cell carriers with new subscribers. On the bright side, the loss of six million customers will make the network easier and better to use. But it finally got a real CEO, Dan Hesse–after the last one quit when Sprint actually fired 1000 of its customers for complaining too much–and has been making strides in trying to fix its reputation. When I call customer service, I get clear-speaking Americans, people who can actually troubleshoot, rather than the outsourced employees from India, who read off a script and don’t really interact.

Sprint’s also gotten some better phones. They got the Blackberry Curve and Pearl, the Instinct and the Motorola Razr.

The biggest news, though, is that they are getting the Pre Treo.

This is the part that makes me very sad. I really liked my Treo when it was working. Except for the bulkiness of the phone, I liked the way it displayed text messages better than the Blackberry, I liked the emails, and I liked that you could touch the screen or use the hard keyboard. Options.

I have the Blackberry World phone now. It’s fine. It mostly does what it’s supposed to but the stupid ball gets stuck all the time, and takes forever to scroll. But it’s really loud, and I can hear everyone perfectly, and that’s mainly what I need when all is said and done. Everything else is bells and whistles. Except, it never works because the network never works.

But the Palm Treo looks like the best of the Blackberry and the iPhone. I know that everyone says that you get used to it eventually, but typing on the iPhone makes me want to throw it at a wall. The sweep and pinching thing is cute, but I’m bored by it. I like the Pre’s ability to have multiple apps open. I like it’s hard keyboard, and the fact that it’s not the iPhone. Too bad I won’t be getting it.

Because of the unbelievably sorry state of my cell phone reception via Sprint, I am literally forced to get another phone at a different company. Since I am not really interested in another Blackberry, I will likely just succumb to iPhone fever, which is on the ATT network, and I hear is marginally better than what I’ve got with Sprint.

Shockingly, I’m a little sad about leaving Sprint. It feels like letting go of an old friend.

Sprint, can you hear me now?

[From Sprint Predicts That the Pre Will Be Big - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com]

La Vida L.A.: Hollywood Forever’s Baaaack

Last summer, I discovered one of the best things about living in Los Angeles: watching movies in a graveyard. And not just any graveyard—it’s the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard. Where other cities hold movie screenings in normal places like parks or rooftops and such, L.A. takes the darkly glamorous route and shows old flicks next to the graves of Cecil B. Demille, Estelle Getty, and Dee Dee Ramone. Because of the popularity of the screenings, people arrive several hours early with a bounty of food and picnic on the grass while a DJ spins, getting lightly tipsy and waiting for the movie to begin. Last year they screened Carrie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Alien, among many other awesome flicks. Truly fun.
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Lost Season Five Finale: You’ve Shark Jumped On Me

Lost, I am not sure when it happened. But lately when I look at you, I feel nothing. No inward stirrings, no heart palpitations, no jittery nerves. There were fleeting moments that recaptured our early days of romance, like when you ditched the time traveling stunt and got back to the good ol’ fashioned flashback, narrative arc, in “LaFleur.” Sawyer being dreamy, and making eyes with Juliet, and not being a douchebag, and Le Sigh…

And there were moments, like the episode when Ben kills Locke that were magnificent. Shivers up spine.

I think the first stirrings of uncertainty I had was when you came up with this Frozen Donkey Wheel and Time Travel. It just seemed a little…. hokey. Kind of not like you. I mean, you’ve always been pushing the border of silly and darkly mysterious—smoke monsters, polar bears, and four-toed statues will do that to a show.

But the first two, even three, seasons, you had a nice riddle-like quality to you. There was a duality and a complexity, yet, at the core, it was very simple. It was us v. them. Live together, die alone. Every man for himself. Pick a team. Choose an alliance. Good guys v. bad guys. The thrill was in the impossibility of not being sure if our team was fighting the good fight, or if the Others and Ben were who they said there—the good guys—when that seemed sort of impossible since they were doing all sorts of kidnapping and killing and stuff. But then, so was our team.

I don’t like this new Ben, the one who admits he’s never seen Jacob, who is easily manipulated into doing a deed for someone else, the one who admit he lies and who whines like a baby, “Why not me?” This Ben has no clothes. He is not the one who I love —who was once all powerful—and wicked, wicked, wicked. Wicked awesome. This Ben, well he’s too obvious. He explicates everything. Like the rest of the show, he’s explaining everything. Ben was interesting when he never showed his hands.

Lost, you are no longer interesting because you are showing all your cards; yet your writers think that because they are doing a lot of hocus pocus—Look over here! Time travel! Stuff blowing up! New couples! Weird undead Locke! —that they aren’t revealing too much, when in fact, they’ve read too many message boards.

There have been so many scenes that didn’t ring true this season.

The time you showed us what Ben saw in the smoke monster using bad CGI, instead of leaving more to the imagination, and Michael Emerson’s impeccable acting. The time Eloise Hawking bounced across a floor in a fucking cape and trilled, “You alllllll have to go back,” in a ridiculous room with weird pendulum-type objects swinging around. In this episode when Juliet explains to James and us, as if we are very small children, that she’s changed her mind because of how he looked at Kate. Really, we didn’t know that? Well, I never!

I know we complained a lot in the first four seasons because you wouldn’t tell us everything we wanted to know, but that’s also exactly why we loved you so much, because you would dole out little drips of information ever-so-carefully. Each reveal took forever and it was such a treat and we would savor it all week long, wondering about it, turning it over in our mind, reading message board post after message board post, until we were lulled into happy Lost sleep. Now, it feels like we’re on an I.V. of Lost drip, only it’s not coming bit by bit, but by a flood. It’s way too much information. It’s sort of like the relationship between paparazzi magazines and celebrities. The more you know about them, the less interesting and mythological they seem. “Celebrities: they’re just like you and me” is the worst thing to happen to movie stars. And TMI is the worst thing to happen to Lost.

So for the season-ender. Someone has to die, right? No one seems to root for Juliet and Sawyer, but I believed that they are supposed to be together not he and Kate; and I believe that Kate and Jack are supposed to be together. But is Juliet this season’s Charlie? Is she sacrificing everything because she thinks something will be better?

More importantly, let’s discuss the business in the shadow of that footsie thing.

We started to figure out that something was not the same with Locke. Did we need to see the body to confirm this? No, we did not. Because you also had that opening scene where the other dude tells Jacob that he’s totally coming back and killing him; so being above the grade of kindergarten, we could have figured that out.

Couple of things we noticed:

• Jacob has to touch everyone. Everyone he brings back to the Island, he touches. Why?

• Does Jacob purposely orchestrate this group so they will come to the Island to help get him killed? Remember when he said to Locke in the cabin a few seasons back, “Help me?” Did he mean for Locke to save him from the killing, or save him by killing him?

• Remember that weird moment earlier this season when Ben comes to help Locke off the chair to stop committing suicide, and as soon Locke mentions that he knows how to get back because he’s seen Ms. Hawkings, he kills Locke? Is that because Ben already knows that Locke is going to come back and make him kill Jacob?

• On whose side is Ellie and Widmore? Are they opposing? Is Widmore on the side of the bad guy in the beginning of the episode? Do we even know that Jacob is a good guy?

• If they reset time, does this mean they are also stopping the evil Locke killing Jacob segment of time?

• Nestor Carbonell is hot.

• Why is Richard suddenly so passive and un-sage-like? Why is he just the advisor and not the leader?

• Who wants to join Bernard and Rose? (Raises hand).  
• Will Sayid bite it?
• Were you also as confused as Sawyer?
• Maybe Juliet and the weapon didn’t set off the incident. Maybe it just happened anyway.

• What if Miles was right? Maybe they weren’t supposed to do anything at all?

• What if Faraday was just a mad scientist and that was a guidebook of crazy person scribblings?

• Where does all of this leave Desmond?

• Is Ben evil? More importantly, will he ever be wicked awesome again?

And finally, What do you mean I have to wait till 2010! What am I supposed to do until then? What if I die? I’ll never find out what happens!

Lost, these are the reasons I continue to be with you. I’m giving you a second chance.