Season 4, Episode 11 - Cabin Fever

Destiny, John, is a fickle bitch.

Not a lot of answers in last night’s episode…just more questions.

Apparently the powers that be have been grooming John Locke since his very birth. (Interesting note: the song that Emily Locke was listening to at the beginning - Everyday by Buddy Holly. What happened to Buddy Holly? Died in a plane crash.) Richard Alpert made not one but two trips to visit John over the course of his early life (with all the time travel that we’ve been seeing this season and last, I’m guessing that he travelled back from some point in the future). It seems that the island has many people “in on it”, as it seems that John’s grandmother recognized Alpert, and John’s caregiver when he was young as well as his teacher in high school really seemed to push him in that direction. Then, years later in therapy, Matthew Abbadon shows up to plant the idea of a walkabout in Locke’s head.

On the freighter, we continue with some of the grittiest stuff in Lost’s history. Keamy is ready to kill Michael because of his betrayal, but Mike’s island immunity power kicks in and jacks up Keamy’s gun, so he must resort to a good old-fashioned beat down.

This led to one big question: the second protocol. Keamy and Captain Gault have dual control keys to access a vault that contains…something. In this particular case, it reveals Ben’s new location on the island. Could this be something that was written by someone in the future with some kind of ultimate knowledge of everything that came before? Or is it like the box that Ben has where anything you want will appear?

The death toll rose by two this week, as Captain Gault and the good doctor both fell by Colonel Kurtz’s Keamy’s hand. And, as I’m sure you’ll remember, the doctor’s body has already turned up on the island, so once again we’ve got a time-jumping mindscrew. And so now, the army of mercenaries is again headed to land to wipe out the inhabitants, though this time, our heroes have Sayid on the way to help them.

Meanwhile, in his trek through the jungle, Locke has a vision of Ben’s old buddy Horace Goodspeed building a house for him and his wife. Horace seems to be stuck in some kind of time loop of his own, as he repeats himself several times. He does manage to plant the idea with John to return to the communal pit where the bodies of the DHARMA Initiative are buried, where John finds a map disclosing the location of the cabin.

In the midst of this journey, we get to the crux of the episode. This installment was about being chosen, and all that it entails. John has wanted for all his life to be special, but seems to fall short every time. Ben, on the other hand, feels that he has been chosen, but is rethinking what that means.

Once there, John is the only one willing to enter the cabin. Lo and behold, Christian Shephard is there waiting. I don’t think anyone who follows the show closely would have been really surprised by this…but I was surprised to see Claire there (though I shouldn’t have been…the last time we saw her, she was with Christian. What was surprising, though, was her coolness about the whole thing. Her baby, the one thing that has driven her character since the beginning of the show, is miles away, she knows that there are mercenaries coming to annihilate everyone on the island, and she’s the calmest and most laid back that we’ve ever seen her. Did she get a glimpse of the future and see that all will turn out well? Or, as is being widely speculated, is she dead and Jacob has taken over her earthly coil?

John only has time for one question, and he chose “How can I save the island?” Christian seemed to approve of this question, and in the final moment, we got our answer…he has to move the island.

This brings up ALL KINDS of questions. First, why? My guess is that the island is in some kind of time bending bubble. The comic book shown to young John early in the episode pictured a bubbled island floating in clouds…and way back in the first season, the comic that Walt was reading depicted a similar thing. Second, how? Hook up some cables to the freighter and drag it? Doubtful. Maybe the island has some kind of propulsion system itself. Or maybe it’s something deeper that we just can’t grasp yet. I’ll go with that.

All in all…decent episode. Nothing spectacular, but no real filler. Just an on par Lost episode.

Season 3, Episode 21

100 Word Review: Earl continues to be a show filled with people and characters that I love - that, for some reason, I just don’t care about. In this episode Earl discovered that marriage, no matter how hot the chick, has problems when you don’t know the other person very well before getting hitched. He and the wife disagreed on who the list should be handled. She thought returning what she stole was enough. Earl didn’t. So earl helped the guest star John Hedder win a bagging competition while she finished up her entire list in a week or so. Season Finale’s next week.

Season 2, Episode 15 - Season Finale

100 Word Review: SO - that was the season finale, huh? That Writer’s Strike was a real pain, wasn’t it? I mean, for this to be season finale…huh. I just don’t know quite what to say. Liz has a pregnancy scare, Jack has trouble getting fired from the Bush Administration. Matthew Broderick guest stars. Tracey continues to try to make his porn video game, and Kennith feuds with a rival page for a spot paging the Olympics. It’s filled with a bunch of absurd stuff and everything goes back to the way it was before by the end of the episode. Big whoop.

Season 4 Episode 13

100 Word Review: You know, sometimes and episode is just…”eh”. This episode of The Office seemed to serve a purpose…showing Jim’s commitment to doing his job for Pam, while Pam showed us that she still dreams of something more than Dunder-Mifflin. Michael is still a moron, and there is just might be some chemistry left between Angela and Dwight. Still, nothing particularly ground breaking or really interesting happened. Michael, Oscar, Daryl, and Pam went to Pam’s old school for a job fair. Jim, Kevin, and Andy played golf in the hopes of closing a client. Season Finale is next week.

Season 7, Episode 11 - My Princess

100 Word Review: This review doesn’t need 100 words…just three letters: W.T.F.

Not only was this episode the worst in the history of Scrubs (it takes that prize easily), this could be the worst 30 minutes of television I’ve ever experienced.

There was not one single amusing moment during the entire show. I’m aware that it was decided that this episode would be the finale after it was already in the can, but that doesn’t change the fact that this episode was unbelievably terrible.

It’s a tired cliche, but I have genuinely never wanted 30 minutes of my life back more than after watching this episode.

Grade: D-

100 Word Review: The Writer’s Strike cut many seasons for shows short, including “Family Guy” which aired its season finale on Sunday. There was nothing particularly “season finale-like” about the episode - which focused primarily on Chris’ pursuit of a girl named Anna who works at Brian’s Vet’s office. Peter manages to kidnap a parrot and become a pirate for a little while, which was…um…hmm…there, I guess. He also spent a good minute or so trying to pick a dead frog up with a shoebox lid - making me wonder just why in the hell I was watching this. You know?

Season 12, Episode 14 - “Cops & Robert”

100 Word Review: In what is, I believe, the season finale for season 12, Hank accidentally steals the wallet of a mentally unbalanced guy who then tries to kill him and the rest of the alley gang, Dale gets a job at “Bossoms” in an attempt to file a lawsuit against them for “sex discrimination” and Bobby gets stuck hanging out with Fred Willard’s has-been cop character at school. Lots of plots that all manage to inter-connect in a relatively satisfying way. I’m glad this wasn’t the last episode of the series for sure, and I’m looking forward to season 13.

Season 19, Episode 18 - Any Given Sundance

100 Word Review: In this sadly average episode of The Simpsons Lisa makes a documentary about her family and it gets accepted into the Sundance Film Festival. You can add film financiers to the list of things Principal Skinner and Super Intendant Chalmers do that they probably shouldn’t. After the Simpsons are in Utah and upset over Lisa’s film we see that Nelson also has a movie showing at Sundance (which is vastly superior to Lisa’s). That’s pretty much it. Guest voices Jim Jarmusch and John C. Riley were entertaining, but Riley felt wasted. Not the best episode. Not the worst. so-so.

Season 4, Episode 10 – Something Nice Back Home

After last week’s amazing episode, this week left me saying…meh.

For being the leader of the Losties, Jack seems to be in distress a lot…it’s like there’s an episode every season where he’s either sick or captured or something. Doesn’t exactly make for the strong leader image I’d like to see in Jack. This week, the good doctor was down with a bout of appendicitis. I’m assuming it served to lay the foundation for things to come, but it seemed really forced. Maybe that’s the idea though…as Rose pointed out, why would Jack get sick on an island that heals everyone else, and at this pivotal juncture?

And I know L. Scott Caldwell is probably busy doing other stuff, but does anyone else find it somewhat jarring to have Rose gone for long stretches of the season, only to return for one episode to impart some words of wisdom? Just me? Okay.

Meanwhile, Sawyer, Claire and Miles are making their trek through the jungle back to the beach. Claire drops the hint that she’s been seeing things (there was a hallucination/vision scene filmed for her intended for last week’s episode, but it was cut). Miles has his own visions again as well…sensing the violence that occurred on the spot they were standing. I wasn’t too surprised that he found Karl’s body, but I was SHOCKED…and a little upset…that he found Danielle, too. She was such a great character, I was sure that she’d have survived the shot that she took. Rousseau…heck, ANY Season 1 character…deserves a better sendoff than that. Of course she’ll be back in flashbacks and such, but I feel like her arc wasn’t really completed.

I’ve noticed over the past few weeks that this season has been much, much darker than anything we’ve seen. Between the borderline insane asylum we see on the freighter, Rousseau’s and Karl’s brutal, sudden deaths and subsequent freaky corpse discovery, and Alex’s absolutely shocking death last week, this season is at a depth that I never expected we would see. I love it.

Back to the story…that night, the jungle company make camp. Claire awakens to see Christian Shepherd holding Aaron. (To help with speculation, check out this spoilery clip from the recent “Missing Pieces” campaign.) When Sawyer awakens the next morning, they are both gone. He finds Aaron alone in the woods, but Claire is nowhere to be seen.

Finally, we come to the flashforward. As a friend of mine said, it’s a Jaters’ dream come true. Taking place after the events of Eggtown (Kate’s episode), but before the events of Through the Looking Glass (Season 3 finale), we find that Kate and Jack have definitely hooked up, and it seems that they’ve been in that role for a while…they seem very comfortable together (and they got Aaron a Millennium Falcon toy, which makes them the best parents ever).

Jack heads to see Hurley again, but, even though their meeting was pretty strained last time, this time it’s apparent that Hurley has gone off the deep end…though he could be the sanest of them all. He refuses to take his meds or even talk to the doctors, because he believes that the Oceanic 6 are all dead. He did make a very good point…Jack and Kate’s current life was pretty darn close to Heaven…and in last season’s finale, Jack’s life was pretty darn close to Hell. Hurley left Jack with a couple of bombshells…first, Charlie left Jack a message that “You’re not supposed to raise him” and that Jack would have a visitor soon. Since he had already seen his father once that day, it was pretty easy to figure out who that visitor would be…and this seems to have driven him to his future chemical dependency.

I wonder what’s recording on Jack and Kate’s Tivo.

Finally, we learn that Kate has been sneaking around, doing favors for Sawyer. I’m sure this favor relates to Sawyer’s secret daughter, Clementine, which makes Kate’s hesitation to talk about it understandable, I guess. You’ve got to feel bad for Jack, though…he thought he was finally out from under Sawyer’s shadow, only to find that he is still on Kate’s mind. They fight, culminating in Jack exploding and yelling that Kate is not even related to Aaron, which the boy overhears. Jack loses it and walks away.

Like I said, not the greatest episode ever…no big revelations, save for Jack and Kate’s hook- and break-up. Mostly laying the groundwork for next week…a Locke-centric episode which promises to be great.

Episode grade: B

Season 2, Episode 14 Sandwich Day

100 Word Review: Jason Sedakus stops back by “30 Rock” this week, as Floyd flies in from Cleveland and gets stuck in New York for a few days due to Global Warming. Meanwhile, Jack’s days at GE appear to be numbered as he is forced to move down to the 12th floor by the new Marky Mark loving CEO. Liz does her best to make Floyd want her while he’s back in town, and crashing at her place, but ultimately goes psycho over him because of a phone call from 8 months ago. There was a also subplot involving Teamsters and sandwiches. Really.