Whale Rider

Whale Rider

I will admit, I procrastinated with Whale Rider. I borrowed it from my parents a long, long time. I had heard it was good, but I kept putting it off, thinking, "I'm just not in the mood for that kind of film." Well, I finally forced myself to sit down and watch it, and I'm glad I did. If you have been procrastinating like me, waiting for the proper 'mood,' then stop! Just sit and watch it. You'll be glad you did.

In New Zealand, a young Maori girl named Paikea (Keisha Castle-Hughes from The Nativity Story) struggles with fulfilling her destiny. She comes from a long line of tribal leaders, but her twin brother, who would have been the next chief, died at birth. Only boys can be leaders and so Paikea's grandfather Koro (Rawiri Paratene from Fracture) starts testing the other boys in the village to see who is destined to be the next leader and possible savior of their dying culture.

The young boys act like, well, young boys and they are more interested in playing and kid stuff. Paikea, on the other hand, has already embraced Maori traditions, learning the songs and language, and even learning to fight with the traditional Maori weapon, the taiaha (a big no-no for girls). She lectures the other boys and even the adults when they seem to stray from the Maori traditions. Paikea, despite being vulnerable and wounded by Koro's harsh rejections, is a strong girl and it is clear she is destined to be someone great.

This is the movie's greatest strength, but in a way it is also the one weakness. Paikea is so obviously the next leader from the first moment she arrives on screen, that we are sort of just biding time and waiting for Koro to get with the program. You can only watch so many scenes of him being cruel to Paikea before you start yelling at the screen in frustration. I suppose in a way, Whale Rider is not even Paikea's story; it is really Koro's. This is the story of how a stubborn and devout man has to wake up and learn that sometimes the best way to preserve your traditions is to break them.

What I liked most about the film was that it opened a window into Maori culture, which I knew next to nothing about. When Koro is teaching the boys about Maori culture, he is also teaching us, the audience. I know this sounds like a whole lot of exposition, but it is actually all very fascinating.

I also very much admired the acting in the film. Though only twelve at the time, Keisha Castle-Hughes delivers a wonderful and layered performance and deserved the Oscar nomination - she is the youngest actor to ever be nominated. Paratene is also excellent, as is the rest of the cast, which includes Grant Roa (The Hothouse) as Uncle Rawiri and Cliff Curtis (The Fountain) as Paikea's father.

Based on the description and the cheesy DVD cover, you might think Whale Rider is not your thing. but trust me, it is. It's a really solid, well-made film and I think all of you would like it.

MVP: Not much of a doubt on this one. This is Keisha Castle-Hughes' movie. Not only does she bring an emotional complexity and maturity to the role, she is also inspirational, which I think is the most important and the most difficult thing to pull off for this film. You can understand why the people respect her opinion and how she actually inspires them to start shifting their lifestyle. It's not easy to play 'a chosen one' as a little kid. Just ask Jake Lloyd. But Castle-Hughes excels at this. She wins the award, easily.

BEST LINE: "Well, you wouldn't know it now, but before he got fat and ugly, your Uncle Rawiri was a bit of a the hotshot with the taiaha."

TRIVIA: Much of the film features Paikea doing traditional Maori things that women are not supposed to do. The film cast and crew performed special chants to ward off bad luck from Keisha Castle-Hughes who had to perform these customs.

OSCAR NOMINATIONS: Best Actress (Keisha Castle-Hughes). She lost to Charlize Theron for Monster.

Eat Pray Love

Eat Pray Love

Based on the New York Times best-seller, Eat Pray Love was released in theaters with a whole lot of hype. This was going to be a classic chick flick, starring the greatest chick flick actress of our time, Julia Roberts, and directed by Ryan Murphy, the creator of Glee and Nip/Tuck. Unfortunately, despite everyone's best efforts, Eat Pray Love is a stinker. Even worse, it is a dull stinker.

Julia Roberts plays Liz, who after a painful divorce, decides to take a year to travel to three different locations in the world in order to heal: she travels to Italy ("Eat") in order to rediscover joy in her life and eat a lot, she attends an ashram in India ("Pray") in order to rediscover her balance and heal her emotional wounds, and she hangs out in Bali ("Love") to rediscover...well, love. This sounds like it could have been a terrific travelogue of a film, but unfortunately it never really works.

The main problem is that Liz is just plain unlikable in the beginning. I understand that she has lost her way and needs to find herself, but the way she goes about casting off her husband (Billy Crudup) seems a bit too cruel to me. Maybe that is the point. In the beginning, Liz is supposed to be unsympathetic and as the movie progresses, she grows less controlling, less selfish, and more likable. But I don't really feel this evolution. This movie needed to have a transcendental moment, something transformative, awe-inspiring and beautiful that reaches all of us in the very fibers of our being. The movie certainly wants to do this and it desperately tries to, but it doesn't come close. But instead, it just tells us via narration. Liz is stressed and can't find her balance in one scene. And then the next scene, she says, "hey, I found my balance." The reason why she was able to find her balance is compelling, but they should have shown it instead of just telling us.

Which ultimately is the main problem with the film. They tell us everything and show us very little. There is a lot of Liz talking about herself, both in dialogue and in a voiceover narration, and the movie is trying so hard to intellectually explain what is happening to her that it never allows any true emotion to come out. Instead it says, "and now, Liz feels emotion and you can, too."

All this is compounded by the fact that the movie is so long and feels even longer. Sigh.

Not to say it is all bad. If the movie fails in its entirety, it sometimes works better on the more micro level. Eat Pray Love tries really hard to give us a sense of what Italy, India and Bali are like, with mixed success. Probably it succeeds the most in Italy, where a lot of time is spent discussing the Italian language, complete with a montage of Italian hand motions (with subtitles explaining what they mean). This goes on for some time, but is amusing and is certainly more interesting than the emotional journey of the characters. The Italy section also benefits from some really great looking food, all filmed beautifully.

I also want to point out that for all the film's faults, you cannot level any of the blame on the actors. Julia Roberts fights valiantly and it is a testament to her innate likability that you don't hate Liz on the spot (despite the script's best efforts). Richard Jenkins, James Franco, Viola Davis, Javiar Bardem, I. Gusta Ayu Puspawati, and others all put in fine work. I refuse to blame them for this movie.

So to wrap this all up, I know I should be applauding a movie for trying to be different, for trying to reach up and be about something, instead of relying on the old Hollywood formulas. The movie desperately wants to be deep and inspiring, and I respect that. But it is a wasted opportunity. This story could have had us all sobbing, our tears full of fear and empathy in the beginning and full of joy at the end. But ultimately, it only inspired me to want to take a nap.

MVP: I think the MVP should probably go to Richard Jenkins as Richard from Texas. At first, he just seems to be mean for mean's sake, but eventually the film allows Richard to open up. Once Jenkins is allowed to play a human being and not a grumpy old cliche, he truly shines in the role, delivering one terrific monologue about why he is at the ashram. Jenkins is a classy actor, and I am always happy to see him. He is a bright spot here.

TRIVIA: Rome has two soccer teams, the AS Rome and the SS Lazio. The two teams are fierce rivals, no doubt made worse by the fact that AS Rome has a bigger following internationally. In the Eat Pray Love book, Mr. Spaghetti is a huge SS Lazio fan. But because the team wasn't well-known enough, the producers of the film decided to make Mr. Spaghetti an AS Rome fan. If you don't think this is a big deal, then you don't understand soccer fans! The decision created an uproar among SS Lazio fans and a ton of gloating from their rivals!

Top Ten Lists for Lost

TOP TEN BEST LOST MOMENTS:

Wow, coming up with a top ten was really hard! There are so many moments I loved on this show. I could easily have done 25 or 50 moments. This is the best I could do with a top ten...

1) Pilot - Season One

Just a perfect hour of television. Jack waking up in the jungle, the first horrible reveal of the plane crash, the skillful introduction of each character during that chaos, Jack first telling the story of how he counts to five to conquer his fear...just so many fantastic moments. It was probably one of the best, if not the best pilot I've ever seen.

2) Locke Reveal - Season One

This is the moment that sealed the loyalty of many of my friends. The reveal that Locke was in a wheelchair before the crash was a huge twist and it was brilliantly handled. In the series pilot, I remembered how Locke was acting weird during the crash, even almost breaking into a smile in one shot. I thought it was really strange. In this episode, they show the exact same footage, only now we have a new lens and we understand why he reacts the way he does. It's a brilliantly edited and acted episode. And a brilliant twist. And the music...this is the first moment I noticed Giacchino's awesome score. He would continue to impress...

3) Chasing Ethan - Season One

This was a long sequence and our first real encounter with an Other - Ethan, who infiltrated the castaways and kidnapped Charlie and the pregnant Claire. This whole sequence was full of some terrific moments - Hurley's discovery that Ethan wasn't on the plane, Ethan kicking the snot out of Jack in the rain ("If you follow, I will kill one of them."), and then Jack and Kate discovering Charlie's body hanging from a tree. Granted, they were able to save his life, but this moment was disturbing and showed that this show was playing for keeps.

4) Sawyer Tells Jack About his Dad - Season One

Sawyer tells Jack a story about how he met a man in a bar, a doctor who couldn't bring himself to call his son and apologize...a man who was of course Jack's recently deceased father. For me, this was one of the best emotional scenes in the series, superbly written, acted, and directed. Matthew Fox's failed attempt to hold back his tears is a moment that still resonates with me. I know it's not exciting as some other moments of the series, but this one sticks with me.

5) Michael Shoots Ana Lucia and Libby - Season Two

Here's a huge twist that I didn't see coming! When Michael betrays the castaways and kills Libby and Ana Lucia, I was shocked. I know Ana Lucia wasn't the most popular character, but I actually liked her and was sad to see her go. And her facial expression when she gets shot is haunting. Absolutely one of the biggest and best twists of the show.

6) Jack Helps Sawyer and Kate Escape - Season Three

People had some complaints about when Jack, Kate and Sawyer were imprisoned in the beginning of Season Three. But hopefully everyone can agree that the escape was awesome. With Jack holding Ben hostage in the middle of a medical operation and screaming into the microphone, "Kate, run!!!!"  Just an awesome moment for me!

7) Beach Battle - Season Three

The finale to Season Three was action packed, emotional, and dramatic with a lot of different plot elements going down - Ben shooting Locke, Jack bringing the survivors to the radio tower, Desmond and Charlie sneaking into the Swan Station, and "not Penny's boat" are all incredibly memorable moments. But for me, the highlight was the battle at the beach, when Sawyer, Jin, and Sayid take on the Others. From the night time ambush, to Hurley coming to the rescue in his Dharma bus, to Sawyer shooting a defenseless Tom (Hurley: "He surrendered!" Sawyer: "I didn't believe him."), this was all amazing and badass stuff. Season Three was a great finale.

8) "We have to go back!!" - Season Three

And the other part of this great finale also needs to go on this list. When we realize that the flashbacks featuring Jack falling apart in a fake beard are actually flash forwards - revealing that some people made it off the island in the future, but not everyone. This was a hell of a twist and ended with a terrific line for a cliffhanger, Jack screaming to Kate in an empty parking lot, "We have to go back!!!"

9) The Constant - Season Four

So everyone loves this episode, where Desmond is jumping through time and can't find his balance. I actually found it to be a bit cheesy. And when Desmond in the past tells Penny that she needs to answer the phone in the future when he calls or else he'll die, I kind of rolled my eyes at the silliness of it all. And then, in the episode's climactic scene, the dying and desperate Desmond makes the call. And Penny answers. And I am suddenly hit with one of the most romantic moments I have ever seen in a TV show. The sheer joy felt by the separated lovers just bursts off the screen and only the most cynical bastards in the world could be immune to it. And when they both say, "I love you" in the phone at the same time before the signal is lost...sniff sniff...that's fantastic stuff.

10) Juliet Blows Up the Bomb - Season Five

The finale to Season Five was incredibly intense as Jack tries to explode a nuclear bomb on the island. It was not as memorable as the other finales, but it did have one hair raising moment of drama that ranks probably as the most intense moment of the show - when Juliet's legs get tangled in the cords and she is dragged into the hole with the bomb. Sawyer grabs her, but isn't able to save her. And at the bottom of the hole, bloody and dying, Juliet sees the bomb and starts hitting it with a rock to set it off with the last of her strength. This was an incredibly powerful and moving sequence, and both Elizabeth Mitchell and Josh Holloway were inexplicably robbed of awards kudos. Neither were even nominated. Both deserved to win for this scene alone.

So there you go. My favorite ten moments in Lost. There are a LOT of other moments I would have loved to have put in here, but I forced myself to ten only.

TOP TEN WORST LOST MOMENTS:

Admittedly, only a few of these are truly horrible moments. Some are nitpicks. But hey, I needed to get the list to 10!

1) People being too mysterious - whole series

This actually was a real problem, especially in the first two seasons. So many of the mysteries could have been solved faster if people would actually talk to each other! Unfortunately, everyone on the plane was too busy being mysterious. I will give a pass to the first half season because these people had never met each other before and maybe there were some trust issues. But you would think that after awhile, they would actually start sharing information with each other. This really got annoying after awhile.

2) Darth Charlie - Season Two

I liked Charlie, but the producers really didn't seem to know what to do with him in Season Two. So they give him strange dreams, make him act crazy, have him alienate everyone in the cast and then instead of letting him explain himself rationally, they have him sulk off and put his hood up so he looks like an evil Jedi leprechaun - this is a new character I like to call Darth Charlie. For a few episodes, you always know if it is a Good Charlie or a Bad Charlie scene based on whether he is wearing the Darth Charlie hood. He proceeds to do bad and out-of-character things like beat up Sun while she is gardening. It seems like Charlie is on the verge of becoming a villain and then the show just completely forgets about it - everyone just accepts Charlie back into the group, and the producers ignore this Darth Charlie subplot ever happened like the terrible idea it was.

3) Hurley Tries to Blow up the Food - Season Two

Lost put a lot of its characters through the ringer, bringing them to the edge of their sanity. That sometimes made the characters do stupid things. But I was cool with that because crazy people do stupid things. Unfortunately, there were a few times when the show went a little too far and it just became unbelievable. In Season Two, Hurley is buckling under the pressure of being in charge of the food stash. Everyone is hassling him, trying to get more food, drinks and peanut butter. Hurley, already fearing for his sanity, decides the best way to escape would be to blow up the pantry and all the food in it. I'm sorry, this is too much. Yes, Hurley is having some issues this episode, but to destroy the food supply and potentially doom everyone on the island to starvation is just too far out of character. Stupid.

4) Charlie at the End of Season Two

This moment killed me! So the Hatch blows up. Charlie barely escapes, but Mr. Ecko, Desmond and Locke aren't able to get out in time. There is a deafening noise and a bright light fills the sky for a few brief, terrifying moments. Everyone knows something bad just happened. And then its over and a bloody Charlie comes out of the jungle onto the beach. Claire asks him what happened. And he says...well, he doesn't say the hatch just blew up. He doesn't say, hey, Ecko, Desmond and Locke were in the Hatch, maybe we should see if they are okay. No, he says, "Nothing happened" and plays dumb. And everyone accepts it! And Claire even gives him a smoochie, conveniently forgetting all the evil Darth Charlie moments from earlier in the season. This is just sloppy. Season Two was not a good season for Charlie. He got much better in the third.

5) Jack Accuses his Dad of Sleeping of his Wife - Season Three

Here's another example of crazy going too far. Jack's trust issues go back to his rocky relationship with his father and also the fact that his wife left him for another man. Jack starts to act really crazy and stubborn, and even a little paranoid. Knowing what we know about Jack on the island, I could accept this. But suddenly Jack thinks it would be a good idea to combine the two crappy things in his life and accuses his father of sleeping with his wife. Which is just mindboggling to me. He even confronts his father at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and tries to beat him up. Some critics like this scene because a) Fox's admittedly good performance, and b) it is what sends Christian Shepherd on the final bender which finally kills him (making Jack feel even more guilty). That's all well and good, but it doesn't change the fact that the reason for Jack's temper tantrum was lame.

6) Nikki and Paolo - Season Three

Here we have the two most hated characters in the series, Nikki and Paolo. Trying to add some new blood to the show, the producers added Nikki and Paolo, two extremely unlikable people, and tried to shoehorn them into the story as if they had been there all along. They were lame and the world agreed. It did not take long for the producers to kill them off, in the Twilight Zone-style episode, "Expose." Though the characters were universally unliked, many people liked the twisty turns of their final episode. I didn't. But I was super happy they were gone!

7) Jack Gets a Tattoo/Bai Ling - Season Three

Lost at its worst, hands down. Not only is the back story pointless (do we really care how Jack got his tattoo??), but its execution is terrible. Bai Ling is bad as Jack's Thai lover/magic tattoo artist and the scene where Jack violently forces her to give him a tattoo is out of place, out of character, and just uncomfortable. It's just terrible. Ugh.

8) Sun forgets how to speak English - Season Six

So just when we need to be barreling towards our climax, the producers decide to give Sun a new subplot - she gets bumped in the head and forgets how to speak English. The producers maybe did this because a) Sun had been doing nothing except yell, "I want to find my husband!!" for almost two full seasons, b) Season Six was getting so depressing they felt they needed some comic relief. Those are the only two reasons I can think of for this silly subplot. All the producers succeeded in was making audiences roll their eyes in annoyance. And the subplot ends when Sun and Jin are finally reunited, a powerful moment that was sort of ruined by Lapidus saying, "Well, looks like someone got their voice back!" Puke!

9) Ilana Dies - Season Six

So Ilana had been set up as a big character in the last two seasons. And then before we find out why she is significant, she literally just blows up. Without us ever finding out why she was important or why her character was even on the show. She was pointless. And it is a pity because she had some potential and I thought the actress Zuleikha Robinson was putting in some good work. I had heard rumors that Ilana was actually Jacob's daughter and that she originally had a bigger role, but the producers just couldn't find the time to work all that backstory in. So what to do with a problem character? Blow her up with dynamite! You know what? I think I would rather have seen her backstory than the Across the Sea episode. A missed opportunity...

10) Across the Sea - Season Six

This episode was just a mistake. It raised too many questions too close to the end of the show. It was badly written and badly acted - most shockingly by the normally superb Alison Janney. I understand they wanted to give some background on Jacob, Smokey and especially the mysterious light. That's fine. But there was nothing in this episode that couldn't have been inserted in flashbacks in earlier episodes. This did not require an entire hour devoted to it. All it did was grind everything to a halt right before the finale, which was a big mistake.

So there you go. That's my top ten/bottom ten. What are yours??? I'd love to know!!!

Random Thoughts on Lost Finale and MVPs

Okay, so now that I got the spoiler-free review out of the way, let's get into the meat of Lost - here are some random thoughts on Lost's divisive finale, and my individual MVPs for each season. First a word of warning, since this is about the finale, this review needs a SPOILER ALERT!!!!

Finale

The finale to Lost was incredibly divisive, split between those who loved it and those infuriated that not everything was answered (which was amusingly summed up in a Christmas-themed episode of Community, when Abed finds a DVD of Lost Season One and says, "It's a metaphor, representing a lack of payoff." I don't always mean to be the one who cuts down the middle, but I really disagree with both the faithful and the disgruntled. To those who didn't like it, I think they might be so disenchanted with the unanswered questions that they missed a whole lot of brilliance. And to those who loved the finale, I have to say that there are some glaring conceptual problems that I can't get over.

So first, the good. Lost's producers always said the show was about the characters and not about the island itself. Accordingly, the final season did a good job of wrapping up everyone's story. Sure, the mysteries of the island were never really solved, but that wasn't important. And frankly, I like the fact that the island is left a mystery. There is literally NO explanation that would have satisfied everyone, so why not leave it a mystery? Besides, everything we needed to know about the island was clear - this is a magic place, it is a barrier that can keep evil at bay, and it needs some sort of protector to keep it safe. Do we really need to know anything else? Besides the magical stuff, I did feel there were a handful of unanswered questions that I felt should have been addressed and apparently the producers realized this early on - they produced a short epilogue that tied up all the loose ends that I cared about.  So I encourage everyone to find that epilogue and watch it!

As for the story itself, I loved the resolution of the island story itself. Jack's acceptance of his role was terrific to see and I liked his final battle with evil Locke. And I was incredibly moved by Jack's death scene, where he collapses in the same reeds where he first woke up in the series premiere. Just when you think he is going to die alone, Vincent the dog shows up out of nowhere to keep him company while he passes. That was a special moment that almost had me bawling.

The finale also made me realize just how tragic John Locke's story was. Not for the reason you may think. Yeah, it kind of sucks that he was right all along and Jack didn't believe him until it was too late. It also sucks that Locke was killed and his image taken over by the epitome of evil. But the real tragedy is that Locke's faith in the island, from the very beginning, was pretty much fostered and manipulated by the smoke monster. From the first season, he was basically a patsy for the entire series. That is a complete bummer and depressing (but still very effective).

Now, let's turn to the bad for a minute. As much as I liked the resolution of the island storyline, I really have some problems with the flash-sideways purgatory revelation. It isn't because I felt lied to (though certainly by implying that the alternate universe was caused by the nuclear explosion at the end Season 5 was a low blow on the part of the producers). No, the reason I am bothered by the sideways timeline is because I think the producers cheated. The reveal that the storyline was a Purgatory-like place meant that we were wasting our time the entire season to see how the alternate universe and the main storyline connected only to realize they have nothing to do with each other. They don't! Think about it. Other than that moment where Desmond can temporarily see both universes, the two really don't connect at all.

Unlike the flashbacks in the first season, the sideways did not reinforce anything going on in the island storyline. Which in of itself, would have been fine - Season 4's flash forwards were like that, too - but the flash forwards also led us on a story that eventually tied together. The purgatory revelation, on the other hand, showed that the flash sideways were actually irrelevant to the main storyline of the last six years! Before any one says, "but the reason they were all together in Purgatory was because of the island was the most meaningful time of their lives," I gotta say I don't buy that as an excuse. There is only one practical reason for the flash sideways - with a show as tragic as Lost, where so many beloved characters died horrible deaths, the producers engineered an entire alternate universe for the sole purpose of giving us a happy ending. That's it.

And I think that is cheating.

Now I would be lying if I said I didn't feel all warm and fuzzy when everyone reunites and hugs it out in the church. It was a really nice, emotional moment and the characters deserved a happy ending. I just felt that the producers cheated to get us to that point.

The purgatory thing also opens up some questions that don't make a lot of sense - why don't Bernard and Rose get to leave? In fact, why are they even there? They say that this alternate universe is a place where people have to reconcile with themselves before moving on, and it seemed like Bernard and Rose already did that when they were still alive. And why is Keamy there? And the gunfight between Sayid and Keamy leads to another question - what happens when you die in Purgatory?

I certainly would not go so far as to say all the flash sideways scenes were stupid. A lot of people hated them. I could never say that because despite the flawed concept, I thought the execution was fairly well done. There were some wonderful character moments, particularly involving Locke and Jack. The dialogue, the acting, and the directing were all superb. Giacchino's score to the ending was an emotional powerhouse. And I loved almost all of the moments where our heroes "wake up" and realize what is happening. The best one was probably the Sawyer - Juliet "you want to grab a cup of coffee" reunion (The worst one was probably Sayid and Shannon's wake-up reunion, since I never really bought their relationship as true love. Sayid's true love was clearly Nadia).

Anyways, I could go on. The long and short of it is, the finale to Lost was pretty mixed. I loved the finale of the island storyline and felt cheated by the flash sideways storyline. It certainly did not make me re-evaluate my opinion of the show overall, which despite some real problems, still stands as a testament to what good television can be.

Okay, next post I am going to list my top ten and worst ten moments of Lost. Be ready! But first, here are my single season MVP Awards!

MVPs!

Season One

In many ways, this is the toughest season for me to pick. I think ultimately I have to give it to Matthew Fox, who plays Jack, the leader of the castaways. Audiences took to him in the very first episode from the way he took control on the beach after the crash, dashing from emergency to emergency and saving a whole lot of people in the process. From the beginning, he grounded the show and gave us a strong lead to care about. I personally liked that his greatest strength (his decisiveness) was also his greatest weakness. Jack's blindly charging into situations often saved people, but sometimes it also made things worse. I thought that was cool. And I credit Matthew Fox's excellent work with making us care for Jack despite his flaws. Honorable mentions go to Terry O'Quinn as the fan favorite Locke and Naveen Andrews as Sayid, both of whom are super cool in this first season.

Season Two - This year is another tough one. It was a good year for Terry O'Quinn, whose Locke had to deal with the button in the Hatch and then a crisis in his faith in the island. But then, a new player emerged onto the field, Michael Emerson, in a role that was supposed to just last for a few episodes. Emerson was SO good that they decided to not only kept him around for the rest of the show, but to make his character, Benjamin Linus, the leader of The Others. It is a superb performance of calculated malevolence and was an absolute blast to watch for the entire series' run. It all starts here.

Season Three

This one is easy. Henry Ian Cusick as Desmond. Season Three featured my favorite incarnation of the Desmond character, who I call Psychic Desmond. After recovering from the explosion at the end of Season Two, Desmond now gets flashes of the future - including haunting visions of Charlie' death. He spends most of the season running around, saving Charlie. Desmond was always a fan favorite, but in Season Three he was the true highlight. It doesn't hurt that he sports an awesome beard, a great costume (I want a blue shirt like that) and drinks a lot of expensive scotch - three big pluses in my book.

Season Four

Michael Emerson wins again as the vile Benjamin Linus. He was good the entire show, but this season took him to another level. Because now he wasn't just manipulating his own people and the castaways; he also had to deal with the mercenaries who came to the island to hunt him down. This is the season where we see the greatest range in Emerson's terrific performances. He is as conniving and strategic as ever, but we also witness him at his most vulnerable when his daughter is killed, at his most callous when he kills Keamy, thus dooming the freighter in the process, and at his most unexpectedly badass when he wipes out those two horsemen in the desert after leaving the island.

Season Five

If there was a season that Terry O'Quinn dominated for me, it was Season Five. The range of emotion he has to go through is ridiculous - throughout the season, you see him go from blindly brave in his attempts to rescue the castaways stuck in time jumping hell to his suicidal self-doubt back on the mainland to his otherworldly confidence when he returns to the island...it's the last that is most impressive, given what we learn about Locke in the Season Five finale. Only after that reveal do you go think back and realize just how different O'Quinn's takes on the Locke and Bad Guy Locke are. It's subtle work, and brilliant. Second place here would go to Josh Holloway. There's a lot for Sawyer to do this season as he tries to keep everything from falling apart in Dharma-land, and he deserves a mention for some real top-notch work.

Season Six

For me, this season was Matthew Fox's finest moment. The reluctant leader tries to take the backseat because whenever he asserts himself, someone gets hurt. But now he knows that John Locke was right, he knows now that he has a purpose, and he is just waiting to see how it all plays out. Compare the angry, stubborn 'man of science' from Season One to the 'man of faith' who calmly stares down Richard over that stick of dynamite, and you can see just how far the character has come. This season, he finally accepts his destiny and it is pretty awesome to watch.

I have also created a top ten list of the show's best and worst moments. You can find that HERE.

Lost (Spoiler Free)

Lost - Spoiler Free

This review is for those who have never seen Lost, the people who are on the fence and can't decide whether they want to commit. Since the review is mostly for newcomers, it will be vague and spoiler free. For everyone else, I will have a more detailed and spoiler-laden post coming soon.

I came to Lost really late. By the time I became interested in the show, it had already been on for so long that I figured I might as well wait until it was all finished and watch the whole thing on DVD. But it was a commitment. That is six seasons worth of TV. It takes some time. Some folks who have never seen the show might be like, "ugh, I don't know if I have time. It is really that good? I have all this new stuff to watch, do I really have to go back and watch this?"

And the answer is an unequivocal YES. Because Lost at its best represents TV at its finest. For the most part, it is one of the most compelling and addictive shows I have ever seen.

The most basic, spoiler-free write up I can give is: a plane crashes on a remote island and the survivors try to stay alive. But this island is strange and mysterious, in good and bad ways, and our survivors are not alone. The cast of characters was huge, and included everything from con men to doctors to rock stars. If I had to list all the characters, this post would go on forever. But one of Lost's greatest strengths is that for six seasons, it adeptly balanced all the characters, adding nuance and depth to each one so that by the finale, we felt we knew them as people - this is quite a feat because most shows struggle to achieve this with one character, and Lost literally pulls it off with over a dozen. Now there are a few exceptions.  A handful of characters never worked for me, but for the most part, they gave us a superb group of memorable and three dimensional heroes and villains. And since the Lost producers were adamant about the show being about the characters first and foremost, I feel I should talk more about that.

The technique that the producers used to help us get to know the characters was by focusing on a single person each episode and intercutting the current plotline on the island with a flashback from their lives before the crash. This was a creative and invaluable tool for helping the audience get to know these characters as human beings, and the technique has been copied many times since - most notably in Battlestar Galactica. While I liked Battlestar a lot, the flashbacks never worked for me because they were poorly used, reinforcing points we already knew and forcing the actors into bad wigs or silly situations that made no sense. In Lost, they actually bring something new to the table and for the most part, connect us to the characters (though they also do have their share of bad wigs). Admittedly, as the seasons went on, the producers started to run out of ideas for flashbacks and you can see them spinning their wheels looking for stories ("hey, let's do an episode about how Jack gets a tattoo!" I'm not joking). But for the most part, this was an inventive way to get to know the characters.

It doesn't hurt that the cast is spot on, delivering stellar performances - everyone is putting in some amazing, career-best work. Even for the characters I didn't like, it was the writers who dropped the ball and not the actors, who gave it their all every single episode. And on one related one side note, Terry O'Quinn plays the mysterious Locke, arguably the most popular character on the show. O'Quinn has always been one of my favorite character actors. I've dug him since he played Howard Hughes way back in The Rocketeer. Whenever his familiar face popped up in a movie, I gave a little thumbs up. So to be able to see him finally take the spotlight in a major role and knock it out of the park...it was awesome to see. Okay, side note over.

Aside from the cast, Lost is truly impressive from a technical standpoint. The look of the show was very cinematic, with lush and pristine camera work better than what you see in most television shows. The directing and writing were all for the most part quite good.

But now the bad. And there is some bad. There are always some weak episodes in every show, and Lost is no exception. Especially in the third season, you can see the producers desperately trying to come up with some delaying tactics. The problem was that they had an idea of where they wanted to go, but since they had no idea how long the show would be on for, they were scrambling to spread things out. Once ABC announced Lost would end after Season 6, the show shifts, digs in, and starts barreling towards its climax in a fairly focused way through its last few seasons.

While I liked most characters, most of them had at least one subplot or episode that was kind of lame. I don't want to go into details and ruin anything. But we can talk about it once you've seen it!

The other thing that I think that is important to note is that as the show progresses, it definitely gets more convoluted and bizarre. The show embraces its more mysterious elements. I don't think that was a bad thing. I liked it. But I can see how some people would be turned off, and even I have to admit that the first season by far was the best of the show.

The last thing to address was a major concern during the show's run. I heard a lot of complaints from regular viewers about mysteries not being solved fast enough, questions not being answered, and new characters popping up and distracting from who we really want to focus on. Those viewers are right, but they had an entirely different experience than I did. They had to deal with reruns, season breaks and a Writers Strike that shut down all production in Hollywood. They would literally have to wait for months for a new episode, hoping to find out the fate of a beloved character, only to get an episode about some new character they didn't care about. So the loyal audience was right to complain, but IGNORE THEM! When you watch the show on DVD, you don't need to wait, you don't get affected by the Writers' Strike, and if you watch an episode with a character you don't care about, it's no big deal because you can just watch the next episode right away. And most importantly, on DVD you realize that the showrunners do answer most of the questions and solve most of the mysteries, and they do it at a reasonable pace. No, they don't answer every single question, but they do answer the ones that matter. On DVD, Lost is a different and probably a heckuva lot less frustrating experience.

So there you go. I can't say much more without ruining things. The overall message is that despite some weaknesses, Lost was superb television. And when the show is cooking, it was easily the best show on television. If you haven't taken the plunge, I say do it!

To see my Spoiler-Full review of the show's finale, click HERE. For my top ten lists of the show's best and worst moments, click HERE.

MVP: This is a tough one because each season had its own MVP for me. And I will go into my individual season MVP honors in my next post since that will include spoilers. But for the series as a whole, I think I am going to give it to composer Michael Giacchino (Star Trek, Up). Most shows have a musical formula, which sounds the same every week - a comfortable soundscape that the composers are rarely allowed to deviate from in terms of form or function. It is a rare thing when a composer is given the liberty to branch out and go crazy. But that is what Giacchino does here, and the result is brilliant.  He doesn't only have a main theme, but an individual theme for every single character. And what is remarkable is how these themes evolve over the years, how they grow and expand and how they merge with other themes when appropriate to create new themes. It is an absurdly complicated score, with hints of motifs in Season 1 expanding into full blown glory by the final season. It's a staggering musical accomplishment. At least, to me it is. Is the music the best thing about Lost? No, absolutely not. But Giacchino's work might just be most impressive musical achievement in the history of series television. It's a bold statement, I know, but I firmly believe it. And for that reason, I have to give him a MVP here.

TRIVIA: The castaway's leader, Jack Shepherd, was not supposed to make it very far. He was supposed to be played by Michael Keaton and then as a crazy twist, he was going to get killed off halfway through the first episode. For whatever reason, the studio actually convinced the producers not to kill a major character so quickly. Keaton then backed out. And then Matthew Fox (Party of Five) was cast. Also, it is interesting that with Jack dead, the castaway's leader was going to be Kate, a frumpy, middle-aged businesswoman. But when things shifted, Kate became the young, beautiful badass played by Evangeline Lilly.