A regular episode of 6th season LOST, which is ok, but once again, lots of just running back and forth between islands.  The flash-sideways story was satisfying, but what is its purpose?  More after the break . . .

***SPOILERS***

I liked this episode, I even maybe for awhile thought it was very good.  I guess now, as much as I want to savor every last minute of LOST left to us, I equally want to see the story just play out to its end.  I don’t want to wait for answers anymore, just break the dam and give it to us all!

What I really need is some hint that the flash-sideways stories have some relevance and are not just filler or some nice way to show an alternative life for the characters.  To a degree, I have faith that the writers will tie the flash-sideways storylines in very cleverly, but then to another degree, I don’t.  Are they just filler after all?  I really have a hard time imagining how they are relevant.

WHAT I LIKED:

• Let’s just get this out of the way now, umm, Sun asking Jin which buttons should stay unbuttoned and the bust-eye-view of this happening
• Desmond showing up at the end, though I feel the Official podcast spoiled that for me
• Sun’s tirade in Korean on the beach with contorted face, totally hot
• Widmore finally coming face-to-face with MIB
• Widmore asking, “Do you know who I am?”  Expecting even some creature on an island to know who the powerful Widmore is! ha
• Jack and Sun’s “conversation” on the beach at the end

WHAT I DID NOT LIKE:

• Jack and crew just waiting around on the beach for the return of Richard, Jack is a man of action, how can he just wait now?
• Jin not putting up any fight when Keemi and that dude arrived
• Yeah, why is a physicist leading guerilla ops??
• Claire still wanting to kill Kate, so what was all that crying asking for forgiveness just like 2 eps ago??
• Richard still scurrying around all wide eyed like a frightened chicken
• Not a single dude from Hurley
• Sawyer just hanging around pretending to not look concerned, go kick some ass James!

Dude, can’t MIB just like tip over those sonic things?  Seems like he can stand in between the legs of them, so just pick up the leg that is outside the sonic wall and flip it, boom, neutralized.  Let the rampage begin.  No?

So was it only Jacob stopping MIB from hopping on Desmond’s sailboat and sailing back to the good life in our world?  Seems like MIB is full of chances to leave now.  What did Jacob do to keep him in check, did he actually have some power over him?  The island itself not enough of a cork to keep him there?

I guess it all just comes down to, why are we getting these flash-sideways?  How significant are they and how will they all be tied in to the current actions on the islands in just 8 more hours of the show?

What does the MIB want to get off the island to do?  Looks like plenty of fun to be had right on the island.  What does he want to leave and do?  Drink every flavor of Gatorade like I did when I came back?  Eat a real piece of cake?  How powerful can he be among regular people if he is dependent on the same technology (airplanes) to get back as they are?

Who are the three people MIB still needs to recruit?  Jack, Hurley and Sun?  He needs Kate to get Jack?

What kind of war can a regular man and a smoke monster really wage?  Widmore is safe in his sonic fence area, MIB already survived one dagger attack.

I guess I am just getting really impatient for answers and the show to run its course, though I’ll be very sad when it does.  All of a sudden LOST and 24 will be gone just like that.  Two staples of TV watching for most of the 00s, and the last two movie like quality serial genre programs that produce 20+ eps a season, that we may ever see, at least for the foreseeable future.  None has come since LOST in 2004, so I cannot see it happening in today’s television climate at all.

I will vote 3.5 stars if I could, so maybe I’ll just go 3 stars this time.

The acronym FTW has been used increasingly in the past few years first among gamers and online geeks, but it has started to filter into more common every day spoken conversations as well.  For example, I hear John Noe of Pottercast using it sometimes.  So as I was walking down a small, off the path street in Kawagoe, Saitama, Japan, I noticed that a small business’ storefront sign had a “For the win!’ slogan.

urban DICTIONARY gives several definitions for FTW.  I was surprised to find out that the true origin of the phrase (not the acronym) was from the old game show Hollywood Squares!  Now that I learned that though, I seem to be able to remember hearing the host saying it.  

I wonder just how widespread FTW is getting in the offline world?  Or even the online world?  Has anyone heard their mom start using the acronym or full phrase in either e-mail or conversation?

WARNING — SPOILERS

GENERATION KILL is really hitting its stride now.  The 5th episode, “A Burning Dog,” was riveting for every second of it’s hour-long running time.  From the very opening seen I was sucked in and taken off my bed and into my television.  The first season of GENERATION KILL is the best season of TV since the 4th season of THE WIRE.  

In this entry we find more of the same, but it is in no way a repetitive episode.  The things that are repeated need it.  These were the incompetency of the commanding officers, the mistakes that are made when troops don’t have the proper supplies and how the ambition of people never in danger puts the people under them in great danger.

I can’t tell you how visceral a feeling I have when Brad and Ray and Trombley and the Rolling Stone reporter load up into their humvee and begin rolling through the dark on a mission.  It is perhaps something innate in the American male, that being the feeling one gets when riding in one’s car with friends, especially when there is danger around.

I am at once totally stoked to be in the humvee with them, and at the same time petrified.  I feel another duality, that as long as they (we) are in the humvee we are safe, but in the back of my mind I know we are incredibly vulnerable.  

There have been battle scenes and firefights for Bravo Company before, but in this ep they went full-on for the first time, and thanks to a masterful editing job, it wasn’t just a incoherent mess of not knowing what was going on.  The viewer could see the threats and how the soldiers dealt with it, and how the leadership and bravery of one man, Sgt. Brad “Iceman” Colbert, saved all their asses.  

Like I said in the opening paragraph, this is the finest television I’ve seen in years and GENERATION KILL’s first season is on pace to become one of the all time great TV seasons.

RATING:  4-stars, better than most motion pictures

• GENERATION KILL episode 2 review

The creators of the best show of the 00′s, THE WIRE, have a new HBO series, GENERATION KILL.  I have now watched the first two episodes of GENERATION KILL and I can definitely say that this second episode had a definite WIRE vibe to it (the first ep was a bit slow, but had to establish a lot).  That sense of true urban grit, of urban tension, of realness, it was flowing all over this David Simon and Ed Burns penned ep (along with Even Wright).  I am totally on board with GENERATION KILL and it feels great to finally have a high quality drama on my weekly viewing schedule again.  

GENERATION KILL is the story of the U.S. led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 from the viewpoint of the Bravo Company, an elite group of marines who also happen to have an embedded journalist from Rolling Stone magazine with them.  

Also like THE WIRE, within Bravo Company you have a diverse mix of people, from extremely sharp and intelligent leaders down to some of the dumbest of the dumb marines.  And not all the commanding officers are the sharpest knives in the drawer.  And if one of them happens to be your CO and gives an obviously wrong order, you still have to follow it because you are a marine, after all.  

You realize while watching GENERATION KILL just how amazing it is that the U.S. military can accomplish anything at all, at least in Iraq.  From having the wrong color camouflage to not enough batteries to power night vision goggles, it was just ludicrous how under-equipped the Bravo Company marines were.  And you feel for them.  It’s already the toughest job in the world, made infinitely tougher by lack of adequate equipment and ROE (rules of engagement) that literally change in the heat of battle.  

I am once again fascinated by a TV show.  I will enjoy my weekly hours back in the very capable hands of David Simon and Ed Burns.

• GENERATION KILL episode 5 review