It's been a long, long time....but TV!

Okay, so I see that I haven't blogged in more than a year and a half. Keeping up with something like this is pretty evidently not my strong suit.

But I think I want to write something/talk about TV. Mainly Lost, The Wire, and Glee. I'm caught up on the first and the last, so spoiler alert (as if anyone was actually going to read this). The Wire's over and done, and I'm still in the 1st season, so I'm not so worried about it there.

Okay, so Lost is over. It was a really great show, and I really liked the ending. I can buy the whole last-season-sideways world as an imaginary world/purgatory, and once I wrapped my head around the fact that that part, and the church gathering in particular, was essentially outside of time, I was good. I like that Ben stayed outside because he wasn't ready to forgive himself and move on and I LOVE that Juliet and Sawyer were together. I'm a little disappointed that Michael didn't at least get a chance to make the choice that Ben did, and wonder whether Harold Perrineau was busy or not asked to come back. The sideways world definitely had a bit more of an impact for me in that last episode, with the exception of the realization that Vincent was there when Desmond was helped out of the well and the appearance of Rose and Bernard (oh, and Vincent lying with Jack when Jack dies -- but I'm always a sucker for animal-related story lines like that). I loved it when all of the people we hadn't seen in a while showed up -- even Shannon, whom I kind of detested when she was on the show. My favorites included Hurley's pleasure at seeing Charlie, Charlie's reaction to seeing Claire, Sun and Jin, and Sawyer and Juliet.

I know that a lot of people didn't, for various reasons. Some people seem to have thought that the show crapped out and said that everyone died in the initial plane crash. I think those people may need to re-watch. That's just not what happened. Others didn't like the ending because it didn't answer the big island questions or because of the religious stuff at the end. Those are legitimate complaints, but I disagree. 1) If you want questions answered, you were probably watching the wrong show. Lost is about the mystery and about how some things are just beyond rational and/or simple explanation. It's not just drama; it's sci fi/fantasy. 2) I really don't think they could have answered the questions to the fans' satisfaction. Any explanation would have been a letdown. 3) Lost has been about faith vs. science for a long time now, and it seems to have come down on the faith side. I'm not thrilled with this part, but at least they didn't decide that all of the important players were angels, like in Battlestar Galactica.

Also, a comparative note -- Lost's ending was so much less disappointing than Battlestar, The X-Files, and Alias, all of which had great moments in their multiple seasons.

I really don't have much to say about The Wire. I've been hearing what a good show it is for a while now, and was a little doubtful. But it is so good. I'm a latecomer, and my husband and I are watching it on DVD now.

On to Glee -- a lot of people talk about Glee, and maybe I seem like a teenage girl for doing so in a favorable way. But I love that show. I think I love the fact of it more than anything else. It makes me laugh and makes me want to sing (although I don't do that when people can hear me). I've heard some people talk about its misogyny, but I'm not seeing it (and I usually do -- that movie The Box? It HATES women). I think it's more of an anti-adult thing, mostly done to focus the show on the kids and their POVs. At first, the talk was about Terri and Sue Sylvester, but the Principal is kind of sucky too, and now we have more with Finn's mom and Kurt's dad to make the adults more sympathetic (Kurt's dad is awesome). Again, a lot of my fandom of this show is based on the mere fact of its existence. Even when others talk about the weakness of certain musical numbers, I have trouble looking at those same numbers with a critical eye (cultural or musical). I just find it incredibly entertaining that they even have a number with Kurt, Mercedes, Tina, Brittany, and Artie (easily the most underused in terms of musical talent -- seriously, he should be the group's male lead) doing a stealth performance of "Can't Touch This" in the school library. Basically, the show is just fun.

Okay, now a quick moment to tie this all together. Up until now, my Tuesday nights have been about watching Lost and then getting Glee on iTunes. This week, with Lost over, I was all set to watch one episode of The Wire (with husband) and then catch Glee (definitely without husband). But then Neema went and got shot, so I held off on Glee. How many other people move from watching The Wire into watching Glee. I can't imagine that there are very many of us with that kind of range in our scripted television.