Wednesday Night TV

Crazy Lost episode, Friday Night Lights season finale, South Park parodies 300... for a non-sweeps month, this is about as good as it gets. Click below to reveal spoilers for all three:

Lost: Many had theorized that women on the island couldn't have babies, but it's even worse than suspected - other than Claire, every woman who's gotten pregnant has died before giving birth. Juliet explains that the only reason Claire survived was that Ethan had been sneaking her a vaccine, and the only reason Ethan kidnapped her was because the castaways found out he didn't belong, so he could no longer give her the vaccine in secret.

This of course means that they killed Ethan for no good reason. And now Claire's having withdrawals and only Juliet finding a secret stash of medicine can help her. Jack trusts her immediately, of course, but Sawyer and Sayid want answers. She says "If I told you everything that I know, you'd kill me," which is awesome. But she throws Sawyer and Sayid's checkered pasts back in their faces, saying that she won't reveal her past for the same reason they don't reveal theirs. And her vaccine saves Claire almost immediately.

The pregnancy thing has been speculated, of course, because of their fascination with children, their recruitment of Juliet, a fertility specialist, and the fact that a psychic mysteriously told a newly pregnant Claire that she had to get on flight 815. But in the end, Juliet is shown discussing her whole plan with Ben - how to get Kate to accept her with the handcuff plan, that they had activated an implant in Claire to make her sick, and that they'd see each other in a week.

So who knows how much of what we learned about their experimentation on Claire was true? We're sure that women who get pregnant on the island can't carry their babies to term, but Juliet speculated long before the plane crash that the problem was at conception, so a woman who got pregnant elsewhere and came to the island should be fine. What does this mean for Sun? If Jin finds out all this, will he find out that she was impregnated by her boyfriend before the crash? Or did the island heal Jin and he is the father, which would put her at risk for the mystery ailment. Lots of possibilities.

The other thing going on were discussions about the island's cancer preventing abilities and Jacob, the often mentioned but as-yet-unseen leader of the Others. No one on the island had ever gotten cancer, but right before the crash, Juliet discovers that Ben has a tumor on his spine. He had just asked the mysterious Jacob to cure Juliet's sister's cancer, which was successful. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with anything. Or it's possible that, like Locke said, that Ben had "lost touch with the island," and it's cancer prevention doesn't work if you do. And the frequent mentioning of Jacob I'm sure has people continuing to speculate about his identity, with a lot of people suspecting Locke's father, but my money's on Billy Dee Williams.

A really fun episode for mythology buffs, I think, but not much going on for character/drama/humor. I'm cool with either or both, so I enjoyed it a lot.

South Park: 300 parody! Lots of slow motion, "THIS IS LES BOS!", the overly dramatic British accent voiceover, the ridiculously low-pitched voice of the Persian leader... lots of really nice touches. I can't tell if it was a sort of loving parody of the movie or an honest dig at the overly stylized visuals and cartoonish portrayal of the Persions in 300.


We also got some random gross/funny "scissoring," an essay/esse pun that cracked me up, and a group of Mexican day laborers doing a pretty good job of teaching fractions. Kinda pointless across the board, but funny.

Friday Night Lights: Oh, the commercials. You show Tami telling Eric that she's pregnant, and you show the players in the baseball caps that all sports teams wear after winning championships... that just plain sucks. I guess we got right to the pregnancy thing within the first few minutes, so that's not so bad. Tami takes half the episode to spill the beans, and Eric takes it extremely well.

The players get good tickets, and Riggins offers his to Tyra, so she asked Landry to go to the game with him, and I can definitely see why he thinks it's a date... but boy she was just almost raped. Not really the time to be putting the moves on him. And Riggins ends up giving his good seats to his neighbor and her kid, so he gives Tyra four crappy seats instead. Which means Landry's riding up with Tyra, her mom, and her stripper sister. If this were like Nip/Tuck, getting stuck in a car with two young sisters and their still-hot mother would've played out a whole different way, but it's basically a nightmare for Landry. And they pick up Lyla too, but also Matt's grandmother. Even Nip/Tuck couldn't spin that last part into something fun.

On what looks a lot like a smaller version of Super Bowl media day, a reporter confronts Coach Taylor with the TMU job news, and he doesn't have much choice but to admit it. The players and staff hear about it, and it's seriously affected the mood going into the game. The only one who seems to take it all ok is Buddy Garrity of all people. He has a nice moment with Matt, who is not taking it well, where he understands Matt's frustration but also says "if you're ever lucky enough to have a family like I do, I promise you, you will understand." A great little scene... but forget that, it's game time!



As usual, things start off ugly. 26-0 at the half is really rough. The announcer guy, who a rare element of the show I've never really cared for, places the blame squarely on the news of Coach Taylor's departure. But you can't do a football story without an inspiring halftime speech. It's no "win one for the Gipper," but it was still really well done. The inevitable comeback montage is pretty exciting, but Smash dislocates his shoulder scoring a touchdown. Naturally, he'll play through the pain, and we find the team down 5 points with six seconds to go.

They go with the hook & lateral, and it works perfectly, with Smash just barely crossing the line as time expires, and the Panthers win state. I felt like this show would have a very real chance at ending with a loss, so I'm left with a sour taste in my mouth over the commercials. But it's not the show's fault, so I can't be too unhappy. I just now hate network promotional departments even more.

The win and the baby causes the Eric to re-think his career and he offers to back out at TMU and stay a high school coach, but of coruse Tami won't be the reason he skips out on his dream. So it sounds like if we come back next year (and the word is cautiously optimistic), Coach is off in Austin, but Tami and Julie stay behind, and everyone has to figure out what's next. If this is the series finale, I can handle it, and if it's not, it gives the writers a lot to work with for next year, and a lot of new challenges as well. Here's hoping we get another season (or two or three), because this is one of the best show's out there.