The Moth

Speaking of cancellation: I don’t want to scare any of the “Lost” fans, but I started watching the series on DVD. And I like it. There’s a good chance I won’t jinx it and get it cancelled though, because I’m not crazy in love with it; I’m merely enjoying it. I’m actually two discs into it already, and I hadn’t realized how many episodes I’ve already seen. Without context, I didn’t like them as much, and so I just remembered all the initial spoilers.

The pilot is still phenomenal, two of the best hours of television ever made. Seriously. The others I’m liking but I’m not blown away yet. I noticed that Paul Dini is a story editor and wrote a couple of the episodes; whether it’s his influence, or just because I know who he is and am making connections that don’t exist, the episodes remind me a lot of the Batman animated series. Tightly written stories with a clear message and interesting symbolism, but a little too “neat.” I don’t want to sound overly critical, because I think they’re very, very good, but there’s just something keeping it just short of great. The symbolism is a little too blatant (Charlie digging out of the cave is just like that moth digging out of a cocoon and look! there’s a moth right there!) and the message is a little bit too clear. But I’ll say again that that’s me being over-critical because the show is so well done otherwise.

And the music is perfect. Unless I’m reading it wrong, it’s by the same guy who does the music for “Alias.” The score doesn’t draw attention to itself, but just works perfectly for setting the mood. And even their song choices work — in “Alias,” whenever they would start playing a song and show a montage of people thinking, it just seemed sappy and obvious, but the couple of times they’ve done it so far on “Lost,” I didn’t even notice it was happening.

Also, I’m going to have to add a couple of things to my “Llorando” post below, apparently: the end of Locke’s story (in “Walkabout”) and the end of Sun’s story (in “House of the Rising Sun”).

Crap, I was just looking on imdb and saw another spoiler in the cast list. Dammit. I’m going to have to hurry and get caught up.

And I’ve got a question for those who’ve already seen season 1: The first few episodes have a lot of flashbacks to the plane crash. Do those go on throughout the season, or are they kept mostly to the beginning of the series? I don’t want to be watching an episode during a plane flight and then all of a sudden have another one of those flashbacks pop up and freak my shit out.

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The Horizon

I didn’t even remember that “Alias” moved to Wednesdays until I saw it on the TiVo last night; I’d pretty much written it off since I heard about the cancellation and since the season seemed to be starting off on shaky ground. But last night’s was really pretty good! They’re back with the action scenes and the intrigue and the secret conspiracies and double-crosses, and of course the guest stars. I’ve always liked the drug-induced-dream-sequence-flashback episodes (they’ve done at least three that I can remember) for some reason; I guess the people behind the show realize that and are tapping into that market.

If they can keep it up at this level, and the signs suggest they can, then I’ll be mighty pleased. They’ve got a good villain in Amy Acker and decent support cast with the two new guys and French lady with overbite. (And it’s kind of funny that cutting off somebody’s ear was horrifying and brutal in Reservoir Dogs, but now they show it not only on network TV, but on a network TV series that my mom watches).

The show’s already repeating itself, so it’s good that they can go out on a high note. They’ve always had kick-ass season finales, even before the big cliffhanger, so I can only imagine that a series finale that they’ve had this long to prepare for is going to be huge. I could do without the “somebody’s going to die” stuff in the teaser commercial, since they’ve already blown their wad, cast-member-death-wise, for this season. But still, should be interesting.

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