TV Week in Review

LOST: This week's Lost was extraordinarily strong, especially on the emotional level -- Sun's dilemma and her reaction to it was very moving; it involved a lot of complex emotion that was well handled. We also get to see her being quite tough at the end of her flashback. And a note on how to handle exposition, which is something I complain about all the time in comics and elsewhere -- When Jin and Sun argue over his past, over how old he was when he joined the army, the bit about him being in the army is not the point: the point is he is avoiding talking about it. But when we return from the flashback to the island we see Jin fight and it works because they slipped in information about him being in the army before we realized it. With Desmond and company, we get more than one big surprise, but nothing much to talk about yet. There are only four more episodes of this show this season, and they all look like dooseys from the previews -- you can read little captions about them on Wikipedia, including whose flashbacks they are. I won't spoil any of them, but they look very exciting.

I also won't spoil what I learned about the numbers, but let me tell you where you can spoil it for yourself, if it is not just mis-information. Between seasons two and three ABC (and Chanel 4 in England where I saw it), tried out a viral marketing campaign for Lost, advertising designed to beat tivo. There was a TV ad for the Hanzo corporation (the money behind Dharma); call the number on screen and it would lead you to a website, which was then hacked by a woman whose last name is Blake (another philosophy name; this is all quite silly but I love it) -- you follow what she is trying to tell you by following different secret links on the website and calling telephone numbers and so on. A guy claiming to be a Hanzo employee was on a real life talk show; someone claiming to be Blake showed up at a comic con, and so on. You get the idea; it is not something I would have wanted to participate in (it all sounds maddening, especially as it included a lot of product placement, Sprite and so on), but you can read all about it on Wikipedia. At the end, just before season three aired, people who followed this learned what the numbers mean. I have to tell you I found the answer surprisingly satisfying, which makes me think it is not mis-information -- it ties in very well thematically. At the same time, if it proves to be the material in the season finale in a few weeks, I may wish I did not know ahead of time. But someone wanted some Lost fans to know, so you might not condider it a spoiler. And also, again, it might not be true. Head to Wikipedia if you want to know.