So last night’s episode of Lost had me riveted to the television, I must admit. Then again, I am a fan of Sayid, and any episode which uses him a lot in the story line usually has me glued to the TV set. It doesn’t hurt that he’s easy on the eyes, but his acting is really superb on the show, and he’s a consistent reason that I like to watch it.

Naveen Andrews plays soft and hard all at once so well, being a ruthless, deadly assassin and torturer that he was for the Iraqi Republican Guard, and alternating between his newfound “good guy” turn since he joined the island survivors. Sayid is one of the best examples of a bad guy put in purgatory, and I think he’s one of the compelling arguments that people have for this show being about heaven hell, evil and good, and limbo, or purgatory.

However, to my dismay, Sayid seemed to choose the evil side in last night’s episode, joining Locke’s entity (we’re still not really sure who this guy is, besides “evil incarnate”), along with Claire, and at the end of the episode a dazed and confused Kate whose played by the lovely and talented Evangeline Lilly (what did that mean anyway, is she still lost between the blurred lines of good and evil, after all, remember, this girl did kill someone in the real world, before the island).

Last night was all about Sayid, and his life back in the seeming alternate reality, the intermittent flashbacks to a different “real world” for some of the characters, including Kate, Jack, Claire, Locke, and now Jin and Sayid.  Sayid apparently works for an oil company in this alternative reality (is this the reality that would have happened had he not landed on the island, or the reality that is going to happen if Locke fulfills his promise of reuniting him with his long lost love?)

There is a tandem thing going on though, because Sayid ultimately chooses murder as the way out of his quandry back on earth, and he also chooses murder as the way out back on the island, which seemingly joins him back to the dark side with Locke and Claire.

Is the choice he made in the alternative reality the reason that he joined the dark side on the island?  It’s hard to say how the two are related.  My theory now is that the people on the island were approached by Jacob back on earth/reality and given options to make the wrongs in their life right – aka purgatory. They had the chance to prove themselves on the island, and if they fulfill their destinies on the island and make the right choices, then they ultimately will go to a good place or “heaven”.  The problem is, I’m still trying to fit these alternate flashbacks in with that theory, and it won’t quite work together.

So, I’m very excited about the show “Lost” coming back on the air in the near future. To be exact, the hit series about a group of plane crash survivors who find themselves on a mysterious island that has supernatural powers, is going to be back on it’s network, ABC, Tuesday February 2nd.

My husband and I started watching the series faithfully from the very first episode, and we were hooked in after that first fateful episode where a potentially mysterious monster that seems gigantic was revealed, but only through the shaking of trees and the earth, and the noises.

You see, we’ve never really seen much more of this monster, which incidentally is probably the smoke monster that we’ve gotten a glimpse of a few times, however, you can’t be sure, because you can’t be sure of anything on this show.  Last season was a flash forward and flash backward season, which worked, even though we though it might really stink. They pulled it off though, and showed our favorite characters, Kate and Jack, back “on earth” in normal lives, which seemed to be falling apart.

Jack is convinced that they were never meant to leave the island, and starts to sound a lot like the more superstitious and spiritual John Locke with his theories about fate and karma.  It’s an interesting turn we see the characters take that got off the island, but also, we see how they still think about everyone who was “left behind” and ultimately, how the decision is made for them to go back to the island.

I can’t wait for this next season, which if I’m not mistaken, I think they’ve decided will actually be the last, and what they have in store for us. I’m wondering if they will give us any concrete answers or leave us hanging. Either way, as long as it’s well acted, filmed, and produced, like it always has been, I’m a shoe in watcher for the whole final season, and I’ll be hanging on every word of the new Lost Season, like the true lost Geek that I am

We’ve just started the second season of the show 30 Rock, which was in jeopardy of being cancelled just a short year ago when it came up for potential renewal on NBC.  I’m glad they didn’t cancel it, because it’s one of the few intelligent, quirky and edgy comedies out there that actually tickles my funny bone more than any other new sitcom. In fact, it’s the only network sitcom I can stomach at the moment.

We tried out the Courtney Cox vehicle Cougar Town,and while that show had some good laughs and great jokes, there was just something missing. It seemed too contrived, too planned, whereas 30 Rock gives you more of a pros of comedy feel, with excellent comedic timing and even better writing by the likes of Tina Fey and other SNL alums. No wonder why the humor is edgy and hilarious.

Not that 30 Rock is without it’s dud episodes.  It definitely has those too. For example, we just watched the finale for the first season, and I’d have to count that among one of their dud episodes, especially since it was the finale and the finales are typically held to higher standards of impressions.

The chemistry between Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin is irresistible.  They’ve kind of developed that sort of comedic timing that Ted Danson and Shelly Long had in Cheers so many years ago, and that “will they or won’t they” factor is starting to creep in a bit too, although you know if they did get together, it would totally ruin the show, and it would probably end it, so they will keep sort of subtly dangling that in our face for a while I’m sure.

Kenneth, the tour guide and general gopher for all the other people on the show is great too. His wide eyed hick yet totally loyal character is great, and just looking at him makes me laugh. Not sure where this guy came from, but Hollywood should definitely give him lots more work after this show is cancelled, because he is great. Judah Friedlander, the free spirited, negative, you think he smokes weed constantly character is great too. And Tracy Morgan is awesome as the phsychotic yet loveable Tracy Jordan, a takeoff of himself and other black comedians who have been geniuses of their time, but also troubled by demons and scandals that were later made fun of.

All in all, 30 Rock has been a great filler show to watch and has provided me and my hudband with lots of laugh, big and small, I’m really glad they didn’t cancel it!

Ok, well, I’m kind of bummed to give you my review of Battlestar Galactica’s The Plan movie that was recently released on DVD.  We rented it on Blu Ray, which had some nice extras on it, however I can’t really give this movie a glowing review because I felt that there was  more footage from old seasons than anything.  Let me give you an idea of what I’m talking about.  Lee Adama and Starbuck were not even in any new scenes, the few scenes they appeared in within The Plan looked like they were just pulled from stock footage from past seasons of the show.

I guess I went into this movie with false pretenses, thinking that we were going to get some new insights on the cylon perspective.  That’s sort of how the movie was advertised, so we did go in thinking we’d gain some new understanding of things that happened, and while there were a few revelations, there was nothing new or groundbreaking that we probably didn’t already have some clue about from logical deduction in the first place.  For example, we find out that Sharon Valeri, aka Boomer, was triggered from a sleeping agent to an active cylon by Father Cavil using a small elephant figuring and putting it in her hands to make her active.

We see how she sabotaged the ship, and how she was triggered to snap out of her humanity and into cylon mode when she shot Adama.  We sort of get a little better showing of how cylon Leoban becomes infatuated with Starbuck, played by Katee Sackhoff (can I tell you again how disappointed I was that she was barely in it, except for from old footage?)

Father Cavil is probably the only one with any real meaty role in The Plan, and we do get a better understanding of his character’s struggles against his own models, how there was essentially a good and bad model of him, one that believed the humans were supposed to live and it was a mistake to attack them, and one that believed humanity should be exterminated once and for all for all of it’s grievous “sins”.

All in all, I have to admit, it was nice to get that familiar chill up my spine when the movie started, excited to see my favorite old characters at it again, but ultimately this was just a big rehashing of the same recycled footage with a little bit of gratiuitous extras.

Larry David is a comic genius of sorts.  If you watch the HBO show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, which stars big time television producer and legendary co creator and writer of probably the biggest sit com hit ever, Seinfeld, as himself, then you know what I’m talking about.

Not only is his comic acting and timing spot on, who would have known after he spent years behind the scenes in his earlier days as a TV producer, but the man has talent for writing the most hilarious, albeit totally irreverant and uncomfortable scenes in the history of TV.  Sure, he touched on the uncomfortable, ego driven humor in Seinfeld on regular tv, but on “Curb” he can touch on that with a whole lot more leeway.

I’ve always said that Curb is like Seinfeld, only much dirtier and much more potentially offensive to the wrong viewer.  Yes, some people would be TOTALLY offended by some of the dialogue and situations in this show, so the easily offended should be warned. However, if you love edgy, quirky humor with a healthy dose of irreverence, you absolutely need to check this show out – period!

This season, Larry has concocted the ingenius idea of doing a Seinfel reunion as the background story.  Trust me, these characters still have the timing they used to, and they’re even funnier “behind the scenes” as themselves, where of course, they are just as quirky, only in slightly different ways than their television personas.  The second half of the season centers around Larry being approached again to do a Seinfeld reunion show.  He is hesitant, because he hates reunion shows. He thinks they’re always forced and phony. He’s right. There are also multiple references to them “blowing” the series finale, since so many people complained that it really wasn’t as good as it should be.

Larry cooks up a hair brained idea that doing the reunion show might be able to get him back together with his estranged wife, Cheryl, played by another great actress with great timing, Cheryl Hines.  She’s started acting again and is interested in starring as George Costanza’s ex wife in the reunion show.  Of course, having an ulterior motive (his M.O.), he agrees to do the reunion show. So, basically you get two shows in one, they do a Seinfeld reunion without actually doing it, it’s ingenius really, and trust me, it’s funny as hell.

This season was just like the others, filled with bust a gut humor, where you’re laughing so hard you’re crying.

Yes, I’m not ashamed to admit that I am a total BSG geek. For those of you who don’t know the lingo, BSG is Battlestar Galactica. I know, quite a mouthful for the name of a television show, but this gem is probably the best piece of television I’ve ever seen in my life. Period. End of story. Even if you’re not totally into sci-fi types of things, this show has it all. It’s got drama, it’s got love stories, it’s got the sci-fi aspect.

It’s got a little bit of blood, it’s got suspense, murder, action, you name it. More importantly though, Battlestar Galactica has the best cast I’ve seen on any show, the best dialogue and most original story lines, and most interestingly, it has it’s very own lexicon that totally works. For example, the books in the BSG universe have, and for that matter, every other piece of paper, is not squared edges, instead it is cut off across the corner edges, like someone cut a triangle off the tip.

There’s also the advent of the great sort of swear word, but really not “frak”, which believe me, if you started watching the show, you wouldn’t be able to stop saying and almost saying this when you mean to curse. That’s just one example of how this show gets inside your head. We watched it when it was all out on DVD, just a year or so after the last season aired it’s last episode, and I couldn’t imagine watching it while it was on, having to wait from week to week to see what was going to happen.

Enough with that though. We’ve been done with the show, all seasons, for a while now, and we’ve been waiting to get the new movie, which is the story told from the CYLON perspective of the human/CYLON war. We finally got it in the mail yesterday, and we’ll be watching it tomorrow night, the night afterThanksgiving. So I’ll have a review for you all shortly on what I thought. I’m sure I’ll love it, there’s really nothing they could do that I wouldn’t be totally enthralled with at this point, I’m convinced.

Well, I have to say, I’m more than a little bummed that Joss Whedon’s latest stab at television, the fun and mysterious Dollhouse, is going to be cancelled from the Fox netword.  I wondered why, when I thought it was one of the more fun and interesting shows I’ve seen on television in a while, and Eliza Dushku does a great job as the brainwashed bad ass Echo, but then I read that they were only averaging about 3 million viewers this season, which is pretty dismal for any television show (I have to admit, I wasn’t savvy as to how many million made a hit vs. a ratings flop), which is puzzling, because they were down almost half their viewers in their second season.

I can’t imagine that anyone who watched the first season of the Dollhouse, which we’re still in the midst of on DVD, would not want to watch the second season, so I tried to figure out the reasons they might have had such a dramatic drop off, to no avail.

Who’s to say that they don’t come back on another network though, that has happened with other shows before, but it’s hard to say whether another network will take a gamble on it or not. I’m sure it can’t be cheap to make, since it has some great fight scenes and the production of it doesn’t look cheap on it’s surface, so a network would have to take that expense on and perhaps market the show to a different demographic.

I’m sure a lot of their demographic now is the typical same audience that watches shows that are either supernatural or science fiction in nature. Whedon’s other hits include Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, so there’s a chance that much of that same audience might transfer to the Dollhouse, which is puzzling since it’s ratings weren’t that high.  It bums me out that good shows like this get cancelled while other crap that’s really not imaginative or well acted gets to stay on the air.  I guess such is life.

Another show that bit the dust was Southland, a cop show, and a few others that I never heard of.  Let’s hope Dollhouse gets picked up by another network, that’d be awesome!

Joshua on one of my favorite reality tv shows of all time, and yes, probably one of my guiltiest pleasures of all times since it takes up three days of my already busy week, departed the show this week when he was voted out on a three to one vote from the Big Brother house after being lead to believe that he was staying. 

Josh is the gay, or bisexual he says, man who has had numerous blowups in the house, and seems sneaky and conniving, but is nonetheless one of my favorite houseguests because he’s on the team I’m rooting for with James, and because he’s got that heartless, sort of bitchy quality that makes him fun to watch on the Big Brother show. 

He is explosive though, and for that I think he paid with his leaving the house since people tend to feel they can’t trust such explosive personalities.  Ryan, who I thought didn’t have a chance of staying so long in the Big Brother house, is still left, even though I’m not really sure why.  He and Joshua had an alliance that apparently didn’t mean anything to Ryan after he was talked out of it by Natalie (who didn’t know he had the alliance). 

And another thing, if I have to look at Natalie’s rat nest hair, screechy voice, and hypocritical Christian butt any longer, I really don’t think I can take it.  I don’t understand why Sheila, whom I also have a distaste for on the show, and Natalie, have such huge powers of persuasion in this house, but all I can really chalk it up to is the fact that none of these people have any spines if they are listening to these two delusional chicks. 

Natalie is actually an embarrassment of a woman.  She chases after a guy, Matty, who has no interest in her and even treated her downright cruelly at times, and even after he has left the house, she keeps talking about him, staring at his picture, and saying that she is avenging him.  Why, honey? 

He certainly wouldn’t give a rat’s a#$ if you left the house when he was there!  Natalie is not only annoying, but she is really a weak woman who has to have the approval of a man to be accepted, she actually hard to watch because she’s a pathetic basketcase who is also a stalker. 

The last episode of Lost, my currently favorite TV show that’s on, may have left some fans a little confused, confounded, or even further mystified by the mystery that is Lost.  Fans may have had some of their theories thrown out the window, or further confirmed by this latest episode.  For me, I’m one of the time warp/alternate dimension theorists when it comes to Lost, because it’s the only plausible explanation that encompasses most of what I’ve seen in the show thus far. 

Although the purgatory themes seemed best at first, because of all the seeming tales of evil acts and redemption as confirmed by most of the character’s back stories, seemed to point to the fact that they all had sketchy pasts and were redeeming themselves on the island.  Although this story line does not really jive with the alternative universe/ time warp theory, it’s all I cling to now when it seems they throw another wrench into pretty much every theory with each episode.

Desmond time jumps several times in the last episode, in increasing frequency toward the end, between what seems like might be his past life and the present time when he and Sayid embark on a helicopter ride back to the ship where the people who have come with Naomi to either resscue them or so something bad, as they are led to believe by the Locke character, who is often a dividing force among the characters of the show, but also a leader in many aspects. 

When the encounter some rough patches and lightning, this is when Desmond begins jumping between his two lives, and he’s confused about what’s going on.  We see that he tries to go back to his long lost love when he is in his pre-island life, and she will not have him and even despises him, and then at the end of the episode, we see that she has been searching for him (as we knew before), so we have to wonder what happened to change her mind in between.

The time jumping is what Lost is known for, but only this time we actually see Sayid jumping between two different times.  Anyone who figures out what’s going on must be granted a genius title! 

Well, apparently it was a busy week for the Big Brother contestants.  According to live feeds, I read on another site that Amanda, the “booty girl” with the butt that would make any girl envious, passed out because she is hypoglycemic and needed sugar.  She was rushed off to a hospital after also having a mini seizure-like episode after she awoke. 

Another female player, Allison, Ryan’s partner, was reportedly also rushed off in an ambulance after having a bad allergic reaction to something she ate.  No word yet on whether either contestant will be back on the show, but let’s hope they will be, because they both add a lot to the show. 

This season of Big Brother has proven to be one of the most interesting so far, if you ask me.  The twist this season, if you don’t watch, is that each player came into the house already being (unknown to them), matched up to what the producers said per personality tests was  a “perfect match” for them (romantically).  The catch was, they and their partner did everything together – slept in the same bed, made the decision on who to vote out together, and got eachother in trouble – together.

The catch has definitely thrown some wrenches in the show, getting Parker and his partner, and Ryan’s girlfriend who spilled the beans about their pre-existing relationship only two days into the game, Jen, voted off the show for being too strong and outspoken players in the game.   Ryan and Allison were saved from eviction because Jen has a big mouth, and Parker also showed that he had a trouble making side to him – never a good combination on Big Brother, if you ask me.

They’ve already lost one player, Joshua’s partner, to a family emergency, and had to replace him with another castmate Sharon who had already been voted out of the house as the first eviction with her idiot partner who got them into hot water on the first night there. 

This season of Big Brother has egos to spare, and a lot of men and women who seem to butt heads and not know how to play the game in a cool and collected way.  I’m constantly shouting at the screen DUH, but I have to admit it makes for good television watching these idiots shoot themselves in the foot over and over again.