Underpants On The Outside

Lost has a habit of setting up dozens of mind-boggling mysteries and solving NONE of them. My friend Jordan, whose use of imagery is nothing short of genius, describes the experience of watching the show as frustrating as “Dry-Humping a Supermodel.”

What is it about exes? Why do we remember them being hotter than they were, and the sex being better than it was? Why do we forget the pain, and the moments when we’d look at them and think, “I’ve wasted so much time on you…”?  I don’t know.  All I know is that on Friday at six AM I sat down to watch two hours of the most infuriating show on television. 

That’s right.  6 AM.  Thursday was a terrible, no good, very bad day.  The work day sucked, I overcooked my dinner, I found holes in two of my best workshirts which meant I had to do laundry, and by the time I was done it was 10:30 and I was too damn tired to handle the confusion and unfulfilled expectations that come from watching Lost.  Also, given my luck that day, there was a good chance my TV would catch fire.  I set my alarm for six and went to bed. 

I woke up feeling happy and refreshed, and then spent the next two hours ruining that feeling…

From the very first minute, the show had already given me a Blue Ball Special.  For the past several months ABC advertised a blockbuster, two-hour premiere.  PSYCHE!  The first hour is a recap.  That is not a two-hour premiere.  That is a one-hour premiere, and a one-hour reminder.  Up yours, ABC.  That isn’t equivalent to dry-humping a supermodel - that’s a supermodel who just pulled the move where she plants kisses all the way down my torso to my waist… then comes back up.  I hate that maneuver.  Women who do that should be given empty Tiffany boxes for every birthday for the rest of their lives.

In theory, recap episodes are for new viewers who have heard all the talk about this show and want to jump on the bandwagon without bothering to Netflix the DVD’s.  These people are lazy.  Lost is like a religion.  You can convert in, but in order to truly call yourself a believer, you have to have spent dozens of hours digesting the literature and constantly reviewing it.  You have to have spent long nights searching for meaning in insignificant details.  You have to believe in something that will continually test your faith and accept shit that makes no sense because deep down you believe it will all be revealed in the end.  Oh yeah - and it will deny you sexual release.

Some of you might wonder why I sound a bit angry.  That’s because when I originally took these notes it was early and I could have had another hour of sleep.  That and I’d just found out that Cinnamon Pecan Special K tastes nothing like Cinnamon Toast Crunch.  That was sort of the cornerstone of my new weight-loss program.  Now I’m going to have to take up smoking.

Considering I have trouble recapping a single episode in less than three pages, I’m curious to see how ABC recaps three seasons in an hour.  Turns out: not so well.  Fifteen minutes in, this is what a new viewer would know: there’s a polar bear, a smoke monster and a pirate ship, while people are constantly scared, bloody, and being rained on. It makes no sense.  Take away the polar bear and the smoke monster and you’ve got everything I can remember about European History. Welcome to the program, Johnny-Come-Latelys.

I’m just going to end the recap of the recap here.  Instead I’ll take a moment to discuss some of the commercials.  Unlike a lot of people with DVR, I don’t manage to save a ton of time fastforwarding through commercials.  There are a few reasons for this.  First, a lot of commercials contain hot women, and it’s hard to press fast forward when I’m masturbating furiously.  Secondly, some commercials happen to be entertaining.  You know what’s not one of them?  The one where the Maytag guy uses a pitching machine to shoot baseballs at a washing machine.  Call me old fashioned, but where I come from we wash our baseballs by hand.  Even if I didn’t, I certainly wouldn’t load them into a washing machine using a 90-mph fastball.  I don’t expect my car to make my whites whiter, so I don’t expect my washing machine to survive high-speed collisions.  However, I do like the commercial where the chick says “door open” and hits the glass door at full speed with a cup of coffee.    My dad constantly runs into pull doors the same way, and it never gets old. 

This week’s mystery:  The Future.  I’ve already made the analogy of this show as an ex-girlfriend, but let’s flesh out some details.  She and I had a tumultuous relationship.  She said I moved too fast, but in my defense, she IS a supermodel, and she wore EXTREMELY scandalous outfits.  Over the past few months she and I took some time apart to think things through. 

Just before the split, she gave me the mother of all dry-humps.  The show has always relied on flashbacks, but in last season’s finale they pulled a flashFORWARD.  The flashbacks always gave me blessed relief - finally a character’s odd behavior made a bit more sense with context. The flash forwards do the exact fucking opposite. 

The episode of that first flashforward focused on Jack, played by Matthew Fox.  When the show started he was the charismatic, quiet, reluctant leader of the castaways.  His reluctance may have been a result of him being an incompetent leader, because since then he has fallen for every single trap the island had to offer.  He’s still waiting for someone to tell him how you keep an idiot in suspense.  Then again, I’m the one sitting down for a fourth year of this crap, so I’m not really one to talk. 

In that episode, Jack was back in Los Angeles.  This is great, I thought.  There was a light at the end of the tunnel.  From the context of the future, mysteries of the present would be gradually revealed.  I was filled with hope.  Then that hope was told that the supermodel loved him like a brother, and that meant no handjobs.  For some reason, in the future, Jack wants to get BACK to the island, he thinks they never should have left, and he goes on flights hoping they crash. Of course, he doesn’t feel like any explanation is needed for any of these statements.

Now it looks like the flashforward is going to be the show’s M.O.  When Thursday’s episode began, we see a pile of mangos.  I figured they would turn into some kind of flying mango monster back on the island.  Instead, we find ourselves in a farmer’s market, and the mangos explode when Hurley, the show’s big tub of comic relief, goes plowing through them in a Camaro.  We’re back to the future (sorry - couldn’t help myself), and Hurley’s being chased by the cops.  Of course, like most fat people, it’s not long before Hurley’s caught, but as he’s dragged away, he yells, “I’m one of the Oceanic Six!  I’m one of the Oceanic Six!”  (FYI: Oceanic is the airline whose plane started this whole shebang.)   In the present, there’s like forty something people still living on the island.  So if Hurley’s part of the “Oceanic Six”, that means a whole bunch of people are going to die.  I would really like to know who, and how.  That there is the supermodel.  The fact that I may die before I ever find out… well, that’s the dry-humping part.

The cops put Hurley in an asylum because he’s having visions of The Hobbit, who died back on the island. Then a man comes to visit - a lawyer from Oceanic.  Right away, I know this guy is bad news.  Not because he’s black - because he’s THIS black guy.

This guy is ALWAYS EVIL!  ALWAYS!  On top of that, half the characters on the show are conmen, liars and thieves, so of course he’s not what he says he is.  But just before he leaves he asks Hurley, “Are they still alive?”  Just in case that weren’t vague enough, Jack then pays Hurley a visit because wants to know if Hurley is going to “tell.”  Hurley doesn’t answer.  Tell what??? Tell who??? It’s amazing that this show can be so good when its mysteries are only mysteries because no one is willing to finish a sentence or use proper nouns.  Fuckers.

A bunch of other things happened in this episode, but overall, it was the flash forwards that affected me the most.  At the end of the episode I was overwhelmed by the sense that not only do I not know what’s going on, but even when I do finally find out what’s going on, I won’t really know what the hell is going on.  The supermodel analogy is especially appropriate here, because the previous sentence is an incredibly concise yet accurate summation of all of my sexual relationships.

So where does this rate on the supermodel/dry-humping scale?  (I’ve decided that when I do these posts from now on, I’m going to a) relate them to an actual model based on how intrigued I am, and b) describe the dry-humping scenario.)

Supermodel to be Dry-Humped: This week’s episode was a terrific one.  I am completely charged for this season.  So of course we need someone really really hot.  But Lost is also trying some new tricks and looking ahead into the future, so I need someone I wasn’t previously aware of; someone with a bright future ahead of them that I would like to watch (with x-ray specs).  I’m going with new Guess Girl Sarah Mutch.  (Thanks to my Maxim subscription.)

Dry-Humping Scenario:  With this new flash forward device, the show’s writers are messing with me from the future.  It doesn’t have the same feeling as dry-humping a supermodel.  Instead, it’s like I actually got a supermodel to agree to hump me, but just before I stick the tip in, a cyborg from the future shows up and cock-blocks me.  DAMN YOU SKYNET!!!! 

P.S.  Throughout the episode, there were commercials (get this) advertising a “commercial” from Oceanic Airlines, to be aired during Eli Stone, the following program.  It’s a ploy by ABC to take advantage of the insatiable curiosity of Lost’s viewers and increase ratings.  So just in case dry-humping a supermodel weren’t frustrating enough, imagine trying to enjoy it while she’s pitching Amway products.