I know that fans of “Jericho” wouldn’t want to hear this, but these 7 episodes on the second season is the end of the road for the show. I hope they conclude the series without a cliffhanger on the 7th episode.

Apparently, the ratings were terrible for a season opener, and it can only go downhill from now on. Some will say that the 3 leaked episodes was the reason, but I don’t believe so. Only Jericho fanatics would try to pirate these episodes, and they aren’t many of those. Even if there were 1 million fewer viewers because of the leaked episodes, 8 mil viewers overall would still not be good enough. Jericho needed a good 12 mil as a starter to hope for about 9 mil at the end of its season and hope for a renewal.

To add to this, the show had a downgrade: camera equipment. It looks like a damn soap opera now. No film-look at all. It just looks red and ugly, no dynamic range or color spectrum. At the beginning, I thought it was just me, but then I saw that others noticed too. In fact, I was a bit surprised that people actually did notice! Some say that because they went digital it makes the show look cheap, but it’s not the digital part that makes it cheap, but the fact that they use cheap cameras that probably don’t have good lens support. There was almost no DOF in the new season opener.

So that was CBS’ plan for “Jericho”’s comeback? Make it cheap, cheap, cheap? I feel that CBS stabbed us in the back. Oh well, business is business.

I called my little bro today and to my surprise he told me that he started watching “Heroes” and “Lost” for the first time. He is still on the second episode of “Lost”, but he is loving it so far. But he wanted to know more. He asked me how many episodes are around, and what I know about them. I told him that I won’t spoil it for him. But he insisted. True story:

Eugenia: You have to watch it yourself, Lost is a puzzle, if I spoil it for you, you won’t enjoy it as much.
Teo: But I want to know who gets off the island and who dies.
Eugenia: Sorry, I can’t tell you. There are deaths and twists, but you gotta watch it yourself.
Teo: Does the doctor die?
Eugenia: No.
Teo: Does the hot brunette die?
Eugenia: No.
Teo: Does the fat guy die?
Eugenia: No.
Teo: Does the pregnant woman die?
Eugenia: No.
Teo: Do the Chinese die?
Eugenia: No. They are Koreans btw.
Teo: Does the old guy with the scar in the eye die?
Eugenia: No.
Teo: Does the blonde guy who killed the bear die?
Eugenia: No.
Teo: Does the father with the kid and the dog die?
Eugenia: No.
Teo: Then no one dies!!!!
Eugenia: Yes they do! You forgot 4 main characters, and 3 of them die.
Teo: No, I mentioned them all.
Eugenia: No, you didn’t.
Teo: Yes, I did. I don’t remember anyone else.
Eugenia: Then it’s a good thing they died.
Teo: ….

* What a stupid show “Terminator” is. So this guy had his house burned down and he lost his AI computer program that he was working for years. 2-3 weeks later (in the show’s timeline), he already had re-written from scratch the AI chess program and he was ready to compete at a Chess competition. Not only it’s not possible to write alone such a complex software “that learns” in 3 weeks, but even if he had done so, it would still be full of bugs and not ready for the competition. If the writers instead had said that the guy had a backup of the software in a safe location I’d believe them, but re-writing from scratch software in such a little time shows how the writers have no fucking clue what they are doing. It’s so fucking pissing me off having clueless people writing technology shows. You see, the people who watch sci-fi, are usually technologists and geeks. And that’s an audience that you can’t serve them shit. They’ll go elsewhere.

* “Prison Break” instead had a great episode tonight. Very intense. Too bad it will be canceled, I don’t think it will get lucky this time.

* Very interesting analysis from an MIT media professor about “Lost” and “Twin Peaks”. He claims that the puzzle factor of these series is what people want, and no matter how many people are crying foul and shout “give us answers”, in reality they don’t need answers, but even more deepen puzzles. From the moment you give them the ultimate answer that resolves the show, their interest is over for that show. This is what happened to Twin Peaks after the Laura Palmer murderer was revealed: the ratings went downhill. Not everyone likes puzzles, but everyone is intrigued by them, at least in the beginning. Because of this, such shows can lose as much as half their audience over the years, but the ones who will remain, will be fanatics.

* I’ve grown to hate John Locke. And on the upcoming “Lost” episode it will be shown what an ass he is, and that he doesn’t really know what the hell he is doing. Bleh.

* This is the story of Anonymous’ Los Angeles chapter against Scientology, in HD. I love their masks. “Remember, remember… the fifth of November…”

I am out of review article jobs these days, so I have lots of time to watch TV now. I don’t like reading much (I have a hard time focusing for more than 2 minutes at a time), although I might just read the new “Firefly” novel that got released recently (dunno yet).

So I asked for the Gold Edition DVD box of “Twin Peaks” for my Valentine’s gift. I am eager to watch “Twin Peaks” as I’ve always heard good things about it but when it used to air in Greece I was snobbing it. Apparently, if you like “Lost”, you will like “Twin Peaks”. Same eerie mysterious atmosphere. Netflix does not carry all the DVDs, so I am (hopefully) getting this off Amazon for $80.

I added “Space: Above and Beyond” on our Netflix queue though, and I will use their online watching facility to watch “Earth 2“. Hopefully Comcast won’t cut us out because of the downloading bandwidth…

While reading some of the customer reviews on the “Twin Peaks” Amazon page, someone mentioned “The Prisoner“. I had never heard of that TV series. I did some googling on it, and after reading what was it about, I found the premise and mystery around it very interesting. In fact, without even having seen the series, I feel that this could be a very good remake for the TV if talented writers are hired. Instead, we get a remake of “Knight Rider”.

* Polaroid film is now past. It’s the end of an era. I only shot Polaroid film maybe twice in my life (I have very few pictures of my childhood and friends, we never had a camera in my family until the recent years), but it still feels sad.

* If I am right (I am probably not), the season finale of Lost’s 5th season (next year), it would be all about how the Oceanic Six had to leave the island, and as a flash-forward, how they come back. It would be very interesting, from the director’s point of view, to put together the two scenes: the Oceanic Six leaving the island, and some of them eventually coming back to the island years later. Two opposite scenes, back to back, within 3-5 minutes. And they can add some poetic justice into it, having the Six being unhappy leaving the island because they leave people behind, and happy coming back to it for the final act, after having spent 5 seasons wanting to get out of there. That would be killer. That would be art. I am pretty confident that this is how it’s going to play out.

* Popular Mechanics site has a very nice analysis on the “Lost” helicopter, and why the science around it doesn’t work.

* I was thinking earlier that “Lost”’s and “24″’s seasons airing at the second half of the TV season makes sense. The reason many shows lose viewership is because of the 2-month hiatus every year because of the Christmas season. TV networks could instead have completely different programming for Fall and different one for Spring. For fall: 12 episodes of a given series from September 10th to December 10th. For Spring: 18 episodes for another series from 15 January to end of May at the same timeslot. This way, you eliminate the problem of overworking the crew for 26-episodes (that’s what they used to do in the past), you have back to back episodes without holes so you retain your viewership, and you have a richer programme. And if you give writers artistic freedom and an end-date like the “Lost” writers have, you can do miracles. Problem is, TV networks would never agree to such a schedule, and the main reason is because they need to know when to cancel a show or not. The way it works now, they use their Fall ratings to decide if they will cancel shows or not. By doing this 12+18 you need to know beforehand how many episodes to order, and that can be proven expensive if the show is not a success.

* I posed the question over at DarkUFO’s site about how viewers watch “Lost”. Apparently, 25% of them pirate it. However, let’s be clear about it: the people who pirate it, are mostly viewers from other countries that their TV channels will either never show “Lost”, or they broadcast these episodes weeks or months later. This is simple a clear cut clue that “selling shows abroad” does not work anymore. The Internet has taken barriers down, and everything that’s time critical, it has to happen NOW, otherwise face lots of piracy. I think that TV networks should stop thinking of making money by selling shows abroad as much as they could in the past, and instead open their web sites for everyone (not IP-lock them as ABC does these days), and add ads in there, and let EVERYONE, from any country in the world, to watch these shows. Money, again, should come from ads. Sure, ads won’t be as targeted anymore, but what can you do? At least you could potentially have more viewers as long as IGMP Multicast takes off with routers/ISPs. Interestingly, in the poll, so far the iTunes option has 0%.

* Sushi tonight, out with my JBQ. Yum!

“Lost” did about 15.1 mil viewers last night, which was not too bad at all (it’s still the No1 show in the key demographic slice despite overall viewers going down over the years). I’ve noticed two occasions on last night’s episode that show the brilliance of the writers.

1. When Jack tells newcomer Miles that there are guns pointed into his head and Miles doesn’t believe him, and then voila, Juliet and Sayid are appearing off the jungle aiming Miles.

This is reminiscent of the scene where Tom Friendly told Jack in Season 2 the exact same thing and Jack didn’t believe him. “Liiight uuup”, Tom shouted, and dozens of fires were lit. It shows how the “Others” are now the old force in the island, with most of their good men/women dead, and the Losties are the new arising power there. It shows how much the group has grown up since their crash, how much more experienced they are, and how much the tables have turned.

2. Team-Locke creeping out Charlotte.

Locke and his people were downright creepy to poor Charlotte who had just parachuted to the island along the other 3 guys. Exactly the same way the “Others” appearing creepy to the “Losties” on the previous seasons. Team-Locke is not willing to talk about the island or its powers, or even who they are individually, just like the Others did in the past.

This is tragic irony at its best. We spent 3 seasons siding with the crash landed losties, only to find out that they have become as creepy as the “Others” because of the circumstances. This is great writing. This just shows that something that someone might call “good” or “bad”, is simply “a point of view” and neither good or bad. You got to love the philosophical references on “Lost”.

On a related note, Matthew Fox (”Jack”) said that if they will shoot new episodes after the strike ending, it won’t be more than 4-6 episodes.

“A deal has been struck between the major media companies and the Writers Guild of America to end the writers’ strike, former Walt Disney chief executive Michael Eisner revealed on CNBC“.

Now the only question I have is how many “Lost” episodes will be shot for this season (there are 8 that are already done). To go back at the field and shoot it requires 4 to 6 weeks. Then, it requires 2 weeks to actually shoot, per episode (although multiple episodes are usually worked on at the same time). Then it requires at least 1-2 weeks of post-processing.

Overall, we are looking for at least 2 months time before a new episode is ready for broadcast. This means that if the crew starts working this coming Monday, the first new episode (9th of the season) would be ready around 10th of April. Given the fact that “Lost” plans were for 16 episodes this season, the season’s finale will have to be pushed to 12th of June (Thursday). And this is up to ABC if they want to push their series so far into the summer when viewership is down, or cut the number of new episodes, or have a two-hour finale. Hopefully, they will allow “Lost” to have all its 16 episodes this season, as planned.

Regardless, don’t forget to watch the 2nd episode tonight. It’s an exciting episode, I hear.

Perez calls Victoria Beckham “alien spice” and he’s got a point. She reminds me of the Greys too. Creepy.

Madonna’s daughter, Lourdes, looks great. In fact, she looks exactly like her mom. She has the same smile as Madonna used to have as a youngster. I am impressed in the way Madonna is raising her children. Lots of education (Lourdes speaks 3 languages flawlessly, already), little TV, no junk food. Hopefully she doesn’t inject them with B12 though as she does to herself.

I was astonished to see on various polls and discussions online that most viewers would have taken Locke’s side instead of Jack’s on Lost’s 4th season opener. I wonder if these people are actually sane or if they understand what the hell they are viewing on TV.

Locke’s role on “Lost” is to be a sidekick. He is actually the main ‘villain’ on the series, not the Others, but he is portrayed in a way that people don’t realize it. Locke simply does what he thinks it’s right, without taking other people’s wishes into account, without even having enough information himself about the things he stands for. He is insane, as Jack very well put it. Sure, he is able to walk after he crash landed, but that doesn’t mean that everyone shares his wish to stay on the island.

Locke’s is the magician of the clan. He acts purely on superstition and subjectiveness. Jack on the other side is the hero, who takes logical steps according to available information to him, to save his people. The fact that Locke sees an apparition of Walt while he’s almost dead, doesn’t mean that it’s a true vision, but it could be tricks of the mind while bleeding to death. But instead of thinking straight that he is hallucinating (no matter if WE, the viewers, know that the island has special powers or not), he embarks on his way to stop the freighter people. Just because a vision told him so. I am pretty sure that after the blown up of the submarine, communication station, implosion of the hatch and the killing of Naomi, he will make sure to sour the freighter people’s opinions for the survivors, resulting in them deciding taking them hostage or something, and only save 6 of them.

Locke is not a friendly character. He is a cool character, but he is not the hero. Jack is. Locke is here just to make things difficult for the hero from the “inside”, in a similar way to Dr. Zachary Smith in 1965’s “Lost in Space“. Dr Smith was not a bad person, just like Locke is not a bad person, but he is selfish, and most of all, misguided.

So why the hell would I ever follow Locke? I don’t follow the Pope either. Instead, I would follow a scientist-turned-leader who thinks hard before taking an ultimately, rational, decision.

As someone put it on Blogger:

“If i were a lostie who has been trapped in a creepy island for 3 months eating only mangos, fish and boar meat, running and hiding from a smoke monster, witnessed a lot of deaths, hearing some creepy voices coming from the woods, kidnapped or watched my friends kidnapped by some ppl who call themselves the others, i would try my chance to get off the island and go with team jack no matter who was coming to the island… At least they have a boat and a helicopter! and who says “not penny’s boat” means they are coldblooded murderers who are coming to the island to kill them all… Oh yeah Ben and Locke say they are coming to kill them all… At least we are sure that 6 of them are alive in the future.”