LOST Fan

The new episode will be at 9:00. It’s called Dead is Dead. Are you seeing a trend here with repeated-word titles? First, there was What Happened, Happened. Now, there’s Dead is Dead.

Of course we know that on LOST dead isn’t always dead. Dead is sometimes undead. Dead is also sometimes a few days in a coffin before rising again, good as new, albeit too formally dressed for a tropical island. If you’re an actor on LOST, then dead means never having to say that your contract is over, because you can always come back in a flashback.

This will be a Ben-centric episode. In honor of that, here’s a video of Michael Emerson answering viewer questions, in “Ask Lost,” which I think is the start of a new internet-extra series from ABC.

Schedule for April 7, 2009

9:00 pm to 10:02 pm — New episode, Dead is Dead

(An hour earlier in Central Time)

Next week there will be another new episode, but on April 22 there will be a clip show, called Lost: The Story of the Oceanic 6, instead of a new episode.

Josh Holloway (wearing a shirt, but with the top buttons undone) is the featured actor in this week’s official video podcast. He talks about the evolution of his character, Sawyer.

The podcast also has clips of some of the best moments of LaFleur, including the instant-classic scene of Sawyer and Juliet kissing in the Dharma kitchen.

Holloway said all of that domestic bliss was a shock. Sawyer had always been a “fun weekend,” not a relationship kind of guy.

Not to mention that he and Juliet didn’t get the best of starts. In fact, the first time the two of them met, she shot him with a taser. (I had forgotten about that!)

“Does a tiger change his stripes?” Holloway asks. “I hope not totally. I hope they bring his edge, keep it sharp.”

Evangeline Lilly was on Jimmy Kimmel’s show last night. He asked her if Kate was pregnant, and Lilly didn’t know — or if she did know, she wasn’t saying.

It makes sense that Kate would be pregnant. First she pops up, out of the blue, in Jack’s bed. Then there is that whole weird thing where people on Flight 316 were supposed to be surrogates for the people on 815. If Locke, in his coffin and borrowed shoes, was supposed to be a stand-in for Jack’s father, and Hurley, with his guitar, was supposed to be a stand-in for Charlie, then it would make sense to have a pregnant woman on board to be a stand-in for Claire.

That would also open up some interesting possibilities in terms of time travel. The last time we saw Kate and her group on the Island, they seemed to be in the 1970s. If Kate should happen to stay in that time period until she gave birth, then her child would be around 30 years old by the time that Flight 815 took off from Australia.

Maybe Kate will give birth to herself? I’m just joking. I think.

I had posted these two brief interviews with Lance Reddick earlier, but I was unable to incorporate them into the “Abaddon/Lance Reddick” category index. So I’m reposting them here for the sake of completeness for anyone who is reading through that category.

Both interviews were released before “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” aired.

The relevant segment on the first interview starts at 1:03:

The second video has been removed from YouTube, but you can see it at this link. It’s worth watching — it’s only about a minute long, but quite revealing.

As for the character of Abaddon — after all this time that I was so eagerly awaiting his return, I’m disappointed that he got killed off so quickly. I know this show has a habit of abruptly killing off some of its best characters — but they didn’t give this one much air time.

I wonder if Reddick was too busy with Fringe to do more than the one episode of LOST this year, and if that was why the producers got rid of the character. The second interview above seems to suggest that might be the case.

Or perhaps Abaddon might still come back as one of the un-dead, or as one of the pre-dead in a flashback or time jump. With LOST, you never know.

Here he is again, featured in the official ABC podcast of the week, along with our old friends Damon and Carlton (or, as some call them, “Darlton”).

Darlton also mention the smoke monster, so I’m going to assume that it’s coming back into the story very soon, most likely tonight.

(I didn’t even know these podcasts existed, until I happened to stumble over one today. It’s good! I’m going to look for them from now on.)

That’s what Daniel Dae Kim (Jin) said in an interview with the AP.

I thought the actors didn’t know what was going to happen?

But apparently he does, this time, and he says (here comes the slight spolier) that the monster is as old as the Island.

In another interview, this one on video from EW.com, he talks about how it feels to know that Jin is alive (”given this economy” he says, “it feels really good”) and what he thinks about all the time travel in the show this season:

In an interview published today in The Daily Beast, Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet) said that it would be “wonderful … the creepiest, but the best thing” if her character ended up with Ben.

She may have been joking (or maybe not), but what she said reminded me of something from Season Four. Do you remember the creepy scene where Ben takes Juliet to see Goodwin’s body?

Michael Emerson is so good here. I think it’s one of his best performances on the show, and that’s saying a lot. The pause before his last line, and then the way he says it — just amazing.

I wouldn’t want to see Ben pair off with anyone on the show. To me, he’s like a creature from another planet, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to mate with the Earthlings. Better that he remain asexual.

As for Juliet, I like the rapport that’s developing between her and Sawyer. Yes, I know, Sawyer and Kate have a chemistry that burns with the intensity of a thousand suns. But Kate can be annoying. And Juliet and Sawyer are so cute when they are sarcastic together.

Who would you like to see pair off? Cast your vote(s) below.

Who would you like to see be together as a couple by the end of the show?
( polls)

Screenshot and video from Lost 4×06 The Other Woman (c) ABC

My favorite part of this video interview is when Evangeline Lilly tells those of us who love the character stories that we just have to be patient. She promises that the show will get there. They have to do a lot of set-up during the first half of Season 5, she says, but then they’ll get back into the stories of the people.

And for those of you who do love the time travel element, Matthew Fox is on your side, and he hastens to assure you that the science-fiction aspects will continue to be a very necessary part of the whole world that is LOST.

I like trying to figure out the puzzles that the show presents, and I like the time-travel stuff, but only up to a point. Most of the season so far, except for the wonderfully Hurley-centric episode The Lie, has been too much, for my taste, about the vertigo-inducing time jumps, and not enough about the characters, and their connections, interactions, and struggles to redeem themselves from whatever haunts them from the past.

I had been worried that the show might be permanently spinning off in a direction that was less interesting to me than what they had done in previous seasons. So I was relieved to hear Lilly say that the stuff I like the most will be coming back!

What’s your favorite part of the show? The character development? The science-fiction aspects? Or do you like them both equally?

Screenshot and video (c) Entertainment Weekly