LOST Fan

Here are the clips of the scenes from last night’s Whatever Happened, Happened where Hurley and Miles argue about time travel, in case you’d like to see them again.

There’s some wonderful dialogue here, as Hurley and Miles act out the thoughts of every LOST fan who has ever passionately defended a favorite theory about the show — or who has ever gotten a headache from trying to figure it all out and running into too many paradoxes:

Jorge Garcia and Ken Leung are such talented comic actors. We’re lucky to have them on the show!

I was looking in my stats, and I saw some searches for “damon lindelof quits lost.” What? I thought. What? I googled the phrase, and sure enough, a whole bunch of articles popped up.

I almost had a heart attack.

And then I realized (and I’m sure Dear Reader, that you came to this realization long before I did) that it must be an April Fool’s joke.

Whew.

The story, which I was able to read once I calmed down, is actually pretty funny. It claims that Lindelof went into a rage after the Conficker worm infected his laptop. The story quotes a “non-union seamstress” on the set, who said, “At first, I thought it was Carlton and Damon arguing about another continuity error, but then I realized there was none of Carlton’s usual high-pitched crying.”

And this:

Lindelof made a brief statement … “I just don’t need that kind of stress in my life. And, to be honest, we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. I mean, Charlotte’s on the island five years before she is born. The runway was built for the plane to land on, but they didn’t know to build it until someone from the plane went back in time and told them. It’s all chicken and egg. We were just making it up as we went along, and I have no clue how we were going to reach a logical, rational ending next year. I think this whole Conficker thing just helped me realize I don’t need all this. Someone else can figure it out. I really just need to simplify my life right now.” When asked if he would be returning to LOST, Lindelof replied, “Never. Never, never, never. I left the island, and I’m never going back!”

Funny stuff!

Damon Lindelof, still with us

(Photo via Lostpedia)

I liked this episode of Lost Untangled a lot better than the ones from the last couple of weeks. The part where Locke kept on croaking “Let’s … go … back … to … the … island” made me laugh out loud:

ABC made another episode of Lost Untangled:

I think this episode has a few funny moments, but I don’t find it nearly as funny as I did last week’s.

It starts off in exactly the same way, which seems too repetitive for a series that is only on its second episode. Plus the novelty of the concept itself may already be starting to wear thin. And ABC’s not giving a credit to the Fine Brothers, the original creators of action-figure videos spoofing LOST, also took off some of the luster.

What do you think? Funny or not?

Screenshot of action-figure Sun pointing a gun in the general direction of Ben is from Lost Untangled 5×05 This Place is Death (c) ABC

I still haven’t been able to find out anything about the mysterious creator of the ABC Lost Untangled video, but I did find some videos, made by a duo called The Fine Brothers, that look strikingly similar. Did ABC just rip off the idea?

Here’s the first one:

You can see more of the videos here: The Fine Bros Comedy

Locke and Sawyer action figures

This is the video they were advertising on the bottom of the screen during The Little Prince.

“This isn’t rocket science. Or maybe it is.”

Funny!

Video and screenshot (c) ABC

Funny column about LOST by Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Did you ever get confused about some plot detail in LOST, and then start to wonder if everyone else knew exactly what was going on? Did you ever worry that maybe it was just you that wasn’t getting it?

Well, you don’t need to worry about that!

In an article printed in today’s New York Times, Gregg Nations — who is not only a co-producer and the script coordinator of LOST, but is also the person in charge of keeping track of all the show’s details in order to ensure continuity — revealed that he, too, got confused:

… Mr. Nations admits that without his database he would have trouble remembering everything about the series.

That was evident when a reporter asked him a question that had been suggested by a colleague: What became of the body of Naomi, who in Season 4 was one of the rescuers from the freighter sent to search for the island? She died after Locke threw a knife into her back.

“She died in the jungle,” Mr. Nations said. “So she must still be on the island.”

But wait — didn’t Sayid insist on taking Naomi’s body back to the ship?

“You know, you’re right,” Mr. Nations said. “She was on the ship and the ship exploded. I guess she’s fish food. You found something that I wasn’t tracking. Now I guess I had better.”

That is so funny. If even the people who create the show can’t keep track of everything — if even the continuity guy doesn’t know — then surely there is no way that we mere viewers could possibly follow it all.

To help get ready for the start of Season 5 (which is coming up very soon!), here are some recaps of previous seasons.

Lost in 8:15

This is an official recap, made by ABC, done in 8 minutes and 15 seconds. A narrator talks very fast and says funny things in a deadpan voice. It covers Seasons 1 through 3.

This is also included on the first disc of the Season 4 DVD set.

Lost in 4:24

Another official recap, this one starts with a condensed version of the Lost in 8:15 video above, and then continues on to cover the first 8 episodes of Season 4 (the new material covering Season 4 starts at 3:05).

4:24 is a reference to April 24, the date that LOST came back last year after the writers’ strike.

Carlton Cuse
Damon Lindelof

Writers/Producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof do commentary for the finale of Season 4, There’s no Place Like Home Part 2, on Disc 4 of the DVD set. It’s the first time a commentary track has ever been made for any LOST season finale.

I recommend watching this if you get a chance. These guys are funny! And they get better as the episode goes on — toward the end, as they start getting punch-drunk from fatigue, they come up with increasingly goofy — and clever — comments.

They talk, tongue in cheek, about wanting to write a show that has flashbacks and flashforwards for Sawyer’s shirt (you know, the shirt that Sawyer is always taking off) — filling in the shirt’s backstory, revealing how it was made in the factory, then going into its time on the Island, and showing what the shirt realizes it has to do to redeem itself.

Another example — when commenting on the scene after the helicopter crashes into the ocean, when the characters are thrashing around in the water, the producer pair say they originally planned to have a shark rescue Desmond, but when they started filming they found they couldn’t afford to get the shark. They say they had also hoped to have the characters do synchronized swimming accompanied by a whale song.

By the end of the commentary, they’re promising to come do the laundry — and provide commentary on their doing of the laundry! — of any viewer who made it all the way through.

This is all very entertaining. Most of the commentary, though, is actually quite informative. In addition to providing background on how some of the scenes were filmed, the two discuss the characters and themes that will be important in the upcoming Season 5. I’ll talk about some of that in future posts.

Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, producer/writers on the show, made a short video spoof of “Course of the Future,” the Season 4 DVD bonus feature that I wrote about in the post below. In the spoof, which is posted online for one week only, the writers appear in the future to warn their present selves that they have ended the show badly.

It’s at Dharma Special Access. The password is yksnizdar. Again, it’s there for one week only (though I’m sure someone has posted it to YouTube by now. It’s just more fun to do the whole secret password thing.)

By the way, you’ve probably noticed that the password is “radzinsky” spelled backwards. Do you know who that is? (I had to google it to find out. It’s a very obscure reference!)

For readers new to this blog, I’m reposting a video that you may not have seen (it’s buried in the bottom of an old post, hidden behind a non-descriptive title). It’s so good that I wanted everyone to see it.

When I started this blog, I went to YouTube and looked around for LOST-related videos I might post, not knowing what I would find. I was delighted when I discovered this one, and it was the first thing I linked to on this blog. You’ll see why, when you watch it …

There’s a sequel, of sorts, for Season 2, done to a Weird Al Yankovich polka medley. If you watch it, make sure to watch it all the way to the end.

Now … carry on, carry on!

Here’s another video from the delightfully demented CapnBob (aka Robert Montjoy), whose take on Season 1, a video called Lost Rhapsody, I posted earlier.

In that first video, CapnBob took stills from the show, animated them, and set them to the music of Bohemian Rhapsody, sung as a polka by Weird Al Yankovic.

Here, he tackles Season 2, in Lost Rhapsody 2: Electric Boogaloo, again using music from Weird Al. This time it’s a medley called The Alternative Polka. The art technique is a bit different. Be sure to watch the video all the way through to see the surprise at the end.

Ah, that reminds me that Season 2 was my favorite season of all.

Jorge Garcia, who plays Hurley on the show, has a blog. He’s traveling through Ireland, and like many tourists, he enjoys writing about what it’s like to drive on unfamiliar roads, about the interesting things he sees while sightseeing — and about the “oddly pleasant” sensation of plucking a hair out of his nose. Okay, maybe this isn’t quite your average tourist blog:

I noticed I had a hair in my face. So as I started to brush it away I could feel it was coming from my nostril. Somehow I inhaled a rogue hair into my nose. And once I realized it, my first thought was to run to a mirror to check it out. And my second thought was to get the camera.

Which he does. Check it out.

The new, fifth season of ABC’s Lost won’t start until 2009 (rumor has it that it will be in late January or early February).  It’s so hard to wait!  In the meantime, though, there is plenty to talk about.  There are online puzzles and clues, news about the actors, memories of the show’s past, speculation about its future … and pictures of Sawyer without his shirt.

To start, here is a wonderfully crazy video I found on YouTube.  It takes stills from Lost’s first season, and animates them to the tune of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, as sung by Weird Al Yankovic.   The video was made by Robert Montjoy, aka CapnBob. Enjoy!

There’s lots more good stuff to come. Don’t want to miss a single drop of your Lost-talk fix? Then subscribe to the feed.