K-Squared Ramblings

Breaking the Castle’s Fourth Wall

Hah! It turns out those ads for Heat Wave during Castle aren’t fake: ABC actually had someone write the Nikki Heat book as a tie-in #

The first time I remember seeing something like this was with (appropriately enough) Murder She Wrote, with a paperback mystery novel credited to Jessica Fletcher. In that case, though, the show had been on for years and was a television staple. DC Comics got into it in 1997 with The Life Story of the Flash, credited to Iris (West) Allen, which had previously been referenced in the comic books.

More recently, Lost had an in-universe book published in the real world: Bad Twin was billed as the final novel by one of the passengers on Oceanic 815 who didn’t make it through the first episode. I actually read that one. It was interesting enough, though it had little to do with the show beyond the presence of the Widmores.

TV, Smoke & Flash

• TV: Castle good. Bones OK but more Katie’s thing. Still undecided on Glee. Excited about Flash Forward. Not sure on Heroes or Dollhouse. #
• The “Mind the Gap” monster in Neverwhere sounds a lot like the smoke monster on Lost now. #
• Speaking of smoke, I’ve been trying to figure out where all the crud in the air is coming from today. Norco maybe? #
• Flash-only sites are also invisible to smartphone users, even with iPhone & Android. @rzazueta #sbbuzz #

Lost Finale

That makes two very good season finales this week. Lost was more plot-focused, while Heroes was more character-focused.

And we learned some very interesting things about the fate of the islanders.

Spoilers follow. Read the rest of this entry »

Exit stage left, pursued by a Claire.

Yeah sure, Heroes X-Men blah blah blah, but wait, there’s more. I’m getting a distinct vibe from the latest episode that has less to do with mutants than with good TV. This makes me very happy, all the more because I didn’t pick up on it until the third-to-last ep of the season. Of course, that could be just a lack of recent J. Michael Straczynski in my life.

Warning: the remainder of this post contains spoilers for Heroes through episode 1.21 “The Hard Part.” Also, if you haven’t seen Babylon 5 and Memento, or at least have some working knowledge of the two, you probably won’t be able to make head or tail of it. (God knows I can’t, and I wrote the darn thing.) The more background, the better. Read the rest of this entry »

LOST renewed (and thoughts on TV season structure)

Here’s a surprise: Lost has been renewed for a three-season deal… but each season is only 16 episodes long. The writers are glad that they have an endpoint, because now they know how long they have to tell the rest of the story they have in mind. (Call me credulous, but I’m inclined to believe that they do have at least some of their plans worked out ahead of time.)

Though I have to say, I hope they’ve checked their contract for loopholes. Farscape thought they had a two-season deal, so they took their characters and story to some really dark places in Season 4, figuring they had another year to dig them out. Instead they got canceled, and it took a fan campaign and the sale of the Jim Henson company to get even a four-hour miniseries to wrap things up.

As for the structure, this is actually probably better than two 24-episode seasons. It makes it easier to show an entire season through without interruptions. This season’s schedule, with just 6 episodes at the beginning followed by months of reruns, was terrible. Of course, once they came back from hiatus, it was much better than the sporadic episodes they showed in Season 2.

Arc vs. Scheduling

This brings up a problem with trying to run a TV series with an arc to it: Scheduling can seriously mess it up.

Babylon 5 suffered from PTEN’s decision to hold the last four episodes of each season until fall, followed immediately by the following season. It undermined the season-ending cliffhangers, and broke the narrative in the middle. Eventually they started anticipating it: JMS would write a mini-cliffhanger five episodes before the end of the season, and in one case even wrote a recap into the script for episode 19.

Veronica Mars and Heroes have done a good job this year of breaking the season into mini-arcs that match the schedule. Veronica Mars had a 9-part mystery, followed by a 6-part mystery, followed by a series of one-shots at the end of the season, and each arc was shown without interruption.

Heroes told the initial “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” storyline, followed it up with some backstory, and finished the first run with a teaser for the main arc for the rest of the season. (Heroeswiki breaks it down further, by tagline.) The second arc deepened the plot, and brought everything to a high point: the revelation of Linderman’s and Bennett’s agendas, plus cliffhangers in Hiro’s and Peter’s journeys. Now we’re in the home stretch. As the tagline says, “It’s time to save the world.”

That seems to be the way to go: If you don’t have the clout to change the schedule (like 24), find some way to work within it. Plowing straight through without regard to when the episodes are going to be shown, like Lost did with Season 2, is just going to frustrate your audience.

(Thanks to aeryncrichton for the news!)

Lost on Avenue Q

So, did anyone else have the song “Mix Tape” pop into their heads in connection with tonight’s Lost?

Incidentally, on the question that so vexed Hurley and Charlie—namely, who would win in a race, the Flash or Superman… it’s the Flash. That’s not just a fan reaction, I have documented evidence.

Locke’s Office?

Here’s one for the Lost fans out there: a box company in Tustin, California!

Okay, actually, they’re a moving company, but check out this sign:

This is in a business/light industrial area on Walnut Ave.

Sci-fi mommy

I can’t believe nobody’s made this comparison yet……it looks like the producers of “Lost” picked the wrong SF TV-show lead to be Alex’s mom:

Of course, it’s entirely possible that they might be able to land Claudia for a recurring guest spot as her “mother” (flashbacks maybe?), and thus call into question through visuals alone whether Danielle is even as right in the head as she seems to be.

Lost on the Internet

CNET has an article on various websites related to Lost. Among them are official sites for Oceanic Airlines and The Hanso Foundation and fan sites for Mega Lotto Jackpot and Charile’s band, Drive Shaft.

I’d seen the Drive Shaft site last year (or at least a Drive Shaft site), though it seems to have exceeded its bandwidth for this month.

The official sites don’t have much detail, but they do have easter eggs…