That is what I had been thinking of doing for a while, but that episode last night was making me rethink that. Something about it seemed a bit predictable. I kinda pissed off my host last night when I blurted out "Hurley was talking to Ricardo's wife" about the same time the ship's captain was killing the other slaves; and it was obvious that the vision of his wife that he had while he was still chained was really that MiB guy.

Don't get me wrong, Losties, I am not trying to dis the show, just sharing my initial reactions to what I saw last night; I know that watching it last night put a lot of stuff Out Of Context for me, and there must be tons of stuff I do not know that would make everything make more sense. I am intrigued a bit by the two episodes I saw last night, mostly about this Flash Side ways stuff; that brings up a question: is there only the one reality seen in this sideways flashes, or do you see different realities for everyone else.

One of the things I have been thinking about Lost the last year or so is that it seems like so many of the fans of the show (not those on this site) are the sorts of people who would make fun of me and many of my friends for being hooked on some SF show (such as my host), all while knowing nothing about common themes and tropes of SF. Then Lost will do something (time travel, alternate realities, stuff common throughout SF and F) and these people will be like "oooh! wow!" as if alternate realities was something JJ Abrams & Co. thought up. Sort of like the resistance to Harry Potter that I, and many others, had when the mundanes (as my Vampire The Masquerade LARP troupe would call people who didn't game or even read F/SF) or muggles (Potter-speak) went bonkers for the series. Of course, I've now seen three of the Potter movies (the 1st two, and the most recent--bad idea that, seeing the last movie without the intervening films) and hate to admit, I liked them. I guess my reaction to Lost-fandom (and that of the Potter-fans) is much like the attitude I would bitch about of fans of some music group or another that was around for years before becoming popular as hell; those fans would often bitch about all the Newbie fans. Yeah, I can be a hypocrite at times.

See, I have been worried that all this hype about Lost (and Potter) was from people who had no clue of how great the F/SF genres can potentially be, and suddenly they discover these shows and think that they are the epitome of good Fantasy or SF, without them having anything to really compare it to.

Does that make sense to any of you? Have you ever felt similar reactions?

Anyways, I have to admit, considering the fact that Werthead's tastes in books and shows (going from his postings here and his blogspot blog) matches up with mine in most ways, I figure I probably will enjoy the series once I start watching it again. I've just put off getting back into Lost for so long because I didn't want to get sucked in and have to wait every week for the new episode; already doing that with too many shows, I HATE THE WAIT (you hear that George?! yeah, I know, you ain't my bitch).

So the writers of the show DO know the genres they are writing in then? Not just a bunch of TV writers trying to make an SF show with no experience in the genre?

I will not be watching any more of the new episodes, since if I do watch the series in the future I'd like to try to keep some things a surprise (yeah, I'll have two or three seasons at least spoiled by some of what I learned last night).

I didn't realize that so much of what has happened was planned out so long ago; that alone actually sort of intrigues me.

Well, I gotta head to class, but I'll be looking back here in a couple hours, and perhaps have more thoughts to post (you've been warned).