kpduty

LOST is the new show on ABC Wednesday nights at 8pm. This is the same time as AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL on UPN, and it's causing considerable headaches. Last night I thought, well, I'll tape one while I watch the other, but we don't have cable or TIVO and The Husband was downstairs in the living room "studying" (that's the French word for "napping") so I was shit out of luck and spent the hour flipping back and forth. So apparently LOST is this show about Tyra Banks leading a group of adventurer models and they crash on an island and all they have to survive are bikinis and a makeup artist. Or something like that.

It's actually more about Matthew Fox, the oldest brother on PARTY OF FIVE, and he's a doctor and he may have a drinking problem and his flight crashes on an island way far away from where the plane was supposed to be going. Around 48 people survive the crash and quite a few of them are introduced right up front. Presumably we'll get to meet all of them by the middle of the season.

This is all very soap opera-y, so pay attention...

Matthew Fox is Jack, the aforementioned doctor. Kate is the hottie tough girl whom he will eventually sleep with, just you watch. She was being transported to the US by a Federal Marshal, for what they haven't said. Boone and Shannon are "brother and sister." I put that in quotes because she may have totally been lying. Shannon knows French and is convinced they'll be rescued so she spends a lot of time on her personal grooming. Charlie is the heroin addicted bass player for a faded out rock band who happens to have a small stash on him. Hurley is the amiable fat guy. Michael is there with his son, Walt, whom he hasn't seen in a long time. Walt's mother just died. Walt has just been befriended by totally insane crazy person Locke. How crazy we just don't know. Sawyer is also totally crazy; he's a chain-smoker, so we know he's going to come in handy. Sayid used to be in the Iraqi Republican Guard, but he seems really cool. Jin and Sun are Korean and appear to speak no English and have totally separated themselves from everyone else. I think he may be her pimp; they just have a really weird relationship where he won't let her talk to anyone and he's always yelling at her. But I could be wrong. And then Claire's young and 8 months pregnant and she totally shouldn't have been flying. I expect she's totally going to die in childbirth. There are also some others orbiting around these guys, like an older woman who was sitting next to Jack on the plane, and the Federal Marshal. He's got a big piece of plane in his gut, though, so he's not going to be around much longer.

So why is this show so awesome? Well, first of all it springs forth from the mind of JJ Abrams, who is the creative genius behind ALIAS. And I think you know the love/hate relationship I have with that show. Like ALIAS, the first episode of LOST was kind of lame, picking up considerably when the giant monster chewed up the pilot and spit him out into a tree.

Giant monster, you ask? That's the second reason this show is so awesome, GIANT PEOPLE EATING MONSTER. No one's actually seen it yet, it's just been running around in the forest knocking over trees and making noise and eating pilots. Does it have a preference for people? Who knows? There are other animals on the island you'd think would be good food for a giant monster. Like the polar bears.

Polar bears, you ask? Hmm, yeah, that's reason number three. In the second episode Sawyer kills a polar bear. What's a polar bear doing on a tropical island? If they can get to the French lady, she might know.

French lady, you ask? Apparently, there's some French lady somewhere on the island. Sayid picks up a transmission with the plane's radio, where the French lady talks about "everyone being dead," and she being "the only one left," and "the big thing ate them all." And that's when all the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. And then there was the disembodied male voice counting during the transmission. Sayid theorized it was the number of times the French lady's message had looped, meaning that the distress call was SIXTEEN YEARS OLD!!!

That's kind of when I almost peed my pants.

I shouldn't really be giving a review of this because it's only two episodes old, but I'm excited that there's a fairly interesting show on the air that's mysterious and thought-provoking and speculative as X-FILES was for me. It may end up totally sucking ass. People on the boards are coming up with all these theories about how this is all in Jack's mind, that these are all people he's killed practicing as a doctor; that they're in the Bermuda Triangle (even though that's on the other side of the planet from where they are) or Eden or Limbo; that there's no monster, the polar bear was a mutated dog, they're on a secret military research base. It's fun to guess.

Ain't It Cool News has an interview with the other LOST guy, Damon Lindelof, and he basically says a lot of the inspiration for the show came from Stephen King's THE STAND, which kicks ass.

....I totally just spaced out on the message boards. Someone was mentioning that JJ Abrams is addicted to the number 47 (like Chris Carter was addicted to 1013 and 1121) and that 48 could mean that SOMEONE ON THE ISLAND IS ACTUALLY SATAN!!!! Which kicks ass.

Maybe I'll post an update after a) I've spent at least four or five days reading message boards about the show or b) the show starts to piss me the hell off. But check it out, if you're not too engrossed in AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL.

PS I must apologize for how scattered this post was. I seriously am reading message boards while writing this. Multi-tasking is my thing!!!