Couple of video bits to call out. First on the humor front: Writers of Lost

I still think Lost isn't doomed, but this is funny anyway. (I saw it from Violent Acres.)

Second, I was excited to see Merlin Mann (from 43 Folders, or the Phone Guy videos) launch his video podcast: The Merlin Show. But then I was a little surprised to see the first real episode show up as fifteen minutes. Yikes! I was expecting Ze Frank, not Adult Swim lengths. So I let it pile up last week - I was continually rebooting TinyGod into XP so even if I wanted a break I couldn't easily get at the videos on the Mac side of the fence. But I finally got around to watching that episode (an interview with Jonathan Coulton - download it here), and really enjoyed it. It's a good 15 minutes, but I need to figure out a good "automatic download from iTunes and stream to the 360 solution". TVersity I'm sure but I want an automatic feed that just makes it happen.

Anyway, lots of good stuff in that episode about the creativity vs. deadline dichotomy and how Thing a Week affected that.

(And while I'm talking about Jonathan Coulton - if you haven't seen Spiffworld's music videos (using World of Warcraft) check 'em out. Either Code Monkey or Skullcrusher Mountain would be my suggestions.

technorati tags:JonathanCoulton, MerlinMann, Lost, videos

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So I figured it was time for me to weigh in on the whole discussion of whether the writers creating Lost in fact have any idea what they are doing. I'm a little late to Lost - you can thread back some of my previous posts starting here. There seems to be a movement to reject Lost as being a big shaggy-dog story and they they'll never be able to make it all hang together. I don't understand it though, in that I don't see what it is in season three that is making people claim that. It's plausible and I can admit the possiblity - but I don't think anything that has happened recently strengthens the argument. I also don't know why you'd sit down and sat "I'm going to watch this show", agree to take the ride as it were, and then start assuming partway through there's a huge bait and switch afoot. There are a lot of unanswered questions, some of which stretch back to the beginning of the show, but I've seen web commentary about how they keep introducing new elements to distract the viewers. I don't agree with that - they introduce new elements to move certain plots forward and in some cases to introduce new elements that may be needed later.I'm not 100% convinced they know what they are doing, but I'm still comfortable just enjoying the ride and seeing what happens. It's not as good a show as it was, but it's still pretty good - better than most of what's available.I also have to extend a lot of credit to Lost because I very much think that we wouldn't have Heroes without Lost. Lost proved that mainstream America will watch a sci-fi show (if it's properly concealed), watch a show with a strong story arc, and watch a show where not every little detail is spoon-fed to the viewer. There are a lot of shows this year that trace a direct lineage to those realizations. Back during the first season of Battlestar Galactica I said it was the best show on TV at the time, and I stand by that (for the first season mind you - boy what a letdown that show has become this year), but it was a basic cable show that caught a basic cable audience that was already pigeonholed into a sci-fi ghetto. Lost broke out of that and got a mainstream audience and I think you can see a direct lineage from that to Heroes or even Jericho this fall. And Heroes holds the crown of "Best show on TV" right now, so I'm glad that Lost broke the way to that. It hasn't been that long since all of network TV was a wasteland of stupid "reality" shows, I'm glad to see real scripted TV make a comeback.Even if turns out they have no idea what they are doing at the end of it all :-)

technorati tags:Lost, television

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