Monday Medley

What we read while lamenting the destruction of traditional marriage…

• Christopher Hitchens wrote a moving a piece on being diagnosed with cancer. This came just a week after Atul Gawande wrote an terrific analysis of how patients with terminal diseases cope with facing death. Just prior to his diagnosis, Hitchens’ memoir was published.

• The New York Times reports on the critical graduation speech by Hunter College High School’s (Justice Elena Kagan’s Alma Mater) valedictorian. Falkenblog, meanwhile, directs us to a valedictory speech that should have merited the New York Times attention.

• A subject dear to Tim’s heart: Jersey jargon.

• Further proof that William Faulkner can write about anything, as if we needed it. Remember the words of Moe Szyslak: “William Faulkner can write an exhaust pipe gag that would really make you think.” Our favorite sentence from this Faulkner Sports Illustrated piece from 1955? ”But [the ice] looked not expectant but resigned, like the mirror simulating ice in the Christmas store window, not before the miniature fir trees and reindeer and cosy lamplit cottage were arranged upon it, but after they had been dismantled and cleared away.”

• John S reviewed Inception last week. Well, apparently Christopher Nolan stole the idea from Scrooge McDuck.

• You should remember how we feel about August (read: not well), so we’re totally on board with David Plotz’s, umm, plot, to cut it down to a lean 10 days.

• We are far from the first ones on this, but sometimes, taking two things that independently aren’t funny, like say, Kanye West tweets and New Yorker cartoons, and putting them together equals comic gold.

• Our favorite part, of course, is that he’s “only” done this once before.

• NPI favorite Kristen Schaal has been making the rounds lately.

• Mark Cuban on how he almost bought the Texas Rangers.

• The title says it all: California Gurls: An Anthropological Study

Getting Lost (Redux): The Constant

“The Constant” is arguably the most popular episode of Lost ever, which in a lot of ways is quite astonishing. Unlike “Through the Looking Glass,” which had a twist that anyone could have anticipated getting a big reaction from fans, “The Constant” is a mythology-heavy time-travel plot involving one character who wasn’t a regular castmember for the show’s first two seasons, and another who was never a regular. Nevertheless, Desmond and Penny, largely because of this episode, became the most compelling romantic relationship on the show for a lot of viewers.*

*This doesn’t say much for the Jack/Kate/Sawyer triangle, or Charlie/Claire, or Sun/Jin, which were set up from the show’s very beginning.

Desmond’s time-traveling ability had been known since “Flashes Before Your Eyes” in Season Three, but whereas that was a more straightforward flashback, “The Constant” cuts back and forth. He has become “unstuck in time” thanks to a storm that interrupts the helicopter flight back to the freighter. The odd time-properties of the Island* cause people who have recently been exposed to radioactive energy or electromagnetism (like say, in an electromagnetic explosion) to lose their grip on time.

FlashBack…to FlashForward

JOHN S: FlashForward premiered on ABC last night (with an encore for those who missed it tonight at 8), and Tim and John S watched–we weren’t lying when we said FlashForward was the #9 reason to be excited for the Fall TV Season. So Tim, what did you think?

TIM: First off, you said it was #9. I would have had it at like #3, behind the return of Survivor and Degrassi’s Nina Dobrev in The Vampire Diaries. Those are really the only two things that could excite me more than a show in which the presentation of a friendship bracelet is accompanied by pulse-poundingly dramatic music.

JOHN S: Yeah, there was a TON of pulse-pounding dramatic music in this show. It was like 80% of the episode.

TIM: Right, and that’s one of the things I kind of expected. It reminded me a lot of the premieres of 24 and, predictably, Lost, in its explosive and perhaps overly dramatic tone. At the same time, I think that’s what shows have to do these days to survive: You rarely build an audience when you’re building characters. One of the smarter things FlashForward did was to avoid breaking for a commercial for 15 minutes. By that point, we had already seen the en medias res opening, the flash back four hours, the blackout, and the realization that it was global. It lays most of its cards on the table in those 15 minutes (two big ones left to be played later in the episode) and tries to hook you in as quickly as possible (like 24 does with its four hours in two nights with limited commercial interruptions).

Was it too dramatic? Ehh, a show that’s so conceptually driven is almost required to get it all out there in its first episode. If FlashForward were to save some of its expository twists (something like the fact that the blackout was indeed global or that everyone not only blacked out, but also saw a vision of their future) for later episodes, it probably wouldn’t create the same kind of buzz leading in. It’s not like you’re going to draw in viewers with your “…AND THEY SEE THE FUTURE!” trailers and then save that information for later.

Am I making any sense?