Lost's official podcast - surprisingly refreshing!

So I've been listening to the Lost podcast lately. I've gone through the handful of season 4 podcasts and actually went back and downloaded some of the season 3 ones. I don't even remember what it was that prompted me to check out the podcast originally, I tend to have a dim view of "official" TV show podcasts. This mainly stems from the Battlestar Galactica podcast, which got some discussion in blog comments here and here. My original objection to the BSG podcast was mainly that I didn't want to watch the show twice, and I as understand the BSG podcast it is designed to play alongside the episode. As time wore on I got increasingly annoyed at the fact that important story information seems to be revealed in the podcasts. If you browse around BSG fan web sites you'll run into things where you say "I didn't know that!" and it turns out that you didn't know it because it's not in the show, it's in the podcast.

So the Lost podcast isn't like that. For one, it's much shorter than the show, usually less than half an hour. But the part I like best is that it turns out that a large part of the podcast is Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse reading questions submitted at an ABC online forum. And they make fun of the questions, they make fun of the posters, and they occasionally reveal something interesting and insightful. They'll often say something like "This question comes from LockeIsTheBest48, who has posted 400 times in the last 90 days. That's a bit too often with the posts, you may want to get outside for a bit." or something to that effect.

My favorite so far was somebody asking whether the injuries inflicted in the hatch explosion were based on the "four monkeys". They went on to explain that Locke was mute, Charlie was deaf, Desmond had been blown into the jungle naked, and thus they predicted Eko would be blind. (This was early on in season 3.) Carlton and Damon discussed this a little, running down the Hear No Evil, Say No Evil idea before there was a pause and Carlton said, "Wait, what's the fourth monkey? Don't be naked? THERE ARE ONLY THREE MONKEYS!" After a pause then Damon said, "Yeah, so interesting theory, but no." Then they move onto the next question.

I don't know how I existed without the internet to feed me a constant stream of mockery-worth content. To find out that it comes *pre-mocked* in the Lost podcast. Well, that's exciting!

On a more serious note, they do say interesting stuff. One of my favorites so far was that they say they knew that ABC couldn't resist promoting the episode where Eko dies as "Somebody on Lost will DIE!" promos and the whole "Don't miss this episode!" sort of vibe. So they claim that's why they introduced Nikki and Paolo when they did, that basically the audience would assume that Nikki and/or Paolo would die and the whole thing would be a big tease. That way, when Eko dies it was even more as a surprise. I have to say, that warms the cockles of my cold, marketing-hating heart. The idea that they deliberately inserted "red shirt" characters into the show just to confound the marketing expectations is brilliant. It almost makes up for the fact I hate Nikki and Paolo for their spider-throwing ways! Both of them got exactly what they deserved if you ask me.

iPod/Podcast Tip

Did I mention that I got an iPod classic for Christmas, so now I watch video podcasts on my iPod? Well I did. It's fantastic, and it also plays Phase by Harmonix. :-)

Anyway the fact that podcasts are listed in reverse chronological order is very annoying. I finally got annoyed enough to look up a work-around. Here's the trick:

When you pick Podcasts from the menu you get a list of podcast feeds, showing how many episodes you have of each feed. Select a feed and press Play, not Select. If you do this it plays the episodes in chronological order. As a bonus, it will seamlessly segue to the next track in the list when it finishes. That sounds sort of obvious, but it's NOT the way it works when you play individual podcasts from the reverse chronological list.

I don't know how extensive the support for this is. It works on my iPod classic.

Edit 2/15/08 I forgot to mention that this only works if you have shuffle turned off. Sorry for any confusion!