A long long long time ago, when I was but a first year graduate student, still uncertain about what the hell I was doing in Ithaca and whether I'd made a huge mistake, my 7th LiveJournal post ever was called
The Cost of Television. It was about my journey to get television on my computer, and how the product I bought was pretty wretched. Oh, how times have changed. Wait, no, that's not right. They haven't changed at all.
Some years after that post, I got sick and tired of the lousy TV tuner card I'd bought, and I got a better one. It was the
Elgato EyeTV Hybrid (actually not the one they sell now, an earlier version). This is the one I still use, and the software it came with is considerably better than the earlier one, expect for one small problem.
Last night I got home at about 8pm. Plenty of time before Lost at 9pm. But apparently there'd been a power hiccup, and my computer had shut down. So I had to boot it up and then open the EyeTV software to watch TV. No problem, right? Wrong. See, this program has this lovely feature that it takes 2 and a half hours to start up. I'm not kidding. You open it, and it sits there, spinning the MacOS color wheel, for 150 minutes, or thereabouts. For no apparent reason. And with no way to stop it.
At about 8:30, when I realized that this stupid program wasn't going to finish whatever the hell it was doing any time soon, I realized I had to do something. So I pulled out my new laptop, and tried to see if I could install the software there. Maybe on the laptop it would take less than 150 minutes to start up? Well, it did, but then when I plugged in the TV tuner, the program quits suddenly. AAAARRRGHH!!!
By this time it's about 8:50. Now, I know what you're thinking. Oliver, it's just a TV show. Even if you miss it tonight, you'll be able to watch it tomorrow on abc.com or iTunes. Be patient! Yes, these thoughts were in my head. Sorry, I'm pathetic. I need to watch Lost as soon as its available.
I looked online and discovered that there's actually a new version of the crappy EyeTV software, but naturally it's not free. I was reminded of my postulate that the main purpose of software is to be crappy enough to convince the consumer to pay for a new version. But, I had no time, and I needed a solution. So I payed $30 for a piece of software that I desperately didn't want, and it's started downloading. 115 MB. Not going to finish by 9pm. When I watched the clock tick from 8:59:59 to 9:00:00, the file was only 30% downloaded.
Finally around 9:15 it finished downloading, and I installed it. And it worked! Quick, switch to ABC!
So I watched the last 45 minutes of last night's Lost, then the first 15 minutes this morning.
Sooo... how 'bout those major character deaths? Sayid's death made a lot of sense to me. As soon as the bomb showed up, and Sayid started talking about how to disarm it, it felt right that he sacrifice himself to save everyone else. At the end of the day, after all the terrible things Sayid's done recently, it seems like this small moment of redemption is about the best he could hope for. Ultimately, he can't save everyone, he can't really save himself, he can't get Nadia back (except possibly in the sideways world?) all he can do is prove that he can still do something good when he needs to.
I thought the whole scene in the sub once they find the bomb was fantastic. Jack's conviction that it couldn't hurt them, and his intuitive leap about the rules governing the Man in Black's actions was great, and you start to see the Jacob he'll become. Then Sawyer not believing him, and finally Sayid sacrificing himself. Great, tense, Lost moment.
Then there was Jin and Sun. I suppose we all should have predicted that as soon as they got back together, and their story seemed to resolve, they'd die. Certainly Jin's promise to never leave her was not going to serve him well. Part of me feels like the density of this episode didn't give enough room for a suitable death scene for the two of them, but it was okay. And, seriously, this show means business. Kill major characters in the finale, sure. But kill THREE in the 4th-to-last episode? Now that's the show I fell in love with.
I'm curious to see how the dead characters will influence the sideways storyline, where they are all, of course, still alive. One theory is that the sideways world is some kind of afterlife for these characters, so maybe it makes sense that a bunch of them have to die on-island? Who knows.
Also, I'm reminded that the title of the 2nd-to-last episode is (highlight to see in case you don't know and don't want to know)"What They Died For". Yes, they died indeed. I feel like this title is also referring to the
masive pile of people who have died over the years. Definitely an "it's the 2nd-to-last episode and we should reflect on the last 6 seasons before the action-packed grand finale" sort of title.
By the way,
apparently they're extending the Lost finale to 2.5 hours (just enough time for EyeTV to open). This seems strangely
familiar. So we get 5.5 hours of Lost-related material on May 23 (remember, that's a Sunday, not Tuesday), not including Jimmy Kimmel's thing.