Thursday, January 13

J.J. Abrams Night

Lost and Alias. Wednesday are now competing for my favorite night of television (Sunday's have Simpsons, Arrested Development, Desperate Housewives and whatever HBO currently has to offer). Last night's episodes were very good. Lost was creepy and, of course, posed several additional questions about the characters and the island. What the hell is that giant thang? Alias is off to a really good start this season. A lot lighter and breezier than last year's brooding season. Here's what Television Without Pity has to say about both...

Lost:
Boone, God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity and Locke are doing their thang in the jungle, which involves staring at the still unopenable hatch in the ground, because Michelangelo did something similar before he carved David (think Locke's getting a bit too full of himself?). Boone wants to tell Shannon about the hatch, but Locke expresses his disdain for that idea by bopping Boone in the head, tying him up, and smearing some hallucinogenic paste onto the open wound in his skull. Of course, if you don't know that it's hallucinogenic mind paste, like many viewers, then you spend the rest of the episode on the edge of your seat; Boone frees himself and Shannon (also apparently tied by Locke), the two of them run from the Iron Giant, only Shannon doesn't make it. That's right: Lostzilla eats her, and she dies in Boone's arms. When Boone gets back to the beach, he naturally has a thing or two to say to Locke about it, only it turns out that Shannon is not dead. And Locke wanted to know what Boone would see, and Boone needed to let go of Shannon, and that sort of mystical Locke crap. So either you thought it was a great twist, or Fonzie's revving up the motorcycle. Luckily, the rest of the episode was pretty good, and apparently all of it really happened. Hurley tries to make nice with Jin, and it's funny, funny, funny (it involves Hurley pleading with Jin to pee on his foot wound). Kate figures out that Sun speaks English; Sun's making a farm. The backstory involves Boone and Shannon, who are not related by blood; they're stepbrother and stepsister. And Shannon, feeling screwed over by her rich stepmother, sets Boone up by pretending to be abused by a series of boyfriends, whom Boone pays off so they'll break up with his sister, with whom he's secretly in love ("secretly")? And then Boone and Shannon do it (in the flashback) just before they head back home to L.A. on the doomed flight.

Alias:
Syd and Marshall and Dixon and Vaughn go on a sun-filled mission to a bank that requires all of them to speak in silly accents and, again, the mission totally doesn't matter. But the whole scenario made me laugh out loud, so that's a good thing. Then Syd throws a birthday party for Agent Sean and apparently his present is…Nadia? Whocka whocka. In Apple Store news, some fictional supercomputer has been stolen and it's up to the Appleseed gang to get it back. Well, specifically, it's up to Sydney and her girlish figure and a blowed-up car to get it back. While Syd's off saving the world from men with bad facial hair and Andalusian chateaus, Nadia's being given the third, fourth, and thirtieth degrees by none other than Jack, who's kindly offered to run Nadia through her security entry tests. Or whatever. His real reason is to…test how she'll act when Syd tells her Jack killed their mother? Yeah, I'm not clear on the entire situation. But it doesn't really matter because the whole "Syd seduces the baddie in order to do her job" scenario takes most of the rest of the show to get through, with typical results. You know, it looks like Syd's nailed the mission, then something bad happens, then Agent Sean gets kidnapped, then Syd gets captured too, then Vaughn and Dix have to go help both of them, then Nadia and Jack have to go help them too, then Jack shows Nadia some secret CIA documents that tell Nadia that the Baddie of the Evening was actually Irina's killer, not Jack, then Agent Sean and Syd kick some henchman ass and Nadia shows up to save Syd's life…and kill the man she thinks killed her mother. Wow. Way to think on your feet, Jack.

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