Boston vs. LA, and LOST Thoughts!

Two Wednesdays, two Clippers games where I was at the Staples Center live and in person. Just lucky timing, I guess, and the fact that I was presented with a couple of offers for tickets that I could not refuse. Last week, I had courtside seats to witness the Clips get slaughtered at the hands of Shaq and the Suns. This week though, I got to see the Boston Celtics take on the Clippers, for relatively cheap, thanks to a great deal through Boston University. The atmosphere at Staples was great - the stands were positively filled with Celtics fans, as various promotional deals like the one offered by BU saw LA's large population of Beantown transplants pack into the stadium to play the part of the heel and cheer on the usually-hated Celtics. Sure, the pro-Celtics chants were often drowned out by angry retalliations of "Boston Sucks!" from LA natives, but the back-and-forth made for one of the most lively crowds I've seen in a while. The game itself was suprisingly close and down-to-the-wire.

The Celts were sans Kevin Garnett, and were playing very helter-skelter and without any real offensive focal point. Neither Ray Allen or Paul Pierce truly stepped up, and Rondo seemed to buckle a bit under the pressure. Meanwhile, the Clippers played some of the best basketball I've seen from them in a long time. Marcus Camby and Zack Randolph played particularly well, and overall they came out with a lot of fire and will to win. They didn't play great by any means, but they played well enough to scrape out a win over a depleted Celtics squad. That said, Boston could totally have won that game if they hadn't botched the final play. With the crowd on its feet expecting an epic final shot, the Celtics just lost the ball out of bounds as the clock expired, in what was a very anticlimactic finish to an otherwise exciting game.

The result was that my friends and I had to exit Staples to a chorus of hearty "Boston sucks!" chants and a lot of Clippers fans sporting $#%^-eating grins. Still, it was pretty darn cool sitting amongst fellow Boston-ites in a sea of green T-shirts. Tons of BU'ers were in the house, and it was almostl ike being back in Beantown for a night. Plus, I ran into a couple of Birthright Israel friends as well - putting one last exclamation point on a pretty crazy night in downtown LA.

Upon getting home, I was pretty exhausted from a looong and taxing day, but there was still something to be done before I could drift off to sleep. So without further ado ...





LOST:

- Wow, okay, now that's what I'm talking about. After a couple of weeks of plot-heavy but often frustrating episodes, LOST hit back this week in a big way. This was really the first ep in a while that to me just kicked ass and fired on all cylinders. Because not only did we get some jaw-dropping forward momentum in terms of new plot revelations, but we got some vintage character drama courtesy of Locke and the man who portrays him, the great Terry O'Quinn. It's been a while since O'Quinn really has had the spotlight and has had the opportunity to once again blow us all away. He's done it before - "Walkabout" was the episode of Lost that cemented me as a fan for life - any show that could so quickly produce so classic of an episode was alright in my book. But here, as the story of Locke's return from the island is finally told, O'Quinn just totally shines, producing a complex, emphathetic turn as one of TV's absolute most compelling characters. And O'Quinn had a couple of great foils, one in particluar in Michael Emerson as Ben Linus. The confrontation between Ben and a suicidal Locke was absolutely riveting - I'm not sure why exactly Ben disposed of Locked in the manner he did, but what I do know is that I was hanging on every word, and the intensity of Ben's murderous actions made for some truly edge-of-your-seat TV. Did the mention of Eloise trigger the act? Or was it something else? Regardless, this episode never became frustrating, because all of the plot developments came about organically from the action. This was great writing - it never felt wooden like last week's ep did in parts. Once again, there was that great feeling of the puzzle pieces fitting together. We got some long-awaited returns, for one thing. WALT was back after an extended absence, and I anticipate that his story still has a lot of traction before all is said and done. I also loved the return of Abadon and thought his ultimate fate was fitting. Abadon's return was a perfect example of complex continuity done RIGHT. The enigmatic character returned, we learned more about him, past appearances were acknowledged and wovern into the fabric of the story, and the character's final fate felt appropriate and dramatic. Then there was the whole angle of Whidmore trying to convince Locke to join up with his cause. Pretty interesting, and that line about a war coming? Epic stuff, that. You've also gotta be intrigued by the new cast of castaways who a seemingly resurrected Locke is now palling around with in the present, on the island. How do they fit in, and how significant of a role will these new characters play? And, finally, you've got to respect a good old fashioned cliffhanger ending delivered with just the right amount of dramatic oomph. What I'm getting at is that, hey, that ending was badass. "Who is he?" "He's the man who killed me." Daaaaaaaaaamn. Next week, please. LOST is back, baby.

My Grade: A


- Sah-weet, almost the weekend. That was fast.