Category: Lost (Page 12 of 29)

Bullz-Eye’s TCA 2009 Winter Press Tour Recap

January 23, 2009 /

Wait, didn’t I just go to one of these press tours…?

Actually, that was back in July, when the networks were busy pimping their new fall schedules; this time, they were presenting us with an idea of what we can expect to see on our favorite broadcast and cable channels from now until they premiere their next fall schedule.

Going out to L.A. in January was a new thing for me, though. It was my first winter tour since becoming a member of the Television Critics Association in 2007 – last year’s was canceled due to the writers’ strike – and, if the rumblings throughout the ballrooms at the Universal Hilton were any indication, it may well prove to be my last January tour. I’m hopeful that this presumption turns out to be inaccurate, but given the current economic climate and an increasing tendency for newspapers and publications to only send their TV critics out for one tour per year, there’s every reason to suspect that the networks will join suit and only be willing to pamper those critics once per year.

Sorry, did I say “pamper”? Of course, I meant, “Treat with the utmost respect.”

It feels a bit odd to be doing a wrap-up of my experiences at the tour before I’ve even had a chance to write up all of the panels I attended while I was out there, but, hey, when you get a good spot on the calendar, you make it work however you can. So still keep your eyes open for my ongoing pieces on the various shows you can expect to find on the broadcast networks during the next few months, but in the meantime, here’s a look at some of the best and worst bits from the January ’09 tour as a whole.

Most enjoyable panel by a cable network: “Rescue Me,” FX.

I’ve been a big Denis Leary fan every since No Cure for Cancer, so I knew the guy was inevitably going to go off on a profanity-filled rant before the end of the panel. What I didn’t expect, however, was that Peter Tolan – who co-created the show with Leary – would start the proceedings by telling Leary to watch his mouth, adding, “If you were going to say ‘cunt,’ don’t.”

From there, the two of them seemingly battled each other in an attempt to offer up the most memorable line. Leary complained about his salary. (“I had a crazy idea of getting paid, like, $250,000 an episode. They put limits on that, let me tell you. That’s Kiefer Sutherland money right there.”) Then Tolan claimed that he was at fault for the show’s fourth-season slump, blaming it on a drug problem and that “I was heavy into a kazillion hookers that year.” Then Leary bitched about how Michael J. Fox was going to guest on “Rescue Me” and get the Emmy that Leary himself has yet to earn. (“Five fucking episodes, he comes in. God damn, $700 million from ‘Spin City.’ He never asked me to do the show. He’s going to walk away with the fucking Emmy. That son of a bitch.”) Then Tolan started mocking Hugh Laurie’s American accent by talking about how he could do a British accent. (“Aye, pip, pip, mate, aye! ‘Allo, Mary Poppins!”) And…well, as you can see, there was really no contest: this may well have been the greatest panel ever.

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Actors, Actresses, Celebrities, External Entertainment, External TV, Lost, News, Reality TV, Rescue Me, TCA Blog 2009, TCA Press Tour, The Office, TV, TV Action, TV Comedies, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

Lost 5.1 / 5.2 – Because You Left / The Lie

January 22, 2009 /

It’s funny to think that a show that was initially about a group of people trying to get off a mysterious island has suddenly become about those very same people trying to get back, but credit Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof (the brilliant masterminds behind the series) for one thing: they sure know how to keep it interesting. “The Constant,” one of last season’s best episodes (and arguably one of the best the series has ever produced), changed the show forever when it brought the concept of time travel into the fold. So when it was announced that the series would be using this complicated storytelling device even more in the final two seasons, it was pretty much a given that the writers couldn’t wait to blow the collective minds of its audience. And as it just so happens, my mind has been officially blown.

As far as this whole island-moving, time travel thing is concerned, let me express my absolute gratitude over the decision to set some ground rules from the get-go. You see, it’s very easy to introduce something like time travel into a sci-fi story, but it’s even easier for it to get out of hand and come back to bite you in the ass later on. This has been a recurring problem on “Heroes” lately, and unfortunately, the more that they mess with the space-time continuum, the more the series digs itself into a hole it’s never going to be able to climb back out of. I mean, seriously, how many different futures are they on now?

Lost 5.1

Thankfully, “Lost” has a character like Daniel Faraday among its ranks, who is quick to point out to anyone who challenges him (ahem, Sawyer) not to try and change the future. Because no matter how hard you may try, you can’t undo anything that has already happened, even if, y’know, it hasn’t actually happened yet in relation to when you are. How funny, then, that the minute Sawyer gives up on trying to contact Desmond through the hatch door, Faraday does exactly that. It just so happens that Desmond’s time travel powers allows him to converse with Faraday without him actually knowing it (Penelope suggests it’s a dream, but Desmond says it’s a memory), and I wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up playing a major role in the Oceanic 6’s eventual return to the island.

Of course, the Others (as they’ll now be known) are hardly given a second to adapt to their new surroundings when they’re thrust once again into a different time. Faraday likens the whole phenomenon to a record skipping, and though they’re transported back and forth several times in a matter of hours, their final destination (or what seems like their final destination anyway) is most certainly pre-crash. I’m not sure exactly what time period that is, but online reports seem to indicate that it’s sometime in the 1970s, which sounds about right, except for the fact that Dharma workers are running around the woods shooting fire arrows at unsuspecting trespassers like they’re living in the Middle Ages. And on that note, a brief moment of silence for poor Frogurt (er, Neil), who was turned into a human shish kabob before he could even speak his peace.

All this talk about the past and there’s so much happening in the present. Okay, maybe not, but one thing that did pop into my head while watching tonight’s episode was a) how would the Oceanic 6 return to the island if it’s constantly moving through time, and b) what happens if they return during present time, but the Others are still “trapped” sometime else? Maybe the island hasn’t even begun to stop moving and Jack and Co. have to figure out how to fix that before they even try to return, but if that’s the case, Charlotte is in serious trouble, because it doesn’t look like her nosebleeds will be getting better any time soon.

Plus, before they even attempt to stop the island from moving, Jack and Ben have to convince the other four (Kate, Sun, Hurley and Sayid) to go back with them. That’s going to be pretty difficult considering that Sun wants Ben dead, Kate is on the run from the law (again), Sayid doesn’t trust anyone, and Hurley has just turned himself over to the police for killing three men that Sayid is responsible for. Oh yeah, and not only is Hurley still seeing dead people (cue Michelle Rodriguez cameo), but they’re giving him instructions on how to avoid the authorities. “Lost” is back folks, and it’s even trippier than usual.

Actors, Lost, TV, TV Dramas

It’s time to set your TiVos… (part 2)

January 19, 2009 /

A couple of weeks ago, we provided a list of shows that were debuting soon so that you’d have a chance to set your TiVos. Well, 14 days have past and, since that’s the amount of program data that TiVo can carry, it’s time to do it again.

Here is a list of the scripted shows that premiere in the next two weeks (through Feb. 2):

LOST (ABC)
1/21/09 at 9:00 PM
Two-hour 5th season premiere

LIE TO ME (FOX)
1/21/09 at 9:03 PM
(from FOX’s press release, September 2008) FOX has given a series commitment to LIE TO ME, a compelling new drama from Imagine Television and 20th Century Fox Television. Tim Roth (“The Incredible Hulk”) and Kelli Williams (“The Practice”) star in this fascinating character drama inspired by a real-life specialist who can read clues embedded in the human face, body and voice to expose the truth behind the lies in criminal investigations. LIE TO ME is scheduled to premiere midseason. When you scratch your chin, wring your hands, wrinkle your nose or swallow too much, Dr. Cal Lightman (Roth) knows you’re lying. He doesn’t just think so he knows so. As the foremost deception expert in the country, Dr. Lightman can uncover the deepest secrets and crack the hardest cases. More accurate than any polygraph, he knows whether those in front of him be they family, friends, criminals or complete strangers are honest or not. Dr. Lightman heads up The Lightman Group, a private agency contracted by the FBI, local police, law firms, corporations and private individuals when they hit roadblocks in their searches for the truth. Joining him at the agency are a variety of experts in the field of behavioral evaluation: Dr. Gillian Foster (Williams) is a gifted psychologist and Lightman’s professional partner, a woman whose guidance he needs whether he knows it or not; Will Loker (Brendan Hines) is Lightman’s lead researcher who practices “radical honesty” at all times; and Ria Torres (Monica Raymund) is the newest member of the team, selected for her innate ability to read body language and catch certain clues that her colleagues may miss.

BURN NOTICE (USA)
1/22/09 at 10:00 PM
2nd season winter premiere

THE LAST TEMPLAR (NBC)
1/25/09 at 9:00 PM
(from NBC’s press release) In this four-hour miniseries, Oscar winner Mira Sorvino (“Mighty Aphrodite”) stars in an epic action-adventure tale about the greatest mystery of our time. At the New york Metropolitan Museum, four horsemen dressed as 12th century knights storm the gala opening of an exhibition of Vatican treasures and steal an arcane medieval decoder. For archaeologist Tess Chaykin (Sorvino) and FBI agent Sean Daly (Scott Foley, “The Unit”), this is just the start of a suspenseful game of cat and mouse as they race across three continents in search of the enemy — and the lost secret of the Knights Templar. The miniseries is produced by MUSE Entertainment Enterprises. Victor Garber (“Alias”) and Omar Sharif (“Doctor Zhivago”) also star. Emmy Award-winning television impresario Robert Halmi Sr. (“Tin Man,” “Gulliver’s Travels”), Robert Halmi, Jr. (“The Poseidon Adventure,” “The Christmas Card”), and Michael Prupas (“Human Trafficking”) will executive-produce the miniseries.

LOVING LEAH (CBS)
1/25/09 at 9:00 PM
(from CBS’s press release) Emmy Award nominee Lauren Ambrose (“Six Feet Under”) and Adam Kaufman (“Without a Trace”) star in LOVING LEAH, a new “Hallmark Hall of Fame” presentation to be broadcast Sunday, Jan. 25 (9:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. This quirky love story revolves around the unexpected wedding and unconventional married life of a 26-year-old widow and her late husband’s brother, a handsome 30-year-old cardiologist. Susie Essman (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”), Ricki Lake (“Hairspray,” “China Beach”), Natasha Lyonne (“American Pie”) and Academy Award and Golden Globe Award winner Mercedes Ruehl (“The Fisher King”) also star. Jake Lever (Kaufman), a successful, 30-year-old Washington, D.C. doctor who seems to be living his dream, is stunned to learn of the death of his older brother, Benjamin. Jake and his mother, Janice (Ruehl), who are not religious, drifted apart from Benjamin after he moved away to become a rabbi and chose to devote nearly all of his time to his rabbinical duties and his faith. As a result, Jake and Janice are virtual strangers to Benjamin’s young widow, Leah (Ambrose), and the other mourners in Benjamin’s close-knit Hasidic community in Brooklyn, N.Y. Already ill-at-ease in Benjamin’s world, Jake is shocked when he is asked to honor an ancient Levirate marriage law. As a single man, he’s expected to marry the childless Leah to carry on Benjamin’s name…or else deny his brother’s existence in a ceremony that will release them from this generally un-enforced Jewish law. Despite his serious relationship with a beautiful surgeon, Carol (Christy Pusz), Jake finds it unthinkable to deny his brother’s existence and impulsively suggests he and Leah marry and maintain a secretly platonic relationship in Washington, D.C. Leah gladly accepts as a means of finally pursuing her own dreams without offending her very traditional and domineering mother, Malka (Essman). Jake and Leah’s oversimplified plan to live separate lives out of Jake’s two-bedroom apartment proves to be more challenging than anticipated, especially when Leah’s suspicious mother shows up unexpectedly. The harder they work to disguise their “pretend” marriage, the more their real love for each other grows. Ricki Lake portrays Gerry, the first female rabbi Leah has ever met, who invites Leah to join her temple in Washington, D.C. Natasha Lyonne plays Leah’s sister, Esther.

THE CLOSER (TNT)
1/26/09 at 9:00 PM
4th season winter premiere

TRUST ME (TNT)
1/26/09 at 10:00 PM
(from TNT’s press release, April 2008) TNT has greenlit TRUTH IN ADVERTISING, a new drama series starring Eric McCormack (Will & Grace) and Tom Cavanagh (Ed) and executive-produced by the creators of ad-supported cable’s #1 series of all time, The Closer. The drama centers on two highly creative ad executives whose professional partnership and friendship are put to the test when one is named creative director of their firm. Monica Potter (Boston Legal), Griffin Dunne (Law & Order: Criminal Intent), Sarah Clarke (24), Mike Damus (Lost in Yonkers) and Geoffrey Arend (Garden State) also star in the series, which comes to TNT from Warner Horizon Television. Greer Shephard and Michael M. Robin (The Closer) serve as executive producers, along with The Closer writers Hunt Baldwin and John Coveny. Robin also directed the pilot. TNT has ordered 13 episodes of the series, which is slated to premiere on the network in 2009. “TRUTH IN ADVERTISING takes place in the high-pressure world of advertising, but it’s really a story of friendship and values and how those things are strained by the often conflicting demands of work and family,” said Michael Wright, senior vice president in charge of the Content Creation Group for TNT, TBS and Turner Classic Movies. “Eric and Tom play two fascinating, compelling and always interesting men whose unique friendship and working relationship is the core of the show. We are thrilled to be working on this superb drama with the creative talents who brought us The Closer. And we are especially happy to have such a stellar cast, led by Eric and Tom.” TRUTH IN ADVERTISING takes place in the offices of multi-million dollar Chicago advertising agency Rothman, Greene & Mohr, where Mason McGuire (McCormack) and Conner (Cavanagh) are the top creatives. Family man Mason is a nice guy navigating the politics of an increasingly competitive corporate world. When he is promoted to creative director, he must learn to cultivate his inner shark in order to survive. Conner, on the other hand, is highly emotional from the get-go. As Mason’s partner, friend and copywriter, he gets that advertising is a business, but he’s always looking for ways to mix in plenty of pleasure on the way. Meanwhile, RG&M is on the verge of its IPO and huge advertising accounts are on the line, creating internecine battles among the company’s creative teams and additional pressures on Mason and Conner’s working relationship and friendship. As they desperately try to keep things in check, they risk having the rug upon which they park their Prada-covered feet pulled out from under them. In the take-no-prisoners world of advertising, the order of the day includes pressure, selling, fear, envy, competition and big, big money. But for Mason and Conner, it’s the friendship and loyalty of the people behind the scenes that spell the difference between success and failure.

BALDWIN HILLS (BET)
1/27/09 at 10:00 PM
3rd season premiere

LISA LAMPANELLI: LONG LIVE THE QUEEN (HBO)
1/31/09 at 10:00 PM

MEDIUM (NBC)
2/2/09 at 10:00 PM
5th season premiere

Geez, y’think some of these press release descriptions are long enough?

External Entertainment, External TV, Lost, TV, TV Action, TV Comedies, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

I have seen the first two episodes of Season 5 of “Lost,” and…

January 1, 2009 /

…I can’t say a whole lot about them. Sorry, but you know how it is with the press lockdown on these things: nobody at the network likes spoilers. I will, however, offer up five random tidbits from each episode to perhaps further your excitement ’til they air back to back on January 21st:

Episode 5.1:

* Willie Nelson’s “Shotgun Willie” is used as the background music to the opening sequence…and the fact that it’s on vinyl is, if not technically important in and of itself, something that indirectly ties into a point of comparison later in the episode.

* Time is very much the essence of the episode, a factor which lends itself to offering up several familiar faces that we haven’t seen in quite some time, but if you’re someone who gets a headache from the rules and regulations of time travel, prepare for a migraine the size of Montana. On the other side of the coin, however, this means that it’s finally Daniel Faraday’s time to shine!

* We get our first proper encounter with someone whose face has been well known to us for several seasons now.

* Sawyer spends virtually the entire episode with his shirt off. This has nothing to do with anything in the plot; I just figured it might give the ladies out there a little something extra to look forward to.

* And just as a helpful piece of kitchen advice, always put your knives point down in your dishwasher. I’m just sayin’. You never know when it could pay off for you.

Episode 5.2:

* One of the Oceanic Six has a mainland encounter with a long-dead islander…sort of.

* There is a moment which is almost certainly a winking tribute to “Weekend at Bernie’s.”

* The father of one of the characters makes a return appearance…and that character’s mother, too, for that matter.

* Fire = bad. Fire attached to projectiles = very, very bad.

* When you hear the line “good to see ya” uttered late in the episode, you will grin and possibly cheer.

Stay tuned, because I’ll be screening episode 5.3 when I’m out at the TCA Press Tour from Jan. 7 – 16, and I’m sure I’ll be able offer a few more tidbits from that installment as well.

External Entertainment, External TV, Lost, News, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

2008: The Year in TV – Jeff Giles

December 9, 2008 /
TOP 3 SHOWS

1. “Lost,” ABC

Lost poster

After two seasons of listening to viewers bitch about everything from too many characters to plots not moving fast enough, the “Lost” writers whomped us all over the head with a run of episodes that was better than anything fans had seen since Season One. Many of the show’s most important riddles were answered – or at least what we thought were its most important riddles, because now there’s a whole new list of them to answer. Not even that damn writers’ strike was enough to put much of a dent in this season of “Lost” — and not even the new Fray single playing in the background is enough to keep us from geeking out over the Season Five promos that ABC recently started airing.

2. “The Office,” NBC
Few network shows – and zero sitcoms – have played as fast and loose with their casts as “The Office”; whether it’s Oscar going on “gaycation,” Andy entering anger management counseling, Jim transferring to Stamford, Toby fleeing to Costa Rica, or Pam wandering off to art school in New York, you never know who’s going to move off-canvas for a spell – kind of like your actual workplace environment. It’s this grounding – along with one of the best casts and some of the strongest comedy writing on television – that helps keep “The Office” from getting stale, and allows it to transcend such stereotypically show-killing plot devices as the star-crossed couple (in this case, Jim and Pam) that finally gets together. Of course, it helps when said couple isn’t even the hottest pairing on the show: this season, Dwight and Angela’s secret warehouse liaisons have proven that even a Second Life-playing, beet-farming paper salesman can get his mojo rising every once in awhile.

3. “Friday Night Lights,” DirecTV
Unless you have DirecTV, you haven’t seen any of “FNL’s” third season – and you won’t until early 2009, under the terms of a unique cost-sharing deal that saved the show from cancellation…for now, anyway. It certainly remains to be seen how non-DTV fans of the show will deal with this arrangement – if, for instance, they’ve managed to keep from spoiling the entire season in advance with recaps posted on the Web – or whether NBC will deign to promote content that’s already aired elsewhere. In the meantime, however, here’s what we can tell you: the third season of “Friday Night Lights” packs all of the addictive small-town drama and pulse-pounding gridiron action of Season One, minus the unwelcome addition of stupidly soapy ingredients that weakened Season Two (in other words, nobody’s throwing any bodies off bridges). We’ll be very surprised if “FNL” returns for a fourth season – on any network – but we’ve still got our fingers crossed.

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External Entertainment, External TV, Friday Night Lights, Lost, News, Reality TV, Reviews, The Biggest Loser, The Office, The Wire, TV, TV Action, TV Comedies, TV Dramas, TV DVDs

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