Thoughts on LOST

After tomorrow night the final season of LOST will be half over. I'm feeling very mixed about this.

Now I have been a hardcore LOST fan since the beginning. But not so intense that I get too wound up in all the mysteries. I don't have to get the questions answered every week. I'm just more along for the ride.

But as this is the last season (and since the writers have known this for the past three years) I'm expecting more excitement. So far, I have gotten that yet. Used to, I would count down the days until LOST came on. Now its like, oh yeah, its Tuesday and LOST is on tonight.

Maybe part of the problem is the flash-sideways. I can't become too invested in them because I don't really know what they are. Is it a daydream all happening in Hurley's head? Is it really how the show and characters end up?

Also, I think the stakes need to be raised. Kill some people off. It's the last season. And no killing the characters you only added this season does not count.

I thought perhaps after the first six episodes the excitement I was looking for would come. It seemed like that was the first act of the season. If that's the case, act two hasn't really raised the game yet.

Oh and another suggestion. Put Desmond on the show. Stat!

I think another thing that would help is if I really knew what some of the characters wanted. What does Smocke (Smoke Monster Locke) really want? Why is Widmore there? You can't trust a thing they say so you never know exactly what there true intentions are.

I'm excited for Tuesday's episode because it is all about SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT Richard! Hopefully we can get the answers we've been waiting for. I'm just afraid the excitement I'm looking for won't come until the last few episodes. And that's still two months away.
--
In my own writing news...I've been working on a spec script of the show "The Vampire Diaries" for a while now. With some pressing deadlines coming up for screenwriting programs I'm interested in submitting it in. I've changed my plot about three different times, each time taking it further. Observing a writer's room for the past three months has been a great help. I finally got what I thought was a pretty solid idea put together. Broke the story. Even wrote the first two acts. I had my story set after the last episode that aired, back at the end of February. It seemed like a good break in the story to try to fit my own script.

And the other day, I was reading through the descriptions of the upcoming episodes, since the show comes back this week. And low and behold, in the second episode back, something I was using in my script is in the actual show.

Well, boo. On one hand, it is a good thing. It means I'm on the right track with the show, to have something I wanted to do actually turn up in the story. But now my spec is no good. Oh well, back to the drawing board, as they say.

My newest tv obsession

I've recently got hooked on a television show that has been on for a while. Yes, exactly what I need, right. But over the past few weeks, I think I have managed to watch almost every episode of THE OFFICE. And I can now say that I am hooked.

I had seen the show before but never really got into it. But I started to watch and now I can't stop. The show skillfully mixes the laugh out loud humor with the nicely touching moments. Jim and Pam are my new favorite couple. I cringe when I see whatever Michael is going to do next. There's starting to be an embarrassment of riches when it comes to comedy. And I think I like that.

My favorite non-major character: Stanley. He doesn't even have to say anything to make me laugh.

I know there are many great television shows out there that I haven't watched yet or need to. Maybe I'll be able to get around to all of them some day.

I also have been discovering some new shows, one that haven't even come out yet. Yes, it is pilot season out here in LA. The time when the networks film a bunch of shows and then decide which ones to pick up. So throughout the industry the scripts are floating around and even the lowman on the totem poll gets to read them. I've read about six scripts and nothing on the drama side has really popped yet. There are starting to be a lot of cop shows which I'm not really into. I did read the script for the new Matthew Perry comedy MR. SUNSHINE and it was very funny. Hopefully it will get picked up and join the ranks of those laugh-out-loud funny shows.

TV shows I have broken up with this year

I'm usually a very faithful watcher when it comes to my television shows. I don't miss episodes. I fully commit. However, there are a few shows that I have slacked on watching. Shows that I would think I would normally be very into.

One of those shows I watched all last season, Fringe. I'm a huge JJ Abrams fan, so of course I gave this show a chance. I does have that nice mix of mythology that I tend to love in my shows. But maybe the problem for me was that there wasn't enough. This show isn't like Lost which equally mixes character development with the mythology. I think for Fringe I got a little bogged down by the case of the week. I'm not a big CSI/Law and Order fan, so maybe that turned me a way for a bit.

Another show that I have not watched lately is Flashforward. This show was marketed at the NEXT LOST. There were pretty big expectations. And while the first episode was a great start, the plot sort of got bogged down with later episodes. It was the same thing every week and the characters were always discussing there flashforwards and whether or not they would come true. Again, I just seemed to get bored with the show.

I knew I wasn't keeping up with either of these shows when I had a backlog of about four episodes of each show that I never got around to watching. And while both shows are on a break right now, I still can't bring myself to get back into them. I can see myself maybe catching up on Fringe soon though. I really wanted to watch Flashforward to the point where the story caught up to the date of everyone's flashforward. But it doesn't look like that will happen either. We'll see.

Things in LA are going great. I got to sit in on the episode pitch to the network/studio for the show I am working on. It was for the last episode of the season and it was very cool to watch the show runners basically lay out what was happening in the episode. I'm just amazed by what I learn by just being able to sit back and observe.