Now with more EYEPATCH: Lost, Heroes - reviewed!

On last night's LOST ...

Okay, LOST last night emplyed its trademark flair for the dramatic with tons of melodrama worthy of an old movie serial. Nearly every act ended with a stunner of a cliffhanger. I mean, within a few minutes, I was already on the edge of my seat and smiling as I witnessed the totally unexpected return of Miechal (sp?), aka, EYE-PATCH GUY!!! Yes, business had just picked up! We got some great, big reveals in this episode, but at the same time, everything else felt like filler that was simply getting us from Point A to Point B. As is often the case, there were a lot of empty declarations of "Tell me what you know!" and "I want answers!" As per usual with Lost, when someone asks for answers, the response is always vague and never actually adressess the issue at hand. To paraphrase: Sun: Why are you helping me? Juliette: Because ... I want to give someone GOOD news again ... (slanty half smile). Par for the course with Lost -- one step forward, two steps back.

Speaking of which, we ended with a great cliffhanger -- the newly-revived mystery girl telling Hurley that everyone on Flight 815 was dead - the plain had crashed and the wreckage had been found. Okay, not bad, not bad. But is this actually going to be addressed, or will it be Four-Toed-Statue Part 2? Look, anyone who's ever watched the Twilight Zone can, off the top of their head, think of about 5 different ways that a plane could appear to have crashed with all of its survivors' bodies recovered and the wreckage retrieved, when in fact it crashed and lampooned numerous survivors on a mysterious island. Time loop / paradox. Dimensional anomaly. Elaborate hoax. Afterlife / purgatory. Reality-altering courtesy of someone with the power to bend the rules of space and time (Jacob?). And so on ... The point is, those old Twilight Zone episodes were so effective because they were simple, one-off stories that captivated with the sheer power of their ideas. Lost is presenting all these cool ideas, but so far, not doing much with them.

Anyways, the one big idea this ep DID present in detail is that the Lostees are living on SPERM ISLAND, where every male is magically a genetic jackhammer. Kind of funny that one of the first scientific explanations of the island's strange effects on people is this particular revelation.

As for all the Sun-Juliette stuff. Well, again, I've mentioned frustration with Juliette's ever-ambiguous alliegances, and here we get another "I will do your evil bidding ... but I HATE you" moment. Alright, we get it with Juliette. But who wants to bet that we're in store for a dozen more "I'm good ... no, wait, I'm evil!" moments before the season finale? The Sun flashbacks were pretty good ... I always enjoy the subtitled Jin-Sun flashbacks - they always do a great job of giving them a great, authentic feel, like a legitimate Asian film that managed to sneak into the trappings of Lost. On the other hand, this was another flashback that didn't really feel essential, especially with so many seemingly urgent events going on in the here and now.

On the whole - this was a really exciting episode of Lost - lots of big, dramatic, holy #$%$ moments, though they were accompanied by the usual dosage of forced ambiguity and dangling questions. But man, when all is said and done, you can't help but admire Lost. Its telling a NEW story, an original story. Compare this to Heroes which feels like its cobbling together bits and pieces of already-familiar stories. Lost is so entertaining AND at times frustrating precisely because it remains so NEW - most of us really don't know where exactly it's going or what to expect. For that alone, I give it props. Plus, I feel like any episode that features a kickass, death-cheating dude sporting an eye-patch deserves at least a B.

My Grade: B+

HEROES:

- I say this to anyone who enjoyed last night's Heroes: go now, to a bookstore, and purchase Watchmen. Read Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's classic work, digest it, and then go back and resume Heroes watching as normal. Why do I suggest this? Well, just the thought of anyone watching Heroes, and THEN reading Watchmen or seeing the future film version, and saying "waitaminute - Watchmen is just a ripoff of Heroes!" well, that thought to me is kinda disturbing. I know that Tim Kring of Heroes fame swears up and down he was never and is not currently a comics guy, but the proof is in the puddin', as they say. Heroes is nothing if not a reworking of ideas from numerous already-established comics, with the conceit of placing these outlandish characters and ideas in an Unbreakable-esque, "real-world" setting. In this week's Heroes, Malcolm McDowell delivered a pretty cool speech to Nathan Petrelli about his motivations for "saving" the world by detonating a nuclear device in New York and killing untold thousands. Yep, it's a slightly tweaked version of Adrian Veidt's climactic reveal in Watchmen. Another example of Heroes' seeming propensity for reworking a number of ideas from other sources. Look, that is all fine and good. EVERY show does this, to some extent. I just feel like there are key moments when Heroes can potentially go in a number of directions, and the direction it often chooses feels ripped from some other story. Contrast this to Lost, which though it can be baffling and frustrating, has created an all-new mythology, and to its credit, never feels derivative.

Now, all that being said, Heroes on Monday was damn good TV. I love how cool actors like Malcolm McDowell and Eric Roberts are giving things a huge boost with their charisma and talent. I love how this show is willing to go to crazy places now, whereas at first it seemed much more tame and much more chained to the "real world." The Heroes of September and October - I could never imagine Heroes as it was then doing an episode set in the future. I love how the plot of Heroes has just been blown up and suddenly there's time travel, epic battles, villains, deaths, real stakes. There's finally that feeling like "oh, crap, I have no idea where this is going." To me, "Company Man" was when things really turned a corner, where the show began to feel legitimately big, epic, mythic. Having Bennett morph from a generic badguy into a three dimensional character has been the best thing this show's done in the bigger picture. It's so satisfying that Heroes is able to really conenct all the dots and say "this is who Linderman is. This is what his plan is. This is what needs to happen for disaster to be averted." All the cards are on the table, which is a great place for a dramatic story to be - a place that Lost, for all its strengths, has yet to reach after three seasons.

This week Heroes had another great episode, no question. The plotting on this show of late has been absolutely top-notch, and I don't think there's a fanboy out there who isn't drooling at the prospect of next week's "5 Years Later" episode. All I ask is that - if you're going to pay homage to other works, be they films, comics, whatever - fine, do so, but do it with a wink and a nod, let the fans know you're in on it. Acknowledge what's come before and go from there. I just don't like the feeling I sometimes get from the show that seems to boast "Watchmen? Rising Stars? Ha! Mighty network TV show needs not admit that we are following in their footsteps." It's funny, too, because the brilliance of something like Watchmen is that it pays tribute to the entire history of superheroes all the while brilliantly deconstructing the entire concept and subverting it for modern times. If Heroes wants to achieve true greatness, it needs to do the same - offer its own original spin, its own update on who these characters are and why they do what they do. Too often, it seems to just be spinning its wheels - I mean, a villain whose motivation is that to save the world, he must first destroy it? Been there, done that - give me a new spin, thanks. And really, I don't mean to pick on Heroes - it's a great show. Mostly, it just needs to keep up the great work.

My Grade: A -