the hands! the hair! the ridiculous cliffhanger! // fox promotional photo

It’s probable that in the next couple days, the first casting sides for season six of Bones will be released. A year ago today, the sides for “Harbingers in the Fountain” found their way onto the Internet, bringing the first spoilers—and a big foiler from Hart Hanson.

In the pages for Dr. Leacock, the dude who stabbed Brennan with a scalpel in last year’s premiere, Hart altered the scene in which Booth rescued Brennan to include this little bit:

Brennan: Yes, thank you. Don’t worry about hurting me, Booth. (Then) You saved me.
Booth kisses Brennan. She kisses him back as they sink down to the floor.

Obviously, that didn’t happen. (Most graciously accepted the “I’ve got you, baby” we got instead.)  To my recollection, such tomfoolery didn’t happen for the rest of the season, suspicious as the spoilers about Hodgins and Angela’s jail cell wedding seemed to be at the time.

With production resuming on July 20 and the sides imminent, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some suspicious spoilers in the next couple days.

I’d bet money there’ll be sides for a character called “Coffee Cart Vendor,” and if there’s going to be funny business in the new pages, that’s where it’ll be.

But while we’re on the subject of the nearly-inevitable coffee cart scene, let’s talk about what we can actually expect.

Will it be the first scene in the premiere? Will it be a joyful reunion? Will it be awkward? Are we about to be led to believe that Booth and Brennan have had no contact whatsoever in the last year? Will they be alone?

In my opinion, the scene has to happen, but with it kicking off a season which will be an incredibly angst-ridden and frustrating one, I have a hard time imagining that the coffee cart will be the romantic reunion everyone is hoping for.

So here’s what I think will happen.

Booth and Brennan will still plan to meet at the coffee cart. Maybe one of them (Bones?) will be waiting on a bench when a text comes in from the other—Sorry, can’t make it, we’ve already got a case.

They don’t get a formal reunion; they’ll just rush back into murder-solving. It’ll be awkward as everyone tries to fit back into their roles. (Rest assured, by the end of the premiere, everything will be back to normal and we’ll be lucky if we get a mention of the year apart ever again.)

We might even be introduced to new characters. I would not be surprised at all to see casting sides for a girlfriend for Booth, who’s followed him home from Afghanistan (a reporter, maybe? A government contractor?) and who will stick around through November sweeps, at which point she will realize that she’s got no business getting between the partners and will promptly Susan Lewis That Shit (translation: get out the way, a la Dr. Lewis in ER’s “Secrets and Lies” or Juliet in Lost’s “Something Nice Back Home” or any number of other characters).

Not to worry, though. In order to prove that everything will be business as usual—and to give us that tiny bit of hope that keeps Bones fans watching in the face of dark, dark despair—Booth and Brennan will, if my theory is correct, meet up at the coffee cart in the last scene of the episode, for their customary End Scene of Fluff.  It’ll set the tone for the rest of the season: they’re still crazy about each other, but there’s more waiting to be done.  I can see Brennan coming back with the realization that absence really does make the heart grow fonder, while Booth comes into the season thinking that he’s gotten over her. But the last scene will make it clear that this is a serious Good luck with that one, Mister situation.

Because yeah, right.  It’s still just a matter of when.

Also, would NOT be shocked to find out that Angela is pregnant.

For six years, I hated your guts. Now, I wonder how much you’re hurting. Your couple was never endgame. Mine was.

End of story.

No, really, end of story.

I win. You lose.

One more time: Jate is fate.

how exactly does one say no to that face?? // fox promotional photo

I’ve spent the last three days laying by the pool with my best fangirl friends, trying to speculate on what could possibly come next for Bones‘s Booth and Brennan.  Many, many hours; many, many beers; and many, many rewatchings of “The Parts in the Sum of the Whole” later, we’re no closer to determining what the finale will bring.

The conclusion is that there are just too many variables.

So since we can’t effectively speculate, I figured it might be appropriate to just list all of the variables we’ve identified and turn it over to the group as a whole to see if anyone can fit the pieces together.

Spoilers for the next six episodes are after the jump.

Variable: Brennan has the opportunity to leave.

A dig in Indonesia may take Brennan away from Washington for a year.  We know she agrees to go; we don’t know if she actually follows through.  There’s always the possibility that the show will pick up in the fall with a chronological year having passed, but that seems pretty far-fetched to me.  Therefore, all signs point to Brennan Doesn’t Go.  But why wouldn’t she go?  We’d assume it has something to do with Booth, but what?

Variable: Booth has the opportunity to leave, too.

Sides show an Army Colonel approaching Booth at work attempting to lure him into a training gig with the Rangers.  Master Sergeant Booth could help make sure a lot of would-be snipers won’t get killed.  While I find this possibility intriguing from the perspective of someone who loves angst, I just can’t really imagine this happening.  See, the pilot introduced this idea that Booth dedicates his FBI career to restoring his “cosmic balance,” saving as many lives as he took while he was out sniping bad guys.  What’s the multiplier on the “taking” side when you’re training boys in marksmanship?  Also, if Brennan’s leaving, Booth doesn’t really have a reason to stay.

Also, Booth has a kid now, and I can’t imagine him leaving little Parker.

Variable: Parker is in the finale.

Young Parker is participating in the season finale.  This definitely seems to suggest he’s there to say a tearful goodbye to his dad, but there must be other reasons for his appearance, as well.  Anyone got ideas?

Variable: It’s not just Booth and Brennan packing their bags.  Hodgins and Angela are leaving, too.

Having just been married by a Justice of the Peace, Hodgins and Angela are setting off on a lengthy honeymoon.  For everything to work out, Hodgins and Angela can’t leave, either.  See, if everyone takes off for a year, they can pick up in the fall with a “one year later” title card and the procedural formula goes unaffected.  But if Booth and Brennan stay, then Hodgela has to stay, too, so that they can help on the case in the season premiere.  Makes sense?  I suppose Hodgins and Angela could just cut their trip short in the premiere and zip home, but regardless, they can only take their lengthy honeymoon if we’re really going to skip a year.  Which, as I mentioned before, I just don’t think can happen.

Variable: Oh, and Daisy, too.

Daisy’s going to Indonesia with Brennan.  But, um, didn’t she just get engaged to Sweets?  Hart Hanson spoke with the Wall Street Journal while doing press for the 100^th episode and the interviewer asked a very interesting question.  They commented on a theory (one that I myself have mused on in the past) that less-important couples get more airtime and Big Moments while the main couple is on the outs.  (Think Hodgins and Angela get together/get engaged around the same time as Booth draws the line and Sully shows up.)  The interviewer asked if this was an appropriate way to analyze the ways in which the Sweets/Daisy relationship and the Booth/Brennan relationship are being contrasted right now.  Hart responded that this was a very insightful way of seeing things—and suggested that viewers keep this in mind as we move to the finale.  Knowing that Daisy is heading off to Indonesia (possibly a death knell for her relationship with Sweets), doesn’t it then stand to reason that Booth and Brennan may be headed for something good?

I think it does.

Of course, I’d also like this just because it means that Sweets would be single again.  And, hey, I’m available.

Variable: The case in the finale is about hoarding.

Literally, a guy gets trapped amidst his own junk and starves to death.  It takes forever.  It’s very sad.

Sweets tries to get Booth to consider that he himself may have a hoarding problem—latching onto things he doesn’t need to hang onto.  Booth finds this ridiculous and says, rather, that he “collects.”

Moreover, the case is just terribly sad.  Mr. Hoarder was in a relationship with a woman whom he loved and who loved him back, but she eventually left him because she couldn’t handle the hoarding problem.  As it turns out, they got into an argument and she hit him with the object that he ended up getting trapped under.  Might it be high time for Brennan to realize that she doesn’t want to die getting trapped inside of her house, with no one to come and find her until her apartment floor collapses under the weight of her junk and falls into the apartment below?  Because, seriously, that would suck.

Variable: Booth and Brennan may or may not be in relationships with other people at this point.

In “The Predator in the Pool,” we’re going to meet Catherine Bryar, a marine biologist who starts the episode as a suspect and ends it as Booth’s girlfriend.  Well, girlfriend may be a strong word, but you get the point.  Although the actress playing her (Rena Sofer, completing the trifecta of OTPs she’s tried to sabotage) isn’t scheduled to appear in any more episodes this season, we know she’s mentioned in at least one episode beyond “Predator.”  While at a fantasy rock band event, Booth removes a tie she gifted to him and wears it around his head.  (It’s actually quite adorable.)  Obviously, the tie doesn’t hold much meaning for Booth (as pointed by out people like Liz), but it at least means that he’s technically dating Catherine.  Beyond that episode (“Rocker in the Rinse Cycle”), we don’t know what their status is.  It’s always possible that after belting out “Hot Blooded” with the real thing, he realizes that he’ll never be able to settle for second best.

Brennan will also resume dating Hacker around the same time.  First of all, this is ridiculous, because Temperance Brennan damn well knows she doesn’t have to settle for less than perfect bone structure.

If the show really does skip ahead a year, don’t be surprised to see Catherine show up in early season six as Booth’s Super Serious Girlfriend or even (eww, gross) his fiancée.  (Don’t worry, I still don’t think this will really happen, although it does sound painfully Hart Hanson-esque.)

Variable: The final scene of the finale involves 200 extras.

Several scenarios are being posited by speculating fangirls everywhere.

Hodgins and Angela’s wedding reception?  I feel like after a quickie JOP wedding at the courthouse and a fast-approaching honeymoon, these two don’t really have big ol’ party on the brain.

A security threat or other crisis at the lab or the FBI building?  Interesting—and a bomb going off would sure give Brennan plenty of bones to deal with that would keep her from jetting off to Indonesia—but it just doesn’t seem very likely.

The one that seems the most likely is a showdown at the airport.  Picture a montage.  Sweets and Daisy saying their tearful goodbyes at security.  Hodgins and Angela enjoying the honeymoon period at their gate.  Booth and Brennan realizing in the same moment that they can’t leave each other and running—one long shot with loads of extras—toward each other through the crowded airport.  Meeting in the middle of an agitated crowd, dropping their carry-on luggage and full-on making out.  And then we hear over the loudspeaker that they’re ready to board the flight to Indonesia.  Will she go?  Will she stay?

Variable: David said that the last scene was hard to get through.

Most assumed that he meant it was emotionally hard to get through, which is still definitely possible.  But if you go with the airport scenario, he could have just meant it was logistically challenging, what with all of the extras and the cameras and that pesky making out with Emily that he hates so much.

So those are all of the variables we have so far.  Can you do the calculus?

Fringe, however, is really taking the cake these days.

Because while the parallel universe thing is a well-loved concept in a variety of media, the particulars of Fringe‘s dimension-jumping physics are directly out of the BBC’s Doctor Who.

Doctor Who first introduced a parallel reality in series two of the current incarnation, and it would become a major staple in the show’s canon for the rest of the Tenth Doctor’s journey.  In “Rise of the Cybermen,” The Doctor, Rose, and Rose’s boyfriend Mickey travel to a parallel world, slightly ahead of ours technologically and about to be taken down by Cybermen.  In the parallel world, Rose’s father, Pete Tyler, is still alive and incredibly wealthy, but her parents’ version of Rose is a puppy.  Though Rose and The Doctor only stay in the parallel world long enough to defeat the Cybermen (as it is very dangerous to travel between dimensions and could result in the complete collapse of time and reality), they re-encounter the parallel world in the series two finale, “Doomsday,” where Rose gets stuck in the parallel world, known by The Doctor as “Pete’s World.”

Okay, so in order to travel to a parallel world, you have to cross the “void,” the dark space between realities.  It’s a dangerous place.  When you go through the void, you get covered with “void stuff,” which makes you shimmer a little bit when viewed through 3D glasses.  Here’s The Doctor explaining:

Flashforward three years and Fringe is explaining the laws of their parallel-reality travel.  As children, certain people were subjected to a test of the drug Cortexiphan, which allows them to differentiate between things from our world and things from the parallel world.  This applies not just to people, but to anything that came from “over there.”  Conveniently, Agent Dunham was one of those children–in fact, the only one who could ever really differentiate.  It’s like she has the 3D glasses built into her brain.  And what happens when she sees something from the other world?  It glimmers.  Here’s their explanation:

Now, this I’ll write off as coincidence or healthy inspiration.  However, the (pardon the pun) parallels got way less subtle last night.

See, Doctor Who‘s parallel world, as I mentioned before, is slightly ahead of ours technologically.  They wear earpods which download information straight into their brains and they fly around in zeppelins.  Noticing the zeppelins is the first defining characteristic of the parallel world. Here’s what it looks like:

Crazy, right? Zeppelins! There’s a word you don’t hear every day.

Cut to last night’s Fringe.  Know what’s interesting about their parallel world?  They’re a little more technologically advanced than us.  And, hey, did you know what the observation deck of the Empire State Building was originally designed for?

That’s right. ZEPPELINS.  Walter looks through a portal to the other world and, to prove it’s parallel to the military guys observing, he shows them a zeppelin.  I’m sorry, but that is just TOO random to be a coincidence.  When’s the last time you had a conversation about zeppelins?  When’s the last time you heard a TV show mention zeppelins?  At least for me, before last night, it was, well, the last time I watched “Rise of the Cybermen.”

ZEPPELINS!  Come on.

Now, the final thing, which I’m happy to write off as a funny coincidence, is that the name for Doctor Who‘s parallel world is “Pete’s World” (here at :54, a continuation of the “void stuff” scene):

So, since we now know the details of where one Peter Bishop came from, can we PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE call Fringe‘s parallel universe “Pete’s World”?  It’s really only fair.

Meanwhile, having learned more valuable lessons from Doctor Who–Rose falls through the void and ends up trapped in Pete’s World–some of us (like Hannah) are beginning to worry that this season finale of Fringe will find either Peter or Olivia somehow trapped in Pete’s World.  It’s an interesting theory, but don’t worry.  Fox is developing an American version of Torchwood, and those guys can help build a dimension cannon.

As they did several years ago, ABC is releasing a set of promotional music videos related to Lost–one for each major character.  I particularly love these videos, because they demonstrate how the network–or at least the promotional department–feels about the characters and their relationships to each other.  Take this one for example:

I’m sorry, who’s all she’s known of love?

Anyway, the one at the top of the page is the most recently released and focuses on Sawyer.  Now, while I am not a fan of most things that involve Mr. Ford, I am a big fan of anything featuring Carrie Underwood.  And of course I’ll tolerate anyone or anything that calls Sawyer “candy-coated misery.”  Because seriously.

I’m more interested, actually, in how these videos correspond to centricity for the rest of the season.  Spoilers are after the cut.

The first video, released last week, was about Ben (set to Michael Jackson’s “Ben,” no less).  This week’s was about Sawyer.  Already, we’re seeing a pattern–the video releases correspond to the previous episode’s centric character.

In an article about the videos, TV Guide Magazine apparently used a press release to list the other characters who’ll be getting videos: Richard Alpert, Sun & Jin, Desmond, Hurley, Kate, Jack, Sayid and Locke.

We know, obviously, that tonight’s episode, “Ab Aeterno,” is Alpert-centric; next week’s “The Package” focuses on Sun and Jin.  That’s followed by “Happily Ever After” (Desmond) and “Everybody Loves Hugo” (Hurley).  This would definitely suggest that the following episodes, “The Last Recruit” and “The Candidate,” are Kate- and Jack-centric, respectively.

It’s been rumored that “The Candidate” would be Jack-centric for some time now, but most have thought that “The Last Recruit” wouldn’t focus on any single character.  It’s possible, of course, that Kate doesn’t have another centric episode in the season, so they stuck her video in to correspond with a multi-centric; this is what appears to be happening with Sayid, whose video will likely correspond with “Across the Sea,” which features few or no main characters.

That said, it could also mean that Kate’s role in the mythology is about to become very clear.

look both ways, guys. // fox promotional photo

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been a little anxious about the Bones finale lately.  If you were spoiled for last year’s finale, you’ll remember that by this time in ’09, we had already heard key phrases like “artificial insemination,” “alternate reality,” and “health crisis.”  This year, not only have we not heard about any big themes heading into hiatus, but we don’t really have anything seriously coming to a head right now, aside from Booth and Brennan’s relationship, but when it that NOT in play?

At the end of the day, it’s an easy problem to have, right?  Right now, I’m dealing with the possibility of my favorite television couple in the history of television couples  never seeing each other alive ever again, let alone having mischievous tree-climbing little children.  I don’t need to spoiler-cut the fact that Booth and Brennan will be together someday.  It’s just a matter of whether or not Hart Hanson has the stones to risk “OMG DESTROYING THE CHEMISTRY” by actually having them give it a go.

(Quite frankly, I can’t imagine that getting to make out more frequently at work wouldn’t amp up the tension between David and Emily to levels previously thought unreachable.)

Will this finale be the (cough) “beginning” (cough) of Booth and Brennan’s strictly-unprofessional relationship?  Or will we finish this year like we have all those previous–with a frustrating near-miss?  Spoilers and speculation after the jump.

Last week-ish, when the sides came out for the penultimate episode, “The Boy with the Answer,” I was far more interested in a throw-off line of Angela’s than in all the Gravedigger nonsense.  (I really should post about that, eh?)

“We’re planning a honeymoon,” she says. “We’re going to take off for at least six months.”  (The “we” being Hodgins and Angela. Damn, I’m behind on this blog.)

Booth and I, of course, were immediately confused, because, um, you can’t take off six months.  This is a procedural, meaning that every character has to be in every episode, even when it’s a flashback to before we even knew you.  (Damn, so behind.)  So I filed that away and went about my business.

And then here come the sides for the finale, “The Beginning in the End,” which you’ll surely recognize as a play on the last season finale’s “The End in the Beginning.”  In these sides, we see Brennan show interest in a far-off anthropological discovery–and a later mention that the team is splitting up for a year.  Specifically, there’s this exchange:

Caroline: If this is gonna be your last case together, then you do it properly.
Brennan: It’s not our last case.
Booth: We’ll be back in a year.
Caroline: Tight as a drum, that’s what I want. And trust me, the way you two are running from each other, it’s your last case.

Oh, the intrigue!

So, let’s analyze, shall we?  I see a couple of distinct possibilities.

1. Hart Hanson is committing out-and-out fuckery.  He’s been known to do this in the past–remember how Booth and Brennan were going to make out in the premiere? I definitely wouldn’t put it past him, but for the sake of this blog, let’s analyze the spoilers as though they are real.  So then we have…

2. Brennan really does leave for a year, abandoning Booth.  The four-month hiatus will chronologically cover her absence, with the premiere picking up with Brennan’s return.  I find this really hard to believe, because it’d be very un-Bonesy to skip that much time, and we started season five with Brennan’s big return, so … been there, done that.

3. Brennan doesn’t leave and Booth and Brennan get together. First of all, highly unlikely.  My girl Leigh and I discussed a few possibilities for this scenario, including one of hers I liked in which Brennan, confused, can’t bring herself to leave her partnership and her partner and shows up on his doorstep without a logical explanation.

4. Brennan doesn’t leave and Booth and Brennan still don’t get together.  I find this the most likely scenario.  Imagine this: Brennan gets off the plane at the last minute and drives like a maniac through DC trying to get to the Booth.  Booth, meanwhile, has his sirens wailing as he drives toward the airport to stop her.  The episode ends with Brennan at Booth’s empty apartment and Booth at the airport gate (you know he’d have used his badge to get past TSA), another opportunity missed.  And as the great Dan Rydell of Sports Night once said, “You miss enough of them and the ballgame’s over.”

5. Mae’s theory of WIN. Last night, on the phone with the great @mae_vaughan, who is skilled at speculation even when forgoing fandom for her new baby nephew, she dropped this theory on me.  We know, via Ausiello, that there’s an exchange in the 100th that goes, “If we don’t work together anymore, we can have sex.” “I’ll call a cab.”  Did you hear that?  ”If we don’t work together anymore, we can have sex.”  Assumedly, this happens in the flashback portion of the 100th, but it wouldn’t be out of the question for this to come back up in the finale.

“If we don’t work together anymore, we can have sex.”

Do you see where I’m going with this?

“If we don’t work together anymore, we can have sex.”

“If we don’t WORK together anymore, we can have SEX.”

Yeah, so the speculation being that, as they face the END of their professional partnership, there’s a pretty serious BEGINNING to their personal one, as they take her last night in the States to, y’know, not work together.  Only, of course, they’re not going to stop working together.  Imagine, if you will, that her cell phone rings right as she’s toeing off his stripey socks.  They ignore it and get back to business.  Lying in bed together later that night, still super-naked, Brennan reaches for her cell and dials her voicemail.  ”Sorry, Dr. Brennan, the dig is off.”  Cue Brennan’s terrified face, looking at the man she loves and has finally, finally, well-and-truly you-know-what-ed, who she now has no escape from.  AND ROLL CREDITS.

Just saying, that’d be awesome.

There’s one more thing we may have to contend with, and that’s the fact that this episode is expected to, in some ways, mirror last year’s finale.  Recently, Hart Hanson cryptically tweeted a photo of his breakfast sitting atop the sexy pages from “The End in the Beginning.”  At the time, grasping for “please let this finale have meant SOMETHING” straws, folks speculated that the sexy times in that episode were not so much a figment of Brennan’s book/Booth’s coma dream–a facet of Mr. B and Bren’s life–but rather a flashforward of sorts.  Minutiae like the clock time and the nightstand contents changing mid-scene support this theory, although I do not ascribe to it.  I’m much more prone to believe that it was an epic set dressing fail than a real, thought-out, years-in-advance plot device.

But I will say, if Booth and Brennan finish the season with “Do you want me to prove it to you?” and the idea that they’d have ended up there whether they were Booth and Bones or Seeley and Temperance or Mr. B and Bren, while Jack and Kate die miserable and alone on the island and in the alternate reality on Lost … I will never watch television again.

Don’t like them with the Man in Black—
Please hurry and rejoin Team Jack.

Not on a date! Not by the sea!
And as for Kate, you let her be!

I will not like him any hour.
With or without that damn sunflower.

I REALLY HATE him by the fire.
(This triangle situation is painfully dire.)

I do not like them “here” or “there.”
(But I will say I’m enjoying Claire.)

I do not like Lost’s final year—
But it’s okay. The end is near.

(Thanks, Green Eggs & Ham. I’m sure they’re more delicious than this crap.)

I’d say we now have a pretty good guess as to the color onesies to start buying the Halperts–

Unless something goes horribly wrong, it’s a girl.

TV Guide Magazine–which, lately, has been spilling spoilers like it’s their job–has a big spread on the birth in the latest print edition which includes the sentence, “Next to Pam stands a 7-foot-tall array of congratulatory balloons, announcing the baby’s gender (which we can’t reveal, but you have a fifty-fifty chance of guessing it correctly).”  Well, apparently, nobody communicated with the photo department, who, along with this very article, slapped up a picture of Michael Scott lugging a 7-foot-tall array of pink balloons.

I, for one, am super-pleased about this arrangement.  Giving birth to a daughter basically seals a TV couple’s fate as one for the history books.  Think about all the babies who’ve mattered on television (romantically) in the past fifteen years–they’ve almost all been girls.  Now think about all the babies who are, as I like to say, “filling quotas”–they’ve almost all been boys.  (It’s the difference between Friends‘s Ben Geller and Friends‘s Emma Geller Green.  Or between Lost‘s Ji Yeon and Lost‘s Aaron.  Lost‘s David Shephard and Lost‘s Future Daughter of Jack and Kate to Be Seen Climbing Trees and Makin’ Mischief in Series Finale Flashforward. You get the idea. Also, that was not a spoiler.)  It’s not an exact science, but it’s pretty damn close.

Plus, John Krasinski has to hold this baby, so it clearly has to be a girl, because, come on. It’s just CUTER THAT WAY.

I’ve also already offered up the right to share “Allie” with me, so there’s that.

enjoy it while it lasts, lady. // abc promotional photo

Pete and Addison are kind of back together on Private Practice, which made me think for a moment that things were finally righting themselves in Shonda Rhimes’s world.  See, Pete and Addison totes made out in Practice‘s backdoor pilot, and then they had some more hot kissing in the first handful of episodes, but before long, the wheels came off the wagon.  Most recently, Addison’s been doing some kissing with Sam, and Pete’s still inexplicably obsessed with Violet, who really should be with Cooper, who’s AGAIN NOT AGAIN hooking up with the excruciating Charlotte.

When Pete and Addison most recently fell into bed together, they admitted they were just settling for each other.  But Sam’s officially put the kibosh on his flirtation with Addison, and Violet doesn’t seem to be coming around any time soon, so it’s possible that my personal pick for Private Practice OTP may actually have a shot at something here.

However, despite my appreciation for Pete/Addison, I’ve recently come to realize that it’s stupid to keep your fingers crossed for ANY couple on Private Practice or Grey’s Anatomy, when the absolute best you can hope for is a Post-It “wedding.”

See, Shonda doesn’t do relationships–she does hookups.  The characters can appear to make it work for a while (Callie and Arizona, Owen and Cristina), but there’s always someone lurking in the background (Mark, Teddy) to make one or both relationship participants behave like children.  And even though she’ll bring on new characters as “potential love interests” for established characters, I don’t believe for a second that she has any plan as to who’s supposed to end up with whom.  For instance, Alex.  At the end of the show’s run, will Shonda pull out all the stops to get Katherine Heigl to do a Clooney and reunite with Alex?  And what about Cooper?  Are we supposed to want him to figure things out with the unimaginably horrifying Charlotte, or are we to believe that he and BFF Violet may one day become more than friends?

I’m far more inclined to believe that the notion of who-ends-up-with-whom will boil down to which pairings are doing the dirty in the on-call room in the episode prior to the series finale.

Which isn’t really that big of a problem, except for that it (A) doesn’t exactly instill trust in the producer, (B) gets a little ridiculous as the characters grow up, and (C) makes fools out of the people who stupidly get excited about things like weddings.  (On the flip side, it makes break-ups almost humorous–consider how pain-free Mark/Lexie’s break-up was.)

So when Kevin McKidd goes out and says, “I’ve always thought it would be cool to see (Owen and Christina) have a baby together down the line,” I want to pat him on the head and say, “Dream on, little ginger one.”

mr. linus is creepier than purging ben // abc promotional photo

I’m moderately embarrassed about how long it’s been since my last post, but, in my defense, I moved and there was a blizzard.  And Lost started, which means the time I used to devote to overanalyzing Hart Hanson’s tweets has been redirected to rocking back and forth in the corner of my apartment hoping against hope that 23 is the new Jacob.

That said, I’m not entirely thrilled with the new season of Lost.  The flash-sideways aren’t gelling for me yet, the on-island stories are bogged down in banality, and a heavy handful of new characters is about the last thing I wanted to see in the final season.

There are, of course, two things going on that have me just as hooked as the population at large: John Locke-as-Smoke Monster and the numbers on the wall.  (Aren’t you impressed I didn’t say Jack and Kate’s longing glances?)

So there are now five candidates for Jacob’s replacement, and in my mind, it pretty much has to be Jack or Sawyer, but probably Jack.  Sayid’s been “claimed” (by whom or what, we don’t know, but it sounds gnarly), Hurley doesn’t really have it in him (sorry), and who really gives a crap what happens to Sun and/or Jin beyond being reunited?  I’m still hoping Sawyer sacrifices himself to save Kate and her unborn child (hey, it’s still only been, like, five days since “316,” even if three of those days were in 1977).  And if it’s Jack, see, he can Alpertify Kate and they can be TOGETHER FOREVER.  Also, Jack’s the one who’s been the most vocal about the island not needing to be protected and all that, so it’s nice and ironic for Jack to become the island’s ultimate protector.

While we’re on the subject, I will say that I loved that split-second look of confusion on Jack and Kate’s faces when they made eye contact at LAX, which went beyond, “Hey, didn’t I steal your pen?”  I’m hoping that moments like that, where the flash-sideways characters experience bizarre deja-vu-like memories about each other, continue throughout the season.  Folks are speculating that Kate could end up with Sawyer in one reality and with Jack in the other, to which I say SHUT YOUR FACE.  I will not accept that.  Fate is a critical concept of Lost and the romantic relationships.  Whoever she’s supposed to end up with (hint: not Sawyer), she has to end up with in both realities.

Okay, but seriously, the mythology stuff is way more interesting that what’s going on with the relationships.  We’re getting awesome new vocabulary lessons, like “claimed” and “recruiting,” and Ilana finally seems to be earning her paycheck.  Claire’s back, which is obviously awesome, and it seems likely her visit will bring answers about the mysterious sickness, as well as a much-anticipated Jack/Claire “hey, we’re siblings!” scene.  Since most people have known that was coming since “Two for the Road,” it’s about time they got to have a chat about it.

There’s plenty more Lost to talk about–Locke’s dad! The kid in the jungle! Richard Alpert pwns everything!–but that’s old news at this point.  I’ll be better about staying on top of things from now on.