Come Monday, It'll Be Alright

Monday, February 4th, 2008, that is!

Hello my dear friends,

I have a few Lost goodies worth passing along to you on this fine Friday.

NEW NIGHT AND TIME SLOT

As first brought to my attention by CR and then confirmed to me by DarkUFO (who has an inside source, trust!), our beloved show will be moving to Monday nights at 8 EST/7 CST in just 136 days. I am indifferent about the move to Mondays, but much happier about the earlier time (and if you will remember, that was its original time slot). Though ABC has yet to officially confirm this news, I think it will happen. When they do officially confirm it, I will let you know.

Some people on the boards are happy because they will watch Lost at 8, Heroes at 9 and 24 at 10. I don't watch Heroes (and won't start because I can't stand that Hayden chick), but I do watch 24, so I am excited to check in with my two crazy Jacks on the same night - call it a Jack Attack, if you will.


TRIPLE-DUH! LOCKE WINS THE CHARACTER CUP

Since the season finale, DarkUFO has been running a "character cup" tournament on his site. And guess who won for Best Character? Why would I be posting about it if it wasn't my man Locke? And wouldn't you know it, but my second favorite character, our brotha Desmond, came in second overall. If you check DarkUFO's main page after the weekend, the entire "awards ceremony" should be posted.


THE AFTERMATH OF LOCKE'S EMMY WIN

I have analyzed the stills from Terry O'Quinn's acceptance speech, and I am very worried. I believe that both he and Michael Emerson cannot escape the influence their characters have had on their lives. I learned how to do this kind of interpretation by reading Us Weekly, Star, In Touch, and the like for as long as I can remember. They are always having "body language experts" determine whether or not people are REALLY in love or REALLY having a fight and that kind of crap. So here is my assessment. Tell me I'm wrong:

Locke's words shared his victory with Benry, but his body language says, "I'm comin' for you, Benry. I am Jacob's Chosen One, and you need to deal. You tried to freak me out in the spookalicious cabin, but then you realized that I COULD hear Jacob, because I rock the house. Even your bullet could not kill me in the Skeleton Pit. I survived an eight-story fall, I am good friends with Smokey, I proved just as conniving as you are in getting Sawyer to kill Papa Locke, and lest you forget - I have looked into the eye of this Island, and what I saw was beautiful. You better move on out to the Four-Toed Statue and stay there, because you will never triumph over me. For I am John Locke."

Now on to Benry (Michael Emerson).

Benry nodded and attempted to smile for the cameras, but as you can clearly see in this photo, he was actually thinking: "John Locke, you poor, poor man. You stand up there, collecting your award, waving to your fans, blinding us all with the sparkles on your tie... but it means nothing in the jungle of the Island. The Island will frown upon your idolizing of the winged statue, and you will suffer greatly for it. Jacob will forsake you, the now-mysteriously-tall Waaaaaalt will turn his back on you, your fellow Lostaways already hate you... you are done for. Enjoy your last moments of happiness. You can never beat me, for I am Benry."

I call a throw-down in Season Four!


THE RETURN OF THE PODCAST

What? You may be thinking. A podcast?

That's right, the producers randomly released another podcast today, claiming that it was in celebration of the anniversary of the crash of Flight 815 (September 22, 2004 ). I would like to think of it a little less morbidly - how about "in celebration of the beginning of Lost"?

Either way, they gave fans what I consider to be some MAJOR direction regarding theories on what is going on overall. I do not consider any of what they said to be "spoilers," because they didn't say who the new cast members are or anything that definitely is or is not going to happen plot-wise, they simply ruled out one major theory. So I am not going to hide what they said in a link to another page as I did with the information from Comic-Con, you have been forewarned and can read on if you choose.

Here we go:

Damon confirmed that as of the end of the third season, the Lostaways have been on the Island somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 days... "they're coming up on Christmas, though you wouldn't know it by the weather." But then they were quick to say that the show still spans a period of time much greater than that, with "the earliest flashback being probably in the mid-1960s" with Benry being born, to the first flash-forward. They commented, "We've gone onto an undetermined time in the future. But we know that they have KRZR phones and beards." (e: remember that the date of the newspaper clipping Jack carried around said April 5, 2007, so we DO know when it was in the future.)

Damon continued: "We are busy pounding out episodes. Sixteen episodes a season for the next 3 years and then Lost will be over. We've been back in production since the middle of August. We're shooting episodes, not sure exactly when we will go back on air. We've heard February, but haven't heard the date or time. I'm hoping for 4 pm on Saturday."

(e: At another point, Damon slipped and said "the first week in February." So I do think the information on February 4th is correct.)

They then called certain podcast listeners from a radio booth, drawing from a list of questions submitted over the Internet.

Q & A Session

Q. Have you guys, from the very beginning, had a plan for the "dreaded love triangle" between Jack, Sawyer and Kate? Or do you get swayed by opinions?

A. One of us is a Jater and one of us is a Skater (e: that means that between Carlton and Damon, one wants Kate to end up with Jack (Jaters) and one wants her to end up with Sawyer (Skaters)). We have agreed on who she will ultimately end up with. (e: notice they didn't say that it will necessarily even be either one of them.)

Then then said that they get sewing kits from Jaters (because of how Kate sewed up Jack's wound when they first met) and skateboards from the Skaters. I'm crazy, but I'm not that crazy!!! Plus, I don't even care about this element of the show!

Anyway, they reconfirmed that the flash-forward and what has happened between Jack and Kate in said flash-forward, is not "the end of the show."

OK, my friends... here it comes, the big dismissal of one of my major theories. Are you ready for it?

Q. As far as the flash-forward goes, is that a definite occurrence that will take place or is it just a possible scenario, one possible future - so maybe if Jack makes it back to the Island he can change it?
A. We are not big fans of "multiple futures..." that would kind of rob the story of its stakes in a certain way. The future is the future. We are not going to go back and re-cast the future by affecting events of the past and then all of a sudden having a completely different future. We're not saying that time and space-time and the ability to travel through time will not continue to be a motif of the show. But everything that we have to say about time travel is covered in "Flashes Before Your Eyes" (Desmond's trippy flashback). Specifically in the scenes between Desmond and Ms. Hawking... the rules she explains to Desmond are the rules that we live by in the writers' room. The future is fixed and there are not parallel futures. Jack and Kate ARE going to get off the Island and Jack IS going to grow that beard and buy a KRZR phone and he IS going to be that miserable.

(e: BOOM. The Multiple Parallel Universe Theory is dead.)

Q. I was fascinated by the character of Richard, but now the actor who plays him is on the show Cane. If that show continues, you will have difficulty with getting him to your set. What are you going to do about that - or was Richard not that important anyway?
A. Your question shows that you have an understanding of how television works, and why some characters have to come in and out. Like with Ana Lucia, we made a contract with Michelle Rodriguez for one year, and that was it. As for Richard, we had envisioned him as Ben's second-in-command and started dropping all these clues about him and had him in Ben's flashback. Then Nestor (the actor who plays Richard) (e: Nestor? That's awesome.) went off to shoot this pilot, and we thought "Awww, pilots usually don't get picked up." Then they cast Jimmy Smits in it, and we thought, "This is not good." Now they're promoting it everywhere all over L.A. The same thing happened with Harold, who plays Michael. He went off to shoot 28 Days Later, shot a pilot. What we do in this circumstance is that we have Richard's character parked. We wait and see what happens. We have a little leeway with Cane because it's produced by ABC Studios even though it's on CBS, so perhaps we can get him out for an episode or two.

Q. Is the Nikki and Paulo story done? Are they really dead?
A. They are done. They were buried alive. We had bigger plans for them, but we decided (and heard about how) we were neglecting our other characters, so we took their entire arc and compressed it into that one episode. The moment we introduced them, the Lost community at large cried foul. So we decided to deal with them in a timely manner. We are not proud that something we tried had failed, but we liked that episode and had fun pulling that one off. The worst thing we could've done was just have them fade back into the background.

Q. Are we going to find out relatively early in Season 4 whether or not Kate is pregnant with Sawyer's baby?
A. You will find out in the first run of episodes, but I don't want to be specific about which episode.


Q. Is Mikhail (e: Patchy) still alive?
A. I don't like your tone, what are you implying?!?! (They laugh.) Have you ever known any Russians, do you know how tough they are and how long they last? You don't even know how he lost his eye! With the idea of a grenade going off at close range, we would think he would be dead. He IS dead. But being dead on Lost doesn't mean you won't be working. Look at Christian Shephard, he's been dead and has been in 10 episodes! So we might be seeing some more of Mikhail in the flashbacks.

Then Damon and Carlton asked the last guy they called who HE thought was in the coffin in Jack's flash-forward. The guy said that he thought it was Locke because of the tiff he and Jack had in the finale (which would explain why Jack was so remorseful because Locke had been right). They responded, "Hmmm, interesting. Though the guy just won an Emmy..." Then they said, "Actually, it's the "Frogurt guy." (e: "Frogurt" is the nickname of one of the castaways that's always in the background... Bernard referred to him in the episode S.O.S. in Season Two because this guy had something to do with frozen yogurt before the crash.)


IMPLICATIONS

While I am definitely sad that there are not parallel universes for our Lostaways, I take solace in the fact that they said that "time, space-time and travel through time" will still be elements of the show. I remain firm in my belief that something strange is going on with the space-time continuum because there have simply been too many references to it over the three seasons. I need to keep reminding myself that it would've been extremely hard to pull off multiple parallel universes for a prime-time hit show. But a girl can dream. Maybe after Lost is over, Desmond will get a spin-off and that's what it will be about! Crap, I better reserve Long Live Desmond right now!

- e