DharmaWantsYou.com has now been updated with the first test. While ridiculously simple, it's also insanely addictive.
I played it for a couple hours tonight and my best score was an 84. I took a break and now I can't log back in. It's driving me crazy. I found a message board where they were talking about it, and the highest score I saw posted was an 88, so that's my goal.
Showing posts with label LOST. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LOST. Show all posts
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Friday, May 30, 2008
Season 4 finale of LOST
It was a decent episode considering that 1) we already knew a lot of what was going to happen from all the Season 4 flash-forwards, and 2) the reveal of who was in the coffin was just about the most anti-climactic thing ever since I was 99% sure it was Locke the second Kate said Jeremy Bentham a few moments into the episode.
I really liked how they added on to the scenes from last year's season finale, with Kate slamming on the brakes and coming back, and Jack returning to the funeral home. Also, Desmond and Penny finally being reunited was really nice.
I think if Locke really is dead, and it isn't a trick from Ben (and Locke?) to get everyone to return to the island, then he'll almost certainly be half-dead like Jacob and Christian when his body is returned to the island. Also, since Christian appeared to Michael right before the C4 went off, and also Jin was at the very front of the boat when the C4 went off, I wouldn't be surprised if Jin and possibly others that were on the boat are still alive somewhere, somehow.
And it should be really interesting to see what exactly are the horrible things that took place on the island that Jack said that Locke mentioned. Are these related to Widmore, Abaddon, or someone / something else? And how did Locke get off the island? Did he have to move it again like Ben did in this episode?
Update (6/1/08): According to this article, it appears that I completely misinterpreted the scene with Michael and Christian right before the freighter blew up. Christian's "now you can go" line apparently indicated that Michael had served his purpose and the island would now let him die.
I really liked how they added on to the scenes from last year's season finale, with Kate slamming on the brakes and coming back, and Jack returning to the funeral home. Also, Desmond and Penny finally being reunited was really nice.
I think if Locke really is dead, and it isn't a trick from Ben (and Locke?) to get everyone to return to the island, then he'll almost certainly be half-dead like Jacob and Christian when his body is returned to the island. Also, since Christian appeared to Michael right before the C4 went off, and also Jin was at the very front of the boat when the C4 went off, I wouldn't be surprised if Jin and possibly others that were on the boat are still alive somewhere, somehow.
And it should be really interesting to see what exactly are the horrible things that took place on the island that Jack said that Locke mentioned. Are these related to Widmore, Abaddon, or someone / something else? And how did Locke get off the island? Did he have to move it again like Ben did in this episode?
Update (6/1/08): According to this article, it appears that I completely misinterpreted the scene with Michael and Christian right before the freighter blew up. Christian's "now you can go" line apparently indicated that Michael had served his purpose and the island would now let him die.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Boob Tube Speculation
I try to avoid TV show spoilers at all costs, so what follows is my spoiler-free speculation on what might be happening next on my favorite TV shows. Those who do read spoilers will probably know if these speculations are close to the truth or way off (probably the latter), but it's fun to guess.
The Office
The one exception to avoiding spoilers I have is that I allow myself is to read the titles of upcoming episodes. If possible, I would avoid even this information, but OfficeTally has the titles of upcoming episodes in the upper right hand corner of the page, kind of making the decision for me. At one time I thought about using the Firefox extension greasemoney to try to block just that box, but that probably wouldn't work without messing up a lot of sites, so I gave up on that. So from this I know that the title of next Thursday's (5/1) episode is Did I Stutter?. My first guess for what this episode might be about, which I had a few weeks ago, was that Ryan was going to fire Michael. Then after Chair Model I thought that in this episode Jim might propose to Pam. Then after Night Out I thought maybe in this episode David Wallace would fire Ryan, send him back to Scranton, and Jan would get her old job back. My best guess right now is that Jim is going to propose to Pam. And I have a bad feeling that she's going to say something other than "Absolutely, I do." In Chair Model, when Jim and Pam started talking about marriage at her desk, the way she had trouble finding her words explaining things and then the way she watched Jim walk back to his desk with a little smile on her face like she was waiting for him to turn around and indicate he was joking suggests to me that another engagement and marriage are not on Pam's mind for the immediate future.
The episode after that is titled Job Fair. For some reason I think this episode might be similar to The Convention. This title obviously suggests someone is going to be fired or quit their current job, or maybe Dunder Mifflin is going to have a booth at a job fair looking for some new employees.
For the past few weeks the season finale was just listed on OfficeTally as Season Finale, but I just noticed that it's been updated on OfficeTally (within the last 12 hours) to an actual title, Goodbye, Toby. OMG, Toby is really leaving! Hopefully he's going to go to the corporate office or something like that so he'll still be on the show. The Office would not be the same without Toby Flenderson, if nothing else as a sponge for Michael's contempt. The scene in The Deposition when Michael pushes Toby's tray of food off the table is one of my favorite scenes from Season 4.
LOST
Wow has this show picked up the pace in Season 4. One of the big mysteries in the Season 3 finale was the identity of the person in the casket. I originally thought it was probably Ben. But after watching the Season 4 episodes that have aired so far that does not seem very likely. And perhaps almost as important as the Season 4 episodes in changing what I think will happen on lost is Lost: A Theory on Time Travel by Jason Hunter. This is fan speculation explaining many of the central questions about LOST. While I don't agree with many of the details, I think a lot of the central ideas are probably mostly correct. It's so good that after reading it I wondered if I made a mistake, since even though it's just speculation and not technically spoilers, some of it is almost certainly correct. So if you haven't read that yet, and you don't want spoilers, maybe think twice about doing so. Because once you do you can't go back in time and undo it.
So, like I said, after watching the Season 4 episodes and reading that, it seems unlikely that Ben is the one in the casket. My current best guess is John Locke, with Michael being my second guess.
Another huge thing is what happened to everyone else that's not one of the Oceanic 6, especially Claire and Jin. My guess is that most of them are still alive on the island.
Regarding what's going to happen during the rest of Season 4, I don't have too many ideas besides what we know, that the 6 are going to get off the island somehow, plus a bunch of things that seem likely based on the basic ideas in Lost: A Theory Of Time Travel.
Battlestar Galactica
Over a year after the incredible Season 3 finale, Season 4 has now finally started airing. Even though 4 episodes have aired, few questions have been answered. Most notably, of course, the identity of the 5th cylon. So far they've been stringing us along, making us think it's a certain individual, only to then show it's probably not them, and then making us think it's someone else, and so on. It reminds me a lot of Season 3 of Nip/Tuck, and the mystery of the identity of The Carver, and it ended up being the obvious person (along with a second person who occasionally helped, who I did not think was as obvious). The person who, might I add, I originally suspected, the second he said he had previously been in Sudan helping war victims. The problem with figuring out the final cylon is that it's not as obvious as that was. The first few Season 4 episodes first made me think the final cylon might be Starbuck, and then Baltar, but now I doubt it's either of them.
A few days ago on Digg there was an article with speculation on who the final cylon might be. While I think the article is creative and the author is willing to think outside the box, I think his guess is completely wrong. The article did contain one helpful bit of information, however. There's a promo picture titled Battlestar Galactica: The Last Supper. According to the article, the final cylon is not anyone in the picture. This would mean that it's not Starbuck, Baltar, Agathon, President Roslin, Admiral Adama, Lee Adama. While searching for the link to that article from Digg, I ran across this article detailing why it makes sense that the final cylon is Lee. But since Lee is in that last supper picture, then it can't be him, right?
So that leaves it to be one of the secondary characters, which I don't like nearly as much as if it had been one of the main characters. Hopefully they handle it in a way so it makes sense and doesn't involve a lot of trickery / deception before it's revealed.
One big mystery about the final 5 cylons is why they're separated from the other 7 cylon models, and why the 7 aren't supposed to talk about them. My guess is that there was a big disagreement between the 12 about something a long time ago (relatively speaking, anyway; the skin jobs haven't been around for that long, have they?), and the 5 went their own way, ending up in the fleet. While it's not clear if they're covert agents or they wanted to join humanity, or if the 5 cylons in the fleet are the only versions of the 5 cylon models, or if like the other skin jobs there are many copies of them somewhere else. I would not be surprised if the fleet finally finds Earth and it's populated with millions of copies of these 5 cylons.
One final guess I have, which I came up after watching the first episode of Season 4, is that Lee is going to become the President after Roslin dies of cancer. That's probably the most obvious thing in the world, though, after the scene where Lee told his father that there was "a position" opening up in the government that he was going to take, and since then has become more outspoken as a member of the quorum. If that happens, that would certainly make things more interesting in the seemingly unlikely event that Lee does indeed turn out to be the final cylon.
The Office
The one exception to avoiding spoilers I have is that I allow myself is to read the titles of upcoming episodes. If possible, I would avoid even this information, but OfficeTally has the titles of upcoming episodes in the upper right hand corner of the page, kind of making the decision for me. At one time I thought about using the Firefox extension greasemoney to try to block just that box, but that probably wouldn't work without messing up a lot of sites, so I gave up on that. So from this I know that the title of next Thursday's (5/1) episode is Did I Stutter?. My first guess for what this episode might be about, which I had a few weeks ago, was that Ryan was going to fire Michael. Then after Chair Model I thought that in this episode Jim might propose to Pam. Then after Night Out I thought maybe in this episode David Wallace would fire Ryan, send him back to Scranton, and Jan would get her old job back. My best guess right now is that Jim is going to propose to Pam. And I have a bad feeling that she's going to say something other than "Absolutely, I do." In Chair Model, when Jim and Pam started talking about marriage at her desk, the way she had trouble finding her words explaining things and then the way she watched Jim walk back to his desk with a little smile on her face like she was waiting for him to turn around and indicate he was joking suggests to me that another engagement and marriage are not on Pam's mind for the immediate future.
The episode after that is titled Job Fair. For some reason I think this episode might be similar to The Convention. This title obviously suggests someone is going to be fired or quit their current job, or maybe Dunder Mifflin is going to have a booth at a job fair looking for some new employees.
For the past few weeks the season finale was just listed on OfficeTally as Season Finale, but I just noticed that it's been updated on OfficeTally (within the last 12 hours) to an actual title, Goodbye, Toby. OMG, Toby is really leaving! Hopefully he's going to go to the corporate office or something like that so he'll still be on the show. The Office would not be the same without Toby Flenderson, if nothing else as a sponge for Michael's contempt. The scene in The Deposition when Michael pushes Toby's tray of food off the table is one of my favorite scenes from Season 4.
LOST
Wow has this show picked up the pace in Season 4. One of the big mysteries in the Season 3 finale was the identity of the person in the casket. I originally thought it was probably Ben. But after watching the Season 4 episodes that have aired so far that does not seem very likely. And perhaps almost as important as the Season 4 episodes in changing what I think will happen on lost is Lost: A Theory on Time Travel by Jason Hunter. This is fan speculation explaining many of the central questions about LOST. While I don't agree with many of the details, I think a lot of the central ideas are probably mostly correct. It's so good that after reading it I wondered if I made a mistake, since even though it's just speculation and not technically spoilers, some of it is almost certainly correct. So if you haven't read that yet, and you don't want spoilers, maybe think twice about doing so. Because once you do you can't go back in time and undo it.
So, like I said, after watching the Season 4 episodes and reading that, it seems unlikely that Ben is the one in the casket. My current best guess is John Locke, with Michael being my second guess.
Another huge thing is what happened to everyone else that's not one of the Oceanic 6, especially Claire and Jin. My guess is that most of them are still alive on the island.
Regarding what's going to happen during the rest of Season 4, I don't have too many ideas besides what we know, that the 6 are going to get off the island somehow, plus a bunch of things that seem likely based on the basic ideas in Lost: A Theory Of Time Travel.
Battlestar Galactica
Over a year after the incredible Season 3 finale, Season 4 has now finally started airing. Even though 4 episodes have aired, few questions have been answered. Most notably, of course, the identity of the 5th cylon. So far they've been stringing us along, making us think it's a certain individual, only to then show it's probably not them, and then making us think it's someone else, and so on. It reminds me a lot of Season 3 of Nip/Tuck, and the mystery of the identity of The Carver, and it ended up being the obvious person (along with a second person who occasionally helped, who I did not think was as obvious). The person who, might I add, I originally suspected, the second he said he had previously been in Sudan helping war victims. The problem with figuring out the final cylon is that it's not as obvious as that was. The first few Season 4 episodes first made me think the final cylon might be Starbuck, and then Baltar, but now I doubt it's either of them.
A few days ago on Digg there was an article with speculation on who the final cylon might be. While I think the article is creative and the author is willing to think outside the box, I think his guess is completely wrong. The article did contain one helpful bit of information, however. There's a promo picture titled Battlestar Galactica: The Last Supper. According to the article, the final cylon is not anyone in the picture. This would mean that it's not Starbuck, Baltar, Agathon, President Roslin, Admiral Adama, Lee Adama. While searching for the link to that article from Digg, I ran across this article detailing why it makes sense that the final cylon is Lee. But since Lee is in that last supper picture, then it can't be him, right?
So that leaves it to be one of the secondary characters, which I don't like nearly as much as if it had been one of the main characters. Hopefully they handle it in a way so it makes sense and doesn't involve a lot of trickery / deception before it's revealed.
One big mystery about the final 5 cylons is why they're separated from the other 7 cylon models, and why the 7 aren't supposed to talk about them. My guess is that there was a big disagreement between the 12 about something a long time ago (relatively speaking, anyway; the skin jobs haven't been around for that long, have they?), and the 5 went their own way, ending up in the fleet. While it's not clear if they're covert agents or they wanted to join humanity, or if the 5 cylons in the fleet are the only versions of the 5 cylon models, or if like the other skin jobs there are many copies of them somewhere else. I would not be surprised if the fleet finally finds Earth and it's populated with millions of copies of these 5 cylons.
One final guess I have, which I came up after watching the first episode of Season 4, is that Lee is going to become the President after Roslin dies of cancer. That's probably the most obvious thing in the world, though, after the scene where Lee told his father that there was "a position" opening up in the government that he was going to take, and since then has become more outspoken as a member of the quorum. If that happens, that would certainly make things more interesting in the seemingly unlikely event that Lee does indeed turn out to be the final cylon.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Chuck - S01E02
So despite my mixed thoughts on the first episode, I decided to give Chuck another chance and I was not disappointed. The second episode was funnier, the plot was more interesting (even though it seemed like just something they had to get out of the way, kind of like the episode of Futurama where Fry checks his old bank account and finds out that he's a billionaire), and the question of which, if either, agent could be trusted made things pretty interesting. One thing I didn't like was that the whole computer secrets stuck in his head thing is even more ridiculous than I thought it would be.
I liked that LOST was referenced when in the middle of reciting some of the secrets he knew he said, "Oceanic flight 815 was shot down...," but I have to wonder if the writers actually watch LOST each week since we learned in the Season 2 finale that Desmond not entering the code in time was apparently what brought the plane down. It would have been better if he had said "Oceanic flight 815 crashed on an island located..." or something like that that alludes to something we don't know.
I liked that LOST was referenced when in the middle of reciting some of the secrets he knew he said, "Oceanic flight 815 was shot down...," but I have to wonder if the writers actually watch LOST each week since we learned in the Season 2 finale that Desmond not entering the code in time was apparently what brought the plane down. It would have been better if he had said "Oceanic flight 815 crashed on an island located..." or something like that that alludes to something we don't know.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
My thoughts on the LOST Season 3 Finale
Much like the Season 3 finale of The Office, my first impression of the LOST Season 3 finale episode was that it was kind of meh. Like everybody else, I figured out pretty early in the episode that the scenes of Jack in L.A. were from the future. I doubt very many people were surprised at the end when Kate got out of the car. I wish this had been a little less obvious so it would have been a surprise at that point, because that would have been pretty cool.
I usually dislike it when a show does an episode set in the future or reveals significant things about what's going to happen since a lot of the fun comes from not knowing what happens and being able to speculate. For example, the Nip/Tuck episode "Conor McNamara, 2026" from Season 4 showed what all the characters were up to 20 years in the future. Now, Nip/Tuck is kind of a guilty pleasure show, but I still thought that revealing what happens to everyone was a big mistake. Not only was the episode the worst of the series, but also it makes the show that much less enjoyable.
After watching again the episode again, though, my opinion of the episode improved dramatically. For one thing, I think the 15 minutes or so where it seemed that Jin, Sayid, and Bernard were dead had a major negative impact on my initial impression of the episode. For another, after finding out for sure that the Jack in L.A. scenes were from the future, I realized that there were still a ton of unanswered questions; there are even more now than before, in fact.
Of the unanswered questions, the most interesting to me is probably the identity of the person who died in the flash-forward. There are some close-up pictures of the obituary from the newspaper over at Lost Screencaps and Easter Eggs, and while it's not possible to make out the whole thing, apparently the entire message has been leaked, and the name in the obituary is John Lantham. This could be a pseudonym or the real name of an established character, or a new character that hasn't been introduced on the show yet. Apparently there's an artist named John Latham that died in 2006 with some ideas that have a lot to do with LOST. For more, check out the Wikipedia page about him.
While arguments can be made that it was John Locke, Michael, or a yet to be introduced character, my guess is that it was Ben Linus that died. When Jack read the obituary he was devastated, to the point that he almost jumped off a bridge. We know that Jack has become obsessed with getting back to the island, and Ben would probably be the person best able to help him accomplish that. Plus, if it was Ben's funeral, then Jack's strong emotions of sadness and regret would juxtapose nicely with his antipathy towards Ben back on the island. As to the identity of the teenage son mentioned in the obituary, perhaps it's Karl, since the identity of his parents haven't been revealed yet.
Also, I'm really interested in seeing how things get to the point in time they are in the flash-forward, and even more interested in seeing what happens after that. I think that would be awesome if the scenes from the flash-forward occur in real time at some point in Season 5, or Season 6 at the latest, leaving at least one full season to see what happens after the small glimpse into the future that we got in this episode.
Unfortunately, Season 4 isn't going to start airing until 2008, so there's still 8 months to speculate on what will happen next. In the meantime, here are a few interesting links:
Lost Screencaps And Easter Eggs
- This site has a bunch of screencap of important and interesting things that range from difficult to impossible to spot during the first viewing.
Liquid Generation: Top 10 Moments of the Lost Season Finale
- What the link says. It's a very good list.
Lost Redux: Damon Lindelof Breaks "Radio Silence" to Reveal Why Charlie Died and More
- An interesting interview with one of the show's producers, including a Q&A about the future of the show.
I usually dislike it when a show does an episode set in the future or reveals significant things about what's going to happen since a lot of the fun comes from not knowing what happens and being able to speculate. For example, the Nip/Tuck episode "Conor McNamara, 2026" from Season 4 showed what all the characters were up to 20 years in the future. Now, Nip/Tuck is kind of a guilty pleasure show, but I still thought that revealing what happens to everyone was a big mistake. Not only was the episode the worst of the series, but also it makes the show that much less enjoyable.
After watching again the episode again, though, my opinion of the episode improved dramatically. For one thing, I think the 15 minutes or so where it seemed that Jin, Sayid, and Bernard were dead had a major negative impact on my initial impression of the episode. For another, after finding out for sure that the Jack in L.A. scenes were from the future, I realized that there were still a ton of unanswered questions; there are even more now than before, in fact.
Of the unanswered questions, the most interesting to me is probably the identity of the person who died in the flash-forward. There are some close-up pictures of the obituary from the newspaper over at Lost Screencaps and Easter Eggs, and while it's not possible to make out the whole thing, apparently the entire message has been leaked, and the name in the obituary is John Lantham. This could be a pseudonym or the real name of an established character, or a new character that hasn't been introduced on the show yet. Apparently there's an artist named John Latham that died in 2006 with some ideas that have a lot to do with LOST. For more, check out the Wikipedia page about him.
While arguments can be made that it was John Locke, Michael, or a yet to be introduced character, my guess is that it was Ben Linus that died. When Jack read the obituary he was devastated, to the point that he almost jumped off a bridge. We know that Jack has become obsessed with getting back to the island, and Ben would probably be the person best able to help him accomplish that. Plus, if it was Ben's funeral, then Jack's strong emotions of sadness and regret would juxtapose nicely with his antipathy towards Ben back on the island. As to the identity of the teenage son mentioned in the obituary, perhaps it's Karl, since the identity of his parents haven't been revealed yet.
Also, I'm really interested in seeing how things get to the point in time they are in the flash-forward, and even more interested in seeing what happens after that. I think that would be awesome if the scenes from the flash-forward occur in real time at some point in Season 5, or Season 6 at the latest, leaving at least one full season to see what happens after the small glimpse into the future that we got in this episode.
Unfortunately, Season 4 isn't going to start airing until 2008, so there's still 8 months to speculate on what will happen next. In the meantime, here are a few interesting links:
Lost Screencaps And Easter Eggs
- This site has a bunch of screencap of important and interesting things that range from difficult to impossible to spot during the first viewing.
Liquid Generation: Top 10 Moments of the Lost Season Finale
- What the link says. It's a very good list.
Lost Redux: Damon Lindelof Breaks "Radio Silence" to Reveal Why Charlie Died and More
- An interesting interview with one of the show's producers, including a Q&A about the future of the show.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
LOST Season 3 Finale
I'm really looking forward to watching the LOST Season 3 finale tonight, which starts in about an hour and fifteen minutes. I'm terrible at predictions, and LOST has the most unexpected twists of any show on television, so I won't even try. Instead, I'll just try to enjoy the show while keeping Teferi's words of wisdom in mind: "Can you prepare for the unexpected? No, you cannot. You can prepare only to be surprised."
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