Arts & Entertainment – Page 65

Checklist

One of the consequences of having a spastic attention span is that I’ve got a huge mental to-do list that grows faster than is possible for a mortal human — even one with my considerable gifts as granted me by your yellow Earth sun — to check them off.

And because it’s all in me head, it’s completely unsorted and un-prioritized, so stuff like “do laundry” is right there mixed in with “write a Flash prototype for that card game you want to do” and “make quarterly tax payment” is right below “watch the season premiere of ’24′” and “learn Japanese” and “get medical insurance” are somehow getting exactly the same level of procrastination. Which really doesn’t make sense, and is making me into more of a flake than I ever intended: “Sorry, I would’ve shown up for surgery to give you my kidney, but I’ve been meaning to finish reading this issue of Batman for months now.”

I keep seeing links to online and offline organizers and to-do lists, but have yet to find one that even closely approximates how my brain works. Err, “works.” I need to be able to add entries quickly, the second I think of them, attach notes or whatever other information I need to get it done, reorganize it and assign/change priorities so easily that “organize the To-Do list” doesn’t become another item, and give a real sense of accomplishment once I’ve checked one off. And maybe give me a cookie.

I could write my own, but I hope I don’t have to point out the problem there.

Still, even though technology hasn’t yet caught up with my brainspasm method of neural functioning, I have managed to make some minor headway. I’m assuming nobody reading this cares all that much about Java reflection and persistent object databases, so I’ll leave that stuff out. Even though it’s kind of cool, and isn’t so over-engineered as to be useless.

Finished Shadow of the Colossus
And I’m going to have to recant my earlier reviews of it — interesting concept and presentation and great visuals, but it’s not a good videogame. It feels too gamey, and it’s not a good game; it’s a frustrating game that you only keep playing because the concept is interesting. Sure, the conclusion is satisfying as an interactive movie, but I decided halfway through the last level that there was nothing they could show or do that’d be worth the frustration of beating the final boss.

Watched The Aristocrats
I’d expected it to be more interesting than funny, but it turned out more funny than interesting. The whole “joke as jazz performance” idea isn’t strong enough to carry a feature-length movie, and I’m not really buying it since very few people actually tell the joke. But pretty much all the people they interview came out of it seeming pretty cool and funny, even the ones I don’t usually like. The only ones who still seem irredemably creepy and annoying are Taylor Negron and Andy Dick. And that sleazy guy in the jacuzzi. And the bad ventriloquist.

Updated the website
Not really, but I did finally clue in and add a link to Fingerbutter.com. And that’s interesting either as a comment on the anonymity of the internet or on how dense I am. A while ago I saw via technorati that some new site was linking to mine, and so I checked it out to make sure they didn’t have any of my tasteful but misguided erotic photos on there. It wasn’t until last night that I actually made the connection that it was my friend Joe’s website. Even though his name is on the posts, he links to our mutual work friends, and he mentions stuff I should’ve recognized, I’d just been thinking, “hey, that’s nice and a little odd that some stranger is linking to my website.” I went back through and re-read it all hearing Joe tell it, and it makes sense now. So the lesson is either that Joe needs to add an “about” page, or I need to rethink my life dream of becoming a private investigator, or some combination of the two.

So that’s four down (I also finally saw Conan the Barbarian over the weekend), about a billion to go. Now I’ve got to go buy replacement ink cartridges for my printer, which had been hovering on the list between “write a novel” and “reconnect with friends I’ve been neglecting for way too long,” but just shot up in importance because of “do taxes.”

George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black Puppets

It was pretty asinine how Fox ran all four final episodes of “Arrested Development” in one night, on a Friday when nobody watches TV, and how they kept showing commercials for sitcoms they weren’t cancelling, and how they all looked really stupid and pandering.

It doesn’t really matter, though, because I got to see all four episodes, and they blew me.

Away. I keep forgetting to say “away.” All four of them were awesome, and it was about as perfect a series finale as you’re ever going to get from television. Even if they don’t end up continuing the series on Showtime, it’s okay, because it ended so well. It was funny, and juvenile, and topical, and self-referential, but it also tied everything together brilliantly — the kind of plot twist on top of another plot twist on top of a reference to something that happened two seasons ago on top of an adolescent sex joke that only they can pull off.

My favorite bits that I can remember: the Hung Jury, Maeby’s birth announcement, having to bleep out the mention of “Veronica Mars,” the guy visiting Buster in a coma, Ann-yong’s real name, the cabinets without enough set decoration, Buster’s directions to the cab drivers, the names of the Iraqi streets, every time Ron Howard said “oh my,” and pretty much every time Ron Howard said anything.

The only way it could’ve been more perfect is if they’d been able to get not just Judge Reinhold and Bud Cort, but Jude Law.

That Awkward Phase

One day of WonderCon down, and the magic hasn’t really taken hold of my soul yet. I’m hoping that that’s just because it’s a weekday, and most people didn’t have the luxury of working in the morning (I actually got stuff done this morning; I couldn’t be more proud) and then finishing up later that night.

I’m still hoping for big, balls-out displays of nerdosity; that’s a big part of why I bought a three-day pass, after all. I’m hoping that they just have to build to that, because today all I saw was a dull sense of desperation and melancholy. It was like the computer game developer’s conference, but with more women. A middle-aged guy wearing a Captain America T-shirt a couple sizes too small here, Blue Sun and Browncoats T-shirts scattered about, a whisper thin guy dressed up as a vampire there. I want to see full-on I-don’t-give-a-damn-because-I’m-with-my-people men and women in costumes, dammit.

As it was, I got to just be a nerdy fanboy today, instead of looking at them and making fun, pretending that I’m not one. I was hoping to continue my tradition of stalking Steve Purcell, but he didn’t show up. It’s just as well; the last time I saw him was when he pulled up along side me in Emeryville and he honked and waved. That just ruins it. Some people are just too friendly and unassuming to be stalker victims, no matter how much you like their work.

But I think I made up for it around Mike Mignola, though. There was a long line of people at the Dark Horse booth waiting for signatures when I went upstairs to catch the lecture from Telltale Games. When I came back down, the crowd was gone, so I walked up and pulled out my big hardback copy of Art of Hellboy, only to be stopped by a Dark Horse representative telling me that the signing was closed, and they’d had to turn away people 20 minutes ago. And my puppy had died.

So I awkardly and dejectedly put my book back in my backpack and shuffled across to the Metreon to drown my disappointment in soba. Afterward I caught the end of a session about Mirrormask (which I still haven’t seen but is coming out on DVD next week), and then the Q&A with Mignola. He kept pretty much the entire time open for questions, and there were actually some good questions asked — I didn’t see any awkward and uncomfortable gushing fanboy comments (they wouldn’t give me the microphone, dammit) or just dumb questions.

Actually, I did ask what’s the status of “The Amazing Screw-on Head,” and he said they’re finishing up the pilot and it should air on SciFi this year; he hasn’t seen it. He also said that he didn’t plan to do any more Screw-on Head comics, because everything he wanted to do with the characters and setting, he managed to get in that one book.

Other stuff: Hellboy 2 is in preliminary talks and could be Guillermo del Toro’s next movie; it depends on his schedule. A couple of Hellboy animated movies are in the works to probably air on Cartoon Network; if popular, they could turn into a series. (Mignola later said that they’re in the storyboard phase and he’s acting as a consultant and plotter but isn’t directly involved other than that). In the comic books, Duncan Fegredo is taking over art for the next three Hellboy mini-series; Mignola said that he sees Fegredo’s three series as Act II in the Hellboy story, and when he takes the book back over after that, it’ll be the final act. He finally knows where he wants to take the character and the story. He also said he appreciates the time he has where he doesn’t have to draw Hellboy or BPRD, because he can work on side projects like Screw-on Head.

After all that, he went back down to the show floor and signed more books, and I finally got to get an autograph and a sketch of Hellboy. He was selling sketchbooks celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Hellboy, and I bought one of those, too. I’d brought my copy of Screw-on Head, but said it was so dark there was no good place to sign it, but he did anyway. When I told him that I thought that was my favorite single comic book ever, he replied that it was probably one of his as well; he was really happy with how it turned out. And he didn’t want to push his luck and make another story that wasn’t as good.

Later I saw Scott Shaw! (he uses the exclamation point) at a booth and I stopped by to say that I was a huge fan of Captain Carrot & His Amazing Zoo Crew “when I was a little kid.” I guess that was kind of rude, in retrospect. Ah well, I’m still going through my awkward phase. And he reminded me that they appeared in ~~a fairly~~ the most recent issue of Teen Titans, so I came out learning something. Learning is growing.

Really, though: I still don’t get the whole idea of being laid back and chatting with comics creators at these things. You’re in an artificial situation to start with, there are a ton of people who also want to get in to get an autograph or picture or whatever, and besides, what is there really left to say after, “That was so awesome.” I thought part of the appeal of comic books was that once marked as a fan, you didn’t have to make conversation with people or be socially adept.

Social Piranhas

Boing Boing.net mentioned a new show called “The IT Crowd” from Graham Linehan, creator/producer/writer of “Father Ted.” Their angle was the Electronic Frontier Foundation and that it appeals to the sysadmin crowd, but I think it’d be funny even to non-geeks. (Speaking as a geek; your mileage may vary).

The first couple of episodes, and more info, are available online, linked from the “AtariBoy” blog. I got them off BitTorrent and they’re worth blogging about. It’s good, bizarre stuff, and you don’t have to be a fan of nerdity to appreciate it any more than you have to be Catholic to like “Father Ted.”

Still, my favorite line from the first episode is “I’m sorry, are you from the past?”

Oil-guzzling babies (and, suitably, ghost dogs)

Considering how much I love Pom Poko and tanuki, and I got Taiko no Tetsujin mostly because it had dancing kitsune in it, I’m surprised I haven’t seen all of this stuff sooner:

My new favorite website is The Obakemono Project, which is like a web encyclopedia of Japanese folk monsters and spirits. Each one has a description and a drawing that is dead-on ultra-cool perfect. For example, the Aburaakago is a spirit that takes the form of a baby and sucks all the oil out of household lamps.

Raccoons with giant balls and lamp oil-guzzling baby ghosts. And katsu curry rice. I, for one, welcome our new Japanese overlords.

That site leads to The Fantastic Shigeru Mizuki English Language Resource Page, which showcases the work of the Japanese cartoonist and his manga about bakemono. Pretty cool stuff — reminds me of what you’d get if Rat Fink had centuries of folk stories to back it up.

And another link from the Obakemono forums led to the news that The Great Yokai War is playing as part of the SF IndieFest next weekend. It’s a movie about a kid who has to stop a war between various goblins, demons, and evil wizards. I swore I’d never see another Takashi Miike movie after Audition, but word on the street is that it’s not quite his usual fare and even I would be able to tolerate this one.

Now there’s something to look forward to after Wondercon.

Update: The artist’s website is here at DrunkenTengu.com, and pretty much all her stuff is teh coolest.

Bettie Page

From the trailer The trailer for the movie The Notorious Bettie Page is up at Apple’s site, and I’m intrigued. Here are the reasons I plan on seeing this movie:

I don’t really know anything about Bettie Page, and I’ve heard the movie isn’t just a boring biopic.
Come on, look at her!
All accounts say Gretchen Mol does a great job.
The trailer makes it look like they do a lot of neat stuff with editing and compositing and such; hopefully it won’t be another one of those bait-and-switch deals where the trailer’s cool but the movie’s dull.
I’m interested to see what the movie does with it. I Shot Andy Warhol was dull and fairly forgettable, but to its credit it wasn’t sentimental or predictable. Well, except that I could tell going in that it involved Andy Warhol getting shot.

If I’m going to be seeing it, I’d better get myself a wallet chain and some pomade to fit in with the crowd. It’ll be useful in case I want to go to another Reverend Horton Heat concert, too.

Helpless, Damp, and Warm

These days when I’m watching my stories, they all start out with the reminder that I could be watching them in glorious High Definition. Why wouldn’t I? I blew a ton of money that could’ve otherwise gone to a charity on a television that was state of the art for at least two weeks after I bought it. And DirecTV makes entering the HDTV generation easy!

Well, easy if you buy a $600 HD DVR with TiVo. And a two-year service agreement. And the additional antenna to pick on-air HD signals, which because of an FCC ruling, satellite providers like DirecTV can’t duplicate. And you may or may not be able to get the $200 rebate on the DVR if you’re an existing customer; I’ve asked four different people (including a confused woman on DirecTV’s call-in customer support, who didn’t know what I was talking about and had to read the website along with me).

And you may or may not be able to find a unit other than through the company directly, as I discovered when I went to two separate Best Buy stores (I wanted to use a gift card, to help soften the blow) and finally was able to chase down somebody to answer my questions. They didn’t know the answers, and it was irrelevant since they were out of stock on the DVRs and weren’t expecting any more.

Because of the break-up between DirecTV and TiVo, they’re now pushing their own separate brand of DVR. But only for the regular models; they’re still selling the HD version using the TiVo service, until they can come out with their own HD equivalent. But they have just launched a new satellite to support MPEG-4 broadcasts of HDTV — which the current HD DVRs can’t work with. So if you buy one now, you’re spending 400 to 600 bucks on something that isn’t guaranteed to be compatible with the service that may or may not launch sometime this year. Possibly.

I looked into EyeTV and other ways to use a computer as a DVR, but haven’t found one that works with satellite providers. Plus the only computer I could spare is the mini, which isn’t fast enough to record HDTV.

The whole business is just giving me flashbacks to when my brother would chase me down the hall, tackle me to the ground, and tickle me until I peed myself. It’s at the point where even I have to take a step back and just say that the whole business is ridiculous. A stupid amount of effort and money for something as dumb and frivolous as television.

In other entertainment frustration news: I lost interest in “24” sometime around the middle of the third season, and I didn’t watch any of last season. But I’d read that the premiere of season 5 was spectacular, not to be missed and all that, so I set it up to record. When I got back from LA and settled down to have my socks metaphorically blown off by the gripping adventure, I found a “partial recording” of the last 30 minutes of the two-hour premiere.

I started trying to piece together what had happened, and as far as I can make out, the TiVo decided to record “Iron Chef” and “Harvey Birdman” over the first hour and a half of the premiere. Except that I can’t find those recordings; they only show up in the recording history. It’s almost like the TiVo knew it’d done something bad and was desperately trying to cover its tracks. I still can’t tell what happened, since it’s supposed to be set up to avoid stuff like that. I can only guess that it’s upset about the whole DirecTV deal and is lashing out at me. All I’m saying is I don’t need my DVR giving me no lip.

I Said Lady, Step Inside My Hyundai

I’m going to take you up to Glendale.

Land at the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank and groove to the hot hits of the 80s played constantly on the PA system. What’s that playing at the rental car booth? “Who Can It Be Now?” by Men at Work? Oh yeah, gonna get my groove on while I slide up to spend some time with My Lady. She knows how I like it; she always makes me wait, take it nice and slow before she asks me for my driver’s license and credit card. Lady knows how to treat a man, insisting on a second phone number even though I don’t got one; I’ve learned to just make one up, give her what she wants. She gives me a mini-van and won’t hear no back-talk from me. That’s all she’s got. And she knows I gotta drive.

Pick up the key and there it is at the far end of the lot — my Dodge Caravan. Oh yeah, that’s my ride. Got a lady on the side in the security booth. She asks me every time what I do for Disney, and gives me that same look every time when I tell her “programmer” instead of “casting agent.”

Tearin’ up the 5 past the In-n-Out, watchin’ the ladies watchin’ me in my sweet ride. Pulling all up into that ABC parking lot. Putting in my time with The Mouse, then heading back to The BUR for a night on the town. Fine dining selections await, such as the Baja Fresh. But there are cultural options as well, such as Borders and the AMC 12.

So yeah, that wasn’t really going anywhere so I’ll stop now. I got off work a little early tonight and didn’t feel like spending 2 hours stuck in LA traffic to get to Anaheim, so I just came back to the hotel. Maybe I’d be better with spontaneous entertainment if I were in downtown LA (I’m skeptical), but with Burbank there’s just no chance. At least the hotel room has an internet connection and I can smoke indoors.

I thought I would be kind of daring and look at what the titles of the adult movies were, but they’re all pretty generic and dull. Bi Bi American Pie was the closest to what you’d expect from an adult film title, although Real Japanese proudly boasts “No Pixilation,” and they relish diversity, what with Running Wild as the “Gay Alternative.” Considering the hotel, I was hoping that One Night in Paris would be available, but no such luck.

But they don’t have the Cartoon Network or Food Network for some reason, so I’ve been forced to spend hours channel-surfing and browsing the web. And being exposed to broadcast television for the first time in months has really made me realize how little I’ve been missing. In between watching the same episode of “The Daily Show” twice and an Anderson Cooper show about James Frey and his whole book scandal, I watched a whole lot of sitcoms. I keep hearing about “My Name is Earl” and “The Office,” but I just don’t get the appeal.

One that was surprisingly interesting, although I’m not convinced I’d call it “good,” was “Crumbs.” It’s the one with Fred Savage and Jane Curtin. It went overboard with the laugh track and the maudlin moments, but from the pilot it was kind of like Schrödinger’s Sitcom: it had the potential to be either really awful or pretty good (not brilliant, but okay). One thing I liked about it is that they didn’t do exactly what I’m about to do: they didn’t make a big deal about Fred Savage’s character being gay. It wasn’t a total non-issue, but it wasn’t A Very Special Topic, either. I had heard or read about the show before (probably from Entertainment Weekly), but all I took away from it was that it was about a dysfunctional family. So I was surprised when they’re in the middle of the show and all of a sudden (I’d missed the beginning), a friend starts asking him about his boyfriend.

I did a Google search on the show, and I was surprised again. Considering what a ridiculous sham the whole Brokeback Mountain phenomenon has gotten to be, I expected there to be all kinds of attention on it. There are dozens of sites that use the same stock interview, and none of them mention it until a few paragraphs down, when Savage says they talk about his character’s orientation but “that’s not what the show’s about.” Well, none of them except for, of course, The Advocate, which uses the same interview but changes the headline and spins the whole article to make the show sound “Will & Grace” meets “Six Feet Under.” Everybody else just seemed to treat it like it was no big deal. Are people finally starting to realize that it’s not really all that interesting? Whether the show turns out to be any good, I dunno. But I thought it had some potential.

Who’s Peeking Out From Under a Stairway?

And Wendy has stormy eyes. When we went to Disneyland last year, Rain played a CD where every track was a person’s name, from A to Z. The entry for W was “Windy” by The Association. And so began my two-month-long nightmare.

I’ve always been susceptible to getting songs stuck in my head, but this one is the worst since “Tom’s Diner.” I hear it before I go to sleep, I hear it just as I wake up, I hear it when I’m tripping down the streets of the city, smiling at everybody I see. When I had my La Tortura episode in the Sony store, I could hear it in the background. “Make Your Own Kind of Music” from “Lost” wasn’t able to drive it out. “We Used to Be Friends” from “Veronica Mars” didn’t work either.

I finally just gave up and bought the album, hoping I could listen to it enough to get sick of it. It almost worked, but that album also has “Cherish”, which is of course the song that was the worst at getting stuck in my head when I was little, before I’d ever even heard of Suzanne Vega. So now they’re both running together constantly, like some infernal medley. (“Infernal Medley” would be a decent band name, now that I think of it.)

Speaking of Disneyland, they’re keeping up with this whole closing-at-8 bullshit. What’s the point of spending three days in LA if you can’t at least go to D-town? I’m starting to think buying an annual pass wasn’t such a great idea.

Dude, where’s my puppet?

I finally broke through the blockage in my Netflix queue and watched the two movies that I’ve had for over a month now: Dude, Where’s My Car? and Team America: World Police. Considering the Netflix fees and how long I had them out, I figure they cost me about $12 each.

Which makes me a lot less charitable of them than I probably would be normally. Both were in the “no really, they’re better than they look” category, based on what I’d heard from reviewers and friends. So I had low expectations but was willing to be pleasantly surprised. I wasn’t.

Dude, Where’s My Car? I moved up in the queue because it has Jennifer Garner in it, but she’s no reason to see it, even if you’re not already bored with “Alias.” I’m fine with stoner movies; in fact, I liked Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle and I actually bought Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. But I thought the whole point of stoner movies was to make something that you react to basically like you would to a stoner person — they’re harmless and mildly entertaining normally, and really hilarious if you’re high. Considering that this one wasn’t harmless and mildly entertaining when I saw it, I’m not all that inclined to try it again the second way. I’d been expecting it to be gleefully absurd and dumb, but it was just dumb and kind of sad.

And I say we all start a fund, where we each contribute $1 a month, and all the money goes to Andy Dick. The stipulation is that he can never work again.

Team America was just bullshit. It seems like they’re just not aware they’ve obsoleted themselves. They’re stuck in the same thing that was subversive back when they did the first “South Park” short, even though the rest of us have all moved on. (And we moved on partly because “South Park” is so ubiquitous).

Violently cutting up puppets and making them have sex and make dick jokes just isn’t at all subversive anymore. And Parker and Stone just aren’t all that subversive anymore — they make the big joke about pretentious Hollywood needing to be put in its place, without seeming to realize that they’re pretentious Hollywood now. Yeah, there are plenty of pompous blowhards who have no business sticking their noses and money into politics, but at least they’re saying something. It’s easy just to say nothing more than “you’re stupid!”

The only reason I didn’t completely dismiss it is the same reason I can’t completely dismiss “South Park.” When they drop the BS about being adolescent and edgy and just let themselves get absurd, they’re actually funny. There were occasional bits in Team America that are funny just for the sake of being funny, because the characters are puppets. Like the panther attack that’s actually just a couple of house cats with sound effects. And the special emergency signal Gary has to make when he’s undercover. And any of the fist-fight scenes where it’s just two puppets flailing at each other.

They should just learn to drop the pretense of how they’re not pretentious, and just make something funny. Every once in a while, “South Park” manages to actually have a message that makes sense, and while those aren’t the episodes that sell T-shirts and catch phrases, those are the ones that actually work.

Bob Loblaw Lobs Law Bomb

This is what we in the blogosphere like to call “posting just for the sake of posting.” Not sure how that’s distinguishable from everything else on here, but still thought it’d be a good idea to acknowledge that.

Because the “Arrested Development” fans don’t hate me enough: I’ve got to say I didn’t like Monday’s episode. I think I got it, what with the references to Oscar-winning actresses as stunt-casting and having it be mostly about Andy Richter who also had a critically-acclaimed show cancelled, but it just crossed some line for me. It just seemed more desperate and blatant than funny, even though they did come right out and say they were being desperate and blatant.

I did like Michael’s line about “we’ve been given plenty of chances, maybe we’re just not worth saving,” and the frequent mentions of the characters not being “relatable.” Not even because I agree, but because it was a sign that they’re aware of what went on with the show and how it’s perceived, and aren’t just doing the predictable response of saying “corporate entertainment sux!” and “Middle America is stupid!” and “we’re too smart for all these stunts!” A lot of that is true, but it was good that they acknowledged some accountability. They’ve shown that they can make a pointed comment and retain some subtlety at the same time; I wish they’d done more of that instead of going for the obvious “Not HBO, but show time” stuff.

I think that the thing that bugged me the most about it: “Arrested Development” is now going to join “Firefly” and “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” as a show that’s remembered more for being cancelled than it is for being good. And that’s a shame, because there’s more to it than just “a genius show that most people are too dumb to understand.”

And the gags I did like: the newspaper headline from the title, when Tobias calls it “the OC Disorder” and Michael responds with his usual “don’t call it that,” and George Michael’s response when Michael says he expresses himself just fine: “Yeah. Fine. What? Whatever, I don’t care. It’s dumb.” I still say Michael Cera’s the best actor on the show.

What Chuck Did

Part 3 of 6 Today I got caught up on the remaining “Lost” episodes. It left me feeling sad, intrigued, and wary.

Sad because you-know-what happened to you-know-who, because I was just starting to like her. I realize that was the point, because even though it’d already been spoiled for me, I could tell as soon as they started making her sympathetic that bad things were on the horizon. It just seemed inevitable.

Intrigued because like it or not, these guys do know how to handle cliff-hangers and doling out information. Like I said about “Alias,” they’re pretty good about giving you a pay-off when they set something up. If they show you a piece of film, they’re going to show you what’s on the piece of film, instead of making you wait a month or longer. And intrigued about how much speculation on the internets is going on, including the teaser sites complete with Disney terms of use. And the total geekitude that reveals stuff I never would’ve figured out, like that the numbers in the code all add up to 108, which is the number of minutes on the countdown timer.

Wary because I don’t know how they’re going to get a whole nother season out of it without running out of big revelations. I don’t know about the rest of the fans, but I’m getting a little tired of the flashbacks. They’ve been building up to Kate’s backstory since early on, and it just struck me as kind of “meh.” The only really engaging part of all that was trying to place where I’d seen her mom before (she was one of the aunts on “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”). The only thing left for a flashback to reveal, as far as I’m concerned, is what happened to Jack’s wife, and I can’t say I’m all that interested.

Before I sound too critical, though, I should say that I’m still impressed with how the show manages to maintain a tone instead of just getting mired in its own gimmicks and plot twists. It’s consistently about morality and fate, which makes me hopeful that they’ll manage to pull it all together into a meaningful story instead of just a series of cliff-hangers and internet mysteries. (And which makes the whole “They’re in Purgatory!” theory more convincing and makes me wonder why people were so quick to dismiss it).

Whatever the case, I’m now in the same boat as everyone else, and I have to wait until January 11th for the next reveal just like the commoners. Episodic television was not designed for people with my attention span.