666 PREVIEW

ABC-TV's press release/web site heralds a new show this fall: 666 Park Avenue, starring LOST alum Terry O'Quinn in a familiar LOST-like setting. The release states:

"What would you do to have everything you desire? Step inside 666 Park Avenue, New York’s most seductive address. We all have some burning needs, desires and ambitions. For the residents of The Drake, the premier apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, these will all be met – for a price – courtesy of the building’s mysterious owner, Gavin Doran (Terry O’Quinn). But be careful what you wish for, because the price you have to pay is your soul. ABC’s wickedly sensual, sexy and spine-tingling new drama about fulfilling our deepest desires, 666 Park Avenue, will air Sundays from 10:00-11:00 p.m., ET.

When Jane Van Veen (Rachael Taylor) and Henry Martin (Dave Annable), an idealistic young couple from the Midwest, arrive in New York City, the glamorous center of industry and media, they are offered the opportunity to manage the historic Drake. Jane, a small town girl with big ambitions, always knew she wanted to be an architect. Henry, a member of the Mayor’s staff, is grounded, intelligent and tenacious. They are lured by the intoxicating lifestyle of New York’s wealthy elite.

Gavin, who has many skeletons in his own closet, is at the height of his world and commands the dark power of The Drake. Olivia (Vanessa Williams), his beautiful but enigmatic, supportive wife, wears her elegance, wealth and position in society as armor… but cracks will slowly be revealed.

Jane and Henry not only fall prey to the machinations of Gavin and Olivia, but unwittingly live in the dark embrace of the building’s supernatural forces which endanger the lives of its residents. These include Brian Leonard (Robert Buckley), a young playwright pining for his early success and promise. Brian’s wife, Louise (Mercedes Masöhn), is a rising hot star in the world of fashion photography. Alexis Blume (Helena Mattsson) is a troubled young woman who is the picture of obsession -- what is her real connection to Gavin, and what part will she play in Brian and Louise’s life? Tony DeMeo (Erik Palladino), The Drake’s doorman, is the eyes and ears of the building. And then there is 14-year-old Nona Clark (Samantha Logan), who has a blossoming psychic ability, allowing her to look into the future of her fellow Drake occupants. 

Sexy, enticing and captivating, home to an epic struggle of good versus evil, The Drake maintains a dark hold over all of its tenants in this new, chilling drama, tempting them through their ambitions and desires."

It appears ABC is setting up the premise of 666 as a micro-LOST: an ensemble cast "trapped" in a demonic building manipulated by Satan (O'Quinn). 

From Comic-Con, observations seem to play on this free will trade off between mortals and immortality. O'Quinn's character is described as a person who plays hard with money and people's souls. He is willing to grant people their desires (cue, "magic box" from the Island) but for a price.

Like the Island, this apartment building is filled with odd mysteries and horror elements: the building itself, called The Drake, has a sinister past. It seems it has seen a lot of tragedy -- suicides, murders and even darker things. Show elements include a malevolent elevator, and a ghost-girl in the basement. - a mysterious group called the order of the dragon that has sealed off part of the basements for an unknown reason (sounds like The Hatch). 

The premise to this series is more upfront than the LOST script. Viewers will know fairly quickly that there are dark elements of the building and its owners, through the eyes of the naive Midwestern couple who comes to the Big Apple and wind up in their own mini-Hell. It all depends on how the creators of the show want to develop the mysteries and horror elements into a reasonable story arcs.

For those who are looking to fill the LOST void, 666 Park Avenue may be the that diversion. Lost alums so far have not fared well in their action-adventure sequels, such as Alcatraz or Hawaii 5-0.

REBOOT:PREVIEW

G4 Television begins its four-hour block of reruns of LOST on Monday.

The question is whether old viewers will watch the reruns knowing what happens in The End. That question is the split dogma of the show itself. After the final episode, viewers were clearly divided into Civil War Camps: those who loved the ending because "it was perfect for character resolutions" versus those who hated the ending because it did not clearly answer the sci-fi, fantasy, mystery story arcs leading up to the final season.

Taking into consideration what viewers know now, can the series have a viable "flashback" of its own? Is there a way to view the show in new context the second time around?  Or will the viewer be played for a fool like John Locke?

We know the main characters wind up in Eloise's church in the state of being awoken but dead. This is the proclaimed "sideways world" but it raises more questions than it answered during Christian and Jack's brief casket conversation. But it does not explain the Island. Are there clues to determine what the Island really was?  Was it real? Was it its own character? Was it an illusion?

We were told that Jacob was the person who brought the humans to the Island. His right hand man was The Man In Black, his dead brother, a smoke monster. The idea that these two supernatural oddities control the lives of visitors is almost the opposite Fantasy Island metaphor, instead of personal fantasies coming true one's evil nightmares come to the forefront.

Is it possible to re-examine the show and piece together the story arcs not to meet an individual's postulated theories but to see if a reasonable literary storyline emerges from the characters? Just as the characters were tested at intellectual and moral levels, can the show itself be redeemed? Is there enough hope in the fact that TPTB knew what they were doing to be faithful to all the story arcs as being important components in the saga, or will a review of the series turn into a full face run into the activated sonic fence?

We will try to put an literary analytical review of the episodes in the context of what we know happens in the future. We will see how long that lasts before the show's main plot(s) goes off the rails.

LOST CRASH LANDS ON G4?

It was an odd in-house promotional ad. Beginning on July 16, LOST would be shown on G4 television.  Something mentioned about being able to see the episodes in a row.  It may have been a tape mix-up.

UPDATE: G4 ad states that beginning on Monday July 16, it will show 4 episodes of LOST on each Monday night.

I thought this may have been a mistake.  G4 and Sci-Fi channels had run LOST episodes in 2008. Back then they called them Lost in 2.0, using enhanced graphics and information pop-ups. Why, more than two years after LOST ended would the G4 cable network want to air the show?

Well, G4 was originally a gamer's channel. It was supposed to be devoted to all things in video gaming: hardware, games, controllers, reviews, awards, the works. But clearly, there is only so much gaming programs one can have on a daily basis. So G4 acquired TechTV, which was a programming base of all things technical, computer, digital and geeky.  But the fusion of the two programming realms has left basically two original shows from TechTV anchoring G4: X-Play, the video game review show and Attack of the Show!, the sequel to TechTV's Screen Savers computer tech show. The rest of the G4 program blocks contain bad B-movies, endless Cops reruns and an Americanized reboot of a Japanese obstacle course game show called Ninja Warrior.  So rerunning 100 plus hours of LOST does make some programming sense to fill air time.

Despite the network house ad, G4 web site has no information on the rerun schedule. Will it be one show a week? Will it be a nightly block of 3 or 4 episodes in a row? Will it be a marathon where the show will run daily from start to The End? Will there be enhanced episodes? Will there be new material?

G4 is not a highly watched cable channel. It is owned by Comcast-Universal, which is in the business of making money. LOST is an ABC network property. Apparently, ABC-Disney had no use or space to re-run the show on any of its cable stations or affiliates.  It is a hard sell to syndicate a sci-fi, large cast drama show. Most syndicated shows are one set comedies since viewers randomly find the programs while channel surfing. I suspect that the LOST rerun licensing fees were low.

It is highly unlikely that the new rerun series will draw in any new viewers. It is also highly unlikely that it will draw back into the fold old viewers of the show.

DEJA VU: SEASON 6 PREVIEW

To further clean out the archives of LOST notes and blog posts, the following are random theories, speculations and possible outcomes as the show was just about to start its final, climatic season:


This would have been a mind-blowing ending to the show, based upon the strange passage of time on the island and past events:

Tale of Two Cities, S3E1

The fake Henry Gale tells Ethan Rom and Goodwin to each go to one of the crash sites, that Goodwin can make the shore in an hour. They are both instructed to act as survivors in shock. They must come up with an adequate story if they are asked, but stay quiet if they aren't. He tells them: "Listen, learn. Don't get involved." They also must provide him with "a list" in three days. They both run.

My speculated end of show:

Mid air plane crash over island. Locke peers up to the sky.  Then he yells, “Jack and Sawyer, there may be survivors.” He then instructs them to go to each crash site and fit in.  Listen. Learn. Don’t get involved.  “I want a list in three days.”  Then Jack and Sawyer run into the jungle. 

I was one in the minority of viewers who believed the whole LOST island construct had to be about the after life. In trying to put together the elements, I proposed a complex solution.

Nexus-Buffer Theory:

D.O.C. = Dead on Crash

The passengers are not in purgatory but Hell. Ben, a minion for the Devil, needs to create “new life” in Hell to form an army to go back through the Gates of Earth to battle Angels  from Heaven on Judgment Day.  He uses grim reapers like Alpert and Ethan to collect the scientific  talent he needs to create his Hellspawn army. However, good and righteous people that have core values rebel against him.  In the end, those who  sacrifice and battle for good would be rewarded in the end by god (like a new life).  The idea of the characters being dead has been reinforced by new characters coming to the island and saying that the 815ers were killed, or they themselves had been killed (Locke’s father was in a car crash.)

Naomi's statement to Hurley is too big to be a red herring. It makes sense that all the passengers died in the crash. But then what happened to them? Many cultures believe that when you die on earth you are re-materialized in either Heaven or Hell. Some cultures believe that you are re-materialized with the possessions around you when you die. Just before a person dies, it is said that that their life "flashes" before their eyes. This could be data collection from a person's memories for the re-materialization in the next realm.

What if the 815ers landed in Hell but don't know it? Hell is supposed to be fire and brimstone. But what if it is an island of psychological fears and tedious eternity is one's penance? (punching in numbers every 108 minutes, staring a TV monitors, watching patients die in OR, running away from Smokey).

In hell, a pregnant woman who dies can come to term; but a woman in hell can't come to term to create a "new" life. 

But this little corner of Hell is special because Satan's minions (Ben's business card) are on a special mission: to create new life to go back through the Gate to Earth as the Devil's Hell Spawn army for the Rapture/Judgement Day. Juliet's research is all about creating new life where it should not occur naturally. That is why Ben will never allow her to leave.

So once the 815ers realize that they are "dead," and the evil purpose of the island Others, the epic battle between Good and Evil will occur.

(During the season, I speculated that when Jacob was confronted by Dead Locke at the Tarawet statue, to answer the plea, "they are coming," the cliffs would suddenly be filled with black winged devils ready to begin battle for control of the Island, which was the portal to heaven's gate).

And with various mythologies about the after life, and the LOST characters seemingly in endless missions, quests or tests, more background reasons for this theory:

Hell has seven Lodges, matching the seven Levels of Heaven. Medieval scholars worked out the different kinds sinners allocated to each Lodge, and each sub-section of each Lodge. Satan, naturally, is at the very bottom.

Although many parts of Hell are ablaze with fire, Satan himself dwells in a frozen lake of ice -- at least, according to the poet Dante.

Holy angels may also be found in Hell, dealing out punishments, controlling operations and keeping Satan and his minions in check. One such angel is Abaddon, known as the Angel of the Abyss, who keeps the keys of Hell. 

In Season 3, Sayid and Kate ascended to the upper level of the Flame with Beatrice as a hostage. They came upon Mikhail, who was holding Locke as a hostage and during the confrontation, Beatrice and Mikhail began shouting to each other in Russian.

(Lostpedia Translation from Russian)

--Beatrice: "We can't risk it, you know the rules."

--Mikhail: "There's still a way out."

--Beatrice: "We won't let them into the territory. You know what to do. It is an order."

--Beatrice: "(English) Just do it, Mikhail!"

(Mikhail takes aim at Beatrice)

--Mikhail: "(English) Forgive me"

(Mikhail shoots Beatrice)

Since nothing in Hollywood is never truly unique, I thought the premise of LOST could be a modern adaptation of Paradise Lost (with elements of Dante's Inferno): 

In Milton’s world view, the universe was represented just like the mobile above Aaron’s crib.  The universe of planets, sun and stars was encapsulated by waters which fed the Earth and kept the raging forces of Chaos at bay.  Outside the Universe sphere are the separate spheres of Heaven and Hell.  In Dante’s work, after the rebellion in heaven, Satan and his devils were cast into Hell in the midst of Chaos.  God then created a new universe which housed a new creature, Man, on Earth.  Satan built a bridge to Earth through Chaos and brought evil to mankind, which lead to the banishment of man from Eden to the mortality of Earth.

In religion context, man has both a body and soul.  Upon death on earth, one’s soul travels to another plane of existence.  Some religions base that upon the sins of the past; others various stages of enlightenment and reincarnation; hell (punishment), purgatory (penance), limbo (pagan paradise) or heaven (resurrection, eternal paradise). In the afterlife, souls have new bodies (vessels).  Various stages of the afterlife may be present in the ether of the after world, as the soul is cleansed of its mortal sins toward a path of enlightenment on final judgment.  The mind would control afterlife matter.

What was left in Milton and Dante’s works was the revenge of Satan against God.  There is an inference that Satan at some time would rise up to fight another battle for heaven.  As Satan had found a path to invade his spiritual form to Earth, it would probably be much harder to breach the gates of heaven.

Thus, we get to the island.  The island is a way station, a nexus  point between the gates of heaven and the afterlife universe.  The Hatch and the Numbers were the mechanism to maintain an electromagnetic barrier between the nexus bridge and the gates of heaven so Satan’s minions could not invade.  When the numbers were not imputed to vent the EM, an alarm would sound, an internal barrier would drop and symbols would appear.  I translated those Egyptian symbols to say “He escapes place of death.”  Once the EM force field was down, the nexus point (island) was exposed - - and other souls (devils) could arrive through either Chaos or through a gate to Earth to take control of this strategic place.  

The passengers on 815 were already in their afterlives.  In the flashbacks, there are clues that these characters died: examples -- Hurley: deck collapse; Kate: car accidents; Sayid: Iraq war casualty; Rose: terminal cancer; Rousseau: shipwreck; Desmond: lost at sea in small boat.  How everyone got on the plane is like the comment from Defending Your Life, how one imagines their demise is how they are transported to the next level of existence.

Three characters are special.  They were either stillborn, or died shortly after birth.  This would mean that they had no mortal sins.  Ben (premature and born on roadside), Locke (mother hit by car, premature), and Alex (mother shipwrecked or died of the sickness).  When Ben stated that he was born on the island, it was a reference that he was actually arrived in the afterlife as a rarity, a human soul without mortal sin. This would imply that he would have angelic powers.  But those powers could be corrupted by other, fallen angels or Satan’s minions.

Stranger in Strange Land,

Thai Jack

The tattoo that Achara designed on Jack's arm translates to "He walks among us, but is not one of us." 

I was still struck by this unexplained clue. Was Jack to become a religious symbol in the grand final battle between Heaven and Hell, as the "son of Christian?"  In the end, some believe it was a much simpler statement: that Jack was the only one who truly "sacrificed" himself so that his friends could "live," i.e. leave their island prison. But there is no context for this explanation, even today, as we don't know if any of the survivors truly had a post-Island life.

DEJA VU: SEASON 5 PREVIEW

Some critics believe that Season 6 was so off-the-beaten-story-path that the entire sideways world arc and The Ending should be erased from LOST memory. They believe that the show basically ended in Season 5.  It harks back to the paramount of theory speculation of trying to fit the conflicting puzzle pieces (clues) into some kind of rational, workable solution to the LOST world(s).


Prior to the Season 5 opener, I posted on a fan blog the following comments as my view of what could be happening in the future:

Pondering such a mud puddle existence, a flash of irrational thought hit me that makes sense: Richard Alpert, Mr. Eyeliner, is Egyptian! An ancient Egyptian. Painting on a pyramid wall looking Egyptian. We made fun of his appearance, but never asked why he looked that way.

Add to that image the fact that ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs are seen at the two great island mystery places, it made we wonder whether these are the big clues.

We have debated whether there are clones, body doubles, multiple lives, duplicates, ghosts, or zombies as part of the story line. I found this interesting:

In Ancient Egypt, they believed you would use your body in the afterlife. When you died your soul or ba would fly out of your body and spark your double (ka) which would then travel to the otherworld. However, it would need to return to your body, since without the physical body, the ka would die. People would be buried with possession that they would need in the afterlife.

If you were a pharaoh, destined to join the other gods -- not only would you need your body, but all the other accoutrements of status, from gold to slaves. Pyramids served to house this paraphernalia of eternity.

What if the show is not about earth science but the ritual beliefs of a LOST ancient religion? While not purgatory as the TPTB infer, it could be an Egyptian "otherworld" were your spirit body, ka, needs to prepare itself in a spiritual world (that does not follow the rules of time, space, science and physics we know of) to return to the human body it left on Earth. 

93 mph island moving away from freighter in Faraday 31 minute time lapse experiment.

Polar Bears in Tunisia, to plane crash site near Bali, to the island vanishing off Fiji, to the launch point in Portland . . .  the mechanism is a large CLOCK: the pendulum  the island is actually anchored by magnetic center of earth and the island is the end weight so to speak; and the pendulum arch runs from Tunisia to Portland, crossing the equator in such a fashion that the rotation of the earth (our 24 hour earth clock) is different on the island.  The Hatch release every 108 minutes is the EM “tension” on the normal tethered string of the pendulum.  The monkey wheel is the chain or distance of the tether.  Changing the tether’s space coordinate would make it appear to vanish.  Focal point at the bottom of a grandfather clock, you only see the disc when it reaches the bottom arch.  If you suddenly move the chain up, on the next pass the disc would be “gone.”

Now for the island to criss cross the earth’s Time rotation means the island has its own time and space dimensions.

Ancient technology may have been as advanced as modern technology (but merely “lost”).  All the elements of the industrial revolution were in the great library in Alexandria before it was sacked and burned.  What if the ancient Egyptians used advanced science and created a mechanical representation of their king’s afterlife?  Or if the Egyptian afterlife is the truth, and the island is the temple where the Pharaohs must prove themselves in order for their soul to be reincarnated with their body in the next life span.

SECOND YEAR

LOST concluded its television run two years ago today.

After the debate of whether the two-part finale crashed and burned like Flight 815 in the pilot episode, the LOST communities and commentators quickly faded from mainstream memory. No more weekly back and forth in the blogs and message boards about alleged clues, plot twists or personal theories. In the end, those outside-the-show interactions between other LOST fans were more important and enjoyable than the actual show's conclusion.

There was no cliffhanger. Either you were satisfied with the ending or you were severely disappointed. but wrapped around that gut level reaction was the gauze of what the heck really happened?

There were more misdirection, deception, lies, red herrings, dead ends, dropped story arcs, continuity errors, big question-no answer elements than anyone could have kept track of, let alone try to piece together in some reasonable form. Despite the loud cries from TPTB that LOST was not a show about hell, limbo purgatory or the after life, the End ended in a wait station in the after life, devoid of the science of time (linear or otherwise) or real reflection (if the island was real and so important, why did they not remember it when they created the sideways world?).

But you could stretch for the answer that was hidden in plain view from Season 1. Kate, the fugitive, has a dark secret to share. She wants Jack to know why the Marshal was after her.

“I want to tell you what I did—why he was [chasing] after me.”

Jack just shook his head. “I don’t want to know. It doesn’t matter, Kate, who we were—what we did before this, before the crash. … Three days ago we all died. We should all be able to start over.”

The answer was exactly as Jack told Kate: they all died in the crash.  And the entire hidden in plain view was each character's personal journey to start over again. Not in an underworld sense of repentance or redemption by a series of painful trials in order to purify one's soul. But in the sense of over-writing one's hard drive of human emotions, errs, flaws and torments, not in a religious purification ritual, but like erasing then rebooting a computer hard drive.

For some reason, the survivors of Flight 815 did not die in a traditional, religious sense. They did die in a human sense, but were granted an opportunity to find their "true character" in the spiritual island realm.  Their new "lives" and final report card was solely based on island events in order to meet Christian's definition that all the church participants' most important aspect of their (new) lives was with each other on the island purgatory.

Just as the wreckage of the airplane on the beach symbolized the wreckage of their past lives, the survivors who were willing to put themselves to the test of becoming lost then found in true friendship would survive to live in the End.

And that may be the final lesson of LOST. The friendships of the community that bounced wit, humor, facts, theories, arguments, puzzles, Easter eggs and frustration for six years.  

REVOLT

JJ Abrams has a new pilot series set for the fall. It is called REVOLUTION. From the press release:


Our entire way of life depends on electricity. So what would happen if it just stopped working? Well, one day, like a switch turned off, the world is suddenly thrust back into the dark ages. Planes fall from the sky, hospitals shut down, and communication is impossible. And without any modern technology, who can tell us why? Now, 15 years later, life is back to what it once was long before the industrial revolution: families living in quiet cul-de-sacs, and when the sun goes down lanterns and candles are lit. Life is slower and sweeter. Or is it? On the fringes of small farming communities, danger lurks. And a young woman’s life is dramatically changed when a local militia arrives and kills her father, who mysteriously – and unbeknownst to her – had something to do with the blackout. This brutal encounter sets her and two unlikely companions off on a daring coming-of-age journey to find answers about the past in the hopes of reclaiming the future.


I saw the trailer on G4 last evening.  My initial impression was that I had seen this show before hand, in various composite elements.  First, there was a 3D graphics landscape inspired series about what would happen if man was suddenly eliminated from Earth. What would happen to the buildings left alone in nature? The show depicted the elements taking over cities and towns in one, five, ten, hundred or more years without man's involvement. Of course, buildings were taken over my vines, animals took over the landscape, and then infrastructure collapsed into rubble. Second, several years ago there was a web novella that was updated weekly with crude 3D animation figures telling the story of a tech salesman in NYC on business when he woke up and most of the Earth's population had vanished in an electromagnetic spike. I cannot remember the name of the series or its bookmark on an old discarded laptop, but the story involved the main character traveling, mostly by foot, back to home in Seattle. When he leaves NYC, he finds bands of confused people, trying to live off the remains of stores. As he gets closer to the goal, he begins picking up pieces of mystery of what happened to everyone. There are bands of war lords on horse back inflicting their own brand of justice on strangers. There is also a mysterious shadow government organization trying to suppress the truth. He learns from underground groups to avoid that organization by avoiding urban settings, camping in the wild, and living on the edge. He slowly learns that there may have been a large electromagnetic burst of some kind which had an adverse affect on the United States, making some people disappear or vanish in their sleep. One of the tell tale signs when he reaches his home is whether his wife's bed had an indentation; that meant she was gone - - - out of phase with his existence. He also learned that one of his clients may have been part of the secret organization who knows all the answers to the mysteries of the Event. The story line began to point to some government weapons program. But before the story concluded, the author's web site stopped updating material. After no updates, I forgot about it, including its title.


The Abrams pilot story has a mish-mash premise.  A large, global electricity black out could happen. But the premise that man would not have the technology to create any sort of power afterward, including simple batteries, does not make much sense. Also, in the trailer, one of the characters when the Event is happening, downloads information into a decorative flash drive. Somehow this drive has its own power source that can be used to boot up patched up computer components to communicate with other people in secret. It sounds a little Hatch-like with the terminal to input the Numbers to "save the world."


If there was a huge electromagnetic disturbance that knocks out all of the electricity on the planet, why would it continue to prohibit engineers from rebuilding the grid by coal, steam, geothermal or wind generators? And if this EM event was so grand, why is the Earth's core not affected, as the series show people still living subsistence lives farming suburbia throughout the seasons. The Earth itself is a giant electromagnetic generator, whose polar fields create upper atmospheric shell that creates a protective ozone layer from the sun's deadly forms of radiation. 


So before the pilot is shown, there are concerns about the Big Premise of REVOLUTION. If you are going to set down a huge mystery, there has to be a science fiction plausibility answer otherwise viewers won't care.