The Office: Season Three, Episode Four – “Grief Counseling”

the office grief counseling

Originally posted on October 13, 2006.

My all-time favorite show is Cheers. One of the things I loved about the show was its pre-title gag. It often had nothing to do with the plot of the episode but was a hilarious way to start things off. One of my favorites had someone tapping their pencil which was followed by a few more tappings which morphed into the whole bar singing “We Will Rock You.” Silly – yes. Hilarious – absolutely.

This week’s Office episode started with a similar bit of nonsense having Michael do the old walking down the stairs, while really just squatting behind some boxes bit. The real gag was Jan asking him to get her some coffee in the “warehouse” and watching Michael crawl to the break room to get it. Dumb – yes. Perfect comedy – absolutely. Especially when Michael says he’s like “Bette Midler in For the Boys.”

We’re back to two offices in unrelated events, but they managed to keep both stories cohesive and funny. Stamford keeps getting the smaller, more gag-y stories, while Scranton gets actual plot lines, but this makes sense since we know Scranton better.

Stamford evolved around the flirtations of Karen and Jim. It starts with Jim being asked to essentially babysit Karen to ensure she finishes a task. Karen obviously miffed, rails on Jim about some potato chips when the vending machine is out of her preferred kind. Jim turns it into a flirty mission by spending the rest of the day making calls to find the chips.

In Scranton, Michael’s old boss, Ed Truck, has passed away through a drunken decapitation and he spends his day disrupting work to deal with his own grief.

In one particularly fine moment, Michael laments that they take a day off to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. and “he didn’t even work here.” Instead of a day off, Michael and Dwight begin discussing a full-sized statuary tribute that turns into a raging robot which Dwight designs a six-foot extension cord for, so that it can’t attack.

Later Michael brings the staff into the conference room so that they can discuss their grief. Michael starts by saying that it “feels like my heart has been dropped into a bucket of boiling tears and someone else is hitting my soul in the crotch with a frozen sledgehammer and a third guy is punching me in the griefbone, but no one hears me because I’m terribly, terribly alone.”

Dwight recollects that he was actually a twin as a fetus, but he absorbed the other person and feels stronger for it.

They then pass around a ball to talk about any moment in their past when they were grieved but this quickly turns into a mockery as the staff recounts moments from such films as Million Dollar Baby, the Lion King, and, Weekend at Bernie’s.

In order to restore order, Toby tells Michael that death is part of life and recalls a bird that crashed into the door that morning. Michael runs to rescue the bird, going as far as to give it water in the break room before finally admitting it is dead.

Everybody then has a funeral for the bird in the parking lot before burning it in its final resting Kleenex box. Pam manages to say some very touching words obviously meant to comfort Michael. Similar to how Jim spoke kindly to him at the convention Pam now shows her own kind soul as the episode ends.

My Name is Earl: Season 2, Episode 4 – “Larceny of a Kitty Cat”

my name is earl larceny of a kitty cat Originally posted on October 13, 2006.

I think I am enjoying the new method of starting out with something on the list, but shuffling over to something only sort of related. The show has always had a way of moving in directions you’d never find on a map, so the disjointed way of crossing off a listed item is kind of fun.

This week’s episode involved finding a poor cat that Earl stole back when he was married to Joy. See Joy had entered a cat into a contest and was afraid that another cat, Sebastian, would win and so she sent Earl to go “Tonya Harding” on it. Earl steals the cat, but can’t break its little kitty legs and instead takes it to the “sleepy cat ladies” house.

This becomes #56 on the list and Earl heads over to the owner’s house to clear things up.

But first, I forgot to mention how Earl came to think of #56. Randy and Earl were walking when a black cat crossed their path, they turned to go the other way and the cat crossed across that way. So Earl and Randy had to sit on the sidewalk for three hours for the black cat curse to go away. As soon as the time was up the cat again crossed their path and thus reminded Earl of the list.

Sebastian’s owner Judy still holds a torch for the cat (and even has a shirt with Sebastian’s picture on it and the words “Have you seen me?”.) They trudge over to the “sleepy cat ladies” house and find Sebastian, a little bit older, and a lot fatter.

Meanwhile, Randy takes a shine to Judy and to woo her, pretends to love cats – though he is quite allergic in reality.

In the funniest segment of the night, we see a sequence of Randy’s past girlfriends and how he often pretends to be something he is not. There is the goth art chick, the Hasidic Jew, and the black power girl. They all like Randy until he acts more like himself and lets out something very un-kosher like “Did Martin Luther King’s dreams have aliens in them?”

Upon breakup, Randy goes through a long period of doing nothing but lip-synching along to Cyndy Lauper’s “Time After Time.”

Eventually Randy does tell Judy he doesn’t like cats and she agrees to give Sebastian away to be with him. Sebastian goes to Earl who decides the cat is list-worthy due to having to give up contests over what Earl did. So, Earl spends his time getting the cat in shape, while Randy continues to woo Judy.

The cat does get in shape, but only places second. Judy falls hard for Randy, but he begins to realize she treats him just like a cat. So Earl gives back the cat and Judy gives Randy back to Earl. And all is right with the world.

The Untold Story (1993)

the untold story poster

Originally written and posted in October 2006.

Someday I really will get into the reasons I tend to watch really depraved, sick, twisted, and awfully gory flickery. For now, I’ll continue to review the nasties I watch. I’m not really all that sure how I even know about some of these films anymore. I think I heard about this one by hearing about some other film and then following various links of similar films to this one. Or maybe I looked up one film on IMDB.com and followed a thread about similar films. Either way I did hear of it, and heard it was one of the most violent, sickest films out there so of course, this demented gore-head had to watch.

I hesitate to call myself a demented gore-head because my mom might read this and then where would I be? In truth, I watch lots of other films, regular like without violence and gore, but there is something raw and carnal about twisted films that make me watch. There I go again trying to explain they why when I said that would have to wait until later.

Ultimately this film wasn’t quite as sick as everyone said. Sure there is plenty of gore and buckets of blood in this tale of a crazed serial killer who slaughters people with his butcher knife and sometimes serves them up as pork pies, but none of it is particularly realistic and therefore not as sick as it could be. The blood, the guts, the nastiness always looks fake, so you never get sucked into the gore too much. The reputation comes, me thinks, from a particularly brutal scene involving the slaughter of several small children. Movies tend to shy away from mass murder involving little ones and so this film seems particularly nasty, even though what is seen on camera isn’t that vicious.

Gore aside, what really lowers the level of this film is the portrayal of cops. All of the police trying to solve the crime are completely incompetent, inept, and stupid. In one of the opening scenes where we see some severed limbs wash ashore, the cops bicker, joke, and argue over who will investigate the appendages. In numerous scenes, the one detective with half a brain brings in a scantily clad hooker as his date while the other male cops oogle and ogle all over her. In the interrogation scenes, all of the cops are all too eager to brutally beat a confession out of the killer.

Anthony Wong does an excellent job playing the psychopath and he even manages to render a few moments of sympathy from the audience.

This is totally a low-grade movie made for gore heads looking for a little fake blood. Even there it never rises above its cult standing as the epitome of crazy exploitation.

You have been warned.

Random Shuffle (10/09/06) – The Chicks, Louis Armstrong, Trout Fishing in America, Robinella, Jim Lauderdale & Ralph Stanley

“Ready to Run” – The Chicks
From Fly

Risking the almighty wrath of Al Barger, I gotta say I kind of dig The Chicks. No, they are not the first thing I’m going to go for if my home catches fire, but there is something nice about a popular country act that writes some of their own songs and plays their own instruments. It is a bit heartwarming to see artists that still gravitate away from the synthetic sounds of your weekly Top 40 and towards something older, something earthy, something real.

“Ready to Run” is a bouncy, lovely little thing despite the Julia Roberts-themed video. It’s even got a pennywhistle giving it a bit of an Irish feel. The lyrics, about a woman running away from a serious commitment to simply have fun, epitomizes the typical outlooks the Chicks have demonstrated (at least in their music) throughout much of their careers.

Of course, in recent years the Chicks have been noticed more for their political views than for their musicianship. The complaints don’t seem to be about their actual views, but that they manage to actually have views at all (because hot girls who sing country tunes simply can not have political ideologies, and certainly not non-Republican ones.) It’s a shame too, because these Chicks can sing, play, and write a mean tune, and there ought to at least be someone paying attention to that.

“Tin Roof Blues” – Louis Armstrong
From 05/04/54

Whenever asked if I’m a jazz fan, I always answer in the negative. Not because I dislike the genre – for I have stacks of jazz records ranging from Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald to Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman – but because I know that anyone who asks that question is going to be serious about their jazz, and I just won’t be able to keep up.

Every jazz fan I’ve ever known is obsessed with the music. Remember the nerdy babysitter in Jerry Maguire? The one who gave Tom Cruise the jazz tape for his love session with Renée Zellweger. Well, I know guys who make him look like jazz lite. So, yeah, I like jazz, but I won’t say that I’m a fan.

Louis Armstrong is probably the most famous jazz musician, the one your average guy on the street can name, and rightfully so for he is also one of the most influential players the genre ever created. “Tin Roof Blues” is off of a bootleg that I have which is just perfect for those setting the mood nights when I’m feeling romantic and make a candlelight dinner for just me and the wife.

It is far away from the psychedelic free jazz and bop movements of David and Coleman, but hasn’t quite gotten into the schmaltzy fare Armstrong is famous for in songs like “Hello Dolly” and “What a Wonderful World.” This song has a nice bluesy swing going on that makes it perfect for looking deep into each other’s eyes over a roasted chicken and some nice wine.

“Lost In Her Lips” – Trout Fishing in America
From Truth is Stranger than Fishin’

Back in the freewheelin’ 90’s I, along with everybody else, got a copy of Napster (when it was free) and began downloading every song I could get my hands on (which wasn’t all that many because I was still on dial-up which put it at about 40 minutes per three-minute song.) Eventually, I got bored with searching for particular songs and began to search for more generic terms like “acoustic” or “live” or “awesome.” By doing this I found all kinds of songs I’d never heard of, and some that were rather good.

During this same period (maybe it was the early 2000s but who can remember?) I also began making mix-tapes for the woman who would become my wife. For what better way than to tell the girl I dug, that I dug her than with 90 minutes of excellent tunes? The problem was that after two or three of these tapes, I was running out of songs. Once again Napster and a few Google searches were providing me with new material to say I Love You without being overly sappy.

I found Trout Fishing in America and this song via one of those searches. The band is generally a goofy, kid kind of band, and while this song isn’t exactly not fitting with that description it manages a nice sentiment without falling into sap. Musically it is a pretty basic little number, but it’s got a nice string of lyrics that are both sweet and funny at the same time.

With lines like

“Lost in her lips, I’m getting lost in her lips,
And losing track of conversation.
If Lewis and Clark had just discovered these lips,
The expedition would have ended up in Mexico”

How can you not love this song?

All I’ve Given” – Robinella
From Solace for the Lonely

There is something quite magic about an unheard-of band and then watching them grow into success. I moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee back in 2000 and discovered Robinella and the CC String band through a friend. Robinella has a beautiful voice that is a mix of Ella Fitzgerald and Loretta Lynn. The string band played like a cross of Texas swing, and old-style country with a dash of something contemporary. Together they were like nothing you could hear on the radio.

I was thrilled when they signed with Sony to release their self-titled major label debut. It gave a professional mix to their wonderful sound. Unfortunately with their next record, Solace for the Lonely, they seemed to be leaving behind their old country charm for something more utterly contemporary. The string band is downplayed for electronic beats and a synthesized sound. Robinella’s voice sounds as lovely as ever, but it often gets lost in the mix.

“All I’ve Given” is driven by a funky bass line punctuated by vibrant electronic keys. Were it by another band I’d probably kind of dig it, but as is I only miss the band as I once knew them.

“She’s Looking at Me” – Jim Lauderdale and Ralph Stanley
From Lost in the Lonesome Pines

I picked this disk up from the library out of curiosity. Lauderdale I know solely through his work with Donna the Buffalo and Ralph Stanley is…well he’s freaking Ralph Stanley. So I figured this would have to be a good disk.

It is.

This is a classic style bluegrass song with lots of call and response and a chorus that layers the voice parts similar to the way The Band did it on “The Weight.” It’s great music, plain and simple with great country vocals backed by excellent pickin’. Lauderdale and Stanley are obviously having lots of fun, and it shows throughout the disk.

Bootleg Country: Otis Redding – 1967

Originally written on October 9, 2006.

Let’s put a few facts on the table. I am a middle-aged, middle-class, white male from the Midwestern United States. I’ve got no soul, I can’t jump, I can’t dance and I can’t get the blues. I don’t know the difference between hip-hop and rap, the blues from complaining, or soul music from Shinola.

What I do know is I love Otis Redding, and if it is soul that he sings, then I’ll spend my life wishing I had some.

Otis had a voice like silk pie. He could make a blind man see, the dead rise again, and a middle-class, middle-aged white guy shake it like he’s got a pair.

This particular bootleg is actually a mix of at least three separate venues all from 1967. As such the quality of each performance varies from simply super to less than stellar. It also contains a few songs played more than once. The result feels less than complete, a little like listening to rehearsal tapes for an album, but Otis displays enough overt energy in every song to make it well worth listening to.

It helps that his band is crackerjack. They swing, jump, and pop all over the place. With Otis keeping up every step of the way it is nothing short of a celebration of life, soul, and music.

Four songs into the disk he covers the Beatle’s classic “A Hard Days Night.” At first, it feels out of place, the music feels too heavy and dense. But in less than a minute, as by sheer force of will, Otis converts me to his side of things. He’s like a fire and brimstone preacher shouting to his minions that there is a better way, and it involves plenty of horns.

Even on slower songs like the tender “Pain in My Heart” the band cooks and lights a fire under the sentiment. It is not as soul-wrenching as what you’ll hear on studio albums, but it is impossible to complain as the beat moves you out of your seat and onto the dance floor.

In pieces, you can hear that’s just where the audience is – moving and grooving and shouting like the apocalypse has just announced the end of times, but first, there’s a party to attend. During “FA-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)” Otis turns the audience into part of the chorus and they blow him out of the park in terms of sheer volume. They are there to have a good time, and there ain’t nothing gonna stop them now.

The differing levels from venue to venue coupled with the pair of songs played twice mars the overall effect of this bootleg, but Otis Redding turns it all loose and more than makes up for the problems with performances that are out of this world.

With only a handful of available bootlegs out there for Otis Redding, this is definitely worth seeking out for collectors and fans of Otis and soul music itself.

The Office: Season 3, Episode 3 – “The Coup”

the office the coup

“Movie Monday” is an apparent office staple where the office watches thirty minutes of a movie each week. It started with some official training videos, morphed into random medical videos, and has now moved into such Hollywood fare as Varsity Blues.

Of course, Angela doesn’t approve, but everyone else seems to enjoy the half hour of non-work.

Jan comes in during the middle and breaks up the party, yelling at Michael for doing something so obviously non-productive. Angela takes this moment to decide Michael will run the office into the unemployment lines (possibly fueled by last week’s rumors that Stamford may be taking over the Straton branch. She corners Dwight in the break room and tells him that he deserves to run the office, not Michael.

Meanwhile, at the Stamford branch, the office plays Call of Duty religiously (ie while at work) and Jim sucks at it. This brings up some contention between the other members of the staff as they play on teams. Although it does bring a little flirtation from Karen.

Dwight secretly calls Jan and they meet at a restaurant. Dwight throws down on Michael, positions himself for a take-over, and seems to know way too much about Jan’s choice of clothes.

Jan calls Michael to inform him of the potential hostilities, and Michael uses this to pretend he has been demoted and that Dwight is now running the office. Dwight begins talking like a crazed dictator stating that only a few will remain in the office and makes a poorly conceived speech to the office prompting Jan to throw out this comment,

“I have this old vacuum that doesn’t work. Maybe if Dwight doesn’t work out we could make that the manager.”

Some new clothes are delivered to Pam that she ordered online and she gives a quick fashion show at lunch, but quickly puts back on her old sweater when Creed refuses to leave after obviously staring at her cleavage.

Eventually, Dwight insults Michaels’s car which causes him to blow the gag and let Dwight know he is still in charge. Dwight grovels and begs for his old job back and Michael agrees only after they “hug it out bitch.” Well and then Michael forces Dwight to wear a sign lettered “liar” and stand on a table.

My Name is Earl: Season 2, Episode 3 – “Sticks and Stones”

my name is earl sticks and stones

Originally posted on October 07, 2006.

I know, I know, I’m late on this. I was exhausted Thursday night and I forgot about it Friday. So I’ll use my notes and my lagging memory to give this week’s run down.

While holding down a lady at the motel for her face waxing Earl decides to cross off number ninety-one to the list, “made fun of Maggie Lester for having a mustache.” In the requisite flashback, we see Maggie introduced to the class for the first time and Earl makes your basic Tom Selleck, joke with “Maggie PI.”

Earl and Randy drive out to Shady Grove which is something of a freak town, housing many folks from a traveling sideshow – there’s the super tall guy, the fat lady, the super short guy, the guy with hands like lobsters, and of course the bearded lady who happens to be Maggie Lester.

Earl has a nice afternoon with Maggie who happens to be a very nice lady and she forgives him for making fun of her. Randy has a good time feeling her beard Yet as he is leaving they poke fun at the rest of the freaks and Earl realizes he can’t take Maggie off the list until he learns not to make fun of people for their differences.

So, the freaks have a barbeque and Earl learns that they are all good people.

In the funniest joke of the night, Randy asks the guy with a giant horn on his head if he’s able to take his head on a plane. Horn head guy replies no, not since 9-11, but that they are all doing what they can.

In celebration of his new friends, Earl tries to take them all out for ice cream, but they refuse for they would be made fun of outside their comfort zone. Earl thinks that’s silly, but then remembers a time he was made fun of for being different – when he was young he couldn’t jump off the high dive because of his freakishly hairy nipples.

Earl confronts the coach who made him take off his shirt only to be told (and held to the ground by an ear pinch) that the coach did it to him so that he’d learn to appreciate his differences.

Earl gains confidence and decides to jump off the diving board, and invites all his freak friends to watch. They are at first hesitant, but eventually show up and everybody decides to jump in. Earl’s story concludes by showing all the freaks took on real jobs and are happy.

The Joy side plot revolves around her meeting her deaf lawyer and not being willing to accept her as a lawyer. There were some good gags over Joy being so politically incorrect to an obviously intelligent lawyer (played with usual aplomb by Marlee Martin). When Joy finally sucks it up and apologizes to the lawyer, she winds up laughing in her face over the way she talks.

Overall a good episode, but nothing spectacular. I am beginning to think that I would probably not watch the show that often it changed schedules and no longer be the lead into The Office.

Doom (2005)

doom movie poster

One of my oldest and dearest friends and I had our first bonding moments while playing Doom. It was freshman year of college and another buddy of mine had Doom and the Doom-like Heretic on his computer. For reasons I won’t get into I had a key to this friend’s dorm room and used to sneak over to play while he was at work. The guy next door, Jamison, would then pop his head in and seeing what I was doing, would start playing when my turn was up. Many weekends were spent just like that, and through those games we became friends.

I suppose it is a pretty typical man thing to bond over playing games that focus on big guns and blood baths, but there we have it.

A movie based on the game was destined to be bad. Hollywood has a horrible record of converting games to films, and games are inherently difficult to map out into a two-hour piece of celluloid. Games are often low on plot, and give the players control over behavior. And for some dumb reasons, Hollywood producers can’t seem to grasp the things that make games so much fun in the first place.

In the film, the demon creatures are no longer from the depths of Hell but are genetic mutations created in a lab on Mars. It seems the scientists discovered ancient bones of Martian creatures with 24 chromosomes instead of the typical humanoid 23. Being dumb scientists they decide to inject humans with an extra chromosome to make them “super” and instead make them crazy mutant killers. (and yes that was a spoiler, but with a movie this dumb you’ll forgive me instantly.)

In the game, the scientists accidentally opened a portal to Hell while creating transport portals like in Star Trek. There is absolutely no reason to remove that part from the movie except that some screenwriter thought including a portal to Hell was too unbelievable and would hurt sales. Instead, we get this dumb mutant plot which is just as stupid and manage to alienate fans of the game in the process.

There is also more backstory than we need and a ridiculous subplot involving one of the marines and his sister who happens to be one of the scientists. It would have been so easy to use the game’s back story in a quick voice-over or title sequence and then dropped us straight into our marine killing demons. It could have been a great hour and a half of killer action and suspenseful horror. It wouldn’t have been great art, but it would have pleased fans and made more money. Instead, we get a big ball of stupid crap.

The one supposed redeeming moment is when the camera moves into first-person mode just like in the game, but even this looked mostly stupid. It looked too much like the game, actually, and ruined it. In the game, it was fun to not be able to see around corners only to turn them and find a bad guy lurking, but in a film, it was just kind of silly.

So, leave the movie at Blockbuster and download the game to relive those college memories

Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)

manhatan murder mystery

Originally written and posted on October 5, 2006.

I’ve been watching Woody Allen films lately and I don’t know how I missed so many of them. I mean how could I be thirty years old and never seen half of his oeuvre? I just don’t get it…I mean I used to watch his films on the USA network when I was a kid – Bananas (1971), Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask (1972), that one about the guy who takes a nap and wakes up a hundred years later and there’s no sex, and I loved them all. I used to stay up late and watch them with my dad. Then I just stopped. I mean I did watch Annie Hall (1977) of course, but so many others…I don’t know…they just slipped by. I think it was watching Deconstructing Harry (1997) that did it. That one…I don’t know it felt like an old man making dirty jokes for two hours…it sounded so good in the magazines, but…I don’t know I couldn’t take it. And then I decided I had seen all the Woody Allen I wanted to see. But now, lately, I’ve been watching the rest, and I can’t believe I ever stopped.

(So that was my written Woody Allen impression. It’s funny, maybe.)

Manhattan Murder Mystery isn’t top-notch Woody Allen, but it’s pretty stinking good. It is basically your classic murder mystery premise with Woody Allen jokes.

Woody plays Larry who is married to Diane Keaton who plays Carol. They live in Manhattan (and I know this sounds pretty much like every Woody Allen movie, but stay with me) and their kindly old neighbor dies. Carol is almost immediately suspicious because the dead woman’s husband, Paul (Jerry Adler),  is too chipper too quickly after the death of his spouse.

Carol enlists her friend Ted (Alan Alda) for the conspiracy while Larry thinks they are both nuts. Carol and Ted get deeper and deeper into trying to see how Paul could have done it and eventually (of course) realize that their little game has more truth to it than they could imagine. Soon everybody is knee-deep in a real death plot and must find a way to not only catch a crook, but stay alive as well.

The plot could have easily been lifted from Agatha Christie or Nancy Drew or any other of the millions of murder mystery writers. There is nothing original in the idea, but Woody Allen pulls it off masterfully, mixing the comedy and mystery in equal parts all in breezy, completely enjoyable way.

It may not be his best work, but it sure is fun to watch.

Lost: Season 3, Episode 1 – A Tale of Two Cities

lost a tale of two cities I have been anticipating tonight since the season two finale ended. I haven’t been this excited about TV since … well, ever. The season three premiere of Lost was like some crazy primitive religious rite. Fans and friends have been hyping it up for months. I was literally shaking with anticipation.

And then it began.

There are people in a house discussing a book. Who are these people? This must be a flashback. I had heard the new season was going to focus on The Others, so maybe this is a flashback to one of their early lives. The discussion gets heated and then there is something. An earthquake.

The house shakes; the people move close together, near support beams. The shaking stops and they run outside. It is a lovely looking place, with bright sun, and blue skies, like the suburbs of paradise. Then someone, a worker or someone, pops out from underneath something. Is that Ethan?

Holy crap it is. This must be Ethan’s back story. But no, there’s Henry Gale. This must be the aftermath of the explosion from the end of last season. What’s that in the sky? It is a plane — crashing.

It’s Flight 815; we’re seeing the crash from The Others’ point of view. Immediately Gale orders The Others to investigate and specifically tells Ethan to pretend he is a survivor.

Bam, commercial. Wow! That’s all I can say. Even my wife is impressed and she has totally lost her Lost momentum this summer.

After the break, we see what The Others have done to Kate, Sawyer, and Jack. Kate is in a large cinder block building with Zeke telling her to take a shower. She is defiant as ever but does take the shower only to find her clothes missing and a new girly dress in its place.

Sawyer awakes in a cage. It looks like something out of a whacky circus and there is an unknown man in the next cage. Sawyer uses his usual charm to question the man but gets nothing but silence in return. Amongst a variety of odd gadgets located in the cage, Sawyer spies one marked with a fork and knife. Pushing it, he gets only a warning. Pushing it again, the strange man warns him not to do it again. Sawyer does and is electrocuted.

Jack awakens in a small windowless room with one wall made out of a strong invisible plexiglass-type substance.

Commercial number two, WTF? We’re 14 minutes in and already at commercial number two! Last season was bad enough with commercials every 10 minutes, now we’re down to seven? Those bastard network executives.

After the break, we’re back to Jack and now he’s pulling on some chain trying to escape. A woman enters and offers him food. Jack refuses, playing the strong, stubborn Gandhi.

Kate is taken to the beach where she has breakfast with Henry Gale who tells her he wants her to have a pleasant memory because the next two weeks are going to be very unpleasant.

The unknown man in the cage next to Sawyer breaks free and lets Sawyer out. They run but are quickly captured by the woman who has been talking to Jack. Zeke makes the other escapee apologize to Sawyer before being taken back.

Eventually, Sawyer manages to figure out the series of levers to push and the food button now releases a doggie bone (with the word Dharma on it) and some more dry food, plus a stream of water. While eating, Kate is brought to the now-empty adjacent cage. Sawyer, obviously moved to see Kate plays it straight and is kind to her. He even tosses over his doggie bone for food.

Meanwhile, Jack finally gives in and accepts the food offered by the woman. She forces him to sit in the corner so that she can open the door and bring the food. As she opens the door, Jack runs for her and manages to subdue her with a sharp object. They leave the room only to find more doorways. Stopping at one Jack tells the woman to open it.

She refuses saying she’ll die if she does. Henry Gale comes in stating she’s right. Jack doesn’t listen and opens the door. Immediately, a flood of water pores in. Gale closes an escape door in the woman’s face letting her and Jack fend for themselves. They escape by pressing an emergency button and the woman knocks Jack unconscious.

I should mention the flashbacks for this episode involved Jack and his ex-wife. It is during the moments when she has filed for divorce and Jack realizes she has found someone else. Jack has gone crazy with jealousy and begins doing things to find out who this man is – calling all the numbers on her cell phone, berating her about it and even accusing his father of knowing something, if not being that man.

Once things are cleaned up from the water, the woman begins telling Jack she knows everything about him. She begins telling him all kinds of things she shouldn’t and couldn’t know by simply paying attention to him on the island. Jack asks her about his ex-wife and is told she is happy. Then, Jack finally fully accepts submission and food. As the woman is about to enter, Henry Gale tells her she’s doing a good job and we fade to black.

It was a great episode. Lots of good emotional pull with the back story, a great introduction to new mysteries involving The Others and what exactly they are doing, and plenty of ‘Oh My Gosh’ moments. I do kind of wish they had spent a few moments with our friends on the other side of the island, but the teaser for next week showed we’ll be seeing plenty of them.

Strangely, though I immensely enjoyed the episode, I feel a little letdown. It is probably the down from a big high, but it feels strange knowing what happened after so many months of speculation.

No worry though; I’ll be back up next week when episode two airs.