LOST Fan

There will be a new episode this week at 9:00 pm to 10:02 (an hour earlier in Central Time.) The title of the new episode is “Some Like it Hoth,” clearly a play on words on the Marilyn Monroe classic movie “Some Like it Hot” — but what is “Hoth”?

According to Wikipedia, which knows a lot more than I do:

In the fictional universe of Star Wars, Hoth is the sixth planet of a remote system of the same name. It is a world covered in snow and ice, with numerous moons, and pelted by meteorites from a nearby asteroid belt. Native creatures include the wampa and the tauntaun.

Is the reference to “Hoth” in the episode title actually a Star Wars reference, or could it be something else? The first Star Wars movie opened in May, 1977, and the last time we saw the Dharma Initiative Losties, they were living in 1977. But apparently “Hoth” was not mentioned in a Star Wars movie until the Empire Strikes Back which came out in 1980.

In LaFleur, the storyline of the Dharma Losties was moving forward and back in 3-year leaps. Will we see a leap forward in this episode to 1980?

Or will Hoth turn out to be something else entirely — a name of a character or perhaps even a mispronunciation of something else?

On the 4/9 Official Audio Podcast, Darlton say that they are particularly proud of this episode. The show needed a bit of fun, they say. After the seriousness of Ben almost being strangled by his dead daughter, and before we start heading into the intensity of the lead-up to the finale, they thought we could use a breather.

Schedule — April 15, 2009

9:00 pm - 10:02 pm — New episode “Some Like it Hoth”

(an hour earlier Central Time)

Note: On April 22, there won’t be a new episode. Instead, there will be a clip show. After that, though, it should be smooth sailing all the way to the finale.

Once again, there will be only one hour of LOST on Wednesday.

The new episode is called Whatever Happened, Happened. According to Darlton on the March 26 official audio podcast, this will be a Kate-centric episode, complete with flashbacks! I know that some of you are cheering now at the thought of a Kate-centric episode, while others (you know who you are!) are groaning, throwing things, and tearing out your hair.

The episode title appears to refer to the question of time travel paradoxes. Was Faraday correct when he said that what happened in the past couldn’t alter the future — or was Sayid successful in his attempt to change the future by killing little Ben?

At first glance, the title — whatever happened, happened — seems to suggest that Faraday was correct. But perhaps the title was meant to be ironic! So I guess we’ll just have to watch to find out.

Schedule April 1, 2009

9:00 new episode Whatever Happened, Happened

(an hour earlier in Central time)

At the time I wrote this, last week’s episode, He’s Our You, was available on abc.com, but just in the regular version, not the pop-up hint enhanced one. Maybe they’ll post that one later??

ABC is changing the schedule around again, which is always confusing.

This week, there will be a new episode at 9:00 to 10:02 pm, as usual, but instead of showing a pop-up enhanced rerun at 8:00 the way they’ve been doing all season (except for last week), ABC will be showing non-LOST material in that hour instead. At 8:00 they’ll be showing Scrubs, and at 8:30, the new show Better Off Ted.

Last week, I turned on the TV a few minutes before LOST was about to start and saw the very end of Better Off Ted. From the little I saw, it looked good! The one person I recognized was Portia de Rossi, who was in the late great Arrested Development. Better Off Ted seemed to have some of Arrested Development’s sense of off-beat humor as well, although maybe not as quickly paced. It looked promising enough that I’m to going to try to catch it tomorrow.

LOST’s new episode is called “He’s Our You,” which is a strange title. When I first saw it, I couldn’t parse the phrase at all no matter how I tried, and thought that “You” might be some kind of acronym — something like “He’s Our Yucky Onepiece Underwear.” Well, not that exactly. But I was saved from coming up with even worse acronyms when I listened to the March 19 Official Audio Podcast.

On the podcast, our friends Darlton (Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof) reveal that the episode will be about Sayid (yay!). Where the title comes in is that Sayid will be introduced to someone in the Dharma Initiative with the line “He’s our you” — presumably meaning that this other character is the Dharma Initiative’s torturer (or else the Dharma Initiative’s lover, Darlton joke — at least I think they are joking).

Schedule — March 25, 2009

9:00 to 10:02 pm — new episode He’s Our You

(an hour earlier in Central Time)

If you want to see the pop-up enhanced rerun of “Namaste,” which will not be shown on TV this week, you can watch it on the abc.com website.