Lost

Lost writers are total pottymouths! The Los Angeles Times got their hands on the scripts and apparently the f-bomb has been blowing up the dialogue. Why so angry, guys? This is network TV!

“That’s the style of the show,” explained co-creator Damon Lindelof. “It started out with the outlines of the pilot. It just became a way of expressing intensity. One of the inherent problems in the show is if it’s just people sitting around the beach or walking through the jungle, you don’t feel there are any stakes or intensity. But if somebody’s walking through the [expletive] jungle or [expletive] Sawyer is walking through the [expletive] jungle, it projects a certain level of intensity that the actors read and go, “I’m playing this with some intensity as opposed to just sitting around.”  read more »

• 0 comments

Lost's director Jack Bender is gonna get off the island for awhile and visit Detroit for the ABC show The Prince of Motor City. Mr. Bender has a long resume of directing and an executive production credit on Dirty Sexy Money, HBO's creepfest Carnivale and Alias. So he'll be in familiar territory directing this pilot about a "gothic" family deep in the Detroit auto business. According to Variety, the hour-long show will have Hamlet undertones. Paging Dr. Freud!  read more »

MONDAY

OMFG, Gossip Girl (CW, 8 p.m.)! (Is OMFG even appropriate slang anymore? Honest to blog, who can keep up?) Too many murdered brain cells to remember exactly where the show left off? Here’s a primer. Blair’s secret affair with Chuck Bass had recently come to light after her reconciliation with Nate. He’s angry, while she’s mortified because being a “whore” undermines her leader status amongst her prim ladies. (Uh, really?) Jenny Humphrey, Dan’s younger sister, recently slighted by Blair, uses Blair’s weakened state to her own social advantage. Jenny’s rebuke—she’s from Brooklyn!—plunges Blair into a deep shame spiral. At the end of the last episode, Serena had just swooped in to console her. All caught up now? Gr8! Kthxbai.  read more »

MONDAY

Put those electric razors back in their chargers, writers: it looks like you’re back to work on Wednesday. (Better yet, shave today, so when you report you’ll have just the right amount of writerly stubble.) Showrunners, ever the go-getters, will be in the office today, attempting to save their charges’ shortened seasons. Miraculously, TV Guide’s Michael Ausiello has a pretty comprehensive list of what the future holds for your favorite shows. (The man knows how to work a beat!) Unfortunately, the earliest anything is going to return is April, with the exception of Saturday Night Live, which could return as early as Feb. 16. In the meantime, here’s what passes for TV.  read more »

MONDAY

First, the good news: it looks like the strike may be coming to an end. Now, the bad news: even in the most hopeful scenario, new episodes of popular shows, like Grey’s Anatomy, won’t hit the airwaves until April or March, if at all before the fall. Jeff Zucker may have found a silver lining in all of this—at least publicly—but what does the rest of America have to show for it except for a newly acquired taste for reality programming?  read more »

There are a few facts that devoted Lost fans will have to accept as they delve into a fourth season of their beloved hit television series. The most painful is that, as of now, only seven episodes are left. (There were supposed to be sixteen. Thanks, writers strike!) Then there’s all that chatter about how the storyline has become a bit over the top, even for a show that’s supposed to be mysterious and bizarre. And now, of course, there all these newcomers and reluctant converts who, having missed the first three seasons, insist on pestering devotees with annoying plot questions.

That’s a lot of baggage for one television show!

Fortunately, I am not a devoted Lost fan. (I checked out season three at my girlfriend’s behest, but I think I’ll stick with my Twin Peaks box set for now.) Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist trolling the show’s message boards to find out what all the Losties were saying about last night’s highly anticipated season opener.  read more »

MONDAY

It’s George Bush’s final State of the Union (All Networks, 9 p.m.). Incidentally, the one year when the networks are scrambling for programming and therefore probably welcome the intrusion is the one year where no one could care less. The failing economy, Iraq, and his legacy will more than likely be on the agenda. Watch and wait for the presidential candidates to trip over themselves trying to respond first.

Speaking of wastes of time, it can’t replace an actual new episode, but Gossip Girl Revealed (CW, 8 p.m.) should satisfy your weekly fix for the posh adolescents. In the show’s new time slot, it promises plenty of bonus features—commentary, deleted scenes, profiles—and a re-airing of the pilot. Sadly, this is meant as an introduction to the uninitiated and harkens the beginning of repeats. Oh, they’re too young to die!  read more »

MONDAY

Bleak. That’s the only word for it. Chances are your favorite show is in repeats. And with the strike hitting its acrimonious peak last week, there’s little hope that those shows are coming back anytime soon.  read more »

Fox and ABC came to opposite conclusions about what to do with two popular shows with seasons left incomplete when the writers' strike begain. Fox is postponing the premiere of its popular series, 24, rather than begin to air a season that isn't finished; but ABC will go ahead and air episodes of Lost, which is also incomplete.  read more »