- The theme for this season on Lost is clearly entire episodes focused on one character with regular exclusion for most of the cast for two or three weeks at a time. Last night’s featured performer was Juliet, with the episode providing a back story on her time on the island and specifically her relationship with Ben. Flashbacks took us back in time three years to Juliet’s arrival on the island wherein she met up with Harper Stanhope, a psychologist among the Others who began having sessions with Juliet to help her adjust to life on the island. However, Juliet made the mistake of falling in love with Goodwin, the Other who died in Season One after being sent by Ben to infiltrate the survivors of Oceanic 815. Goodwin was Harper’s husband, so when Juliet began sleeping with him, there were obviously problems. One was a pissed off wife, but a bigger concern for Juliet was Ben finding out about the affair. Ben had developed a serious crush on Juliet and since he was responsible for bringing her to the island, he felt she belonged to him in a creepy, stalker-ish, get-a-restraining-order way. In fact, by sending Goodwin on the mission to infiltrate the group of crash survivors, Ben was sending him to his death because he knew once they survivors realized that Goodwin was a spy and wasn’t on the flight, they would kill him. That’s exactly what happened, a point Ben drove home to Juliet by taking her out into the jungle to see the decomposing body of her deceased lover and reminding her that, “You’re mine.” Meanwhile, back in the present, Ben is forming a strange alliance of his own, talking Locke into allowing him out of the underground bunker where Locke is keeping him prisoner in exchange for information about whose freighter it really is that’s anchored near the island and who put together the team of people that have come to the island. Once Ben has talked his way out of the bunker, he shows Locke a tape of Charles Widmore, father of Desmond’s girlfriend Penny, taking one of Ben’s former Others prisoner and killing them when they refused to tell him what he wanted to know - the location of the island. It seems Widmore wants the island so he can exploit all of its magical, mystical properties for financial gain. Since Ben sees the island as a sacred place, he wants to keep that from happening, as does Locke. Of course, that love of the island doesn’t keep Ben from carrying out maniacal schemes on it. He has apparently used some sort of toxic gas stored in one of the Dharma stations on the island to kill “hostiles” before and Daniel and Charlotte from the freighter team were on a mission this week to disable that station so the gas couldn’t be used again. When Kate encounters them in the jungle on her way back to the beach from the barracks where Locke and his followers are living, Charlotte knocks her out so she can't interfere with their mission to neutralize the gas supply. Jack and Juliet come upon Kate shortly thereafter and as Jack checks on a bleeding, disoriented Kate to make sure that she’s all right, Juliet disappears into the jungle. She comes upon the station where Daniel and Charlotte are shutting down the gas system and after a brutal hand-to-hand combat session with Charlotte, Juliet accepts the pair’s explanation about the gas. She’s leaving the station with Charlotte when Jack and Kate arrive and Kate goes inside with Charlotte to see the situation for herself. Jack and Juliet stay outside and end up sharing their first kiss, but it comes with a warning from Juliet to Jack. She tells him that Ben still believes she belongs to him and that Ben will hurt Jack if he finds out about their relationship. Left out of this week’s episode was the freighter and everyone on it, which is exactly the kind of glaring omission that is making this season subpar to this point. We know it belongs to Charles Widmore, but Desmond, Sayid, Frank and the rest of the ship’s crew didn’t appear on screen once this week. Neither did Hurley or anyone at the beach camp. So another week, another effort that quite frankly didn’t live up to the standard set by the show’s first three seasons. For now, that’s it and that’s all….
- First the New York Times is rocked by the revelation that one of its writers, Jason Blair, fabricated nearly all of his stories. Notre Dame hired George O’Leary as its head football coach only to fire him once the university learned that much of his resume was lies. Former Toronto Blue Jays manager Tim Johnson lied about being a decorated Vietnam veteran and didn’t last much longer with the team. Former major leaguer Al Martin fabricated stories about playing football at USC and was eventually found out. Just recently, author Misha Defonseca admitted to having made up almost all of the material in her 1997 book, Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, about her experience as a young girl traveling around Nazi-controlled Europe during World War II after her parents were captured by Nazi police. My point is that liars are everywhere, looking to make money and careers off of their fabrications. I just didn’t think that trend would extend to one of my new favorite entities, the Food Network. I recently tuned in to an episode of Iron Chef where “Iron Chef” Bobby Flay squared off in an elk-cooking competition against two Cajun brothers, the
brothers Rathbun. It was scintillating TV, but now the Food Network has its own fibbed-resume scandal to deal with thanks to the host of the network’s Dinner: Impossible series, Robert Irvine. While he may be stellar at cranking out seemingly impossible meals under difficult circumstances, apparently R. Irvine does find at least one thing impossible: telling the truth about his past. Irvine claimed that he had cooked meals for the British royal family and several U.S. presidents, claims he now admits were lies. “I was wrong to exaggerate in statements related to my experience in the White House and the Royal Family,” he said in a statement. The Food Network will allow the final four episodes of Dinner: Impossible to run this season, but the network will not renew Irvine’s contract and thus he’ll effectively be fired. Hope that was worth it, R. Now you can try to find a gig at your local seafood joint because you’re a compulsive liar. Next time, opt for lies that are a little less fantastic and you just might get away with them. Say you cooked dinner for the governor of New Mexico and see how that works. But for now, go away and stop ruining my new fave, the Food Network.
- You wacky environmentalists, you slay me. Your über-hilarious pranks, protests and social statements are a never-ending source of amusement. Take, for example, the recent actions of an activist group that goes by the name the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). In the name of the environment, these ass hats have taken environmental extremism to a new low. In the suburban Seattle neighborhood of Woodinville, the ELF set three seven-figure homes on fire early Monday morning and left a spray-painted sign mocking the builders’ claims that the 4,000-plus-square-foot abodes were environmentally friendly. The homes are all located on the so-called “Street of Dreams,” an exclusive street filled with unoccupied, high-end model homes that visitors have been flocking to for months. This location obviously drew the attention of the a-holes at ELF, a loose collaboration of activists who have been pulling this kind of crap since the early 1990s. The local sheriff’s office estimates that the fires did $7 million worth of damage, a figure I’m sure tickles the losers who are members of ELF. What they don’t realize is that the cost of their stunt is going to get passed on to people whose insurance premiums will go up so the insurance companies can pay for the damages caused to these homes. Look, ELFins, I’m down with protecting the environment and I agree that rich people are some od the biggest offenders in terms of polluting and taking advantage of our environment. That being said, throw a Molotov cocktail through the window at their posh corner office or roll their Mercedes and set it on fire. Don’t go burning houses that could start even bigger fires and hurt people who really can’t afford it. Fire crews found incendiary devices around the burned model homes, so it would seem the ELFins planned this one out. Just a question, ELFins….even if the trees have been cut down to make wood, doesn’t it still violate your ethics to do harm to those trees by burning them, even if they are in processed form? Or in you whack jobs’ collective mind, does a tree lose its soul once it’s cut down. If you burn a tree in its processed, milled form, does it not still make a sound as it cries out in pain once you burn it? Answer me, you environmental whack-a-doos…….
- Is it just me, or is this the most utterly unwatchable season of MTV’s Real World/Road Rules Challenge yet? This season of The Gauntlet has been horrifically bad, mostly because MTV managed to choose the most lopsided teams in the history of the show. This season is set up with the Rookies (players who have appeared in less than two previous challenges) and Veterans (those with 2+ appearances). Thus far, the veterans have dominated, losing only challenges they’ve intentionally tried to throw in order to ensure that their weaker players were eliminated from the game. Even challenges specifically slanted toward the team with fewer players (i.e. obstacle course races and the like where having less players to push across the finish line is optimal) have gone to the vets. The only “drama” has been the guys on the veteran team throwing specific missions so they would have the chance to have some of the veteran girls, who they view as a liability, eliminated in the Gauntlet. Aside from who’s sleeping with who, there hasn’t been much question about how this season will go. It’s just depressing to watch every challenge and know that as long as the veteran guys aren’t throwing the mission, they’re going to win. No one likes watching non-competitive competitions, and that’s what this has been. That, coupled with the stiff, rigid, non-charismatic personality of host T.J. Lavin (or the automated robot who’s been playing T.J. this season, it’s hard to tell), has made this easily the worst season of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge in recent memory and it can't end soon enough.
- Call me crazy, but I thought that slavery in these here United States was something we all agreed to leave back in the 1800’s. That whole Emancipation Proclamation thingy that Abraham Lincoln signed was supposed to abolish slavery, but that message never got through to a mother/daughter tandem in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. that managed to keep a Haitian teen prisoner in their home for six years and forced the girl to serve as their slave. Evelyn Theodore and Maude Paulin (Who the freak names their kid Maude? What is this, the f’ing Beverly Hillbillies?) have been convicted of conspiring to violate Simone Celestin’s Thirteenth Amendment rights to be free from slavery by forcing her into indentured servitude in their household. Paulin was also convicted of harboring an illegal alien for financial gain. Kudos to both of these fine ladies for keeping alive an ancient, horrible tradition of enslaving people, depriving them of their freedom and forcing them to do manual labor. The rest of us have, for some reason, been working to move past this practice, but you two idiots saw fit to revive it. For that, you deserve all the jail time you receive and then some.
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