No, You May NOT Borrow My Season Four DVDs

Hello my dear friends -

I don't think I have to tell you that the premiere of Season Five is now just a week away. Tonight, ABC will replay the entire three-part Season Four finale, "There's No Place Like Home," beginning at 8 PM ET. If you still don't feel completely back up to speed after that, my recaps should do the trick: they're here (for the first hour) and here (for the second and third hours).

Today, however, I wanted to post about a surprise I received last month. Despite the fact that my husband and I had agreed to not buy each other holiday gifts, one day near the end of December he called from work and revealed that a present was indeed on its way to me, and that he felt like he better tell me what it was in advance so that I'd be sure to be home when it was delivered.

After I threw a five-minute-long hissy fit about him making me look bad (not to mention feel guilty) because I stuck to our no-gifts decision, he said, "Check your email and you'll understand."

As it turns out, a good friend of ours who works for Disney (huge, HUGE shout-out to CH!) had received word of a private employee event at which the executive producers and some of the writing team from Lost would be signing Season Four DVDs (for those of you not familiar with the ways of Corporate America/The Man, Disney owns ABC). He knew he'd never be able to live with himself or look me in the eye ever again if he didn't go (I made that part up but hope it's true), and so he went, took pictures and secured a signed DVD set and a snazzy Season Four t-shirt for me.

Below are the shots my husband had forwarded to reveal what my gift was. Needless to say, I was beside myself with excitement in addition to being completely surprised -- that's certainly the kind of news that you just don't see coming. But can you believe that our friend didn't get even one picture of himself with any of the Lost peeps?!?! Or perhaps he did, but feared my reaction and level of jealousy and therefore decided not to include them in his message. Yeah, I'm sure that's it.

Above: the Lost Season Four DVD set in the foreground and Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof (aka: Darlton) in the background. How artsy!

The next several pictures are of the writing and script team. So as to not repeat myself again and again in the captions for every picture, just know that at the table, from left to right, were: Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, Eddy Kitsis, Brian K. Vaughan, Elizabeth Sarnoff, Kyle Pennington and Gregg Nations. (The links go to their respective Lostpedia pages, which detail the work they've each done on the show.)






Here's Damon writing, "Dear e, you are truly the biggest nerd I know, and I know a lot of them. Congratulations."


Yay, Carlton's a fellow lefty!


Eventually, the DVDs arrived safely in Chicago and I had a lot of fun trying to make out the signatures. You can take a guess yourself for each disc and then hold your mouse over the pictures to see if you were right.





Wouldn't you agree that Pennington wins for Most Illegible Autograph? Writing sideways on the disc was an extra-special touch.

Carlton definitely claims the Clearest Signature award, but overall I'm pretty sure that the whole crew used to be doctors in their past lives. (The cat's out of the bag in the picture below... Damon did not write a personal note about my nerdiness on the front of the set. But I'm sure if he knew who the discs were for, he would have... right?)


Rest assured that I wouldn't dare risk ruining any of the signatures and/or getting any of the discs stuck in my laptop or DVD player -- I bought a "normal" Season Four collection that I've used to watch the bonus features and replay a few episodes.

Next Wednesday night, my triumphant Lost trifecta will be complete: a set visit (with "Ben" and "Locke" encounters, to boot), a signed DVD set from my writing heroes, and a season premiere on my birthday. Do you think I should be worried that the Lost gods will punish me for all this bragging and cause my satellite feed to fail on the 21st?

If that happens, no matter where you are, you'll hear my screams.

But before the big event is upon us, be sure to check back with me here on LLL one more time -- I still intend to post my thoughts on the Season Five previews. And yes, besides having seen those clips, I've remained spoiler-free. On that note, if you're not aware of this already, be forewarned that tons of entertainment writers have seen Lost's next two episodes, so there are currently varying levels of Season Five details all over the Internet. This Saturday there will be an event in NYC where parts of the premiere will be shown, so I'm going to be extra cautious about avoiding spoilers come this weekend. If you also want to be surprised by what you see on the 21st (and after such a long wait, who wouldn't?), I advise you to do the same.

Until next time,
- e