See You In Another Life, Brother: The Season Three Finale of Lost Recapped

"Yes, I've heard that you've been flying on passenger planes. Hoping you'd crash. That's dark Jack. Very dark." - Benjamin Linus

If you don't like LOST because you are too wrapped up in the minutiae of smoke monsters and four-toed statues and what they all mean and whether they make sense; if you're frustrated because you think you deserve more answers at a faster pace; if you think the whole thing is one big scam, something the writers are coming up with as they go along, painfully teasing plots out when they can just finish their entire story in one episode, well then just do us all a favor and stop watching. Or better yet, read this Slate piece, and then stop watching.

Now for the rest of us, this morning my friend sent me this pull quote from James Poniewozik's blog over at Time: "There was something very foreordained about 'No Place Like Home.' 95% of it was concerned with unfolding events that--more or less--we knew or had been led to believe would happen."

I think that's why I so unbelievably loved the season finale.

School's Out: The Season Finale of Gossip Girl Recapped

I like to judge television shows on whether or not they are hitting their own established mark. A show sets out to be something, and if it can successfully be what it wants, I will give it all the credit in the world. It's really the only way I think you can accurately review a show.

That's why I really disliked this season of The Office. Through three seasons, the show set the bar for what it wanted to do with expert grace: pathos, awkwardness, unrequited love and staying true to the characters each week, all the while showing a great respect for the original series. This was what The Office was all about.

And then the fourth season happened.

Suck on This: Is This the End of The Office

The Mets stink.

They've stunk for almost a full year. Facts are facts, and the fact is, the Mets are an old bunch with a terrible manager and a clubhouse that has as much harmony as the freighter on LOST.

However, I still sit there and think they should be amazing. And I'm not alone. Media members write about the Mets as if they're a great team just playing badly. It comes to a point when maybe you just have to admit it: they're just a bad team.

That's how I feel about The Office, which wrapped up it's pretty mediocre season last night with a finale that was a perfect encapsulation of said season: some was funny, some was sad, some was good, some was not and overall it just felt flat.

Down the Rabbit Hole: Lost Recapped

A few weeks back, during the poorly written Kate/Jack episode, a shirtless Jack tripped over a Millennium Falcon toy. Hardy-har-har. It was an almost too cutesy wink to all of us giant nerds who sit and watch this show every week with bated breath. Yes, we get it. You guys, like Liz Lemon, love Star Wars. We all do. (Original Trilogy only, natch.)

But after watching the first hour of the three hour finale, I'm kinda sorta convinced that maybe having a Millennium Falcon toy just hanging out in Kate's house was a stroke of genius; a reference to how Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse plan on finishing this season. Because last night's episode created an entirely new Star Wars reference: this is the Jedi ending.

Spin City: Why Would NBC Spin-Off The Office

So you're NBC. You have this water cooler friendly sit-com, starring a legitimate movie star that both critics and the desirably younger demographics genuinely love. But then in the fourth season, you decide to spread the episodes too thin by making more hour-longs than a normal fan would deem necessary. And between those rough episodes and the WGA Strike things have really hit a dry spell.

So what do you?

Well, of course you order a spin-off series!!!

Oh wait, that's a terrible idea.

Brick Killed a Guy: Gossip Girl Recapped

This wasn't a great episode of Gossip Girl. It just wasn't. They dragged out the big reveal that Serena "killed someone," almost inexplicably, since we already KNEW she killed someone at the end of the last episode. And then, she didn't really kill anyone, she just gave the almost-date-rapist dude (is there any other kind of dude in the Gossip Girl universe?) his last line of coke. Which, in turn, lead to the hilarious and tearful line of dialogue from Serena: "Mom, I gave him the line that killed him!!!!!!!"

I don't know, I loved this episode, but I didn't. It was kinda boring, kinda slow and then almost irrationally fast. In fact, watching the penultimate episode, I finally realized the difference between Gossip Girl and the creatively superior The O.C.

Sand Trap: The Office Recapped

Season Four of the The Office, from back in October of last year up until last night, has felt like watching the 2008 Yankees play. Yeah the episodes aren't as good as those halcyon days of Season Two, but they still have the same faces and talent--things just feel a little older, a little more tired and not nearly as good.

Occasionally, the stars align and an episode comes out of the shoot that makes you remember why you loved the show in the first place. Michael's deposition, the Dinner Party and Michael's night out in New York were all episodes that had the wit, heart and pathos which made The Office, The Office.

Destiny is a Fickle Bitch: Lost Recapped

I remember a long time ago reading Roger Ebert's review of The Usual Suspects. It frustrated me to no end, because one of my all-time favorite movies was royally panned by one of the more respected film critics in the entire history of film criticism. However, like all good reviews, the pan stuck with me. It wasn't until tonight's episode of LOST that I truly understood what he was talking about. In the review, he wrote:

The story builds up to a blinding revelation, which shifts the nature of all that has gone before, and the surprise filled me not with delight but with the feeling that the writer, Christopher McQuarrie, and the director, Bryan Singer, would have been better off unraveling their carefully knit sleeve of fiction and just telling us a story about their characters - those that are real, in any event. I prefer to be amazed by motivation, not manipulation.

Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof can certainly be accused of manipulation. It's what makes LOST click. We sit there each week, trying to crack the uncrackable puzzle, so distracted by four-toed statues, smoke monsters and Freighter Folk that we are blind to the things happening right in front of our face--like flash-forwards.

The show is one big parlor trick, and we love getting fooled by it each and every episode.

Marry Me!: Lost Recapped

I'm going to get this out of the way: this episode should have been better. It's not that it wasn't good, but it wasn't really what I've come to expect from a "Jack episode." If watching LOST has taught me anything, it's that when Jack episodes are good, they are the best of the series. But when Jack episodes are bad, they are just terrible (I'm still licking my wounds from the tattoo episode with Bai Ling.)

Tonight's episode fell somewhere in the middle.