this screencap doesn't adequately represent this episode. // screen capture via lost-media.com

Ausiello broke some pretty major news yesterday when he announced that former Lost writers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz are penning a pilot for next season, and that one Damon Laurence Lindelof is onboard to consult.

The few details that Ausiello was able to get indicate that the series is fairy-tale-themed and will have a female lead character.

I have to admit that my first reaction was unbridled glee. And then I remembered … SIX YEARS OF AGONY. Six years! During the lowest of the low points of Lost, I would pound my fists on the floor and scream and tweet, “Never again! I will never work with these writers again!” (By work with, I mean watch their shows and then talk about them afterward, but you get that.)

And then I started remembering the good times. You know what Kitsowitz wrote? (Besides Tron: Legacy, in theaters December 17.)

“Something Nice Back Home,” bitches.

That episode is so loved in these parts it’s known simply as SNBH.

Yeah, those three writers were well-known as “The Ones Who Liked Jate.”

And if this show is really fairy-tale themed, doesn’t that mean it has to have a happily ever after? And if the lead character is a girl, does that mean they’re putting some thought into how to make her more than a man-chasing, cage-sexing, indecisive-until-the-afterlife skank? (Katie-Kate, I love you, but you know it’s true.)

The point is, I’m cynical. I expect them to ask too many questions and then answer them poorly. I expect them to clearly set up a love story in the pilot that gets crappily dealt with in the series finale. I expect them to slap some crap together when it’s convenient.

But I also expect it to be, well, fucking amazing.

they will MESS YOU UP. and then make out. // nbc promotional photo

Six years ago today, Lost premiered.

Tonight marks the premiere of the first pilot J.J. Abrams has directed since that project, and I am super-stoked. Undercovers has been on this blog’s radar for over a year, and I could not be more excited to see the finished product. It looks smart, it looks sexy, and it looks funny. And how serendipitous that it’s premiering on Lost‘s birthday?

Undercovers premieres tonight at 8:00 on NBC.

Speaking of birthdays, this little nugget (my dog, Freckles) is two today. She’s requested a marathon of Evangeline Lilly’s best episodes and a trip to the park.

they're totes freaked out. // nbc promotional photo

Let me preface this by saying … the Event pilot wasn’t bad. It was pretty compelling, an interesting premise, and some of the characters are fun. It’s not so much this show that I have a problem with, it’s an attitude that producers and networks currently have with series.

They think we like to be completely in the dark about things. The people developing TV shows right now seem to be under the impression that audiences love that “WTF” feeling. They’ve gotten this impression based on the success of shows like Lost, but the WTFery of Lost is very, very different from the WTFery of shows like The Event.

Think about the Lost pilot. Plane crash, struggling to survive the initial hours, making immediate decisions for the group. Ultimately trekking to the cockpit, establishing relationships, discovering the pilot. Smoke monster.

Most of what happens in that pilot is just basic human interaction in an extraordinary situation. And even when the crazy crap starts happening, there aren’t ANY characters at that point who are like, “Oh, that. Yeah, I know what that tikka-tikka noise is, but I sure as hell won’t tell you.” They’re feeling the WTF right along with us.

But on The Event–everyone has information otherwise unknown to both (A) the rest of the ensemble and (B) the audience. And that’s a result of being a conspiracy story where everyone has secrets AND of the super-jumpy method of storytelling they’re employing. With so many “72 hours ago,” “11 days ago,” and “3 days before that, but 2 days after this,” title cards, I was lost. It’s confusing and it’s frustrating.

Furthermore, conspiracy tales like this, in my opinion, don’t justify season-long storylines. I feel like all it would take is Laura Innes, Zeljko Ivanek, and whomever took Scott Patterson’s women to sit down for five minutes and be, like, “FYI, it’s aliens,” or whatever. And the event would no longer be an event. I had no sense after that episode–even after the plane got zapped into that blue hole–that this was some epic story upon which rests the fate of humankind. You get the sense that the answers are easy to give–the show just isn’t giving them.

Withholding information like that isn’t good storytelling. In order to compel viewers to keep tuning in, you have to give us strong characters and solid writing, not just super-big WTF questions. And I just didn’t see that on The Event.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

i miss juliet, too. // abc promotional photo

Super spoilers under the cut. Really super.

According to Dark’s sources:

Within the first 4 episodes, Sawyer who has gone a bit “dark” meets up with MIB/Smokey and he is given 3 choices

- Go to the Temple with the Others
- Stay and wait with his friends
- Join him and help Smokey/MIB get off the Island

Sawyer chooses to join sides with Smokey

LOVE IT.  And not just for obvious reasons.  (The obvious reason being that it’s going to be hard to win Kate’s heart when you’ve teamed up with the Smoke Monster.)  I love it for less obvious reasons, which is that it’s going to be awesome seeing characters take ultimate sides of good and evil–of course, forcing us to question what the sides of good and evil are.  Also, it’s great to see the writers showing a character’s grief; it’ll be hard not to associate this choice of Sawyer’s with his bereavement over the loss of Juliet.  Remember how irritated people were when Claire showed so little emotion about Charlie’s passing?  Yeah, I don’t think they’ll be able to say the same for Sawyer.

Also, what does it mean that Smokey wants to “get off the Island”?  He wants to extend the reaches of his evil beyond the confines of the island?  And how can Sawyer help with that?

Whether or not he’ll ultimate return to Team Jacob remains to be seen, but for now … WOW.

things were so easy in season one // abc promotional photo

It’s back to the grind for a lot of people this morning, including me–both at work and here.  As at the office, things are quickly picking up post-holiday in the TV world, especially for the rapidly-approaching Lost, which premieres in officially less than a month.

While there’s way more to talk about than just the quadrangle, we’re going to start there this week — but I promise we’ll get to the other business later on.  (That stuff is pretty juicy, too, but it doesn’t involve kissing.)  Serious spoilers after the jump.

Let’s start with the big stuff, shall we?

In the alternate reality, Jack has a kid–specifically, a 12-ish-year-old son named David.  We don’t know who his mom is or what happened to her (all signs point to Mom being dead or out of the picture), and we don’t know what kind of dad Jack is.  We do know that Christian Shephard plays a role in David Shephard’s life–oh, and that Locke is a substitute teacher at his school.

Now, this is all well and good, as long as Darlton knows one extremely important thing: this is no substitute for a tiny precious baby of Jack and Kate’s own, preferably named Lucy and preferably with a twin brother named Luke, but I’m pretty flexible on those last two.

And here’s why all of these things (including the whole mildly embarrassing Lucy thing) could just be real.

First of all, we’re told that the events in the alternate reality in some ways will be mirroring the events in the established timeline on the island.  This, you know, FORCES me (’cause I totally would do this otherwise) to wonder whether or not it’s possible that Kate’s pregnant.  This was a popular theory post-”316,” where Jack and Kate’s random (and kind of sad) pre-Ajira sex led many to believe she brought a baby to the island.  (Jimmy Kimmel shared this speculation, and asked Evangeline Lilly in an interview–she dodged the question and probably didn’t know the answer anyway.)  That whole business about proxies also led a lot of people, myself included, to speculate that Kate was Claire’s proxy on Ajira 316.  But as the season wore on and there was no mention of morning sickness or Jack and Kate getting married and buying a double stroller for their twins, people pretty much gave up on that theory.  Kate also threw back a beer with Roger Linus in season five, although I contend I would have loved that baby even if she was born was fetal alcohol syndrome.

Anyway, some people are revisiting the Kate’s pregnancy storyline for a couple of reasons.  One is that, counting from “316,” Kate would only be a whopping four days pregnant.  It frankly wouldn’t have made sense for Kate to already know she’s pregnant at this point; it’s still possible that Darlton planted the seed (so to speak) in “316″ and are waiting to see if they need or want to use the pregnancy storyline.  With that in mind, the pregnancy-death thing is still an important part of the Lost mythology–and something they’re going to have to deal with in season six–so what better way to address the answer to that question than by giving the lead female character a potentially lethal pregnancy?

Secondly, I’m willing to bet that Jack isn’t an awesome father in the alternate reality.  Part of his story on the island has been in coming to terms with his own complicated relationship with his father.  I would love to see him with a kid after breaking that cycle, but I doubt that we’ll see that in the alternate reality with David–especially since he’s reaching his teen years.  If they were introducing a five-year-old, I’d be concerned.  Ideally, we’ll eventually (likely in a series-finale flashforward) see him as a great dad to his on-island kids with Kate, demonstrating how the plane crash didn’t just bring about misery for Jack.

Then, of course, there are the very recent spoilers that Dark and Kristin have been spilling about Sawyer and Kate’s relationship (or lack thereof).  Dark quoted a source yesterday who said, “early in the season there is a scene with Sawyer and Kate on Island not alt. In this scene kate tries to comfort sawyer but he totally rejects her in a big way. So much so that in the script itself the writers like they do when explaining the context/desciption of the scene actually say that these two are finally done/over – no going back!”

Um, yay.

It’s hard to get too excited, though, because who knows how much of this is the interpretation of the source, but I’ll take what I can get.  Furthermore, I can already hear the cries of the Skaters who’ll boast that Kate is only settling for Jack when she ends up with him, because she tried to have Sawyer and couldn’t.  It’s okay, though, because I’m sure the rest of the Internet will down them out with shouts of “I told you so.”

Of course, I will be totally dignified about this.

This morning, Kristin released seven tidbits and said that six were true–DarkUFO confirms the six (italicized):

• Juliet survives the bomb.
• Juliet does not survive the bomb.
• Kate and Sawyer flirt.
• Kate and Sawyer kiss.
• Juliet and Sawyer kiss.
• Jack and Sayid touch lips.
• There is a scene with Sawyer in the season premiere that will make you cry buckets–assuming you aren’t a robot–and (possibly?) make you Skaters happy.

Dark says Kate and Sawyer flirt in the alternate reality, but I don’t think it goes any further than that.  He also says that the premiere scene she’s referring to is Juliet’s death.  Basically, Kristin’s trying to give hope to the Skaters, but there really isn’t much to be had.  I’m not calling this a W yet–and definitely won’t until the moments after the finale airs–but it’s inches to go with seconds left on the clock, and it’ll take something crazy to turn this game around.

yeah, you're laughing now, kate. come talk to me FOUR YEARS LATER. // abc promotional photo

Oh, it is SO ON.

Last year was pretty quiet on the Jate vs. Skate front; Suliet showed up and claimed the attention of several would-be Skaters.  Now, though, with Juliet dead and the end in sight, the Jate/Skate battle begins anew, and more ferociously than ever.

(In case you didn’t know, I’m pretty invested in this one.  I am like Mel Gibson in Braveheart when it comes to Jack/Kate/Sawyer.)

With some hints at season six plotlines (and a fun new source spilling spoilers in DarkUFO’s comments), the triangle wars are heating up.  Spoilers (and blood, sweat, and tears) after the jump.

Okay, so basically, there’s this person, RSX101, dropping spoilers into the comments on Dark’s blog.  Dark vouched for RSX101′s authenticity but hasn’t been posting his or her spoilers as full-on posts because Dark takes very seriously the possibility of his sources getting in trouble with Darlton and ABC, so he doesn’t post things until he’s verified that it’s not going to get anyone fired.  (At least that’s my sense.)

In more concrete spoilers, we’ve seen both pro-Jate and pro-Skate developments.  Jack and Kate may or may not be sharing a kiss early in the season; we’ve also just gotten confirmation that Sawyer and Kate meet up in the alternate reality in episode eight, “Recon.”  (Shoot me now, please.)

In the post where it was revealed that Sawyer and Kate meet in the alt timeline, RSX101 commented with, “Sawyer/Kate fans. Don’t get too excited as I will be sending dark some spoilers soon which wont make you very happy.”

Of course, that set off a comment battle of epic proportions which ended with Dark stepping in to say, “Jeez people, can’t we go one Sawyer/Kate post without it turning into an argument? Discuss THIS spoiler NOT your ship. I will start deleting posts and repeat offenders will get BANNED.”

Pwned.

Both sides, as well as the pissed-off non-shippers who just wanted to discuss the spoiler in peace, were guilty of taking things a little too far.  And in fact, we still don’t know what RSX’s spoiler is. Though he or she spilled more detailed spoilers in the thread for the Alpert-centric “Ab Aeterno” about the Black Rock and the Man in Black, RSX wouldn’t take the bait to give out the triangle goods.

One Skater said, “Can’t you at least say if it’s a big fight? Or some action one of them takes? Or information that’s revealed? No specifics, just a context of why it might make Skaters like myself unhappy. Some could argue that SNBH with the Jack/Kate engagement was an eposide [sic] I should have disliked and been unhappy about. But I was ecstatic because it was speed-jating and proved that that couple has no trust between them. They literally fell apart in an ugly way, and the spectre of the MIA Sawyer was hanging over the episode in a way that I loved.”

And then I get all angry and terrified that the Skaters might be right and worried that I’ll be an emotional mess come the series finale and OF COURSE THEY’RE WRONG ARE THEY EVEN WATCHING LOST?

The triangle is back in a major way, manifested not just in the comments on Dark, but also in the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

BRING IT ON.