Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

Yes, Helicopter. It's how guys like us roll.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

You are a bit of a whiffenpoof.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

Pepe's is everywhere now.

Sally's is better.

I still dream about Louie's lunch.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

the experience was very cool, but the burger is not "top 10 in the country" as advertised. it's like something my dad used to make when mom was sick.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

The Yalie B-School girl I know is a hippie.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

There is an excellent bar there on the south side of that big square (courthouse and US atty offices to the east . . . ). Lots of old woodwork and good beer on tap. Cannot remember the name.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

Things that sucked, weekend edition:

The final episode of Lost, on top of the final season of suckitude. That is all.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

The Orlando Magic.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

I am not sad that I did not see a single episode of Lost.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

Yes, interesting question:

Which had the bigger letdown from a preliminary buildup:

Magic 8-0 in first two rounds, to 0-3
Lost, season 1-5, to season 6.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

Me too. From reading the wiki it seems like a good idea that just morphed into shit because 11 or 12 of the monkeys in the room broke their typewriters.

I said it a million times: JJ Abrams is a hack that had to blow his way to where he is.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

I didn't start watching until the S-2 finale so I didn't watch the show as it aired live until the season that included the Bai Ling crapfest. The show veered into lame territory fairly regularly and the producers readily admit that in interviews.

For this season, I lowered my finale expectations around the time of the explanation of the whispers. Across the Sea, with its Xena Warrior Princess production looks and Alison Janney's weird acting, got me to the point where I figured I'd be annoyed the finale. I found the finale corny as hell and I think they copped out on giving answers to a lot of previously important mysteries -- fertility issues, why the Others were abducting certain survivors, how come the Others said Jack "wasn't on the list," etc. The resolutions for Jack, Hurley and Ben were all great and those actors all gave great performances. Terry O'Quinn is also a fantastic actor (he's who got me watching to begin with) and he repeatedly hit it out of the park with Locke and Smokey.

So maybe it's because I wasn't expecting much but I am happy with the ending. I loved the symmetry of Jack's eye closing even though that was what I'd guessed Matthew Fox referred to when he said he knew how it would end since the beginning. It certainly wasn't perfect, but neither was the series finale for The Wire.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

JJ Abrams had little to nothing to do with Lost beyond the original pitch and the pilot, I believe.

For Atticus
 

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

If you were watching it for the characters I could see being satisfied by the finale. But I was never that interested in the characters, who started out primarily as a means to drive forward the mysteries of the island. But somewhere in season 5 the writers decided that they couldn't explain even a sliver of the island's mystery in a coherent fashion, so having baited the hook, they pulled the switch and turned it into a character-driven morality play. Had enough of those in high school English.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

I think the wheels started falling off the mystery truck with the flash-forwards so I'd put that demise in season 4. At the very least, the mystery got very baroque with all the off-island antics like Hurley being visited by Ghost Charlie in the psych hospital.

How can you say the character stuff was less important in, say, season 1 when so much of each episode was flashbacks to a particular character's shitty pre-island life?

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

I had missed most of the last season's episodes (I just read the summaries for most of them) but was still expecting more for the finale.

The part of me that likes happy endings got all mushy when the various couples got back together. But the part that wanted some answers thought the ending was Not Good.

Too many unanswered questions.

caption, please
 

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

A fair amount of that was driving the "what's up with the island" plot, though. Locke's in a wheelchair? Walt kills birds by thinking about them? Hurley is crazy and hears numbers?

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

I can't say I gave this a lot of thought at the time (particularly since I didn't start watching really until S-3) but questions like Locke's in a wheelchair could never really be answered by anything besides "Magic!!"

Taking your idea of the island's mysteries as "science" versus all the character arcs as "faith" this posting supposedly from a Bad Robot writer indicates that the plan for the show was always for faith to trump science.

In short, I guess you and a bunch of other viewers got sold a bill of goods thinking the writers might give you a "science" resolution.

ETA that I guess Icky Thump was right in the sense that the post above indicates that the ending was conceived by JJ Abrams, so blame him.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

Yes, that. Whatever the percentage, a substantial part of the first five seasons involved revelation of odd scientific phenomena on the island: polar bears, magnetism, smoke monsters, living dead people, buttons/hatches. All of that was misdirection, and explained as "magic" or "god's way on earth."

Maybe that's why I don't go to church.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

MY DVR may or may not have caught it, but it had become obvious a la the X-files that it had not been storyboarded in advance, they were winging it, making up shit on the fly, and had no way to wrap up all the loose ends. The real question is why viewers repeatedly getted sucked into this crap.

LessinYerevan, Armenia

These pretzels make me stay thirsty, my friends.
 

Postulate:

The most interesting man in the world is not.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

I never watched Lost. Was Captain Nemo the mystery of the island?

Re: caption, please
 

Hey, what's with the fucking red x?

Re: These pretzels make me stay thirsty, my friends.
 

Conceded.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

Who knows? That's the problem.

What we did learn is that we can all be happy in heaven, or your religion's equivalent.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

'Cause it's still different than the alternative crap?

I caught about the last 20 or 30 minutes while having a scotch and unwinding before bed. It was somewhat more amusing than most shows, even with the shit-eating smiles on all the faces, but IT WAS STILL TV FOLKS.

If you want something intelligent, turn off the TV.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

Or turn on 30 Rock, Smuggy McSmug.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

I put that in the mildly more amusing category, too.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

30 Rock is funny, but not exactly intelligent. I mean, the last scene of the season is tracy jordan dancing topless at a wedding.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

Fine. Then watch Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

freshman year I never watched TV. we'd do stuff like outside reading on US history and have long bull sessions in Nathan Hale's old room, in Connecticut hall, where I lived.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

I'd get high and read the Christian Science Monitor. True story!

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

I'm not even sure we had cable freshman year. In Ohio. Where I lived. We never watched TV, but we often got stoned and played RBI Baseball.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

"Cable" consisted of networks, CNN, and CSpan, and some weird third-world channels like TV Uganda or Hungary One. Good times. The better times were the fights over Cosby Show versus Simpsons. Raven-Simone can eat Bart's shorts.

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

Seriously? I don't believe you.

Seriously?
 

I'm receiving spam from someone trying to sell me forklifts?

Re: Seriously?
 

But wouldn't it be pretty cool to have a forklift?

Re: The thread where Spring has sprung, and Penske has risen from the law. Word!
 

I like the History channel.