"Where's the polar bear, Jon?"

First-time Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac cracked me up when he compared the Clinton/Obama rivalry to a Lifetime movie starring Joanna Kerns and Meshach Taylor. Jon Stewart also cracked up from hearing the words "Joanna Kerns and Meshach Taylor," but he held it together:



Yeah, I couldn't believe it either. Michael started working for the Others, or NAMBLA.

Lost: The complete fourth season recapped

Here are the links to all the fourth-season Lost recaps I wrote for the imaginatively named Metroactive Movie & Television Arts blog, in chronological order:

1. "The Beginning of the End"
2. "Confirmed Dead"
3. "The Economist"
4. "Eggtown"
5. "The Constant"
6. "The Other Woman"
7. "Ji Yeon"
8. "Meet Kevin Johnson"
9. "The Shape of Things to Come"
10. "Something Nice Back Home"
11. "Cabin Fever"
12. "There's No Place Like Home, Part 1"
13. "There's No Place Like Home, Part 2"

Lost: "There's No Place Like Home, Part 2"

"I called it back in January. The man in the coffin. 'Jeremy Bentham.'"

The rest of my post can be found on Metroactive's Movie & Television Arts blog.

Lost: "There's No Place Like Home, Part 1"

"Wow, I felt really bad for Kate and Sayid when the other members of the Oceanic Six were greeted and embraced by their loved ones at the tarmac, while no one was there to wait for Kate or Sayid. As Morris Day once said, ex-cons and ex-torturers get lonely too."

The rest of my post can be found on Metroactive's Movie & Television Arts blog.

Lost: "Cabin Fever"

"'Cabin Fever' reveals that Alpert's even older than we think. He visited Locke shortly after he was born and then again a few years later, when he tried to recruit the kid while he was in foster care...

And what's the reason for Batmanuel's inability to age?

I don't think Alpert is even alive. My theory is that he's like Christian Shepherd (John Terry), a dead man who's been resurrected by the island to serve as one of its mouthpieces, to lure those who will listen--like Locke and Claire--to some sort of purpose or mission that has yet to be fully explained and has been hinted at in those trippy final words: 'He wants us to move the island.'

Here's an even wilder theory: I think Alpert is Locke's real father..."

The rest of my post can be found on Metroactive's Movie & Television Arts blog.

Lost: "Something Nice Back Home"

"The Jin/Sun scenes depict a romance between two characters who usually aren't paired together like this on prime-time, where, as Joyce Millman has said, 'younger, whiter, unmarried people seem to have all the romantic fun.' Their relationship is way more interesting than the Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Ana-Lucia Juliet quadrangle. The only viewers who would find triangles, quadrangles and sextangles interesting are viewers who like to frequently use the word 'squee.' God, I hate that word."

The rest of my post can be found on Metroactive's Movie & Television Arts blog.

Lost: "The Shape of Things to Come"

"This isn't a good year to be a teenage girl on a mythology show. First the deaf girl on Jericho gets blown away, and now Alex. Here's hoping death awaits another girl--the annoying Captain Emo on Heroes."

The rest of my post can be found on Metroactive's Movie & Television Arts blog.

Lost: "Meet Kevin Johnson"

"Libby, Libby, Libby, on the freighter, freighter, freighter"

The rest of my post can be found on Metroactive's Movie & Television Arts blog.

Lost: "Ji Yeon"

"Jae Lee (Tony Lee), the bald millionaire who slept with Sun, was apparently named after the Marvel Comics artist who's best known for his work on Inhumans and a Marvel adaptation of Stephen King's Dark Tower saga. I wouldn't be surprised if a 'Pia Guerra' pops up in a future Lost ep."

The rest of my post can be found on Metroactive's Movie & Television Arts blog.

Lost: "The Other Woman"

"Last week, a PopMatters columnist complained about Lost's overreliance on gun-toting. The latest ep--with its scenes of Jack aiming his firearm at a vanished Harper, Charlotte pistolwhipping Kate and a pissed-off Freckles and the freighties pulling guns on each other--doesn't do much to assuage the columnist's thirst for less gats. The show that the PopMatters guy should really be focusing his ire on is Jericho, which recently killed off the deaf girl by having her go out in a Scarface-style blaze of glory, but not before she sprayed a barrage of gunfire at D.B. Sweeney's thugs. Jericho makes Lost look like Pollyanna."

The rest of my post can be found on Metroactive's Movie & Television Arts blog.

Lost: "The Constant"

"A humorless yet intriguing mash-up of Vonnegut, the much-missed Journeyman, Watchmen's Dr. Manhattan origin flashbacks and 'The Tholian Web,' 'The Constant' functions as a breather from the Oceanic Six mucky muck (as if we needed one). But at least 'The Constant' isn't as superfluous as the filler eps from last season (even Jack's tattoos received their own flashbacks in what has to be one of the series' biggest time-wasters) because it finally provides answers to the time travel mystery.

Of course, because this is Lost, 'The Constant' also opens up a whole new can of whatdafrak."

The rest of my post can be found on Metroactive's Movie & Television Arts blog.

Lost: "Eggtown"

"John, that's not a real breakfast."

The rest of my post can be found on Metroactive's Movie & Television Arts blog.

Lost: "The Economist"

"It's all beginning to make sense.

Or not. Nothing on Lost is ever what it seems. Trying to figure out this show is like trying to call the Clinton/Obama primary battle."

The rest of my post can be found on Metroactive's Movie & Television Arts blog.

Lost: "Confirmed Dead"

"Once upon a time, there was a headcase, a ghostbuster, an anthropologist, a drunk and a hot sista from England, and they were each assigned very hazardous duties. But I took them away from all that, and now they work for me. My name is Matthew."

The rest of my post can be found on Metroactive's Movie & Television Arts blog.

Lost: "The Beginning of the End"

"Hurley became disturbed by something he saw in the store. It's definitely not overpriced Ho-Hos."

The rest of my post can be found on Metroactive's Movie & Television Arts blog.

Lost: "Through the Looking Glass" (textual healing edition)

"The Times says the 'Through the Looking Glass' rerun 'may be the first network show with added pop-up context.' The Gray Lady's factcheckers are clearly not NewsRadio fans because on April 1, 1998, the cult sitcom—one of my favorite sitcoms, by the way—aired a Pop-Up Video-style rebroadcast of its 50th ep, in which bubbles displayed behind-the-scenes tidbits like 'Khandi Alexander wrote the exit line when she and Dave leave the mental hospital.' (Their employees seem to be One Tree Hill fans, which must explain why that dopey show got some ink in the Times earlier this week.)"

The rest of my post can be found on Metroactive's Movie & Television Arts blog.

Mike Reddy's DVD Series

While Googling for The Megalomaniacal Spider-Man the other day, I stumbled upon this artist's site and his "DVD Series," a bunch of awesome illustrations of Lost season 3, Purple Rain, Casino Royale, Idiocracy, Planet Terror and Reno 911!, to name a few.

The brilliant artist's name is Mike Reddy. Keep an eye on this guy's work. He's also done album artwork for the Fiery Furnaces.

I want his portraits of Lost and Planet Terror to adorn one of the walls in my new condo. Right now, the bare walls and minimal furniture make my crib look like De Niro's house in Heat--but without Dante Spinotti's knack for making an empty living space look cool.


It's doubtful we'll ever see Evangeline Lilly's buns on Lost, but thanks to Mike Reddy, we get to see them now. Sort of.


"You have to purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka."


Casino Royale


Children of Men


The Departed


"It's got electrolytes!"


Reno 911!