On this, the last day of LOST, I thought I’d share a few show-related links with you. Tune in later today for my list of the “10 Questions I Would Like to See Answered Tonight” and tomorrow for a “How I Got LOST” post about how I got into the show, why it meant so much, and how I feel the finale wrapped up the series.

This is it, folks.

• As a child of the ’80s and a fan of both Perfect Strangers and LOST, I have to say that this is fabulous. Go watch it now.
• This one isn’t so bad either.
  
• LOST 365 Project: A new piece of LOST art everyday.
• Jorge Garcia’s last day on the set
• A LOST playlist
• “LOST devotees need a little faith”
• “The key to understanding LOST? Religion and spirituality” (Some good stuff here, but don’t listen to any of the talk about Chris Seay’s “in-depth” book on the series, The Gospel According to LOST. It’s garbage.)
• The cast says goodbye

And in case all of this “farewell to LOST” stuff is getting you down…

• 11 Reasons to be Cheerful
• Letting Go of Attachment, from A to Zen (I don’t completely agree with this, as I think there are things that are good to be a little attached to)
• Some LOST “Cake Wrecks” (and not-so-wreckish ones as well)
• Cake versus Pie: A Scientific Approach (for the record, I have been pro-Pie my entire life)

WARNING: Do not go any further if you haven’t seen this week’s episode. Spoilers abound.

Before I get into this week’s episode, can I just say that I don’t understand AT ALL the problems people had with last week’s (Across the Sea)? It gave a fairly decent account of how Jacob and Man in Black came to be on the island (if you paid attention to some interviews with actors, we also found out the year) and I’m not really sure why people were unimpressed. Was it that the answer to what they were protecting was too easy? Maybe.

Now, What They Died For. There was a lot of information here. Some twists and turns that may not be as twisty and turny as they appear on the surface (i.e., Charles Widmore being shot, Richard Alpert being thrown into the trees by Smokey — Richard can’t die, can he? I thought that’s what we’d just been told in Ab Aeterno). I don’t think that those characters can be taken away so easily. Clearly there is a story left to be told as far as Charles Widmore goes.

In the sideways flash we see Jack with an unexplained cut on his neck. I wondered if maybe our timelines were about to merge and so I checked Jack’s injuries from the original crash of 815. He did have a few faint scrapes on his neck, but nothing like the cut in this episode. So scratch that. (Pun totally intended.)

Back on the island we have Jack stitching up Kate’s gunshot wound, a nice parallel to the pilot episode when Kate does the same for Jack’s wound on his back. And if we’re really going to get into that mirror image stuff, Jack was stitching the front of Kate’s left shoulder; Kate stitched the back of Jack’s left.

At this point I would like to point out that Ben Linus totally shouted, “Citizen’s arrest!” in this episode and that, my friends, just makes me love LOST even more.

Later, we have some Ben and Danielle interaction in the sideways flash and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t squeeling to my husband about how they need to end up together. Gah. So, I really want Ben of Dr. Linus to be happy, but with some of the stuff he pulled in this episode, I am conflicted. It’s like he’s turning back again. The redemption we saw in Dr. Linus wasn’t evident in this episode. Not to me, at least.

Jacob gathers our remaining candidates and has a sit-down-chat with them around the campfire. Surprise, surprise, Jack “takes the cup.” (Care to get into any biblical imagery HERE?) He is told he must protect the light from Smokey…and I just don’t know how that’s going to be done. Are we going to have more deaths? I really need our remaining survivors to, you know, SURVIVE.

Favorite quote of the night: “You were all flawed. I chose you because you were like me. You were all alone. You were all looking for something that you couldn’t find out there.” – Jacob

This concert that everyone appears to be preparing for looks like it’s going to be a real shebang. And there’s nothing like everything culminating at a formal event. Evening wear, baby. Will things merge? Will the passengers of Oceanic 815 have some mass realization? Will the fact that they are gathered together in one place cause some massive…I don’t know, implosion of the universe, landing us all in some black hole? Okay, probably not that. But we’re gearing up for something big.

And to celebrate, Kevin and I bought t-shirts with this on the front (available at teefury.com on 5/18/2010 only):

What did you think of the episode? Any new theories? And how are you planning to celebrate/mourn the finale? What will you do after LOST?

OR…I Need To Be Held. NOW.

Stop reading if you haven’t seen this episode. This post is riddled with spoilers.

• One of the final scenes of this episode reminded me a lot of one of the final scenes from a favorite film of mine, Jeux d’enfants. If you don’t want a spoiler for the episode or the movie, don’t watch the following video. However, if you do watch it, tell me what you think. (The part I’m referring to is toward the end of this video.)

• Bernard seems to know automatically why Jack has come to visit him. I would like to know how everyone gets clued in that it’s something so much bigger, but I doubt we’ll know this.
• I find it interesting that in the alt-timeline people are making these connections and understanding things so quickly. They all had these deep connections from the beginning and spent a long time together on the island…completely unaware.
• Lapidus – dead? Not dead?
• I wonder where Ben and Richard are.
• Jin and Sun. *sob* Last episode I didn’t even care about them getting back together. But tonight…you just can’t forget how far they have come, the sacrifices they have made for each other, and how long they have waited to see each other again. Never, ever giving up. Such a tragic end.
• Please, Kevin, if we are ever in a sinking sub and I am pinned and you can’t save me and we have a 3-year-old child that you have never seen — SAVE YOURSELF. I give you permission.
• What is Fake Locke going to do now? Go kill Desmond?
• I think Jack and his crew really understand the stakes now. Their numbers are down and this man is out to get every single one of them.

Oh, LOST. I will miss you when you’re gone.

That’s awful. I know. I’m sorry, really, but when I get on this subject I get really giddy and all pre-teeny and stuff. Notice I didn’t say “tween.” I think those critters are a different breed than what me and my adolescent cohorts were. All you have to do is look at the clothing we were wearing in the mid-90s and what the kids are wearing these days. There was a marked difference between what we were buying and what your average middle-aged prostitute donned on any given evening. Not so much anymore.

When the ads first started coming on for GLEE and the internet began buzzing I knew that it was the kind of show I’d like to watch. I’ve participated in a little show choir in my day. Shoot, I’d like to be in one now.

There was something about the commercial that seemed familiar and at first, I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then I remembered.

Schuester.

It was him. I stared at the TV. Could it really be?

Suddenly, all the memories came rushing back and I was 14 again. Sitting in the middle of Mr. B’s health class, doing nothing but listening to our Discmans and whatever new boy band CDs we were passing around that week. Or if you were the girls who sat over in the back corner, Marilyn Manson. I’m just saying.

Around that time there was a show that me and most of my friends were watching — Lou Pearlman’s Making the Band. In case you don’t remember, Lou Pearlman is the shady producer who treated both the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC not so nice. As in, he took their money. But no matter. Every night that this show was on I was right in front of the TV, waiting to see the latest drama that would unfold with a house full of guys who want to be in a boy band living under the same roof. The premise seems hilarious now, but back then? Someone come and fan me, please.

Long story short, the show produced the band O-Town and without them the world would be bereft, left to go on without this gem:

Heh. Heh-heh-heh. Heeee. (I’m sorry.)

There was more drama and one of the guys that was originally supposed to be in O-Town split off and there was another boy band formed — LMNT.

(Should I mention that by this time I was 16 and should have STOPPED being into this stuff?)

Around about this time, we got the internet at my house. Woooooo-doggies! So I was keeping track of all this stuff on Yahoo groups with other 12-16-year-old girls. LMNT had its first three members (3 guys who didn’t make the cut for O-Town), but they were looking for a fourth.

It is impossible to find any visual evidence of Matthew Morrison being a part of this band, but I promise you, he was. I was familiar with him from his time spent onstage in the Broadway production of Footloose (there’ll be more on that tomorrow!) and this development was terrific for me. Apparently not so much for him, since he’s quoted as follows:

It was the worst year of my life. You know when you’re a performer and you’re out there on stage and you’re embarrassed that you’re doing something wrong. It was pretty bad.

Sheesh, dude.

So there was that, but his time in the band was short. And for years I did not see him. Until the 2005 Tony Awards.

And now…he’s on the TV again. Seeing the first commercial for GLEE was a little bit like things had come full circle for 14-year-old me. That is why it’s a good thing I never had a vocal teacher who looked like him. My voice teacher? Well…

BOOM.

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My grandmother once admitted to me, many years ago, that when she was a child living in a small town in Oklahoma in the 40s and 50s she believed that when you went to the big city, life was like this:

(this one allowed embedding when I first wrote this; now it doesn’t. click through to watch.)

And essentially, I grew up hoping that at some point in my life there would be a moment when everyone harmonized and danced through the halls. I’m sorta still waiting on that, but GLEE gives me hope.

Only here’s the deal. I’m thankful that I never had a voice teacher that looked like this (tune in tomorrow to find out just exactly why), or we might have had this situation on our hands:

Let’s face it. I was just a little confidence short of pulling a Josie Gellar (think — the part when she gets up in front of the class and reads a poem she wrote to her crush…ugh) during most of high school.

You guys know I love LOST. What you may not know is that this obsession has been a long time coming. Any time I showed higher than average interest in something fantastical, my parents were quick to pull in the reigns. Well, truthfully they did that with anything that I started getting a little crazy about. Do you think I got to go to that *NSYNC concert in OKC in 1998? NosirreeBob.

There have been a number of sci-fi TV shows that I was interested in over the years. It was rare that I watched them during their original run or that I got to watch them regularly. Listen up. I used to live in a household that owned only ONE television. I was the only girl in the house (my mother didn’t care about TV). Do you think I got to watch anything I wanted?

Sci-fi shows were a natural preference for me, but it was encouraged by the fact that it was something I could get my brothers interested in. As long as they were interested and not in the mood to pick a fight, I got to watch my shows.

Now, in no particular order, clues that it was about get much, much worse:

Dark Shadows
Granny and Paw Paw had satellite television long before my parents. With that came the Sci-Fi Network and this oldie. I used to creep into one of the back bedrooms and watch this. Then I mentioned it to my mom and she revealed that she had watched it as a kid, knew it was about vampires, and then there was a whole lot of rain on my parade.

The Secret World of Alex Mack
One of the great SNICK shows from the good ol’ days. They don’t make them like this anymore. Alex gets some kind of chemical dumped on her from a local chemical plant and instead of shriveling up and dying, she gains the ability to morph into some Capri Sun looking ooze and slither all over the place. She can crawl through air ducts and under doors without anyone noticing. Now, I never bought it that she didn’t leave any residue behind, but whatever. Loved it. Larisa Oleynik before 10 Things I Hate About You.

Muppet Babies
I know, you’re all, “What?” Muppet Babies was like Intro to Star Wars for Preschoolers. And I loooooved it. The Star Wars episodes were my favorite, probably because I had never seen the movie and it just whetted my appetite for the whole thing.

Ghostwriter
This was the first show I was really devoted to. It aired when I was in elementary school (the original, not the “new adventures”) on Sunday afternoons on our local PBS affiliate. Basically I had to hope that we got home from church in time and weren’t going to church that evening to get to watch both new episodes each week. I can’t even remember if we ever found out who Ghostwriter was, but this show kept me interested for a number of years. I wrote to the cast enough when I was in 3rd grade that I finally got a signed postcard back and even a Ghostwriter notebook for participating in their songwriting contest. That is so embarrassing now that I think about it. Worse yet, I can remember the lyrics of my song and no I will not repeat them ever in my life. I’m pretty sure they were set to the tune of Exposé’s “I’ll Never Get Over You Getting Over Me” so let your imagination run wild.

My favorite story arc from the show was the one about time travel (go figure; I’m really starting to notice a theme in my life) — when the kids connected with some children in the past living in one of the current Ghostwriter group member’s home…back in 1920 or so.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Another SNICK show that it seemed everyone watched. I think I got into it during the summers when it would run on repeats during the afternoon. I don’t think my mom would have let me watch most of those episodes at night. This one was more creepy than sci-fi, but it had its moments. They don’t make them like this anymore.

Space Cases
Let me go ahead and tell you that a huge part of the reason I watched this show was Kristian Ayre. He’s the one with the hair.

And this show makes up for the fact that I’m not a trekkie.

The Tribe
And finally, maybe my favorite…The Tribe:

It’s a New Zealand export and something I watched on WAM! during my last few years of high school. Basically a soap opera for teens. The premise is that there are groups of kids (or people under the age of 21 or so) who have formed tribes in a post-apocalyptic world where all of the adults were killed by a virus that only young people were able to survive. The main tribe that the series follows is the Mall Rats, a group that took up residence in the city’s main shopping center. There are good tribe and bad tribes, tribes that live in the country and the city, those that create their own religions, build up their own rulers, etc. It was a really brilliant show. Sadly, we didn’t get to see the whole series in the US and because of a family crisis the series was put on hold and then cancelled.

And, if my obsessive viewing of this show wasn’t enough, I used to be a part of a Livejournal based RPG based on this series. Yeah, I know. I won’t lie. If someone told me there was a text-based RPG active and placed in this world, I’d be there in a minute. So, umm…hey. Tribe folks. Got anything for me?

So, you see? I told you. It was bad and only got worse. Right now I’m in LOST but almost to the end, starting Twin Peaks, and I hope to check out The Outer Limits, Dead Zone, Sliders, and The X-Files in the future.

Any kiddie sci-fi shows you were into?

Easily the most caffeine fueled I have ever been post-LOST. I share all kinds of theories, thoughts, and observations on this episode, plus tell you about a completely unrelated (Okay, maybe a little related? You tell me.) theory about romance and what I like to call “The Space Between” (if I may borrow that phrase). Talking déjà vu and how I think some theories about that relate to the show.

If this one doesn’t convince you that I’m a nerd about this stuff, just wait until tomorrow.

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That’s right, you get a video this week.

Oh yeah, I left something out…
(more…)

We have Richard, ladies and gentlemen. What a great back story. In this one I talk and talk and talk. There is SO much Bible in this episode, it’s not even funny. I actually made a few original (I think) observations in this one. Let me know what you thought about this episode!

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