Number of castaways left on the island in Lost: Still 44 (Boone died, but Claire had a healthy boy who looks slightly Asian despite having Australian parents)
Number of castaways it takes to change a light bulb: None. They don't have any.
Number of actors from well-known SF series/films out of work now that Boston Legal is on hiatus: 3
I have moved my commentary on specific t.v. episodes and issues here: Bravo Gabbo TV Web Log. By doing so, I hope to make it easier to read, as well as enabling me to post on a more regular, and topical, basis.
December 2004-January 2005 My current near-obsession is with the ABC series Lost. I say near-obsession because I don't haunt the chat rooms or boards, and I have no clue what the fandom (you know there is one) has chosen as its moniker. Maybe they just saw "I'm Lost;" I believe the marketing slogan is "Get Lost;" but I did discover there is an fairly interesting game at www.i-am-lost.com. If you click on the blinking red light in the plane wreckage, it takes you to the main site, which gives plot synopses for any episodes you may have missed, and some nice still photos.
Fair warning though - the show will hook you, and later, when you try to describe it to friends and co-workers, the first thing they typically ask is "Is it a reality show?" The answer - a thundering "NO!" If we wanted reality we would turn OFF the television. So, for newbies...
Synopsis of LOST:
Forty-eight people survive the mysterious wreck of an international flight from Australia to Los Angeles. The pilot tells Jack, the informally acknowledged leader of the survivors and a medical doctor, the plane was 1,000 miles off course when it broke apart. The pilot is promptly killed by something that is very large and leaves his broken body atop a tree in the jungle. Back on the beach, Jack attempts to surgically remove a piece of shrapnel from a wounded man's stomach. The man regains consciousness mid-procedure, reveals he is a U.S. Marshall, and he was transporting a dangerous criminal back to the United States. To Jack's surprise, it is Kate, a woman he has started to bond with, and who sewed up an open gash on his side. The Marshall dies, thanks to the efforts of Sawyer a mercenary con-man who specializes in alienating everyone. Other key figures (in no particular order):
Sayid A former member of the Iraqi Republican Guard, who should be the enemy, but is more likeable than Sawyer. He has engineering and mechanical skills invaluable to the group's hope for sending a distress signal; Hurley The overweight gamer who may not be jolly, but he has become important for organizational aspects, as well as group morale; Charlie A recovering drug-addict and former bassist for the defunct Irish rock band Drive Shaft, he is starting to turn into a @#%! decent guy, and one of the most upstanding persons on this show. Yes, it would have been courageous of the show to kill him off when... but, come on, its Charlie. John Locke A cubicle jockey at a box manufacturing company, he has trained for years to go on a "Walkabout" is Australia, giving him many useful survival skills, such as knowing how to hunt and field-dress a wild boar. He is one of the "good guys," but mystery surrounds him - in an early episode, he apparently saw the thing which killed the pilot, but denied it when asked; Claire A young Australian woman, approximately 8 months pregnant. It turns out a psychic put her on the ill-fated plane trip thinking it would save her child from a terrible fate; Boone A twenty-something young man who bristles against Jack's unwitting authority among the survivors. Trying to save a woman from drowning, he nearly drowned himself (which brings our count to 45). He is seriously too attached to his contentious sister Shannon. At first unwilling to accept that rescuers won't arrive immediately, she treats her stay on the beach as a vacation, and works on her tan; Michael I'm sorry to say we don't know much about Michael yet, except that he had just gone to Australia to pick up his son, Walt, whom he barely knows, after the death of the boy's mother. He has worked in construction for eight years, and was an artist before that; Walt Not yet a teenager, Walt is struggling to hold on to what he knows - his dog, Vincent - and to deal with a father who's a stranger. He is drawn to the mysterious wisdom Locke seems to possess; Sun A Korean woman who studied English and made arrangements to disappear from her husband at the Sydney airport, but then found she loved him too much to leave him;
and Jin apparently ignorant of his wife's knowlege of English (he could be faking ignorance), he loves his wife very much. A former waiter with few prospects, he took a job doing dirty work for her underworld-figure father as a trade-off for marrying her. Although we have never seen him physically abuse his wife, Sun fears the kind of man he has become, and on the island he constantly orders her to obey him.
Supporting characters:
Rose, who believes her husband is still alive, even though he was in the still missing tail section.
Jack's father, who arrived at the island in his casket via the Sydney morgue; Jack was bringing his body back to L.A. Since the crash, Jack saw his father walking in the jungle a number of times, until finally he found the empty coffin and destroyed it.
Danielle Rousseau, a shipwreck survivor sixteen-years ago, who murdered her fellow survivors. She warns Sayid about "the others" on the island, who took her child, Alex.
"Ethan Rom" - He co-mingled with the survivors for weeks before Hurley discovered he wasn't on the plane. "Ethan" disappeared into the jungle, taking Claire: he seems to want her unborn child for unknown reasons.
Number of castaways left on the island in Lost: Still 44 (Boone died, but Claire had a healthy boy who looks slightly Asian despite having Australian parents)