The Good - Lost
I've been watching episodes of Lost that I recorded and I'm caught up on season one. This show is X-Files good and compares favorably with the best episodes from that show. The plot is interesting (40 people are stranded on a mysterious island after their plane crashes) and there are hints of larger things at work: were the people chosen to survive the crash, perhaps to atone for some past sin? What is the purpose of island and the strange monsters/animals that seem to inhabit it? The last few episodes seem to imply that the fates of the survivors are intertwined more deeply than they realize; the flashbacks to events before the crash are intriguing and infuriating. There are great conflicts as well: a recovering drug addict is faced with the temptation of a cargo of heroin; in an attempt to escape the island, some of the survivors on a raft are confronted by strange men (pirates?) who kidnap one man's son and set fire to the raft; the mysterious hatch Locke found in the jungle is finally open, but where it leads to remains to be seen. Also, it gets my vote for "how did they put this on TV:" while trying to transport old dynamite to blow open the hatch, one survivor is literally blown to bits. How this made it past TV censors amazes me.
The Bad - Rock Star INXS
I watch this show with morbid fascination - I'll admit to being a fan of INXS once upon a time and I still can and will sing along. But this show is uncomfortable to watch. First, the contestants are mostly white Americans; not all that surprising, really, but only one Australian and two Canadians made the final cut. That just seems a little odd to me, a little too American-centric. Most of the contestants are pretty people, especially the women. Don't get me wrong, they have fine voices, too, but it is embarrassing and painful to watch these pretty people try to be rock stars. Most of the women are crosses between Jewel and Lita Ford (not Runaways Lita Ford, but Lita Ford circa 1987) and last week, two made the terrible mistake of trying to rock out to...Purple Haze and Paranoid. I have never been so horrified. True there are the token "different" people: there is the Token Black Guy with Mohawk, to which comparisons to Living Color are inevitable, and the Token Overweight Cool Girl with Dreadlocks and Tattoos, who really isn't overweight but looks it when she stands next to the more TV friendly female contestants. The Beck-wannabe lost last week and for all of his awkward posing, I think I'll miss him from the show simply because he was different from the other guys. Lastly, there is the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about - Michael Hutchence. No one has mentioned him yet, at least not on air, and somehow that makes this all the worse.
The Ugly - Family Guy
Let me go on the record of saying that I love Family Guy and I'm glad it's back on the air. I'm just not sure how it manages to stay on the air, because damn, it is ugly. It is South Park offensive, which is saying something considering it's on broadcast television during primetime. Don't believe me? In last week's episode:
The evil monkey that lives in Chris's closet pulled out a bag of weed and rolled a joint.
Chris and Meg both admitted they would masterbate to their mother's pictures if she became a model.
Cookie Monster (from Sesame Street) was heating up cookie dough using a spoon and a lighter like a junky in a stall in the women's restroom at a club.
Do I need to go on?
The Rocking - Best band the hipsters are already sick of:
Louis XIV - Cheeky, raunchy and fun-as-hell indie rock music that is influenced by T-Rex and 70s New York punk.
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