Monday, May 24, 2010

Lost, in translation

The argument could be made that by setting my expectations so high there was an incredible likelihood of disappointment.

And that very well might be the case.

Nevertheless, the last 10 minutes of the series finale of Lost simply did not work for me. And because of those last 10 minutes there is a certain stink coming from the entire season.

This final season has had the characters in the Sideways World meeting, touching and eventually realizing that they have all shared an adventure that, for some reason, they've forgotten. As the season progressed, the characters are made aware of their ignorance and they begin not only to recognize one another but also remember everything they've done.

It was if someone had forced them to forget and they are slowly awakening. But what forced them to forget? Who has created these alternate lives? And for what reason?

And in the end, that final answer, that looked liked it was going to explode in excitement, instead just fizzled like a firecracker that had incredible potential but turned out just to be a dud.

I like Jack, but I simply do not accept that the the ending had to focus on him. Is his redemption the only one that mattered? -- Or am I to assume that the Sideways World was a series of interlocking redemptive rings that were all connected to one another and that everyone has now left their old lives and is ready to move to the next step? Really, am I supposed to make that assumption? Because the show certainly seems to expects me to fill in a bunch of blank spots that it seemed too lazy or too hurried to resolve itself.

The only scene that worked for me in the last 10 minutes was between Hurley and Ben, when Ben admitted that, even though he would be welcomed by the people in the church, he still had some work to do. And in that scene Hurley acknowledged Ben's contribution and the work they did together. It was only in that scene that I got a true sense that the Sideways World existed outside of linear time and was in fact *all time*.

But for the concluding minutes to be all Jack-Jack-Jack was the biggest disappointment. I had invested too much time with all of the characters to give the final moments only to Jack.

Speaking of Jack, his son, David, served no purpose this season other than to be a teenage red herring. I had expected there would be some sort of decision by Jack to choose between the Sideways World and his son or to leave it behind for the greater good of his friends. Instead, David's character was conveniently forgotten and shuffled away. There was no need for David to be in the season. He served no purpose except to distract the audience.

And Desmond, who is so important in both worlds, is also pushed aside in the final minutes of the show. I can't even remember what happened to him after he was pulled out of the glowing cave. And in the Sideways World he just becomes one of the gang in the church wishing farewell to Jack. He deserved more than that.

Oh, and while I didn't expect answers to all of the big questions, I didn't expect the show to just disregard them. Why were the children so important? Why couldn't the women on the island get pregnant? Why could Hurley see dead people? And what was the big deal behind those numbers? The finale addressed none of those questions. It was as if the time for answers was behind them and the creators were saying: You are all so hooked on the show, we can ignore those questions and just get to the important part, which is obviously all about Jack.

For the first 2 hours and 20 minutes I found the episode to be beautifully emotional: Sawyer and Juliet's reunion, the birth of Claire's baby, Sun and Jin remembering their life and death. Scene upon scene stacked upon one another to the point that I found myself caring less and less about the Island and just wanting the mystery of the Sideways World to be revealed.

And then to find out that it wasn't a Sideways World at all but instead it was a Jack-centric universe with everyone there to get a little bit of enlightenment and to give Jack a lot of hugs and smiles. To paraphrase The Beatles and the final minutes of The Prisoner, "All You Need is Jack".

Those final minutes made me feel like I had been manipulated throughout the whole episode, suckered into believing that it would be something more than purgatory and cheated because it became all about Jack.

I have to ignore those last 10 minutes in order to appreciate everything that came before it.

And that's why the finale failed for me.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Breakfast of Champions

Part way through watching the finale of Lost and I realized it might be the end of a Kurt Vonnegut novel.

Or the end of Grant Morrison's "Animal Man".

And that would be just fine.

Lost predictions

It's half an hour to the Lost finale.

I say that Jin & Sun's baby is important.

And there will be a "Last Temptation of Jack" moment that echoes "For the Man Who Has Everything".

But, hey, I won't mind being wrong. I just want to have a good time. Even a good time like "The Prisoner". But no "Newhart", "St. Elsewhere" or Bobby in the shower.

Lordy, I'm gonna miss this show.

Fringe Cringe


I like the TV show Fringe, I truly do. But I confess that I really, really want to love it.

And I realize that this is largely due to the separation anxiety/grief that is going to hit me after the series finale of Lost.

It’s a sad and lonely thing, hoping to find love with another before the first relationship is over, but when something is ending it’s not unnatural to start to look to the future. It is perhaps cold and calculating, not waiting until the credits have rolled and the television corpse is cold, but there will soon be a cathode ray void to be filled.

Having said that, it does however put a lot of pressure on the next best thing.

While Lost has hit a handful of rocky patches during its run, it has remained captivating for six seasons. My faith in the show is so strong that at this point the finale is a journey worthy of a televised Icarus: I may worry whether the wings will work, but the only way to find out is to take that final leap of faith and hope that it soars into the sky, but not so high that it causes everything to come crashing to the earth. In other words, I hope it doesn’t try so hard that it loses sight of The Island and all the people that inhabit it.

Over the years the masterminds behind Lost have convinced me to make that leap. The show has been captivating and confusing but I never felt that it pandered to its audience. It showed how strong network television can still be. It was worthy of a leap of faith because even when it occasionally went down the wrong path it was always a journey worth taking.

However, because of the season finale of Fringe, I am now concerned that I will never be able to trust a show in quite the same way.

The two part finale of Fringe, which had the main characters fighting to escape from an alternate universe and get back home, was going fine until the very end of the final episode when it had a moment of such cringe-worthy stupidity that I found myself grinding my teeth and thinking “Ah c’mon, they can’t really be doing that.”

Because I hate it when smart characters do dumb things just to advance the story. Stupid people doing stupid things is fine and can lead to great tragedy and comedy, but when smart people do dumb things the result is a mess of epic Humpty Dumpty proportions. I don’t mean doing stupid things like trusting the wrong person or falling in love and it leads to disaster; I mean doing something they’ve learned was a mistake and doing it again as if they never had the first experience.

Here’s something I learned from television…


The classic television series The Prisoner is a show that has a smart main character doing smart things. Things rarely worked out in his favor (and even when he wins, it’s uncertain whether he won anything at all), but he is always consistent in his actions.

There is an episode entitled “The Schizoid Man” (and, as an aside, I always thought there was a ‘t’ in the word ‘schizoid’ – I'm glad that never came up in Spilling Bea) that is particularly relevant when discussing the finale of Fringe.

In that episode the main character, Number Six, has to protect himself when another agent is brought to The Village in order to impersonate him and then psychologically break him. Of course, as is always the case with The Prisoner, there is much more going on as well – betrayal, the on-going battle against authority, the right to privacy and secrets, and what it means to be an individual. There is always a lot of stuff going on in The Prisoner.

What I learned from that episode many years ago was this: always, always, always have a password that only you and a handful of your most-trusted friends know. That way if you and your team ever get split up, kidnapped or sucked into an alternate universe where everyone has a doppelgang-ing duplicate, there will always be a sure fire way to ensure the real you comes back home.

A secret handshake, the punch line to a favorite joke, the answer to a simple question (Q: Who’s your favorite superhero? A: Swamp Thing) would all be examples of identity checks. They’re not perfect and I’m sure they could be tricked, teased or tortured out of someone, but at least an effort has been made to protect everyone. Because if body snatching aliens are coming from outer space, there better be some kind of test in place to check if your best bud is now a pod person.

And it’s not as if the characters in Fringe are new to this stuff. Even if they’ve never watched an episode of The Prisoner they have seen a lot of weird stuff including (most friggin’ important of all!) shape-shifting alternate universe invaders. And once you’ve seen your best friend killed and then impersonated by some bad guys, you would think that some sort of safety protocols would be put in place. Cuz, y’know, you probably don’t want something like that to happen twice.

Simple questions like “Who was the first girl that ever slapped you” or “What color is your underwear on a Sunday” or “That was no ladle, that was my knife!” would elicit a response that no alien shape-shifting body snatcher from another universe could ever hope to duplicate.

And it drives me up the wall when smart characters do dumb things or don’t act as smart as I think they should. Put it this way: if I can think of it, they should have thought of it, too.


I’m still going to tune into Fringe next season, but the show is going to have to try a little bit harder. I like it, but I’m not sure if it’s ever going to be true love.

Oh the loss of Lost. Will I ever feel the same way about a television show once you’re gone?

(By the way, my super-secret password question and answer: “Q: Who was the greatest baseball player of all time? A: Frank Mahovlich!” Go ahead, let some shape-shifting alien figure that one out.)

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The Worst and the Best

I just realized that the worst thing that's happened to me in the past six months was when a pick-up truck rammed into my car as he ran a red light.

The best thing that happened to me was a couple minutes later when I had the realization that I had been driving alone, my family was not with me, and it could have been much, much worse.

Sometimes the bad helps the good look really, really spectacular.

The Sound of Sustenance

"Lunch sounds nice," I said to a friend. "But beer sounds like a symphony of beautiful women playing wind instruments."

Monday, May 17, 2010

Badges of Honour

While waiting with Zed to walk into school, I overhead one of the older boys. And it reminded me of how cool is it to get injured when you're a boy.

"Look at this scab," the boy said to one of the other kids in line. "It looks like a pepperoni pizza."

And he was right. The injury was the slightly larger than a quarter in size, and had two sharp red dots within the scab. It looked like an angry, hot out of the oven mini-pizza with two pepperoni slices on top.

"Go ahead! Touch the scab!! Touch the pizza scab!" he said to his friend. I'm not sure if his friend touched it; I would like to think he was brave enough that he did.

I don't think most girls would express the injury with such joy and enthusiasm. And I'm willing to bet that the boy wasn't quite so thrilled when he hurt himself.

Had it been one of our boys who had suffered the injury, we would have held him, consoled him and carefully patched him up.

But maybe, just maybe, if one of my boys went to school with just such an injury he would have proudly displayed his wound -- as if it was a major accomplishment and something to be proud of.

I never broke my arm as a kid or did anything that required a cast. And I sure as hell wouldn't want to break a bone now. But I remember that I always felt a tiny bit of envy whenever I saw other kids getting their cast signed. It was like we all had to acknowledge their pain and pay tribute to their bravery. As if by accidentally hurting themselves they proved to be smarter and more daring than anyone else.

It's the attainment of popularity and fame through injury. Pity can come from adults; from other kids, it's awe.

Friday, May 7, 2010

May the Fourth Go Away

Star Wars has saddened me.

Because it was Star Wars that made me bitter and feel that things had got worse.

While I was out with friends the other night, someone at the table said, "It's not like the old days," and I replied, "It's never like the old days."

And I remember the f
irst time I ever felt that way: Star Wars, the most recent crap-fest trilogy, made me feel that way.

Because those movies are shit and the originals are better. And only old people say stuff like "It's not as good as the original" or "It's not like the old days."


And that, my friends, is why Star Wars can bite me.

Because they made me feel old.

Monday, May 3, 2010

The Book of Love

Back when I was a teenager, a friend told me that my parents were unusual because he could see that romance existed between them.

Now, granted, this was my mother's second marriage, but he was one hundred percent correct: we were surrounded by parents who rarely displayed any affection towards their partner or even showed enthusiasm for one another. Life had taken its toll on the relationships of most parents. And perhaps that was what had happened for my mom and dad, but in their second marriages both of my parents found partners who gave them a new outlook and a new zest for life.

Yes, I know: most teenagers see their parents as dried out old husks of wasted space who don't realize that their ancient ways are going the way of the dinosaur and that there are new exciting things in the world that they can't begin to understand and why don't you just let me do what I want and why can't you just leave me alone!!!!

... Ahem.

In some ways my parents and their new parents were inspiring. It was sad that divorce had been necessary, but it was amazing to see that there could still be energy, fun and romance when you get older. Through them we could see that romance wasn't something only young people could enjoy.

And I've been fortunate that I have inspiration in other people, too.

Our friends in Montreal, A & D, are wonderful people and a terrific couple. Oh I'm sure they have challenges and most certainly have their ups and down, but they admire and respect one another. They are far from being two peas in a pod and I can't ever remember them finishing one another's sentences or thoughts.

But they like each other. They tease each other. And they laugh together.

For those reasons (and many, many others) I always enjoy spending time with them. Because seeing the best in them gives me hope that my wife and I can be the same way in years to come.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

"She's So Funky Now" [sic]

I was grabbing some lunch the day before our trip to Montreal (which, of course, was the day before my wife and I were going to see Peter Gabriel in concert) when I heard "Games Without Frontiers" playing on the radio.

And when I did the math in my head I suddenly felt very, very old.

Because when I heard the song it brought back the memory of when I was young and how I thought the chorus to the song was "She's so funky now". It wasn't until I read the liner notes that I realized the chorus actually was "Jeux sans frontieres" and I was struck by the fact of how wrong I had been and how cool Peter Gabriel was: he was saying the title in French and I had misheard it in English. (Years later I learned that Peter Gabriel took the title and the chorus from a French game show. Which didn't make it any less cool. As a matter of fact, it managed to make the song and its title even more relevant once I read the premise of the television show.)

(Oh, and I still think that "She's so funky now" is a rather interesting mishear-ment of a song. Perhaps it's not as interesting as the classic and horribly incorrect "Excuse me while I kiss this guy", but it's still pretty good.

And my other great mishear-ance was from Randy Newman's "Sail Away": Rand sings "We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay". But I heard "We will cross the mighty ocean in just one day." The true lyric has historical context, but my lyric is perfectly acceptable within the cruel salesmanship of the song.)

Back to jeux sans frontieres: I remember doodling the words on a French test in high school because I thought they were cool and because I wanted to show my French teacher that I knew something besides the verb conjugation I had learned so very inadequately in his class. Because of all that I'm able to place the song at a certain time in my life.

But then, after all that flashed through my mind, I did a wee bit of quick math and I realized -- ahh crap! -- that if I scribbled the song's chorus in high school, it means that the song is now more than 30 years old! Which makes me -- well, much older than I usually think I am.

(As an aside, Wikipedia informs me that the song came out in 1980 which indeedly-deedly-doo confirms that the song is 30 years old. But it also goes to prove a point: I don't need wikipedia as long as I can rely on simple math skills and the continued kindness of women who continue to wear sandals so I can count on their beautiful painted toes when I've run out of fingers and toes of my own.)

(Oh, and did I mention that Peter Gabriel recorded an Oscar-nominated Randy Newman song for the soundtrack of "Babe, Pig in the City"? Randy Newman finally won an Academy Award a couple of years later. Peter Gabriel was nominated for a song in "Wall-E" but hasn't taken the trophy home yet.

Having said that here's a clip with Peter Gabriel singing "That'll Do" with Rand on the piano...)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xan3b7_peter-gabriel-randy-newman-thatll-d_music


As for the concert in Montreal...

The Rhythm of the Heat

It can be a terrifying experience when you dare to see an artist who you've admired and enjoyed for many, many years.

Will they still have the magical charisma of their youth or will they merely be coasting on past accomplishments? Do they still have something to say, or are their best days behind them?

The scene in the movie 'Trainspotting' captured it perfectly when two of the characters talk about the career trajectory of Sean Connery. Their conclusion: "So we all get old and then we can't hack it anymore. Is that it?" Musical examples would be Bob Dylan, The Who and The Rolling Stones -- do they have anything new to contribute or are all artists doomed to follow the path of Sean Connery?

After seeing Peter Gabriel in concert, it is a huge relief to report that he is the exception to the Trainspotting rule.

Before writing about the concert, I have to confess that I am not a huge fan of Peter Gabriel's new album, "Scratch My Back". It has an interesting and challenging concept as he does interpretations of classic songs without the safety net of guitars or drums and instead relies on orchestral arrangement for the material. David Bowie's "Heroes", Paul Simon's "The Boy in the Bubble" and Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going to Rain" are among the songs that he re-works under his self-imposed restraints.

But as a complete work the album sounds monotone and dull because it lack any shifts in mood or passion. It can be enjoy in tiny morsels, but listening to the whole thing in one sitting is somewhat trying. And coming from an artist as energetic and thrilling as Gabriel, the album feels especially dry.

Having said that, when I heard that he was touring and making a stop in Montreal, there was no way I was going to pass on the event.

As a bit of an aside: years ago I had to learn the difference between a play and the production of a play: Shakespeare's "Hamlet" exists on the page; the production is what I might go see in Stratford. The work continues to exist on the page while the production is an interpretation of the work -- sometimes the interpretation is a success, sometimes it's a failure. Books and films can have the same relationship -- the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan and Harry Potter continue to live on the page no matter how good or bad the screen interpretations may be.

And in the same vein, while the album doesn't work for me, the concert presentation of "Scratch My Back" was a marvel to hear. While there are still challenges with what the orchestral arrangements can and cannot do, the concert setting and atmosphere makes the music powerful and captivating in a way that the album never does.

The concert was broken into two parts: the first had Gabriel perform the new album in its entirety. He then returned after a a short break to present re-workings of some of his own songs including "Digging in the Dirt", "Mercy Street" and "San Jacinto". The tribal-like of drums were sorely missed in "The Rhythm of the Heat", but "In Your Eyes" and "Solsbury Hill" were exhilarating with the orchestra.

Peter Gabriel's voice sounded somewhat challenged at times but considering the man is now 60 years old, it's not surprising that some of the notes that he hit some 30 years ago are no longer within his range.

But what is surprising is that he continues to challenge himself. It would have been easy for him to coast and merely give the fans what they want. Instead, he continues to challenge himself and his listeners to try something completely different.

The album doesn't work for me and I still can't listen to the entire cd at one time. But I do appreciate it more after seeing the show. Peter Gabriel's latest endeavor could have easily seen him fall on his face, but instead he soared.