Reviews and More

Private Practice 2×14 — “Second Chances”: What happened to Wyatt? Did I miss an episode or something? Because all I heard was a throwaway line from Archer about Wyatt leaving to chase “pharmaceutical dollars”, which is why the other practice needs a replacement. What the hell was that all about? I thought Wyatt was supposed to be Addie’s next love interest, but I guess not. Oh, well.

I wasn’t really feeling this episode. The patient stories just seemed like they were thrown in there for the hell of it, and the doctors’ stories were just all over the place. I don’t care much for about Violet’s pregnancy. If none of the involved parties wanted children, why were they having unprotected sex in the first place? They aren’t teenagers, after all, so there’s really no excuse for something like this.

And why does Cooper have to move in with Violet in order to be there for her? He can be extremely supportive without actually living with her, so this seems like kind of a strange thing to do. The way Cooper broke the news to Charlotte was weird, too. Why would he say it that way (“I’m moving in with Violet”) instead of, “Violet’s pregnant, so I’m going to stay with her for a while to help out.” That better be cleared up quickly!

I’m looking forward to the crossover episode, but after that, I’m really going to have to reevaluate my feelings about Private Practice. It’s not as consistently good as I hoped it would be, so I’m thinking about ditching it — especially since Thursday nights are just jam-packed with shows I watch.

House 5×13 — “Big Baby”: This was another subpar episode of House, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know why the Foreman/Thirteen romance is getting so much screen time, particularly since the characters have zero chemistry together. And isn’t Thirteen supposed to be a lesbian? Why is she even with Foreman to begin with? Meh, I guess she’s supposed to be bi…

I’m glad the whole experiment with having Cameron in charge came to a mercifully quick end. There’s just no way I’d be able to deal with her playing games week in and week out. She’s good as House’s underling, but just not believable at all as his boss.

Nothing else from the episode stands out at this point. I miss the good old days when House was “must see TV” for me!

I started listening to Michael Connelly audiobooks a couple years ago, and have slowly grown to appreciate them for what they are: simple, straightforward crime novels that have some entertainment value. As long as I don’t expect great literature, a bunch of well-developed characters, or a tightly plotted story, I’m usually ok with the experience. But Connelly’s 2004 book The Narrows failed to reach even those low expectations, and was easily the worst of the Harry Bosch series thus far.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The Narrows brings together characters and plots from two of Connelly’s previous books. First, several years ago, FBI agent-turned-serial-killer Bob Backus, nicknamed The Poet, was hit in a shootout with other field agents as he was about to turn an LAPD officer into another one of his victims. The FBI, looking to put a positive spin on the story, claimed that The Poet was almost certainly dead, and pointed to a body found in the area Backus was headed as proof of that claim. But the crime lab was unable to make a positive ID, causing some in the Bureau to believe that he managed to escape.

The second plot deals with Terry McCaleb, a former FBI agent who retired after receiving a heart transplant and ran a fishing charter until his death from complications related to his surgery. McCaleb’s wife Graciela had reason to believe there may have been foul play involved, so she contacts retired LAPD detective Harry Bosch, now a private investigator, to look into McCaleb’s death for her. Bosch agrees, though he doesn’t really think there would have been any reason for anyone to murder Terry.

As the novel unfolds, these two investigations eventually merge, bringing Bosch together with FBI agent Rachel Walling to collaborate and take Backus down. After hitting a few dead ends and overcoming some obstacles, Bosch and Walling eventually do get their man, bringing The Poet’s crime spree to an end once and for all.

My Reaction: I didn’t like The Narrows at all, and I think the reason was the way Connelly chose to narrate the story. The book continually shifts between a first-person “I” perspective whenever Harry Bosch is front and center, but then changes to third-person limited when Rachel Walling is in the foreground. This was distracting and exasperating, and made it very difficult for me to get through the book.

Another reason I didn’t like the book is that these characters just aren’t as interesting as Connelly seems to think they are. I mean, sure, Bosch is ok, so I didn’t have a problem with him appearing here. But Backus, Walling, Graciela, and the other minor FBI agents aren’t that great — and certainly aren’t worth bringing back again and again. I wish Connelly would take the time to invent quality characters instead of going the easy route with these rehashes. Ugh.

The story was ridiculously complicated, which made it unbelievable. I had no idea why Backus needed to execute this master plan after successfully evading capture for so long. I’m no profiler, but I would have thought it would be enough for him to just kill the bookstore owner without the elaborate setup. He surely would have gotten away with it then.

Overall, The Narrows was a disappointment. As I said before, I’m not expecting heady literature when I read Michael Connelly, but this wasn’t even a good story. I suggest skipping this title, as it’s definitely not representative of the rest of the Harry Bosch series.

As soon as I saw the trailer for Lakeview Terrace, I thought it looked like a dumb film that I wouldn’t bother with. Its meager box office receipts seemed to bear me out, but one thing led to another, and I somehow ended up renting the DVD when there wasn’t much else available. Unfortunately, my first impressions from the trailer were dead on, as this film was ridiculously implausible from beginning to end.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Samuel L. Jackson stars as Abel Turner, a widowed LAPD officer who is shown early on to be a strict disciplinarian with his children. He has rules for everything, they complain, even down to which L.A. Lakers jersey son Marcus (played by Jaishon Fisher) can wear (they don’t support Kobe). Abel is just as tough on the job, especially when dealing with informant Clarence Darlington (Keith Loneker). Basically, Abel is the kind of guy you don’t want to piss off.

Another thing Abel dislikes is interracial couples, which is bad news for Chris (Patrick Wilson) and Lisa Mattson (Kerry Washington), who have just moved in next door. At first, Abel appears to be friendly, dispensing advice about the ins and outs of the neighborhood and so forth, but Chris soon notices that Abel’s actions always have a negative undertone. For example, Abel’s house is equipped with floodlights that are meant to protect against possible intruders advancing from the canyon behind the houses, but the lights just happen to shine directly into the Mattson’s bedroom. When Chris asks Abel to turn off the lights until they can get some curtains up, Abel puts him off with one excuse after another.

Tensions between Abel and Chris escalate, as Abel surreptitiously sabotages things around the Mattson house, including the air conditioner and their vehicles. After Abel and his kids witness the Mattsons having sex in their pool, all bets are off as Abel tries in earnest to get the Mattsons out of the neighborhood. The final straw is when he forces Clarence to break in and vandalize the Mattsons’ house — a stunt that goes horribly wrong when Lisa returns home early.

Finally, Chris gets confirmation that Abel was indeed behind all the Mattsons’ problems, and he gets into an armed confrontation with the man out on the street — with deadly results.

My Reaction: I thought Lakeview Terrace had a pretty flimsy premise (Abel’s character disliked interracial couples), and therefore wasn’t able to put together a convincing story. Very little background information about Abel was given, so it was difficult to understand just where his prejudice was coming from — until very close to the end when he revealed that his ex-wife had been having an affair with a white man. But by then it was too late to bring forth this type of justification because the character was already lost to me.

A bigger problem with the film was that there were no likable characters at all. While Abel was supposed to be the bad guy, the story was more or less told from his point of view, so there was a tendency to want to side with him. I kept expecting some skeleton in the Mattsons’ closet to be unearhed that would ultimately justify Abel’s harassment, and when that didn’t happen, I was kind of adrift in terms of which character to support. I couldn’t bring myself to sympathize with Chris because Patrick Wilson played him as such a whiny little bitch that I was rooting for Abel to knock him out every time they were in the same room together.

And finally, I couldn’t figure out why Abel had Clarence break into the Mattsons’ house in broad daylight when everyone was just down the block. Why not wait until they were out to dinner or something and then have it done? Abel could easily go somewhere else during the time to give himself a rock-solid alibi, so it was just plain stupid to have the break-in occur when it did. Of course, it had to happen that way to fit the plot, but I can’t stand it when plot devices are as transparent as this.

Ordinarily I would be surprised Roger Ebert gave a film like Lakeview Terrace four stars, but my tastes diverged from his years ago, so I guess his high rating is to be expected. Actually, I give the movie four stars also — except my scale goes all the way up to 10!

I’d never heard of Jodi Picoult before, but I decided to pick up her novel Nineteen Minutes after seeing it on Amazon.com’s Editor’s Picks of 2007 list. The subject matter seemed interesting, and with an average star rating of 4.5 after 448 customer reviews on the site, I figured this would be a pretty safe choice in terms of an interesting read.

What I soon discovered, however, is that Picoult is extremely long-winded, and that her writing is quite uneven. The novel was interesting at times, but positively dragged at others, making for a tiresome reading experience overall.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The quiet, peaceful town of Sterling New Hampshire is jolted awake one spring day when 17-year-old Peter Houghton goes on a Columbine-style shooting spree at the local high school. His rampage lasts 19 very long minutes, and leaves 10 dead and 18 wounded. Houghton is arrested at the scene by sheriff Patrick Ducharme.

While Peter sits in jail awaiting first his arraignment and then trial, the novel explores both the aftermath of his crime and the events leading up to that fateful day. So part of the action is told in flashbacks dating all the way back to before Peter was even born, when his mother Lacy, a midwife, befriended single mother-to-be Alex Cormier. That friendship would in turn lead to Peter and Alex’s daughter Josie being friends during early childhood, though the two would eventually drift apart as Josie became one of the cool kids while Peter remained an outcast. And part of the action covers present-day actions as Alex tries to figure out a way to help Josie deal with the trauma of losing her boyfriend in the shooting and Lacy tries to figure out where she went wrong with Peter.

By the time the novel reaches its conclusion, the reader has a far better — though not perfect — understanding of what Peter’s state of mind was at the time of the shooting and why he chose to express his rage in that manner.

My Reaction: Nineteen Minutes was a very frustrating book in many ways. First of all, as I said above, the novel was just far too long and could have really benefited from some heavy editing. There were many parts that I simply skimmed, including everything about Lewis Houghton and his happiness theories, as well as the relationship stuff between Alex and Patrick. These subplots added nothing at all to the main story, and thus felt completely out of place. Why even include this kind of filler? Peter, Josie, and Lacy were the most interesting characters and had the most interesting problems, so Picoult could very easily have made a compelling novel about these three alone.

The biggest obstacle to my enjoyment of the book, however, was Picoult’s portrayal of Peter’s bullying at the hands of the cool kids. Would fifth graders repeatedly pick on kindergarten kids to the extent of destroying three lunch boxes? I mean, we’re talking about 11-year-olds going after five-year-olds here. That does NOT happen. And as soon as property is destroyed (especially when it happens over and over again), parents and teachers do get involved.

The high school bullying was only slightly more believable. Yes, I’ve seen bigger guys shoving smaller kids into lockers or pushing them around or whatever, but again, does it happen every single day? The verbal assaults, calling Peter faggot and homo, were spot-on, and those would definitely happen on a daily basis. But the physical stuff and the blatant destruction of personal property (Peter having his glasses deliberately smashed) would not fly for very long — not in a middle-class school district like the one portrayed in this novel.

I thought the Josie “twist” was utterly ridiculous. She was having issues with her physically and verbally abusive boyfriend, but instead of breaking up with him she decided that shooting him would be a better answer? Um, okay… that’s a little extreme there, isn’t it? I at least understood how someone like Peter would reach his boiling point after all those years of bullying, but Josie had tons of other options.

And finally, the ending left a lot to be desired. Calling Matt Royston and Courtney Ignatio’s killings manslaughter was an absolute joke. I mean, what did Courtney even do to Peter besides pass that one e-mail on to Drew, who then spammed the entire student body? Are there people out there who really believe that a simple action like that would reduce her cold-blooded murder to a manslaughter charge?? Wow.

On the whole, Nineteen Minutes was very difficult to get through. There were too many boring parts, it was far longer than it needed to be, and most of the plot points were simply too unrealistic, even for fiction. I don’t understand all the praise this book has received, nor do I get why it’s on Amazon’s Editor’s Picks list. It’s not at all worth the time!

How to Read and Understand Poetry. I’ve always been interested in poetry, but when I read it, I can help but feel that I’m missing out on a lot of meaning and subtext that the author was trying to convey. Moreover, I wanted to learn about the mechanics of poetry, about how poets have to fit a certain number of long and short beats into each line and things like that. I figured that would give me a better appreciation for the actual craftsmanship of writing poetry. I hoped this lecture would help me achieve my goals.

The course is delivered by Dr. Willard Spiegelman, who teaches at Southern Methodist University, and consists of 24 lectures that are approximately 30 minutes long (if I remember correctly). Dr. Spiegelman addresses topics ranging from metaphor and metonymy to irony, tone, sentiment, and heroism. He also dissects a few forms of poetry in detail, including sonnets, villanelles, and free verse.

Unfortunately, I found How to Read and Understand Poetry to be a bit lacking in helping me do just that. I was expecting Dr. Spiegelman to talk mostly about forms and devices, while pointing out relevant examples along the way. But he took the opposite tack, and chose to talk about specific poems in depth to show how they illustrate the points he’s trying to make.

So in other words, while I can better understand the particular poems that Dr. Spiegelman referenced in his lecture, I cannot extrapolate his teachings to poetry in general. Does that make sense? I hope I’ve explained myself adequately!

Overall, this is not a course that I would recommend to anyone. It’s not likely that you’ll be able to approach any old poem from a more informed perspective after listening to or watching Dr. Spiegelman’s lectures — but shouldn’t you be able to with a title like How to Read and Understand Poetry?

I thought for sure that the Kevin James comedy Paul Blart: Mall Cop would prove to be a one-week wonder at the top of the box office, but I guess I was wrong. The film took in another $21.5 million over the weekend to edge out newcomer Underworld: Rise of the Lycans and maintain its title as America’s No.1 movie. Rise of the Lycans, third in the Underworld franchise, earned $20.7 million for second place.

Oscar buzz propelled the Indian film Slumdog Millionaire into fifth place on the list after the film generated another $10.6 million in ticket sales nationwide, bringing its total to $55.9 million. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button also enjoyed a resurgence thanks to Academy Award nominations. The Brad Pitt drama tacked on another $6 million, and has now earned $111 million since its Christmas Day release.

No other new films cracked the top 10, so the rest of the list is just a reshuffle from how it appeared last time.

Here’s the complete Top 10 at the box office for the weekend ending 1/25/09:

1. Paul Blart: Mall Cop, $21.5 million
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, $20.7 million
3. Gran Torino, $16 million
4. Hotel for Dogs, $12 million
5. Slumdog Millionaire, $10.6 million
6. My Bloody Valentine, $10.1 million
7. Inkheart, $7.72 million
8. Bride Wars, $7 million
9. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, $6 million
10. Notorious, $5.7 million

I’ve been an Audrey Hepburn fan ever since I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s back when I was 12 years old. Hepburn was just so glamorous and graceful as Holly Golightly that I instantly loved the character. I then went on to watch Roman Holiday and My Fair Lady with equal zest, but then kind of lost my enthusiasm for old films. I’ve recently decided to start up again, however, and picked out Funny Face when at the video store. Not exactly a great choice, but it was watchable!

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Maggie Prescott (played by Kay Thompson) is editor-in-chief of Quality magazine, a fashion and beauty rag aimed at women. She’s under deadline pressure to get out the next issue, but is underwhelmed by the mock-up she’s presented. Maggie thinks that Quality should do something new, give the public something they’ve never seen before. She’s tired of the same old models in the same old poses, and she’s sure everyone else is as well.

So Maggie turns to top photographer Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) for help. She says that she wants her models to have a more intellectual look, which prompts Dick to suggest heading out to Greenwich Village to put their models in a different setting. This might bring about the desired result.

They end up at a philosophy bookstore called “Embryo Concepts”, which is run by a young woman named Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn). Jo vehemently objects to the use of the store as a backdrop for a modeling shoot, but to no avail. Then later, when the prints don’t turn out quite how Maggie envisioned, she decides that Jo would be the perfect model for Quality magazine — despite her funny face.

The rest of the film then shows how Dick and Maggie attempt to convince Jo to go along with their plans, and how they finally get her over to Paris for a shoot. While there, Jo tries to reconcile her desire to engage in philosophical pursuits with some leading French intellectuals to her heightened feelings for Dick. Love wins out in the end, and Jo and Dick presumably live happily ever after.

My Reaction: Meh, I couldn’t really get into this story at all. I think it mostly had to do with the fact that I didn’t buy the Dick Avery-Jo Stockton pairing, since Fred Astaire was about 30 years older than Audrey Hepburn when this film was made. Are you kidding me? Like a 28-year-old intellectual would fall in love with a 58-year-old fashion photographer? I suppose it’s possible, but just highly unbelievable in the context of the film. I mean, if Avery had been a philosophy professor at NYU or something, I’d buy it. But a fashion photographer? No.

Besides my issue with the age differential between the leads, I just didn’t think the rest of the plot had enough substance to fill up an hour and forty minutes of screen time. So a magazine editor is on a quest for a fresh model? That model is reluctant about getting into the biz because she somehow thinks it compromises her philosophical principles? I don’t know… just too boring.

Also, who in their right minds would think that Audrey Hepburn has a funny face? Clearly she was beautiful right from the start, even when she was just a simple shopkeeper. Turning her into a model wasn’t quite the incredible transformation it was in My Fair Lady when she was a poor, lowly “guttersnipe” before being discovered by Prof. Higgins.

Overall, I’m not sure that Funny Face is suited to a modern audience. It might have been a hit in 1957, but I don’t think it has much staying power. The storyline just doesn’t resonate with today’s viewers. I give the film 5.0 stars out of 10.

Private Practice 2×13 — “Nothing to Fear”: I thought this episode was just ok. I wasn’t really into any of the storylines, but found Violet’s patient to be the most sympathetic. Maybe it’s just because I recognized Roxanne from L.A. Law, a show that I used to LOVE back in the late ’80s. At any rate, I didn’t feel anything about the old guy dying alone, nor did I care too much about the latest adoption saga. Seriously, do we have to have depressing baby stories every single week? I know that’s Addison’s specialty and all, but man, it really is hard to take!

I’m so glad Kevin is finally out of the picture. Let’s hope it stays that way this time. I’m not sure that Wyatt is the right guy either, but it’ll just be better seeing Addie with someone else for a change.

Oh, and can I go on record saying how damn annoying Dell is? He has become so self-righteous that it’s sickening! I can’t stand his holier-than-thou attitude, and I hate the way he treats patients who don’t conform to his moral standards. Grow up!

Charlotte and Cooper… love them to death, but Cooper made the right call in delaying the wedding.

Grey’s Anatomy 5×13 — “Stairway to Heaven”: Ugh, I sure could have done without hearing that sickening sound of the serial killer deliberately cracking open his skull. Had to look away again… yuck! How did he not die from hitting his unprotected brain repeatedly like that?? I’m glad the boy didn’t get this guy’s organs, but I didn’t like the cop-out on the writers’ part about just happening to find another donor in the same hospital. What luck, huh?

This episode was kind of boring until the end. I’m so glad that Cristina and Meredith have made up, because they really do need each other to freak out to. That was a good way for Derek to put it… so true, too! Speaking of Derek, I’m happy that he was there for Meredith after she witnessed the execution. He might not have understood why she needed to be there, but at least he is allowing her to have her own opinions now instead of making everything an either/or proposition.

The Mark storyline was ridiculous. He deserves much better than that! Bailey is not even Bailey anymore, and someone please tell me why Denny is still on this freakin’ show!!!!

Bones 4×12 — “Double Trouble in the Panhandle”: Wow, I can’t believe this was the first episode shown after the hiatus. It was pretty bad, and just makes me wonder why I still watch the series. Bones was interesting in S1 and S2, but the last season and a half have been pretty crappy. I’m about ready to give up on this show, especially with the move to Thursday night, which is already jam-packed with other series that I watch.

I didn’t necessarily mind that Booth wanted to go undercover in the circus, but I’m kind of getting tired of how the writers don’t even attempt to make these operations realistic. Why would Booth be called in to investigate a murder on the Texas-Oklahoma border? Wouldn’t agents at the Dallas field office be better suited to such a thing? And why was Brennan even needed on the case at all? Are you telling me that a regular coroner wouldn’t have been able to figure out that the victims were conjoined twins, that we needed a forensic anthropologist for that?? Uh, huh.

I know this has never been the most realistic show out there, but at least before it seemed like there were a few constraints. Now, it’s like anything goes, which sucks.

Bones 4×13 — “Fire in the Ice”: Is it just me, or were all the hockey scenes incredibly cheesy? Maybe I’m just in a bad mood because of the first Bones ep that aired tonight, but I couldn’t get into this story at all. Is this the first we’ve heard of Booth playing on a hockey team? I swear, there has been zero mention of such a thing in previous episodes — and not only that, but he’s got a squint on his team? I don’t know, I just don’t buy it. I don’t even know what else to say about this ep, because, frankly, I didn’t pay all that much attention to it. Booorrrrring!

House 5×12 — “Painless”: I thought this episode was pretty weak as far as House goes. The medical mystery wasn’t all that interesting, and since the guest actors were terrible, I couldn’t even get into their stories at all. The stuff about the doctors’ personal lives was equally boring, though, making for a tough episode to sit through — and a pretty big disappointment coming off the hiatus.

I can’t believe that Cameron is being considered for Cuddy’s job! Was that a real offer?! What kind of administrative experience does Cameron even have? The writers stuck in a throwaway line about her submitting House’s departmental budget for him, but come on. That can’t really make her qualified, can it? And what the hell is going to happen to Cuddy if Cameron takes over for a while? She and Wilson get so little screentime as it is that I sometimes forget they’re even on the show!

Thirteen and Foreman make me want to tear my eyeballs out, House and his mania about figuring out how people respond to pain has been played out, and Kutner and Taub just cannot carry an episode on their own. Gah, what has happened to this series? It used to be my favorite show of the week; now I’m just watching out of habit.

Although I’m not a huge fan of Michael Connelly, I’ve grudgingly come to accept the fact that his books are entertaining enough for my purposes — meaning that they’re easy to listen to on my iPod while I’m working out, sitting in traffic, or doing housework. They don’t require my full attention, so I can let my mind wander a bit while still being able to follow the plot. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve got all of his works already loaded on my iPod, either, because that means my decision to listen to the books is already made. So when Chasing the Dime came up on my playlist, I didn’t even think twice about forging ahead with it.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Henry Pierce is a brilliant young scientist who is on the verge of perfecting a breakthrough in nanotechnology that will launch his firm, Amedeo Technologies, into the forefront of the field and make him a millionaire in the process. All he and his colleagues need to do is reel in an already interested investor named Maurice Goddard and apply for a few patents, and their futures will be set.

Everything is looking up for Henry except for his personal life. He has just split with longtime girlfriend Nicole — her idea — because he’s been spending all his time working at the lab (“chasing the dime”, going after profits) instead of working on their relationship. Henry has had to move out of the house they formerly shared, and into a new apartment, with a new phone number. Only the phone number isn’t so new. He soon learns that it used to belong to a prostitute, and since it’s still on the woman’s website, Henry’s place is inundated with calls from men hoping for a hook-up.

Henry tries to track down the woman himself in order to ask her to remove the number from her site, but he can’t find any trace of her. He does come up with a name, Lilly Quinlan, but beyond that, no one has seen or heard from her in a few weeks. This doesn’t sit well with Henry, as he feels something bad has probably happened to her. Because Henry had a sister in the same situation years ago, he can’t let go of the Lilly Quinlan mystery. He starts looking into her disappearance in earnest, and is soon caught up in a tangled web of deception and murder that eventually lead right back to Henry and his company.

My Reaction: I had mixed feelings about Chasing the Dime. I thought everything related to nanotechnology — with applications as diverse as better sunscreen or improved laptop memory — at Amedeo was very interesting, and if Connelly had made this a straight-up corporate espionage thriller, it would have have been a good book. But the way he had to tie everything in through that elaborate setup regarding Cody, Lilly Quinlan, and shady mobsters in the background made everything feel extremely contrived. Instead of saying, “Oh, that was a great plan!”, I was left thinking, “Was that really the only way to get to Henry?”

Sorry, but the sister angle didn’t seem like a strong enough motive to get Henry to abandon his patent application work in order to track down Quinlan’s whereabouts. I mean, his whole company’s future, as well as the future of all his employees (not to mention his own livelihood and career) were at stake on the project. There’s no way he would drop it all to find a missing prostitute. And the fact that Cody knew this was a sure way to throw Henry off his patent game was absolutely ridiculous. With all those millions riding on the plan, there’s no way they would go this route.

I do have to admit that I didn’t guess who the perp was until the very end. I thought it was going to be Nicole — and logically speaking, it probably should have been her. She would have been able to pull this off like ten times easier than Cody, but whatever. But that obviously wasn’t enough of a twist if I was pegging her as the suspect 50 pages in.

Anyway, Chasing the Dime was something of a disappointment. The nanotechnology angle was intriguing enough, but most of the plot was utterly preposterous, making for an unsatisfying read.

We’re just a couple hours away from the Lost Season 5 premiere! I usually run hot and cold about the show, where I get really, really interested in what’s going on for a long stretch of episodes and can’t wait to see what happens next, and then I get bored with all the misdirections, the painfully slow revelations, and the sometimes ridiculous plot twists. But I have to say that Season 4 ended on a very promising note, and since the producers have already publicized the fact that Season 6 will be the last, I think they’ll start picking up the pace and giving viewers some real answers.

Here are some questions I have:

– Is John Locke really dead? Are Jack and Ben going to somehow revive him, possibly by lugging his corpse back to the mysterious island? That’s where John was strongest, after all, so it could work.

– Why is Ana-Lucia coming back? Don’t tell me that she’s actually important to the big picture. I didn’t like the character the first time around, so something tells me I’m not going to like her this time either.

– Did Jin really die in that explosion aboard the boat? Please say it ain’t so. Jin and Sun are a terrific couple, and it would just be so sad if he truly bought it.

– Is Charlotte (a relative newcomer in the Lost universe) Ben’s childhood friend Annie, who figured so prominently in some of his flashbacks? If so, then I wonder what’s going to happen when Ben sees her again. Will he become a kinder, gentler version of himself?

– Will Hurley find a diet pill stash among all the Dharma Initiative supplies so he can drop a few pounds and actually look as though he’s been stranded on an island for a few years? Yeah, that’s a bit mean-spirited, I guess, but it’s something I can’t help thinking about when I watch the show, and distracts my attention from what’s going on.

– Will Kate wake up and finally choose Sawyer over Jack once and for all? She and Sawyer are a MUCH better couple, and have loads of chemistry whenever they’re on screen together. Jack is such a wet blanket that I don’t know why anyone would want to be around him for more than a few minutes at a time.

– Will Claire’s disappearance ever be cleared up? If I recall correctly, she just vanished in the jungle one day, right? But no one ever found her body or any other trace of her, so we really don’t know what happened to her yet. I’m still waiting for her to read Charlie’s Greatest Hits list to see her reaction to what he wrote about meeting her.

Well, I’m going to record the first two eps on TiVo so I can pass through the commercials. I hope they’re worth the wait!