Wait, there was a new one tonight? I thought last week's was the last one till February! I am teh peeved!

(Well, sorta. I guess I can watch in on iTunes tomorrow.)

For a superior group of people like the Others claim to be, some of them certainly have anger management issues.

According to the IMDB, William Mapother is 6'1" and Nathan Fillion is 6'1.5"

I would have to be extremely motivated to want to have sex in a polar bear cage.

1
Or, conversely, you can just watch it on ABC's website and save $1.99.

they need to ditch the love story angle of kate and sawyer, its getting repulsive. and this last episode didnt really have anything to hold me over for 12 more weeks.

the first 2 seasons were great. this season, not so much yet.

Other than the lack of showering, how is it repulsive?

repulsive was probably not the right word. I just hoped that there was one awesome show that would go the distance without succumbing to on screen "romance". I just dont like love stories to interfere with my mystery and basically science fiction type shows. But the whole setting of having sex in a polar bear cage...with the camera just didnt really do it for me.

I hope they cleaned the polar bear "stuff" out of the cage.

Sex in a polar bear cage...Bad
Sex with Evangeline Lily...Good

Good wins.

i must admit that i am a new lost fan and i have not been with the show since its conception back in 2004. over the past month, ive seen every episode from the first two seasons and finally have caughten up with tonights episode.

I think its a different experience watching every episode basically back to back instead of waiting each week for a new one.

oh and this is amazing.
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1723243

appropiate for this threads discussion.

So, I guess the whole "Do no harm" thing goes out the window when held by mysterious island dwelling hostage takers.

I'm sure Hippocrates covered that in an addendum to the original oath.

what is your theory on why juliet wanted jack to kill ben on the operating table? I cant decide if she was being serious or still trying to con jack yet.

6 - You give love a bad name?

11 - I can't trust Juliet at all, so I will just wait and see.

12

I dont know what you're asking. If by love, you mean polar bear cage sex on a pile of fish biscuits, then yes, not my cup of tea.

Elizabeth Mitchell wouldn't lie to us. She's the perfect gal for Jack, now that Kate has made her bed (as it were) with Sawyer.

i cant really trust benry. Not from his current character but 6 years ago he played the crazed serial killer on The Practice and he was so evil in that show that its carrying on to my impression of him on lost.

Juliet is cute. Although Kate is closer to my age, I think ive fallen for Juliets (fake) sincereness.

The only other person who apparently can't avoid Juliet's sincereness is Santa Claus.

than the lack of showering, how is it repulsive?

i'm sorry but this one made me laugh out loud & my girl looking at me like i was crazy!!

i also found it quite humorous when Alex thought she could save the day for the losties by taking out the others with some rocks shot from a slingshot.

maybe an Emmy in the comedy catagorey will be in the future for Lost.

14 - Mostly I was joking, but I didn't understand why you thought it was so important for a show to avoid romance. Particularly this show (not that it has been - lest we forget earlier couplings Lost has had).

They're stranded on an island, you know.

18

i knew i wasnt alone in my feelings!

So many loose ends. Locke walking, magnets, smoke monsters, Others, Hanso Foundation.

Lot to tie together here at some point. Hope they don't mess it up like Chris Carter did. Please have a plan, guys.

21

The avoidance of romance isnt necessarily important on an island (hehe), but the insertion of the newfound romance takes away from, in my opinion, the more exciting aspects of the show and other plotlines. Its not really just the sawyer-kate angle, but the rose and bernard plotline bored me to death, the jin and sun stories were pretty boring to me as well. The only really island romance that was interestiing to me was Hurley and Libby. And that was more aided by the mystery of Libby being in the same pysch ward as Hurley before they were stranded. But i guess exploring that branch was never meant to be since they killed her off.

so basically for me, less romance, more action and mystery. My views, as a college student is probably different from that of someone older, who is married. I probably cant appreciate the romance angles as much as some others.

i think the real reason why im ranting so much is because this episode did not answer any of the questions i had and I have to wait 12 weeks to maybeeeee, get a question answered.

23 - Can their plan be on their own timetable?

I've never seen any indication that these folks don't have a plan. What I've seen is an intention to let this show run a while before revealing everyting.

24 - Nate, you are just not nearly enough of a romantic.

But what can I say. I've been rooting for Sam and Diane, Frank Furillo and Joyce Davenport, Winnie and Kevin, Jim and Pam, Joel and Maggie, all these people, forever.

i'm with Nate

26 Of course they can have their own timetable. I don't think I indicated any burning desire to have this thing completely told in the next five episodes. I just remember the X-Files, very slowly unraveling to reveal that Chris Carter and the gang were going as they were going.

I just hope it's worth the buildup. It very rarely is. But hey, I'm watching the show, so I guess my faith is kind of implicit.

How much will i have to dish out for the DVD collection? i've never watched Lost.

You know what I wonder? How much audience are they gonna lose by taking off till February?

The last thing I expected was still more backstory about Kate. As Jon said above, when the heck are they gonna tell us about the two newbies?

I enjoyed the Rose and Bernard episode. I found it one of the most touching ones that has been done on the show.

And the Jin and Sun stories have been good too. I'm just sentimental.

And since we're talking about romance, I'm a pretty firm believer that as the sexual tension disappears, the show goes downhill. Sam and Diane did a pretty good job, but that's about it.

I'm definitely what the kids would call a "Shipper", that is to say that I always root for the romance to flower, but it's rarely in the best interest of the show.

28 - I didn't mean to put you on the defensive. I just hear this concern time and again - maybe I'm on the defensive from it.

If the series finale airs in 2010 or whenever and it's not satisfying, does it ruin everything that comes before?

In my view, you shouldn't worry about the future. If you enjoy a given episode, enjoy a given episode. Don't worry about being let down.

I like Rose and Bernard as well. Though I like both Sun and Jin, their whole story really hasn't done it for me very much.

31 - I agree with you, except I'd be even stronger about how good the Jin and Sun stories have been.

31

you own a cat Bob. :)

the one thing about the jin/sun plot that is intriging is the pregnancy. Im curious to how Jin is going to act when he finds out the baby aint his :)

I also want to see some Ben and Juliet flashbacks. I think that would be awesome and hopefully answer a few questions of mine. The Desmond angle with his lost love is an interesting one too.

I do like the Desmond love story. His whole "leave and sail the world" thing is really intruiging. The fact that his woman is spending her life trying to find him, and the fact that he is totally oblivious to that. Penny, I think, is her name.

Yeah, I'm surprised there wasn't more Penny so far this season.

38

i thought you weren't into romance nate.

The Desmond thing is interesting because they can take it to so many levels. Did Pennys father have the race because he knew desmond would enter it? Is Pennys father powerful enough that he knew about the island and that was the only way to keep Desmond away from his Daughter? What exactly is Penny going to do about news she recieved at the end of season 2? Who else knows about the island that isnt on the island?

these type of plots are what they should have been developing, not the love triangle between kate, sawyer and jack.

For some reason, Desmond instantly became my favorite character. The Clancy Brown episode with the two of them in the hatch is, I think, my favorite episode in the series thusfar. Finding out what happened on the island years before the Losties got there was great.

Plus, the whole "meeting Jack in the stadium at night" scene...What's up with that?

i thought you weren't into romance nate.

Romance, when its attached to something cool like large magnetic explosions interest me.

43

desmond was one of my top characters when he continued to keep saying "Brother".

Someone had to keep up the AD legacy :)

He's an awesome actor, he's a Scot, he's got great dialogue, an interesting personality, and he has the whole star crossed lover thing.

He's a fascinating character.

Plus, the whole "meeting Jack in the stadium at night" scene...What's up with that?

basically just a way to connect everyone stranded on the island to one another.

remember desmonds partner in the hatch? I forgot his name. But he was the army commander in Iraq that interacted with Sayid.

45 Yeah, Buster and Desmond...Kindred spirits.

I just hope Desmond doesn't run into a loose seal, or get sent off to Army.

46

i agree. I was happy when they brought desmond back and it looks like hes here to stay for a bit.

give me a cool plot & i'll hang with a show, romance is over rated.

BlueBleeder, you should rent the show, or Netflix it, and just fire through the first seasons as fast as you can.

I would also recommend staying away from reading anything about the show until you catch up.

Romance does have plot, you know. It has mystery, it has action. It even has the occasional explosion.

51

i'm gonna have to buy the DVD, i've heard to many cool things about the show from co-workers.

Being my usual wet blanket self, even if Jack successfully removed the tumor from Benry's spine, wouldn't they have to do radiation and chemotherapy? Is there an oncology hatch? Is that where the guy with the eyepatch lives?

But I still don't know what is more troubling? That the rest of the statue is missing or that the foot has only four toes?

53 You'll like the pilot. Probably the grandest entrance to TV I've ever seen.

Lost and Northern Exposure are my two favorite pilots.

Yeah, the toes! The statue legs! I totally forgot about that!

Yet another mysterious...er...mystery.

Tumors aren't necessarily cancerous. Could be another variety. Jack was claiming it would kill Ben in a week; cancer's not that fast.

i agree. the Pilot totally overwhelmed me in a good way.

54 - They seem to be able to get all the equipment they need, except for a more willing spinal surgeon.

Northern Exposure is one of my three favorite shows ever, but I wouldn't say the pilot was one of the best.

You know what had a great pilot .. that Hill Street Blues show you may have heard of.

59 Whatever happened to the actors in HSB? Seems like I never see any of them in anything at all, and I haven't since the show went off the air.

59 Yeah, it wasn't great, but the Northern Exposure pilot is so dear to me because I could just tell that the show was going to be...well, different.

Aside from Twin Peaks, not a whole lot of TV had been truly "different" like Northern Exposure was at the time.

I should add that when I saw the Arrested Development pilot, I instantly knew that I had a new favorite show.

I should also add that I knew it was not going to make it very long.

60 - Well, the show went off the air over 20 years ago. Several died. (There was some talk of a curse.)

Most never had high-profile acting jobs again.

i honestly still cant get over the slingshot screen. I mean, come on! seriously? a slingshot?

you couldnt even get a BB gun? or maybe a bow an arrow?

I thought the "Northern Exposure" pilot was one of the best shows of the series. I loved the show after that. Until everybody else started liking it. Then I couldn't like it because I wanted to be cutting edge. I was in my 20s. I had that attitude then.

As for Benry's "tumor", it's been X-rayed, although you would think that if they had a lot of good medical equipment they would have an MRI machine. Maybe that got wiped out after Locke stopped pushing the button.

63 That's what seemed strange to me, that they never had great jobs again. The cast was almost uniformly brilliant, I thought. I know that Bochko and Barbara whatsit are married, but Bruce Seitz(?) and Michael Warren and Hamel and the rest seemed to disappear off the TV face of the earth.

Pity.

Steven Bocho and Barbara Bosson aren't married anymore.

Veronica Hamel has done a LOT of Lifetime movies.

Dennis Franz and James Sikking have worked a lot since HSB.

65 - Great Northern Exposure moments, off the top of my head:

The founding of Cicely
Maurice cliff-dives
Ruthanne dances on her own grave
Chris needs to catapault something
Joel and Maggie truly falling in love (well after they finally had sex)
The musical episode, especially Holling's song.
The Michigan episode
The mayor election episode, with Copeland's music playing over the vote

I could go on and on.

68 - Franz got cast twice as two different characters on Hill Street, so he was off to a good start.

In some ways, the bit players and guests did better than the stars. David Caruso for one. Danny Glover. Frances McDormand.

I could go on and on.

Chris needing to catapult something was so awesome.

Ed's documentary on Cicely was very, very heartwarming.

I loved that.

I agree with Jon that it is about time some of the core characters got busy. They are on an exotic island, with practically nothing to do (besides the obvious hatches, others and polar bears), I expect that people should be hooking up like its a co-ed freshman dorm.

I heard someone (filmfreakcentral's Walter Chaw I think) describe Lost as cowardly and I can kind of see the point. The show's stock in trade is constantly hinting at a truth without ever making a point, being controversial, having a deeper mean ect. But taken at face value the show is very enjoyable. In other words, I love that they spiced up the romance because I like Lost because of how over the top it is and sex in a bear cage definitely fits the bill.

73 - I, personally, have no objection to outdoor sex and whatall. I guess I'm just done with both Kate & Sawyer. If this had happened in the first season, or even the second season, I would have been outraged -- outraged! -- about Kate ending up with Sawyer rather than Jack, but now I just find myself hoping that they actually follow their pattern of all unmarried, sexually-active women getting killed. I didn't even realize how tiresome I had come to find both Sawyer & Kate until they started getting it on, and my reaction was, "Good, maybe one of them will die now."

This is all very strange, because I feel the show has made a recovery, and I've enjoyed the beginning of this season much more than I did Season 2, which I felt was unfocussed and messy (and largely pointless, now that they've killed off all of the significant Tailies). The fact that this coincides with my realization that I absolutely hate two of the central characters speaks to: 1) The fact that the other central characters are very interesting; 2) the fact that the supporting characters are well done; and 3) the show, though I ultimately watch it for the characters, does have other elements going for it.

Now that they've killed off Eko -- who was easily my favorite character -- I find myself worried that I'm going to be forced to spend too much time with the Icky Duo and not enough with the show's stronger, and stranger, characters. But we'll burn that bridge when we get to it, I guess.

I've been wondering something: What if the Taye Diggs show just completely and irrefutably tanks, which I expect it to? Are ABC going to bring "Lost" back early, or risk shedding viewers with an extremely long hiatus and nothing bringing viewers to the time-slot? It's a conundrum. I kind of wish they had just gone all in and run "Lost" solid from January-June, rather than this somewhat frustrating whetting-of-the-appetite model they've got going on now.

What I don't understand about this season so far is why Jack doesn't mention, not even throw in the Others' faces even once, the undeniable fact that they are monsters (or, at least, Ben and Pickett are).

Remember: Jack's plane crashes on the island and are basically likely to be freaked out. Ben's people live there, and they terrorize the newcomers: Passengers are abducted; "Ethan" kills people until they hand over Claire; Goodwin kills Nathan, and attacks Lucia. The Others abduct Walt, taking him away from his father. Any pretention that the Others are the "good guys" is pretty absurd.

While Jack certainly has some anger issues to work out, my natural response to Ben speaking to me as if he was a reasonable person would be: "ahem: explain to me all the terrible things you've done to us since we arrived here, and then I'll talk to you. Until then, I have nothing to say to you."

So Jack's oath to do no harm flies out the window, but he's in survival-mode here, dealing with monsters.

75 - Something about the Jack storyline had been bugging me, and I think you've put your finger on exactly the problem: Ben is clearly a very bright man, and if it was his plan to get Jack to identify with the Residents of the island, greasing a bunch of his boys, kidnapping a little kid and siccing a deranged Michael on him just doesn't seem like the best idea. This is a glaring difficulty, but I've mostly enjoyed the storyline so far, so I'm willing to overlook it.

Oaths are based, at least partly, on existing on one kind of functional society (or societal relationship) or another: You swear to your mother you'll never drink; you swear on a Bibble that you'll tell the whole truth; you swear in front of your fellow doctors that you will Do No Harm; so on and so on. When the society which is the context in which you took that oath breaks down -- your mother tries to kill you; the courthouse is burned in an anarchist uprising; you end up lost and abandoned and fighting for your life on a mysterious tropical island -- your oaths cease to have meaning. In my opinion.