Day 6 began on a decidedly solemn note, as the giant screens in the ballroom aired the national moment of silence to commemorate the tragedy in Tucson, and, perhaps appropriately, things shifted directly into the introduction of new ABC News president Ben Sherwood. Next up, Paul Lee, the president of ABC Entertainment, took the stage for his executive session. After that, we had a “Winter Wipeout”-themed cocoa break, then came back into the ballroom for two more panels: one for the return of ABC Family’s “Pretty Little Liars,” the next for the new ABC medical drama, “Off the Map.” Then came lunch revolving around the new Disney Junior animated series “Jake and the Never Land Pirates,” followed by a panel for the new Disney Channel movie, “Lemonade Mouth,” which – beyond the music playing during the trailer – only held my interest when the very cute and very British actress Naomi Scott opened her mouth.

And that’s it.

Well, it wasn’t quite it. We had a cocktail party at 5 PM which was ostensibly “Off the Map”-themed (they offered a trio of tropical cocktails, but I am hard pressed to recall any hors d’oeuvres that had any particular South American flair), but it only featured stars from ABC’s mid-season shows, and even then there were several notable names missing from the guest list, the two most notable being Matthew Perry from “Mr. Sunshine” and Dana Delaney from “Body of Evidence.” Now, admittedly, my experiences with Mr. Perry during the summer tour make his absence neither surprising nor overly upsetting, but it was kind of a bummer that Ms. Delaney wasn’t there, as she’s always been a real sweetheart.

What I want to know is, why didn’t ABC offer panels for one or two of their existing shows, like CBS and NBC are doing with “The Good Wife” and “Community,” respectively?

I’ll give us them credit for setting up a “Cougar Town” set visit for us – that’s happening on the 12th – but I would’ve loved a panel for “Castle,” “The Middle,” or any number of current ABC series.

And why not have an evening function featuring folks from all of their series rather than just their midseason material? I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the fleeting chance to speak with Allison Janney about “Mr. Sunshine.” I’m just saying that the whole day felt like one big missed opportunity.

You know, I was originally going to try and offer up the top 6 quotes from Day 6’s panels, but it would feel forced, so I’m not going to waste your time or mine. I will, however, offer at least one which made me laugh…

“You know, when I was invited to come here, I thought, ‘I’ve been on the job for a few weeks. What could I possibly have to share with them about what’s going on inside ABC?’ And then I remembered that Paul Lee at Entertainment had been on the job all of 36 seconds last year when he came and spoke before you.” – Ben Sherwood, President of ABC News

Hmmm. Come to think of it, that may just be funny because I was here last year for Paul Lee’s appearance. Oh, well.

Speaking of Lee, though, he did offer a few moments that might be of interest to you, so I’ll offer those, at least:

* He showed us an advance clip from this week’s “Modern Family.” The three Dunphy kids try to bring their parents breakfast in bed as a wedding anniversary present, only to find Phil and Claire in the throes of their own celebration. Luke gets the best line, observing that he’s not sure what game his mother and father were playing, “but it looked like Dad was winning.”

* He confirmed that the network has already picked up a few new shows. There’s a character-driven procedural from Shonda Rhimes (“Grey’s Anatomy”) and two comedies, one from Chris Moynihan (“100 Questions”) called “Man Up” and one from Andrew Reich and Ted Cohen (“Friends”) called “Smothered.”

* He’s not concerned about the ratings drop-off from “Modern Family” to “Cougar Town.” “Look, does the position after ‘Modern Family’ provide for us a great launch pad for what we consider to be strong comedies into the future? Yeah, of course it does,” he admitted. “I mean, otherwise we wouldn’t have put the Matt Perry show (‘Mr. Sunshine’) there, and we think that’s a good place to put it. In the long term, do we have ambitions that ‘Cougar Town’ could on its own start an hour? We would love to see it do that. Nevertheless, nobody looks at our Wednesday at 9:00 and 9:30 and doesn’t feel that’s a great hour of television, and those are very good ratings.”

* He’s very excited about the network’s future with Marvel Comics adaptations. “I for one am thrilled that we have Marvel within our family,” he said. It’s a superb opportunity for us. And ‘Jessica Jones,’ which we have Melissa Rosenberg doing, and ‘The Hulk,’ which Guillermo Del Toro is helping us with, these are A list showrunners that we think is critical. I mean, if you’re going to bring back a franchise, I think, it’s easier to launch a well known franchise. You have the following wind of a well known name. But what really distinguishes the one that survives are the quality of the shows, so that’s why a Barry Jossen at the studio — and we have done as much as we can to really get what we consider to be A list showrunners for that. So, yeah, we’ve got a little glint in our eye that we would love to make a Marvel franchise work on the network, and we’ll see how it goes. We don’t necessarily have to do it on cycle. We certainly would like to do it with a huge amount of support and, you know, this is one of the things I think our company does better than other companies that I’ve worked for in the past, is that you can get the whole company behind an idea and that if it works, you can then make that idea live in theme parks and in retail stores and beyond. So I definitely have a glint in my eye that I would love to make that happen, and we have the properties to do it. And they probably won’t be the only two Marvel things that we do going forward.”

Beyond that, though, I really can’t say as I have anything to offer you of interest about the other panels. I had a nice chat with Jason George, late of “Eli Stone,” who hails from my home area of Hampton Roads, so for his sake, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that “Off the Map” turns into a mid-season success. I also had brief conversations with a few “Wipeout” folks, including co-host Jill Wagner and executive producer Matt Kunitz, so look for those to turn up in the near future. Otherwise, though, I got nothin’.

See you guys tomorrow for Fox. Trust me, it’ll be awesome.

If, like me, you grew up a weird kid compulsively watching the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy and, yes and alas, the Three Stooges, then you might well enjoy “Backwash,” an enjoyably dippy web series with its final episode to be uploaded on Crackle this Monday night, December 20. The series stars Joshua Malina, who also wrote it, as the grumpy and conniving Val, who is, for whatever reason, charged with the care of the childlike and lovably idiotic Jonesy (Michael Panes). When they accidentally rob a bank with a sausage — you kind of have to be there — and hook up with a flamboyant ice cream truck driver, Fleming (Michael Ian Black, who I was unable to nab for a quick interview), the on-the-lamb trio begins a cross-country odyssey of sorts.

The enjoyably lowbrow but sometimes surreal silliness is book-ended by introductions from a rogues gallery of comic and acting talent, the funniest being a mysteriously bearded Jon Hamm, Allison Janney, John Cho, Dulé Hill, and Sarah Silverman. Somehow, Victorian author William Makepeace Thackeray is maligned as being the originally author of this more or less contemporary travesty lovingly directed by Danny Leiner, who also helmed “Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle.”

It was my privilege to chat with with some of the actors and creators of “Backwash” at the theatrical premiere of a somewhat shortened feature-length version of the web series. I started with Josh Malina, an actor I’ve been rather fond of since I stumbled over “Sports Night,” the show that convinced me that the writer of “The Social Network” was something more than an entertainingly glib semi-hack, actually a lot more.

In person, Malina is less nerdy than character on “Sports Night” and his somewhat similar character on another show written by Aaron Sorkin, “The West Wing,” but just as humble as some of his onscreen personae. When I asked about some of the press materials stating that “Backwash” is in the spirit of the Marx Brothers, he was cautious.

“It’s something we aspire to. I venerate them so I don’t want to say their name in the same breath. I was weaned on this anarchic and joyful slapsticky spirit of the Marx Brothers. It’s certainly an attempt to capture a little bit of that.”

So, if they characters are sorta kinda somewhat an attempt to be in some way in the same universe as the Marx Brothers, would Malina’s character be, in some way, Groucho-like?

“No. I wouldn’t say we quite follow those archetypes. I would say, however, that my character is sort of a combo. A little Groucho. a little Moe from the Three Stooges, a little [Bud] Abbott from Abbott & Costello, maybe a dash of W.C. Fields and then, sadly, a great deal of myself,” Malina said. Adding that, “in terms of slapstick he’s doing more of the slapping than being the slappee. You can tell that I wrote it. I’m the one beating everyone else up.”

That was about it for Malina. whose next gig is resuming his current recurring role on the USA Network’s “In Plain Sight.”

Next up was Michael Panes, a very unusual multi-talented performer who is both a violinist and a comic actor with an odd resemblance to the younger, slightly pudgier Peter Sellers. I glommed onto to him through his role in Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming’s 2001 dark comedy-drama, “The Anniversary Party,” in which he plays, strangely enough, a violinist with an odd resemblance to the young Peter Sellers. In the film, he finds himself hitting it off, so to speak, with an ambitious starlet played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Though I’ve seen Panes onscreen from time to time since, I told him that I’ve been wondering about him ever since the Leigh/Cummings movie.

“I’ve been wondering about me too. What happened to me?”

Well, I answered, it’s not every day you see a guy in a movie who looks like the pudgy young Peter Sellers, plays violin, and gets lucky with Gwyneth Paltrow (well, her character, that is).

“I thought that would have some legs. Apparently there is only one part that called for that, and I got it. After that, it’s slim pickings.”

But I knew I’d seen him in something — and his IMDb listing indicates he’s been working. I didn’t know until I researched it that he played author and gadfly Gore Vidal in “Infamous,” the movie about Truman Capote writing In Cold Blood that’s was not “Capote” but came out within a year of it and was all but completely buried.

“The truth is, just between me and [Premium Hollywood], I am usually the kiss of death to any project. The reason that you haven’t seen me is that all the work I’ve done, those projects sink. I haven’t told Josh Malina this yet. He’s probably going to find out soon enough.” Then, Panes changed his tune. “I hope that maybe ‘Backwash’ could be the one [that doesn’t sink]. I think it probably will be. It’s really good.”

While Panes puts on a pretty funny Eeyore-act, not all is terrible for him other than “Backwash.” He plays violin regularly with his singer-songwriter friend, Ryan Adams, and will be in the next Cameron Crowe production, “We Bought a Zoo,” “If I’m not cut out.” Let’s hope for Panes’ sake it’s more in the tradition of “Almost Famous” and “Say Anything” than “Elizabethtown” or “Vanilla Sky” and that he’s actually in it.

Panes did leave me with an evocative description of his “Backwash” character. “He’s a simple man. Without a lot of talent, or intelligence, or ambition, or knowledge, or insight, or intuition. He has hunger and bad dreams. I think a lot of people are going to be able to relate to him. There are people out there who are hungry and have really bad dreams. I represent them.'”

That was followed by a brief chat with actor Joe Lo Truglio, who is perhaps best known for hitting Jonah Hill in “Superbad.” He portrays one of the cops who are pursuing our comical heroes. My brief chat with Lo Truglio — who I at first mistook for director Danny Leiner — was marked by my complete lack of knowledge of his career (I can’t even remember his “Superbad” part) and, therefore, nearly complete incoherence.

I did come away with the knowledge that the actor is a tolerant, good-humored guy and that he will be seen playing an FBI agent in the company of Bill Hader in the upcoming science-fiction comedy “Paul” with Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and the voice of Seth Rogen. He will also be a nudist winemaker in the upcoming Jennifer Aniston/Paul Rudd comedy, “Wanderlust.”

The next person I talked to was the actual Danny Leiner, whose claims to fame includes the aforementioned “Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle” not to mention the brilliantly titled “Dude, Where’s My Car?,” and the recent episode of “The Office” centering around WUHF, an abortive web venture set-up by B.J. Novak’s character.

I started out by mentioning that “Harold and Kumar” and “Dude” (which I’ve never seen due to my severe Ashton Kutcher allergy) are probably about as close to the spirit of groups like the Marx Brothers as any recent movie. Leiner thought there might be one or two others, but then we moved on to the topic of web series and where he sought to take “Backwash.”

“It’s a very ambitious world to try to get into. In our thing, we went with a lot of production value. It’s a road trip movie. It’s got a lot of stunts. It’s got animation. There’s really a lot elements to it. I don’t think anyone’s been crazy enough to try it on our relatively low budget.”

We talked about the format of the show, and how the feature-length version I saw that night, which will eventually be available in various formats, differed from it. Most episodes, Leiner told me, were roughly 7 minutes long (about the length of a classic-era Warner Brothers cartoon), condensed from 9-11 page scripts by Joshua Malina. The primary difference between the web and feature length version is that the faux “Masterpiece Theater” style introductions omit most of the plot recaps and stick with the sometimes hilarious shtick provided by the hosts.

Leiner, who did not direct the first “Harold and Kumar” sequel but jokingly confesses that he kind of wishes he had and says he’s heard “good things” about the currently in post-production “A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas,” is moving on in a significant way. He’s taking on a “little indie movie” which is, wait for it, not a comedy. It’s called “Big Sky” and is, as of our conversation, uncast.

“It’s a little, noirish movie that takes place in the desert. It’s about an agoraphobic girl who gets lost and has to survive as she tries to save her mom.” Leiner is looking forward to the big change in tone, though he adds the movie will have some humorous elements.

And finally, I spoke there with the charming and very attractive Lindsay Kraft. When I admitted I didn’t recognize her, she was understanding, though she has had a recurring role on “Southland” as the girlfriend of Ben McKenzie’s Officer Ben Sherman. She’s also been on “Lie to Me,” “Without a Trace,” “Third Watch,” “The Sopranos” and “Epic Movie,” and will appear in the upcoming films, “NoName” and “See You in September.”

Rather than playing the more typical role in this sort of comedy of the ultra-sensible and strangely sympathetic woman who helps the wacky protagonist(s) (say, Kitty Carlisle in “A Night at the Opera,” the leading lady in any Adam Sandler flick, etc.), Kraft appears throughout in a number of guises. The first is a not-so entirely stable bank teller who falls for Jonesy (once again, a Michael Panes character enjoys remarkable romantic luck) as well as a prostitute, a homeless woman, and eventually a femme fatale of a waitress who may be out to lure the vulnerable boy-man to his doom.

I asked Ms. Kraft whether she was familiar with the comedy-team genre, and particularly the Marx Brothers, prior to working on “Backwash.”

“I’ve seen some of them but I’ve seen all of Josh [Malina]’s stuff, all of Michael Ian Black’s stuff that he’s done like ‘Stella.’ Josh is so funny. I’m so glad he followed through on doing this because I think it’s really something we haven’t seen in a long time.”

So, where there any big things coming up for Kraft in the future that she wanted to brag about before I let her go?

“You’re looking at it,” she joked. “There’s a few things. You’ll see.”

In case you haven’t been paying attention to limited release movies aimed at an older audience, “Get Low” is one of the year’s real success stories. My pretty negative review, notwithstanding, I’m surprised but not upset that the movie is doing as well as it is, both commercially and critically. These days, it’s nice to see a movie with a coherent story, at least, doing well. As for its star, Robert Duvall, being an apparent lock for an Oscar nomination, I can hardly complain. This may not be even close to being his best performance, but it’s a very good one and he’s a national treasure at this point. That’s how these things work sometimes.

“Get Low” stars Duvall as Felix Bush, an irascible and sometimes frightening hermit who contracts with the mildly rapacious local mortician (Bill Murray) to stage his funeral while he’s still alive. Though Bush says the funeral is to hear what people think of him while he’s still alive, it’s clear something in his past is disturbing him. Mattie Darrow (Sissy Spacek) is a former girlfriend who may hold the key to some of that.

Arriving right on time for the press conference, I saw that things weren’t quite ready and decided to grab a quick (and free) beverage. Looking over the soft drink selection in the hospitality area, however, I turned around and saw a serenely patient Sissy Spacek beaming at me and, before long, talking to me as if I were an actual human being while looking so good I was slightly stunned. As her assistant smoothly parried my lame request to turn on my digital recorder for a brief impromptu interview, she asked that I inform the public that she, at least, had showed up on time for the event. I was too charmed to do anything else but comply with the wishes of the luminous star of “Carrie” and “In the Bedroom.”

Mr. Duvall, it turned out, was only a couple of minutes late and the event started before I could make a proper drink selection. It was immediately apparent that Spacek and Duvall get along quite well and enjoyed joshing each other in front of reporters. (They last appeared together in 2008’s “Four Christmases.”)

The first questioner asked about what preparations there were beforehand to arrive at the onscreen chemistry he saw between Duvall and Spacek.

“We really didn’t have any rehearsal,” Spacek said. “I think Bill and, Aaron [Schneider], the director, and I read through the script together. We ran lines on set, occasionally, just so we’d remember things, but we didn’t really rehearse. This man comes in prepared.”

“No, no. If you’re not prepared,” Duvall replied, “take one is a rehearsal…I don’t think you have to rehearse necessarily. Take one is the rehearsal, but sometimes take one is the one they use, too. Different strokes, I think.”

“I came thinking, ‘I’m going to watch Bobby and see his process,'” Spacek said, “but you can’t see it. It’s invisible.”

“Well, especially with writing like this. It helps to make it invisible. The writing is so good in this. The structure, the script, the myth, the tale. The Southern tale is so beautifully written, you just go along with it,” Duvall said.

The next question asked about the characters and how they resonated with the actors. You might expect actors to focus on the characters they themselves played, but Spacek went in a different direction.

“I really loved Felix Bush. He’s a peculiar character. He’s funny and he’s deep. I’ve often felt like Felix Bush, wanting to what I call ‘go to ground’ and just get away from the maddening crowd. Not for 40 years…”

“Not even 40 days,” added Duvall.

“Well, 40 days would be good,” Spacek said. “The thing I loved about [the screenplay] is that I didn’t think ‘Oh, Mattie is this character I have to play,’ it was the piece really that pulled me in. It’s a very lyrical story. When I was reading it I just never knew from page to page what was going to happen. I guessed a couple of times, and I guessed wrong. I’ve known people like that. I grew up in a rural area and I live in a rural area now and there are people that their personas are very expansive, like Felix Bush’s character.”

“Somebody said today that there was kind of a mysticism to some of the way things went,” Duvall said.

The next questioner suggested that in some ways Felix Bush was a “companion piece” of sorts to Duvall’s famed film debut as Boo Radley in the classic film version of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

“I disagree. Many people say that — they’re both hermetic guys, but this guy [Felix Bush] could have been a lawyer, a teacher, a doctor and that guy [Radley] was a little off mentally. [Bush’s] hermetic life is an arbitrary thing he chooses. I think the writing is a little bit like Horton Foote, who made the adaptation of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ They’re both hermit guys but very different.”

After more praise for “Get Low,” it was time to discuss newer projects for Duvall and Spacek.

“I’m leaving this weekend to do, ‘The Help,'” Spacek said. Duvall hadn’t heard of the project, but it’s an adaptation of the bestselling novel that will also feature Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard and Alison Janney.

“I’m leaving tomorrow to go to Texas to make a film called “Seven Days in Utopia” with Lucas Black, who’s pretty much a scratch golfer,” said Duvall. “Usually, golf movies — I haven’t seen too many of them but I don’t think [the actors] can really hit the ball [usually]. This kid is a legitimate golfer.”

Another question asked Duvall about his ability to make very simple lines resonate in a way that other actors might not be able to do.

“You just go with it. It’s very specifically written that way by the two authors and especially Charlie Mitchell came in later from Alabama to put the final touches — embellishments, and also in the structure. You just went with it, you know… The writing just kind of takes you. You think about the character and you daydream about the character — day and night. You just kind of let it happen. The writing is beautiful but there’s nothing that makes you feel foreign. It just takes you.”

The next question was about the fact that, as with “Get Low,” Duvall has sometimes worked with first time directors. “It’s okay [to work with a first time director] — it might not be okay if it’s the 50th time he’s directed,” he said.

Duvall went on to describe how films often have a certain amount of disagreement as the film nears completion. “You kind of stake out your ground. It should be a collaborative thing, and it can be. Sometimes if there are differences and there’s conflict, that can be better, sometimes, than if it’s 1,000 percent harmonious. That can end up dull, sometimes.”

Then, finally someone asked about working with Bill Murray. Much of the press chatter as the film opened derived from Murray’s characteristically quirky/impolite approach to promoting “Get Low.” Apparently without explanation, he had failed to appear at the press day held the day before this press conference. (Coincidentally, I was present at a later roundtable interview with actor Luke Wilson in which the topic of Murray’s odd approach to promoting “Get Low” came up, an exchange picked up by Time Magazine.)

Duvall was positive but direct. “It was good working with him. He added a lot of stuff and between takes he would play music on the set. Crazy, different types of music. He was always on the present, in a pretty good way, I think… I think he came on a little bit later, but he heard about the project. He doesn’t have an agent or anything and they finally got it to him. He responded, he really wanted to do it… I don’t know where he is today. He never showed up in L.A.”

So, 50 years after “To Kill a Mockingbird,” what does Robert Duvall think about this whole business of being a movie actor?

“I’ve had a wonderful career. Had I only worked with Horton Foote and Francis Ford Coppola, I would have had a wonderful mini-career, but I’ve had many other opportunities as well. Horton was a friend — how many friends do you have for 50 years and stay friends? I have two or three. It’s been a good career, it’s been varied.

“I haven’t done theater since I did ‘American Buffalo’ on Broadway. I like film. I figure certain film projects you could do on stage anyway. I don’t like to do things eight times a week. It’s like eating steak every night. You get tired of it. I always like to think of myself in the potential. There’s stuff left. Even as we speak there’s stuff left.”

What about preparing for roles?

“It depends on the part,” said Duvall. “Sometimes, you don’t prepare much. When I did ‘Lonesome Dove’ way back, I rode horses day and night for like three or four months. This part, we spent Christmas in Northern Argentina with my wife’s parents and her family. I would just sit in this little hotel studying the part, looking at these beautiful Andes mountains and it gave me a sense of solitude and a kind of peace, a kind of rumination. There are many ways to approach it. Some simpler than others.”

“Exactly like Bobby said, it depends on the role,” Spacek said. “For ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ I went to Nashville and worked with Loretta [Lynn] and her producer and her band. One movie, they set up a real kitchen for me in a location. I was playing a farm wife and I baked pies and bread all day and the crew — I had ’em eating out of my hand. I could say when we were shooting, ‘Could you move that light?’ ‘Oh, you made that good cherry pie. Sure I will.’ On a film that Tommy Lee Jones directed I learned to ride side-saddle.”

“She [sings] better than I do, but when I did ‘Tender Mercies’ down in Italy, Texas and all those towns. Waxahachie… ‘Waxa-by God-hachie’ we called it. I got up and sang with the local bands and see the people two-steppin’ by you and everything. Hopefully there’s not a fight breaking out in the back. You do that as your homework too, you know,” Duvall said.

“That’s one of the beautiful perks. You get to do these things that you wouldn’t ordinarily get to do and people help you. It’s great. I learned to make strudel on a table where you rolled it out on the whole table,” Spacek said.

“Jack of all trades, master of some,” Duvall added.

Then it was this humble reporter’s turn to ask a question, and I followed up on the theme of rural roles (though I had a hard time pronouncing the words “rural roles”). Apart from the accents, what was different about portraying the kind of country-based characters Duvall and Spacek have played as opposed to more urban-roles in films like “The Godfather,” “Network” and “Missing”?

“Oh, they’re different,” Duvall begin. “I don’t think that can be explained, but they’re different. Billy Bob Thornton wants to direct ‘The Hatfields and the McCoys.’ He said, ‘no New York actors allowed below the Mason-Dixon line.'”

“That is true,” the Texas-born Spacek added. “There’s something about Southern characters…”

“Maybe an English actor might be better than at it than a guy from New York as a Southern guy,” Duvall interrupted.

Ms. Spacek was somewhat doubtful. “Maybe. I wouldn’t sell those New York actors short.”

“When I played Robert E. Lee in ‘Gods and Generals,’ we brought Bob Easton back, this great dialectician from Texas. They said they wanted a Virginia accent. He said there were 12 distinct Virginia accents from the Piedmont to the coast, black and white. Many different accents. You just kind of have to hit on a flavor sometimes rather than just going for an all-out accent,” Duvall said.

“I think people are people,” Spacek said after a bit more back and forth about the numerous accents of the American South. “The human condition is the human condition, and what we try to do is illuminate the human condition. I think people in the North and the South and the East and West and anywhere they come from are just as interesting. They’re humans, they have the same realm of emotions that we all have. But I’m just more drawn to the Southern character and the different types. Southern literature is so lyrical and so wonderful…”

“And the music too,” Duvall interjected.

“And the music. I’ve been so fascinated with that. When I first started working as an actress, I thought ‘I am going to break the stereotype, the Southern stereotype. We’ve gotten a bad rap. I don’t think I did it alone, but…” she paused, getting a laugh from the room.

“There are so many different Southern accents,” she continued, only to be interrupted again by Duvall — the pair were starting to seem like voluble members of the same Southern family. (Spacek is Texan born and bred; Duvall, however, was born in San Diego — hey, it is Southern California — and grew up largely in Maryland.) “When I was in the army, I bunked over a guy that was a Virginia farmer. Then, for some reason, we changed companies. A month or so later, I bunked over a guy that was a potato farmer from Maine. They both were very rural guys. The potato farmer from Maine was almost related to the speech from old England, but they both were interesting guys and both rural guys. If you could capture either one on film it would be wonderful.”

“It goes back to the story,” Duvall continued, “a guy drove in a car service in New York. He said, ‘You know, when I was in the deep South in the army in the hills, all those guys, the hillbillies in the creeks and the mountains, here and there,’ he said, ‘they constantly outscore the New Yorkers on the aptitude tests.’ Interesting.”

“How did he know that?” Spacek asked.

“He was in the army. I don’t know if it was a generalization or it was specific to him. Hollywood sometimes tends to patronize the interior or the United States. Horton Foote used to say, the great Texas playwright, that a lot of people from New York don’t know what goes on beyond the South Jersey shore.”

Did Duvall and Spacek think there was any difference in the body language?

“I don’t know if you can break it down that way. Maybe. Somebody did some research recently about if you bump people in a schoolroom, guys from the South were quicker to fistfight than guys from the North. Now, I don’t know…”

“Well, part of it is cause people from the North are used to getting bumped,” Spacek interjected. “It’s crowded where they are.”

Then, as the moderator tried to move on to the next question, Spacek had a new idea.

“I think maybe part of it is that the South is so hot that people are pushed to their limits.”

“Yeah, but the hottest I ever felt in my life was Chicago, Illinois — when all those people died in that heat wave… I’ve been in Houston, I’ve been in the Philippines, that’s the hottest I’ve ever felt. I don’t know why.”

“Maybe it’s because they weren’t serving sweet tea.”

Here’s what we do know. A pregnant woman named Claudia washed onto the island after surviving a shipwreck many years ago, and upon meeting another woman in the jungle, she gives birth to a pair of twin boys. The first is named Jacob, but because she wasn’t expecting to have more than one, the other is never given a name – and it remains without one after the woman kills Claudia and raises the two boys as her own. Flashforward to their teenage years and the unnamed child (who we now know as the Man in Black) finds a box on the beach containing white and black rocks that he fashions into a game to play with his brother, Jacob.

When the boys come across some other people on the island, however, they run back to tell Mother, who tells them that the visitors are evil. She later explains that the two of them are on the island for a reason, and that she’s made it impossible for either of them to hurt the other. She then takes them to a glowing waterfall in the jungle to show them just what they’re supposed to be protecting, and though she refuses to say exactly what it is, she warns them that the visitors will try to take the light, and if it goes out, it will go out everywhere. Of course, if MIB had been paying attention, he would have caught this slip-up, as Mother had previously told him that there was nothing else in the world beyond the island. Of course, that’s quickly remedied when the ghost of MIB’s real mother visits him in the jungle and leads him the other side of the island where the survivors of the shipwreck live. She also tells him about her murder at the hands of Mother, and although MIB tries to convince Jacob to come with him until he can figure out a way to leave the island, Jacob stays behind.

Flashforward again to their adulthood, and though they now live on separate sides of the island, Jacob and MIB still get together to play their childhood game. MIB even admits that Mother was right about the other men being evil, but he needs their help in order to find a way off the island. And as it happens, he’s done just that by digging into areas of the island radiating electromagnetic energy (or as he calls it, places “where the metal acts weird”), in order to locate the source of the glowing waterfall. But when Mother finds out about his dig site – one that includes the yet-to-be-frozen Donkey Wheel that will allow him to leave the island – she throws him against the wall knocking him out. And you wonder why the guy has been holding a grudge against her for all these years.

MIB survives the attack, however, and returns the favor by killing Mother, but not before she designates Jacob as the new protector of the island. Unable to exact revenge on MIB because of the safeguards Mother has implemented, Jacob drags his twin brother to the waterfall and throws him in, resulting in the emergence of the Smoke Monster. Later on, he discovers MIB’s body at the bottom of the waterfall and buries him next to Mother inside a cave – the same cave that the Losties discovered containing the Adam and Eve skeletons. It was a pretty cool way to have everything come full circle, but that doesn’t mean that there still weren’t some questions begging to be asked by the time it was over.

The one that strikes me as the most important of these questions is, quite simply, who is Mother? Evangeline Lilly recently stated in an interview (although likely without the permission of her bosses) that Allison Janney’s character was Mother Earth. It certainly makes sense in terms of the role she played on the island, but I find it hard to believe that Mother freaking Earth would be that vulnerable. You’d think she would be immortal, although I guess it’s possible that she lost her powers the minute Jacob become the new protector. I’m not completely sold on that theory, though, and I have a strange feeling that there’s someone else higher up on the island food chain that we still haven’t met.

The other major question revolves around the connection between the Smoke Monster and the Man in Black. Although it originally seemed like MIB turned into Smokey after he fell into the waterfall (Mother did tell Jacob that entering the light was worse than death), the surfacing of his body suggests that maybe they’re not one in the same. While many will likely theorize that Smokey takes on the physical image of MIB out of sheer convenience, I have another theory entirely – namely, that although MIB’s body emerged from the waterfall, his soul survives in the form of Smokey.

Hey, anything’s possible in the world of “Lost,” and if Mother’s conversation with Claudia is any indication (“Every question I answer will only lead to another question”), Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof aren’t too concerned with giving us the answer to every mystery. Between that line and MIB’s suggestion to Jacob that “one day you can make up your own game and everyone else will have to follow your rules,” it’s obvious that they had a lot of fun writing “Across the Sea.” I certainly had fun watching it, but that doesn’t mean it quenched my thirst for knowledge quite like I expected.