Bev Vincent

Finished reading Corduroy Mansions to my wife last night. A book Douglas Adams might have described as “mostly harmless.” Light, frothy entertainment. We’re going to switch gears and read Avoid Boring People by James Watson (of Watson and Crick, discoverers of the structure of DNA). I also posted my review of Karin Slaughter’s Broken at Onyx Reviews last night.

The “origin” story on The Big Bang Theory was pretty funny. We got to see the first time Leonard met Sheldon, how the rules of the apartment were set, and what happened to the elevator.

The season finale of Castle was good, too. Another appearance by the poker-playing writers, which set up a couple of James Patterson jokes, one delivered by himself. When Castle’s mother relayed a message that Patterson was going to be late for the game, Castle quips that he’s probably using the time to write another book. Later, at the game, Patterson chides Castle. “Really, Ricky?” he says. “Just one book a year?” Cannell and Connelly help Castle crack the case. They had a lot of fun with the spy gimmick. I especially liked Hans Brauer (Darby on Sons of Anarchy) as the supposedly hard-assed covert agent who folded like a little kid once he discovered This is Not a Game. Then there were all the thematic statements late in the show about how people were focusing on “the game” without taking the players into consideration, talking of course about Beckett and Castle. Though I projected what was going to happen in the final minutes (I didn’t guess who the other woman would be, but I knew there would be one), it was still a rewarding payoff. Beckett dumped her boyfriend and then got blindsided a few minutes later.

And then there was House, which went where the show didn’t ever dare go before–putting House and Cuddy together, professing their love for each other. It’s been a long time coming, but what will it mean for the show next season. And is 13 going away? I hope not–she’s one of the most interesting characters on the show.

My Storytellers Unplugged essay this month is about translators: Lost in Translation. A lot of the essay consists of an interview I conducted with Tullio Dobner, who has been translating Stephen King’s novels for many years and also translated The Stephen King Illustrated Companion for Sperling & Kupfer. I will have a more complete version of the interview in issue 65 of Cemetery Dance.

We had our first significant rain in a while on Friday night. A good thunder boomer, complete with bowling balls and lightening.

We watched An Education, which finally showed up on our OnDemand system. It was a fascinating movie, with something of a Great Gatsby feel to it. Carey Mulligan looked like a young Audrey Hepburn at times, and her absolute delight in the wonders of the world made the screen light up. Alfred Molina plays her well-meaning but misguided father. An interesting, unsympathetic bit part for Emma Thompson as the matriarch of the school who comes down hard on Jenny after she sows her wild oats. Rosamund Pike plays a real dingbat–she seems totally clueless about virtually everything going on in her world. A fascinating look at a changing world and the role of women in it.

Survivor wrapped up last night. The final challenge was pretty funny — the blindfolded maze. The players ended up pawing at each other and at one point Sandra almost tugged of Parvati’s top. It was a combination of blind man’s bluff and a zombie walk, with a photo finish, too. I thought Parvati would get more of the votes at the end–I think she played a savvy game, but was tainted by her affiliation with Russell in the final analysis. Russell still doesn’t get it that making it to the final three is only half the battle. Getting to the final three without having the entire jury hating your guts–that’s the trick. He’s done this twice; same result. His argument to Jeff that “America” should get more of a say in the outcome was nicely handled by the host: that’s not the game we’re playing. I didn’t see him on the morning show today, but I expect he spouted off more of the same. The live reunion show was lots of fun, as always. I wished it were longer. Unfortunately, Russell is probably going to feel validated by the results of the Verizon contest. He did make the game interesting but, as Ruper said, many of the players are connivers instead of survivors.

There was an interesting clip in the preview for The Mentalist’s season finale. Made me think that Red John is actually Dexter. Wouldn’t that be a crossover?

I finished Broken by Karin Slaughter. Review to come. Question for anyone who’s read other recent books by Slaughter: does Will Trent appear in them? I find it hard to swallow that someone with his reading disability could rise to the level he has in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. How does he take written tests? How does he read reports and handle all the other paperwork the job requires? How does he even find his way to crime scenes if he can’t follow directions?

I did a Sons of Anarchy marathon this weekend, finishing the entire first season. It’s a very well crafted show, with great characters and a season-long arc that works on every level. I like it that these guys aren’t just hardasses. They all have soft edges, just like real people. The colossal FUBAR over Opie, wow. Ally Walker looked like she was having a ton of fun as the lascivious ATF agent, and her scenes with Katey Sagal were smokin’.

Just one episode of Ashes to Ashes left. I wonder if Gene Hunt will ever get to see the stars like the other coppers can. Mr. JLB Matakoni showed up again. Last week it was Doctor Who, this week he’s playing an ANC rebel with a cause. There seems to be a lot to wrap up in just an hour. Will Sam Tyler make an appearance? Will they end up in space suits on Mars? One question I had about the photos Alex had developed–how do you end up with writing on the back of one of them? Did Jim Keats write it?

An interesting episode of Doctor Who. I’m not sure that I entirely liked it, but it had a couple of fascinating details. First, there was Toby Jones as the Dream Lord, a match for the Time Lord. He seemed as gleefully evil as a Batman villain, and for a while I thought we were meant to believe he was the Master. After all, the Doctor described him as the only person in the universe who hated him that much. The revelation of his true identity raised as many questions about the Doctor’s psyche as it answered. Favorite line: If you had any more tawdry quirks you could open a tawdry quirkshop.

Amy got some good lines, too  (“If we’re going to die, let’s die dressed like a Peruvian folk band”), but I liked Rory’s comment. “I carried you. I fear you may experience some bruising.” Her prank about going into labor to see the Doctor’s reaction was pretty good, too. Creepy old folks wandering the village were effective, too, though I tire of gaping-mouth-annoying-noise-making aliens. The episode had a superficial quality to it, something that kept me from being overly invested in its outcome. But Toby Jones was fun.

NBC doesn’t impinge on my eyeballs very often. In fact, I think I’m telling the truth when I say that the only NBC shows I watch are Law & Order (the mothership) and Law & Order: SVU. Well, it looks like that number is getting cut in half, because NBC just canceled the mothership after two decades. It’s hard to fathom that SVU has better ratings, because it’s such a trainwreck most of the time.

Also not renewed for the fall is FlashForward. I sure hope they come up with a whiz-bang ending to the season, because that’s all she wrote for the series. This was a series I almost gave up on at one point, but I hung in there. I still don’t know most of the characters’ names, which is never a good sign, but it’s held my interest. Much more than V did–I gave up on that one when it went on hiatus. Apparently it’s been renewed, though.

I have a question for anyone who watched The Mentalist last night: what did the seance at the end prove? It seemed to me that Patrick already had the case figured out. The culprit’s reaction was pure showmanship, and it hardly confirmed anything of substance. I liked the way Lisbon apologized to the cop for Patrick’s “mother” revelation.

JT’s miscalculation concerning Russell was the beginning of the end for the Heroes on Survivor. Colby is pretty much a non-starter (what did he last in the challenge? 15 seconds?) and Rupert was given the heave-ho, thanks to Sandra’s immunity idol. She managed to keep it hidden from everyone all the way to the end. I’m glad she didn’t delude herself into thinking she didn’t need to use it. That would have been monumentally stupid. Give Rupert his kudos for hanging in as long as he did with broken bones and other injuries. I wonder if his late-night noise making was strategy or oblivion. For me, the biggest surprise of last night’s episode was Russell’s wife–I was expecting Cruella de Ville and she most decidedly was not. I wonder, though, if someone will decide that Colby should go to the end because no one in their right mind–even his former allies–would award him the prize. The only life he’s shown in weeks was to bitch at his brother during the reward challenge.

In the fall of 1967, the building that was at the time called the Civic Center in Pittsburgh hosted its first hockey game. The combatants that night were the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Montreal Canadiens. Over four decades later, on the night of the last hockey game to be played in that building, the same teams faced off against each other. Montreal won both games, in a nice piece of historical symmetry. In winning 5-2 last night, they eliminated the defending Stanley Cup champions and moved on to the next round against either Philadelphia or Boston, whichever team triumphs tomorrow night. Montreal is playing the part of the giant slayer this year. They barely squeaked into the playoffs at the twelfth hour, and now they’re toppling teams left and right.

I was in that building once, back in August 1992. I was in Pittsburgh for a scientific conference and we had a day off in the middle. We were returning to the city after a trip out to Falling Water, the Frank Lloyd Wright house built over a waterfall, when we heard that Eric Clapton had a concert that evening. We went straight to the arena and got tickets. The seats were interesting, sort of press box jump seats at the edge of a railing overlooking the stage. Excellent concert, as I recall. The only time I’ve ever seen Clapton. Ray Cooper, the percussionist who often plays with Elton John, was with him that night.

I think I figured out one of the problems with Happy Town. Laura Palmer’s murder affected everyone in town in Twin Peaks. The grisley murder that disrupts the status quo at the beginning of the first episode of Happy Town doesn’t have the same resonance. Most people in town are going about their normal affairs as if nothing of consequence has happened. The acting chief has to work on the case (which he solved in the second episode, so no ongoing crisis there), of course, but it’s not occupying people’s minds like it should. There’s lots of other drama going on in town, but the real status quo shifter didn’t happen until the end of last night’s episode, with a mysterious disappearance. They’re pushing us really hard to believe that it is the Sam Neill/Leland Gaunt character who is responsible, which means it probably isn’t. At least, I hope it isn’t, otherwise what’s the point?

I was oblivious until recently to the series Sons of Anarchy. I probably heard the title bandied around, but I had no idea what it was about. I picked up the first season and started watching it last night. Cool show. Ron Perlman is the leader of a group of bikers who run everything illicit that happens in a small town called Charming in California. The gang is made up of a motley crew, including his stepson, whose mother (Katey Sagal) is the den mother. Her teeth are a lot sharper than you expect them to be when you first meet her. There’s another father/son pair in the group, too. The father in this case smokes copious pot and wears a nasal cannula to get oxygen. At the beginning of the series, a rival group has just stolen a bunch of weapons and burned down their warehouse, which puts a serious dent in business. There are several rival gangs, mostly divided along racial lines. The focal character is Jax, Sagal’s son and the son of the group’s founder. Jax recently found a manuscript written by his father that explores his thoughts about how the Sons of Anarchy have gone astray from his original intent. Jax’s mother and Perlman’s character are heavily invested in making sure that Jax remains strong and lethal. Jax is conflicted in part because his junkie ex-wife just delivered (prematurely) their son, a boy who has congenital and drug-related defects. The town cops are on the take–but not all of them. Fascinating dynamics. I look forward to catching up with the two seasons before season three begins in September.

I received an interesting proposal via e-mail yesterday, a chance to be in front of a TV camera for the first time. At least, I’m pretty sure it’s the first time. First time the camera will be aimed deliberately at me. It’s not a done deal yet, so I won’t say more at this juncture, but stay tooned.

I’m getting back into my normal exercise routine for the first time in 2010. I herniated a disk in my spine in early January and have had lower back pain ever since. It’s just now starting to abate after four-plus months. I exercised a bit and tried swimming as a low-impact replacement, but I’ve recovered to the point where I can do my usual 35 minutes on the elliptical (3 miles, 400 calories) each weekday without exacerbating the pain. Apparently our bodies reabsorb the disk material after a while, so the pressure on my nerve bundle is waning. It feels good to be able to work toward getting back in shape.

One of the delights of the new series Justified is the witty, razor-sharp dialog. “I didn’t order assholes with my whiskey,” Raylan says to the loudmouths in the bar just before challenging them to an ill-advised back alley rumble. Later, when a bad guy reaches for his guy, Raylan warns him, “I shot people I like more for less.” The series is really developing into one of my favorites. Timothy Olyphant is pitch perfect for the part, and the assorted cast members are all fascinating and colorful in their own rights. I wasn’t fond of the scene where Raylan is warning his ex-wife to get out of the house because the bad guys want to kidnap her. “I’m not going anywhere until someone explains to me what’s going on.” Rather than take 15 seconds to explain (which is all it took once he actually reached the house), Raylan tells her he’ll be there as fast as he can. I was sure the bad guys were going to get there in the interim.  The show is violent, and the violence is felt. People get shot and writhe in pain. They don’t all die, and the ones that do don’t die right away.

Apparently Happy Town isn’t a happy series for ABC. After tonight, they’re going to put it on the back burner until June, when it won’t do any more damage to their ratings, and then burn off the remaining five episodes that are in the can. Can’t say I’m surprised. Quirky isn’t enough to captivate a solid audience.

How I Met Your Mother was wall to wall New York celebrities this week. Peter Bagdanovich (who had a funny schtick in the elevator over the closing credits), NY Times crossword editor Will Shortz, Michael York, and Arianna Huffington were all guests at a party the friends crashed (en route to see Wrestlers vs. Robots). The Big Bang Theory was funny, as usual, with guest star Judy Greer as a nymphomaniac physicist who did her best to sleep with the entire male cast (except Sheldon), several of them at once.

You have to wonder when Rick Castle actually finds time to write. We’ve seen a few scenes of him laboring over the computer, and he had some pages to show to his daughter this week, but he doesn’t appear to have anything remotely resembling a routine. I had an inkling about the solution to this week’s murder (the Orient Express solution, in a way). Good to see “Ken Malansky” from the Perry Mason series. The scummy hotel clerk was a colorful character. They sort of telegraphed the kiss a bit at the end. I knew what was coming the moment they sent Castle down the hall to find Beckett.

Okay…Lost. It was a risky move, abandoning the main characters for an entire episode this close to the end. I know a lot of people didn’t like it. I confess that I was hoping after half an hour that they would wrap it up and get back to the contemporary action. That’s twice this season they’ve devoted entire episodes to backstory. Probably a bit much, but I guess they felt they needed to explain some things, and this was the only way to do it.

So, what did we learn? We now know who Adam and Eve were (which I didn’t expect to find out in this episode — and boy, didn’t Kate look fine in the cave from season one?). We know how MiB became smoky. We know how Jacob ended up being the guardian of the island (and wasn’t that scene very Biblical in a “take this cup from me” context?). We get an inkling of how the donkey wheel came to be. We know the identity of the little boy who has been haunting MiB. (Who else saw him, by the way? Was it Hurley?)

One idea I take away from the episode, though, is that the “rules” that Jacob and MiB have been playing by–they’re made up, the same way MiB (or, more accurately BiB [boy in black]) made up the rules to their childhood game (which is based on the Egyptian game Senet). Is it safe to assume that their mother was as nutsy cuckoo as, say, Rousseau or Claire? She sure seemed to be. She knew stuff (somehow) but how much of it did she just make up. She definitely had powers (witness what she did to MiB’s excavation and “tribe,” the original “others”), though we don’t know where they came from. In a way she reminded me of the Fates, making her thread and weaving it into a tapestry. (Some pundit wondered why young Jacob and BiB had such different hairstyles if their “mother” cut both.)

One reason I think the rules were made up is that “momma” said that they couldn’t harm each other, but Jacob clearly harmed his (nameless) brother by pushing him down the hole into the glowing cave. I wonder, though, whether the creature that is inhabiting Locke now, and that inhabited MiB for so long, is actually Jacob’s brother turned monster, or if it was just a monster in the cave that was released by Jacob’s actions. Didn’t Locke/MiB say something about his crazy mother a while back? Makes it seem like smoke monster Locke really is MiB in some form. His drive to get off the island is consistent with it still being the spirit of the man pushed down the hole, too.

Is MiB now the “light in the cave”? Momma said, “If the light goes out here, it goes out everywhere,” and people believe that if MiB leaves the island very bad things will happen to a lot of people…maybe to everyone.

For me, the last five minutes redeemed the episode, though I wish there had been a more expeditious way to get there. We only have 3.5 hours of new material left.

I started Broken by Karin Slaughter this weekend. I read the first two or three of her Grant County books, but I’ve missed some, so I have to catch up with past events. Fortunately, Slaughter does a very good job of filling in the blanks for anyone who might be new to the series. The book also brings in characters from her Atlanta-based novels.

When it got down to the final three in The Amazing Race, I didn’t really have a favorite to win. I guess if pressed I might have chosen the cowboys, since they played with the least amount of drama. However, that wasn’t meant to be. The drama at the mat, I could have done without. In a snippet on the CBS website that didn’t air, Brent addressed Brandy, saying, “Surely you’re old enough to realize this is a game,” which I thought was the best dressing down anyone could have given her. Grow up, in other words. Sheesh. The stuff at ILM was awesome–can you imagine what it would be like to be able to play around there for a while?

I like the Jesse Stone movies, adapted from the Robert B. Parker series and starring Tom Selleck. Selleck, who has co-written the last couple of installments, has Stone down cold, and there are plenty of fascinating secondary characters to keep things interesting even when the plots aren’t all that original or surprising. Apparently Parker got to see this movie before he died and gave it his stamp of approval. One thing I really enjoy about the series is the setting–they’re filmed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is where I spent most of the 80s. They do a decent job of disguising things (a blurred out Scotiabank sign in the background, for example), but other things that are less distinctive slip through. Like the “Barrington” sign visible from the parking garage (see photo). Barrington is the main street in downtown Halifax. Since a lot of this episode was outdoors in “Boston,” I got to scan the screen for a lot of familiar sites–the historic properties on the waterfront, the shops on and close to Barrington Street, etc. It’s one of my favorite cities. There were a couple of neat Jesse Stone character developments in No Remorse. The bit with him doling out his new cell phone number to an ever widening circle of people, always admonishing them to not share it with anyone else. The developing relationship with his dog.

I finally got to see the film version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo this weekend. This is the Swedish adaptation of Steig Larsson’s novel, and it bears the book’s original name (Men Who Hate Women). It’s a terrific adaptation. I was amazed at how much of what I saw on the screen was exactly as I imagined it when reading the novel. The filmmakers were also clever enough to bring in a few elements from the two subsequent books (some of Salander’s background) to help motivate her actions. The sexual assault scenes were brutal, but redeemed by Salander’s subsequent (equally brutal) actions. The attack on Blomkvist was pretty hair-raising, too. They left out a few things from the novel–Blomkvist’s unusual relationship with the Millennium publisher, for example–but nothing that is greatly missed. There’s supposed to be an American remake at some point, but why bother?

We’re getting close to the end of Ashes to Ashes–just two more episodes. Some unexpected developments this week, and Jim from Complaints is starting to look more and more like he’s the Angel of Death. Looks like answers are close at hand, especially concerning the disfigured cop who has been haunting Alex all season.

Another awesome episode of Breaking Bad. How do you top something like the legless Mexican hitman crawling out of his bed, leaving a trail of blood behind him in an attempt to get at Walt, who is surrounded by about 100 police officers? He was like a rabid dog (and he got put down like one, too, ultimately). When the audience knows more than the characters, you get scenes like the one where Marie accuses Walt of being partly responsible for Hank’s injuries. Skyler talks her down, and she apologizes, but we know that Walt is very much responsible for Hank’s injuries. Almost exclusively. I was sure that bored Jessie was going to do something terribly stupid as he goofed around in the lab, but the worst thing he did was get caught in his inflated clean suit. It will be interesting to see how Gustavo’s power play will impact things in the future. I have no doubt now that it was either him or the dodgy PI who warned Hank that the scary cousins were a minute away.

It was cool seeing “Mr. JLB Matekoni” from The #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency on Doctor Who this week. And next week the guest star is someone I spent an interesting 45 minutes with a few years ago: Toby Jones, who I interviewed in his trailer on the set of The Mist. This week’s episode started off with a terrific sight gag–the Doctor popping out of the stag party cake. For all his years of experience, sometimes the Doctor just doesn’t get it, and he says some incredibly stupid things in front of Rory (“Funny how you can say something in your head and it sounds fine…”) To mend fences and get Amy’s head on straight, he takes the young couple on an adventure to medieval Venice, where something grim is happening. The local officials claim the plague is still raging as a way of controlling access to the city. The Doctor’s psychic paper helps them leap this hurdle, though Rory takes umbrage at being described as Amy’s eunuch. (“I’ll explain later,” she reassures him.)

They look like vampires, they act like vampires, but of course they aren’t. “Makes you wonder what could be so bad it doesn’t mind us thinking it’s a vampire,” the Doctor observes. The episode has a nice blend of scary and funny (Rory’s lighter versus the Doctor’s portable sunlight stick leads to the obvious “yours is bigger” joke), and a good observation on Rory’s part about how the Doctor is dangerous to people because he makes them want to impress him. Nice banter between the Doctor and the villainess, who proposes a “full partnership,” to which the Doctor replies, “I’m a time lord, you’re a big fish. Think of the children.” I especially liked the Doctor’s delivery of his thoughts about the diabolical plan. “Ew. I mean, I’ve been around a bit and that’s…ew.” The Doctor take’s Rory’s observation to heart and orders Amy back to the TARDIS when things get rough. Fat lot of good that did. Interesting, though, that Rory will apparently tag along for at least another adventure. Mickey never had it that good back in the Rose days.

Two evictions on Survivor last night–and Rupert’s still there. I thought for sure he was a lame duck early on, what with his broken toe and all, but he’s managed to avoid the chopping block time and time again. He played the fake immunity idol gag perfectly, without over-selling it. He let Russell come to the wrong conclusion all on his own. He didn’t have to say a thing. Kudos, too, to Sandra both for not busting Rupert and for keeping her own idol a complete secret from everyone. I think she’s the first player who hasn’t at least told one other person that she had an idol. That could be big next week, because the previews indicate that she and Russell might be at odds.

No big surprise that everyone ganged up on Candice after her side-switching shenanigans last week. They even gave her the cold shoulder at Ponderosa when she showed up that evening. For a while. Just to make a point. Danielle was welcomed more warmly when she got there, after her own meltdown at tribal. “Maybe I said too much,” she admitted later. Ya think?

I realized something during this week’s Fringe: we could all do with a little more Martha Plimpton. Man, she was excellent in that episode. My favorite line of hers: “I believe in the unknown, but I’m wondering now if you’re not completely off your rocker.” My only quibble was that it’s hard to believe she’d pass the minimum height requirement for the police department. She looked like a dwarf standing next to Peter. And my suspicions concerning the identity of “Mr. Secretary” were confirmed.

Cho gets some of the best, understated lines on The Mentalist. Sure, Patrick got “They’re all crying on the inside” when confronted with a street full of clowns, but Cho delivered “CBI – we’re like the FBI only more conveniently located” when arresting the guy placing all the sports bets. And later, while interrogating the same guy: “You should tell the truth. It’s easier to remember.” However, Patrick gets the win with the subject line of today’s entry.

FlashForward revealed a subtle sense of humor this week. When the savant guy was freaking out over all the objectionable items on his hamburger (pickles, lettuce and onions) the score grew dramatic and suspenseful…and then the guy found a tomato. “I like tomatoes,” he said, and the music went quiet. At least the FBI is now catching up with the audience — they now know the identity of Suspect Zero, something we’ve known for ages.

Did you catch “Hank” from Breaking Bad on Criminal Minds this week? Playing another cop, of course. And this week’s CSI was like one big fat Greek tragedy.

It seems like we went straight from heating the house to having to cool it down. We got through most of April without any indoor climate control, but I know we had to turn the heat on at least once or twice. No we’re on the verge of summer and it’s A/C season. Highs in the nineties all week, though it still gets down to the sixties overnight, so at least the days don’t start off that bad.

I finished 212 by Alafair Burke last night. I knew her as James Lee Burke’s daughter, but I didn’t know that she was a lawyer, former Assistant District Attorney and currently law school professor. I got to see her at the Edgar banquet last week, and her book was among the freebies given away at the end of the night. It is a sophisticated work. At first I thought it was relying heavily on coincidence as several seemingly disparate threads were suddenly connected together, but by the end of the book some of them had splintered off on their own again and the reason for the overall connectivity became clear. There was one plot point that relied too heavily on a lack of cell phone coverage in someone’s residence, but otherwise I thought it was a very good book.

Tony broke Gibbs’s rule #10 on NCIS (“that’s the one that gives me the most trouble,” Gibbs said), getting involved with someone involved in a case. Except, his involvement was almost completely in his own mind, and he only met the object of his desire briefly at the end. Good for Palmer, getting a chance to catch something Ducky missed, and good for Abby for sticking to her guns and refusing to abandon her work to give a lab tour to a visiting big wig.

Justified was fine this week, too. A hostage drama with one of the most eloquent career criminals to ever grace the screen. He and Raylan were well matched verbally, and the actor who played the hostage taker was terrific. There was a running gag involving where he hid the shiv he used to overpower his guards that reached its logical conclusion when Raylan handed over a piece of fried chicken wrapped in a napkin because of where the convict’s hands had been earlier. And you just know that Raylan was going to take that call at the end, despite all the reasons in the world to let it keep on ringing.

And then there was Lost: I have been studiously avoiding anything that might allude to what’s coming down the pipeline, and I’m very glad that I did. Apparently there were rumblings that a major character might not survive the episode, but I didn’t know that, so the stuff that happened took me by surprise. Completely.

The gang got back together again one last time. Miles, Richard and Ben were still off traipsing through the jungle looking for shit to blow up, so their presence wasn’t needed for this episode, but everyone else was together in one place at one time. Briefly. Sawyer wasn’t going back in that cage again (“feels like we’re running in circles,” he said), but Widmore knew his weak spot: Kate. One of my favorite lines of the episode: “I’m with him,” Jack says as the smoke monster stomps down trees, drags off Widmore’s crew, and generally causes mayhem and destruction.

However, some of the most interesting action was taking place off the island. Jack identified Locke as a candidate for his new surgical procedure and, being Jack, wouldn’t take no for an answer so he started digging around to find out why Locke might refuse the risk-free treatment.  Along the way he bumps into Bernard (still a dentist), who recognized him as the guy who was “flirting with my wife” on Flight 815. The trail leads him to Anthony Cooper, Locke’s beloved father who is in a persistent vegetative state because Locke crashed the small plane they were in. Another plane crash–more devestation. Locke doesn’t think he deserves anything but punishment, but Jack tells him he can let it go. Then Jack admits he doesn’t know how to do this himself “and that’s why I was hoping that maybe you could go first.” More resonance with lines from the past (“I hope you find what you’re looking for” and “What happened, happened” and “I wish you believed me”) uttered by different characters in different contexts.

The fact that Jack invited Claire to stay with him gave me hope that, before all this is over, we’ll find out who he’s married to in the sideways universe. It’s not a big mystery, but it’s one I’d like resolved. And the fact that we saw Jin bringing flowers to Sun means that at least somewhere they’re still alive, because…

Because people were getting killed left and right last night. Lapidus gets one of the lines of the evening, the subject of this post, which were his parting words before getting beaned by a metal door. Presumably killed. As soon as the group abandoned the airplane, I figured his time was running out as he wouldn’t be needed much any more. Of course, let’s send the pilot into the submarine engine room because if he can run an airplane surely he’ll be of some help down there!

But even before that, the first bullet to the heart…almost. Kate is shot and I swear if she’d been killed I might have given up on the show. There are a few characters who can die, but she isn’t one of them, in my opinion. I know there are a lot of Kate-haters out there, but not me. Maybe it’s a pro-Canadian thing.

I found myself wondering why the smoke monster needed a watch. A question asked and answered within a few minutes — it really is the end of Lost! Jack’s theory of everything sounded right as soon as he said it. Fake Locke (aka Locke Ness Monster) can’t kill the candidates. It’s not allowed–the same way he couldn’t kill Jacob. But he could get someone else to do it for him–the same way he did with Jacob.

Everything might have been okay if Sawyer hadn’t jumped the gun. Sawyer was willing to change his mind and trust Fake Locke, but Jack? No way, no how. The guy got Juliet killed. Without Sawyer’s impulsive act, they might have sailed off (was anyone watching the bearing? Did anyone aboard even know the magical bearing?), Claire-less but otherwise intact. What would have become of Zombie Sayid is an open question, of course, but he redeemed himself in the end, taking one for the team. “There is no Sayid,” Jack said succinctly. At least no one got pieces of him on them. His parting shot was to tell Jack where Desmond was. Locke wanted him dead, so he’s probably important. Ya think?

And then we have The Poseidon Adventure crossed with Titanic as the two lovebirds, freshly reunited and renewed (thanks to Jin’s wedding ring), go down with the ship together. “We’ll never be apart again,” Jin said last episode. Honorable notion–but what about your kid, man? Are you going to leave her to Mr. Paik to raise? Minor quibble. I don’t think I reacted as much to the Kwan’s demise as to Hurley’s reaction to it. And if there’s any doubt as to who Kate really loves…

And if there ever was any question about whether Fake Locke might turn out to be good…

And yet — how complicit was Widmore in any or all of this? He was conveniently absent from around the airplane and the submarine was comparatively unguarded. Hmmmmm….

Earlier this year, I took a day-long course at work that gave me the credentials of an emergency first responder. Since then, my colleagues and I have jokingly asked each other if we’ve saved anyone yet. There was an incident at the grocery store one evening where a woman rushed in to say that a man was having a heart attack in the parking lot, but it turned out he was just tired and need to sit down in the shade for a few moments.

This morning, I saved someone’s life. Okay, it was a fictitious person, and she’d been dead for a couple of years, but still. In the first draft of the novel I’m working on, a character is stabbed in the neck in the opening chapter and spends most of the book in a coma. At the end, she’s taken off life support and allowed to die. My agent felt that the incident took place too early in the book for us to care about this character, so I planned to relocate the incident later in the novel. However, this morning, as I was working on the novel’s timeline, I came to the realization that the incident simply wouldn’t fit anywhere else in the book. It would have been too disruptive to the main plot and would have caused such an emotional impact on the main character that I couldn’t justify some necessary behavior on his part. So, she gets to live. Maybe I’ll off her in a sequel, because it’s a good scene, but for now she lives.

I also figured out the interweaving of the three main plotlines and fleshed out the characters of this no-longer-dead woman, who now needs a backstory and some motivation, and another character who I only recently envisioned but who plays a major part in the new first chapter that I drafted last summer. It’s all starting to come together. Within a couple of weeks, I expect to be ready to plow ahead with the second draft.

Did you catch House singing karaoke with Chase and Foreman last night? Boy, was that ever unexpected. I loved the exchange between House and 13. He raised the issue of her mortality and she fought back. “My self pity’s optional,” she said. “What about yours?” The gag with the milk in his coffee from the inexplicably lactating patient was funny, too. Everyone on his team wanted to say something, but none of them could.

I also thought The Big Bang Theory was amusing last night, drawing a parallel in the fractured relationship between Penny and Leonard and Sheldon like divorced parents sharing custody. Good to see Maggie from Eli Stone on Castle last night, too, playing Beckett’s friend Madison. Her character was a shining light on that underappreciated show. I was a little bit dubious about the liquid nitrogen science, though. Unless the victim was totally immersed in a tank of lN2 for a while, he should have been well and truly thawed out six hours later. It was a funny gag, though, to see his hand come apart like that, so I forgave them.

Nothing tops Breaking Bad, though, for potent storytelling. This week’s episode started with something of a creation story, a bit of an explanation for what made the two lethal assassins from Mexico the way they were. Then we get Hank going off the reservation on Jesse, beating him down for using Marie as a diversion. Then the lawyer telling Jesse that the beating was “the best thing for you” (and his follow-up jest calling Walt the “cute one” in the group now). However, my favorite part of the episode was the fascinating trajectory of the bullet that originated with the talkamatic gun dealer (who bore an uncanny resemblance to Steve Buscemi) and ended up…well, you know where it ended up if you saw the episode. I wonder what will happen to Walt’s lab assistant now that he’s been dismissed. Nothing good, I fear. However, the big question for me was who made the warning call, and why? Was it the manager of the chicken joint? That gleaming axe biting into the asphalt–another powerful image.

Not many goaltenders are tall enough to strike that particular pose, which Ken Dryden made famous in the 1970s when he appeared from nowhere and led the Montreal Canadiens to a Stanley Cup or five. He was unique in so many ways–his height, that mask, the way he filled the net…and that pose. It’s a little bit early in post-season play to draw comparisons between Halek and Dryden, but if the Canadiens pull of an unlikely upset of the Penguins, it might be time then. Nobody expected they’d win even one game against Washington and look how that went. Then, after a 6-3 drubbing in game one, they came back to even the series against Pittsburgh…in Pittsburgh. Certainly there are many Canadians rooting for Crosby. He did win the gold in the Olympics, after all, but I’m a Canadiens fan from ‘way back, so I’d love to see them lumber through at least to the finals, and maybe all the way. Their current strategy isn’t pretty–let the opposition tire themselves out taking shots at Halek–but it’s working, so why argue?

We’re down to the final three on The Amazing Race. Sad to see the detectives go. Their speed bump looked like it didn’t cost them much time, so there was a chance they might have passed the brothers, but it wasn’t to be.

Ashes to Ashes was interesting this week. Ray is one of the most fascinating characters, because he always turns out to be a little different, a little better, than he seems. He’s a good cop. He notices things. His moral compass is sticky, but it usually points in more or less the right direction. But what does it mean that he was seeing stars “like an astronaut.” Was that a dig at the ending of the US version of Life on Mars? And what could Gene Hunt have possibly said to the dirty cop that sent him into hysterics? He told him the truth, he said–but what is the truth. I hope we’re going to find out during the three final episodes, and that it is a satisfactory conclusion after all this buildup.

Another Stephen Moffat episode of Doctor Who this week, which is always good news.  “Flesh and Stone” was the resolution to last week’s “The Time of Angles,” and it turned the “Blink” concept neatly on its head by setting up an anti-Blink scenario. Instead of being forced to watch the angels, Amy was forced to keep her eyes closed. We found out that River is actually in the custody of Father Octavian. She apparently killed an important man, and they’re teasing us into thinking it was the Doctor. But was it? I like the writing of the Doctor’s dialog in this one–it acknowledges the way he sometimes starts with nothing and talks himself into the solution. “Is there a plan? I don’t know–I haven’t finished talking yet.” Though Matt Smith looks young, he conveys depth and vast age. We believe that the Doctor is 950+ years old and not 28 like the actor. It was especially good to see him vent some rage and frustration when the situation with Amy seemed doomed. People need to start paying more attention to what Amy says–she’s usually got something important to say. She takes the Doctor to task for not always telling her the truth. “If I always told you the truth, I wouldn’t need you to trust me,” he responds. Later, he asks River if he can trust her. “If you like,” she says. “But where’s the fun in that?”

Best line of the episode: “You, me, handcuffs–must it always end this way?” (said by River)

So the crack in the universe is going to be the ongoing thread/threat this season. “What if time could run out?” the Doctor muses. And, later, “Time can be rewritten.” Amy doesn’t remember the Daleks (completely unrelated to Halek) or the Cybermen. The army officers disappeared into the crack and simply vanished from the recollection of the others present, as if they’d never existed. Why isn’t Amy affected? Because she’s a time traveler now–and she seems very thrilled to realize that.

The end of the episode might rub some people the wrong way, but I think it reflected Amy’s angst and uncertainty. She doesn’t know if getting married is the right thing. Obviously she has questions and doubts. The Doctor, of course, is thinking about something completely different when he says, “We need to get you sorted right away,” oblivious to the way she’s sprawled on the bed. “That’s what I’m saying,” she responds.