Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Lost Wednesdays

The Blot is starting a new feature today, “Lost Wednesdays” in which I talk about my latest Lost theories before the week’s new episode airs and I’ll post any late breaking Lost news circulating around the web. I chose to go with Wednesday to honor the day Lost used to air on and the day it will presumably go back to airing on once all of ABC’s other scripted shows go back into production.

Lost - Season 4
To kick off The Blot Says…’ Lost Wednesdays I’ve got two theories to discuss and one pretty exciting piece of news from Lost’s Executive Producers/Showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof.

Lost - The Mysterious Four Toed StatueBoth of these theories have been mentioned on a few different sites and they’ve really stuck with me over the past week as I’ve tried to digest them. Since they are really opposing theories I thought I should share both of them and see what all of you think. The first theory combines scenes from the first two episodes of this season. In “Confirmed Dead” we learned that Matthew Abbadon put together the crew of Freighties to find the island, and we know from the Flash Forwards that the Oceanic 6 did eventually make it off the island. What we’re not sure yet is who else, if anyone, makes it off the island.

Lost - Kate Austen, Daniel Faraday and Jack ShephardThe theory floating around on the web right now is that no one else makes it off the island, because in “The Beginning of The End” Abbadon visits Hurley in the mental ward and asks him “Are they still alive?” You’d have thought if any of the Freighties made it off of the island they would have reported everything they had learned to Abbadon and he would know that there are still people alive on the island. This begs the question who is still alive on the island and what fait awaits the freighter's crew!?! Because as well all know from Charlie’s final message to Hurley, someone on the island “needs you.”

Lost - Charlotte Lewis, Daniel Faraday and Juliet BurkeThe second theory I’ve read recently that is really interesting and could be really plausible if not for Abbadon’s question to Hurley in Season 4, Episode 1 is that in “Confirmed Dead” what we thought were all Flash Backs to the Freighties lives before coming to the island are in fact Flash Forwards. This would explain why Daniel Faraday was crying while watching the news report that Oceanic flight 815 had been found, why Charlotte Lewis had been reading every newspaper article in multiple languages about the Oceanic crash, and why she was so excited to find the Dharma polar bear collar. I have no idea which of these theories is correct or if either of them are, but both are really interesting and lead to tons of possibilities for upcoming episodes. If I had to guess, I’d go with the first theory but that could all change after watching tomorrow night’s episode.

Lost Co-Executive Producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton CuseAnd now on to some great news! Lost C0-Executive Producer Carlton Cuse has been talking to just about anyone that would listen about his and Co-Executive Producer Damon Lindelof’s plans for Lost now that the Writers strike is over. (link, link) According to these interviews, Lost will resume production immediately with 5 new episodes to be aired this season bringing Season 4’s grand total to 13 episodes. With the season being 3 episodes shorter than originally planned, Cuse admits that “we will have to condense some stories” to fit the entire Season 3 story into the additional 5 episodes. (link) I wonder who’s Flash Backs or Flash Forwards we’ll be missing out on now that those 3 episodes are gone for this season, hopefully it wasn’t vital to the legend of Lost.

Lost Co-Executive Producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton CuseCuse went on to tell TV Guide’s Michael Ausiello that “we had eight episodes of story planned, and we're going to try to fit that into five hours of the show. Even though it's going to be very hard to execute, we felt like any less would be doing a disservice to the story we had planned. We really want to give the fans the best possible experience and ending... to Season 4.” (link) When Ausiello asked Cuse if those final three episodes were lost forever or would they be combined with future seasons, Cuse said “Damon and I remain committed to producing the 40 additional hours of the show that we promised. We haven't figured out exactly when we'll put those other three on, but we're not eliminating them from the show. You will get those three episodes downstream.” (link)

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ABC Valentines

ABC Valentines
For all of you looking for some quick and easy Valentines that you can e-mail to a loved one or friend, ABC has just the thing for you! (link) They have some really cute and funny Valentine’s Day cards based on some of your favorite ABC Shows (Lost, Grey’s Anatomy and Ugly Betty).

ABC Lost Valentines
The emails are free and extremely easy to use, but on the flip side they can’t be personalized. But with cards as great as these who cares about personalizing them.

Ben - Lost Valentine
Betty - Ugly Betty Valentine
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The Writers Strike Is Officially Over and a Scrubs Update

Writers Guild of America (WGA)
As of last night, Tuesday February 12th, the WGA “union members voted overwhelmingly to go back to work.” (link) This means that movie and TV writers will finally be going back to work and “programmers are busy getting back to business after a dry spell that deprived viewers of new episodes and networks of ratings.” (link) Unfortunately not all TV shows will be going back into production. The networks are holding back many of the year’s new shows so that they can be re-launched with full seasons next year. A few other shows that are on the brink of cancellation are also not going back into production until the networks decide if they are going to renew the show or not, or if it’s worth putting those shows back on the air for a very limited final run.

The Cast of Scrubs
Scrubs LogoFor all the Scrubs fans out there that were concerned that we’d never get a series finale since this was to be the show’s final season, you can now breathe a sigh of relief. Creator Bill Lawrence has assured us all that the final four episodes of the NBC comedy will be written and produced. (link) Lawrence stated to TV Guide’s Michael Ausiello that “worst-case scenario is that ABC/Disney lets me make the last four episodes as a DVD. And I say that's the worst-case scenario because I'm going to try as hard as I can to get NBC's support in finishing the show up on TV. I just don't have any definitive answer because I haven't been talking to them.” (link) To clarify, the NBC comedy is actually produced by ABC/Disney, so that in the case NBC does not want to air the final episodes on their network, ABC would like Scrubs to finish the production of the show’s final season in order to sell future DVD box sets either as an individual Season 7 box set or as a Complete Series box set.
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The Heart of the City Tour

Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige - The Heart of the City Tour

Ok, here’s one last tour announcement for the week, I swear! But come on, its HOVA…I can’t ignore his “back from retirement” tour a.k.a. The Heart of the City Tour with Mary J. Blige, can I? What I can’t figure out is why these three “major” tours all taking place in March, April and May? What happened to the good old days when the big boys all toured in the summer to cash in on high school and college kids were out of school? I guess this just goes to show that not only are concerts 24/7 now, but that most of these big tours are so expensive anyway they’re pricing out a lot of students so who cares when the tour is. It’s a very sad state of the industry if you ask me.

Tickets have already gone on sale for many of these dates at the Jay-Z Fan Community site. But beware, tickets are ranging in price from $60 – 400 per ticket!

Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige
Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige
The Heart of the City Tour Dates and Venues

March 22nd - Miami, FL - American Airlines Arena
March 26th - Baltimore, MD - 1st Mariner Arena
March 27th - Uniondale, NY - Nassau Memorial Coliseum
March 28th - East Rutherford, NJ - Izod Center
March 30th - Philadelphia, PA - Wachovia Center
April 2nd - Toronto, Ontario - Air Canada Centre
April 3rd - Boston, MA - TD Banknorth Garden
April 5th - Greensboro, NC - Greensboro Coliseum
April 6th - Washington, DC - Verizon Center
April 8th - Atlanta, GA - Philips Arena
April 9th - New Orleans, LA - New Orleans Arena
April 10th - Houston, TX - Toyota Center
April 12th - Dallas, TX - Superpages.com Center
April 15th - Anaheim, CA - Honda Center
April 17th - Los Angeles, CA - Hollywood Bowl
April 19th - Las Vegas, NV - MGM Grand Garden Arena
April 20th - Oakland, CA - Oracle Arena
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