brooklynmutt:

heh

Hmm. We’re pretty sure she only used “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.”

In “The Man From Tallahassee,” the 13th episode of the third season of Lost, tropical shyster Benjamin Linus (Michael Emerson) conducts a mental exercise with island devotee John Locke (Terry O’Quinn). “Picture a box,” says Linus. “What if I told you that somewhere on this island, there’s a very large box, and whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it…when you opened that box, there it would be.” That scene is probably the most efficient summary of the whole of Lost. The epic series about a diverse group of damaged characters who wash up on a not-quite-deserted island has been a peerless, character-driven story, a riveting adventure, and a head-scratching sci-fi geekfest. But for all the things Lost was, the show was always measured by its potential: the engaging questions it raises and the mind-blowing answers they could yield. The obsession with Lost wasn’t about what it was, but what it could be.

Alston, making a plea for unanswered questions in the last episode of Lost.

marklisanti:

Lost: The Final Scene

(If Cuse and Lindelof had commissioned me to write the finale in a way that would satisfy only me.)

Excellent. Now we have 2 1/2 hours of our lives back on Sunday…

Caryn James on how the new film, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, makes the case for Rivers’ cultural significance: 

Without her coarse, sexually frank stand-up, where would Sarah Silverman and Chelsea Handler be? The film’s trickier, more revealing theme appears between the lines. The cameras followed Rivers for a year, beginning in mid-2008 when she turned 75, capturing moments of raw honesty often in the same scenes that display huge blind spots. In a limo on the way to a Comedy Central roast, Rivers whines to her assistant, “I am so depressed,” because she’s anticipating the predictable jokes about surgery and aging. So why does she do it? For the money—not exactly a depressing motive. (After all, she has a staff and a gilded, faux-Versailles apartment to maintain.) What emerges is a remarkable portrait of the vanity, vulnerability, and personal cost of being an ambitious old lady in celebrity culture.

soupsoup:

Goodnight, sweet procedural law drama.

Here’s what we were wondering around Nwk HQ: If they didn’t announce a cancellation, how would anyone know? L&O is like the ocean we swim in; there are so many episodes out there, playing so often, that it could have been years before anyone caught on…

leitch:

Yep. Poniewozik has it right. I’m an incredible LOST apologist, but, jeeez. Honestly, my eyes rolled back in my head so many times last night that I know what the back of my skull looks like now. (It’s fleshier, more tender than I would have thought.) Oh, and here’s the brilliant Patton Oswalt routine being referenced above.

Honestly, the thing we’ll miss most about lost is Poniewozik discussing it.

Since Twin Peaks, dozens of serial dramas have come and gone, and the only ones that have somewhat managed to work through the challenges of the format are 24 and Lost, both of which are sprinting toward their series finales. They’ve succeeded for different reasons. Fox’s 24 made serial drama work by never giving the audience enough time to stop and breathe, let alone mount a counterargument to the nonstop twists, double-crosses, and improvised torture sessions. But 24, as serial dramas go, was always a relatively low-risk investment for a viewer. Every season has been as close to a reboot as possible, and all you really need to know is that there’s this counterterrorist agent named Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and that if you have information he wants, you’d best hope there are no car batteries nearby. Lost, meanwhile, is arguably the most ambitious narrative in television history, a sprawling genre epic with dozens of characters, a bottomless bag of narrative trickery and lots of Big Ideas. If the Lost finale succeeds at satisfying even most of its audience, it’ll be the first time a show of its kind has maintained its creative and financial viability long enough to even have a resolution with integrity.

Alston, on Happy Town and the state of the TV serial drama

Alston, in a nice piece on her new show:

The sitcom for which White is most known, The Golden Girls, didn’t shy away from the issues women grapple with as they age. But it wasn’t a pity party; it was a silver-haired version of Friends—built around the idea that fun, friendship, love, and triumph don’t have to end when you move from one phase of life to the next. The only thing on the air that’s similar to it now is the new slice-of-life reality series Sunset Daze, which follows a sextet of 60ish women living in an Arizona retirement community. They’re vibrant and funny: enjoying their golden years, not defeatedly wading through them. It’s a rare example of reality television that genuinely reflects reality, rather than Hollywood’s dystopic views of divorced and widowed empty nesters marching inexorably toward isolated, joyless futures. Like Sunset Daze, White’s lioness-in-spring phase is a much-needed reminder to older women that life doesn’t end until it ends. But in order to get the message, they’ll have to pay attention to how White behaves in life, not how she acts on television.

Hosenball reports:

The New York Police Department has stepped up security at the headquarters of the Comedy Central cable channel after an Islamic extremist Web site posted apparent threats to the creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, for making fun of the Prophet Muhammad. Paul Browne, NYPD deputy commissioner and chief spokesman, says that his department for some time has been aware of the small group, which appears to organize around a now-unreachable Web site called RevolutionMuslim.com, at least one of whose purported leaders posted threats against South Park after the scatological cartoon series made fun of Muhammad, Jesus, and the icons of several other major religions, as well as numerous prominent Hollywood celebrities, in a two-part story celebrating the program’s 200th episode. “We were aware of the threat before it surfaced and took precautions to safeguard the offices of Comedy Central,” Browne says. He declined to discuss the security measures in further detail or to disclose how NYPD managed to get advance warning that the cartoon and its producers were going to be threatened.

sarahfrank:

Mindblowing Video of the Day: Stargate Studios’ virtual blackout reel. (AKA before and after green screen shots)

Coming to the realization that every shot I’ve ever seen on television is probably faked.