The Strange World of Thomas P. Coombe

LOST: My Boy Was Just Like Me

 On the surface, the "sideways" stories this season on Lost have been much less flashy when compared to what's going on back at the island. 

 "Locke looks for a new job" can't really compete with "UnLocke reveals one of the island's biggest secrets."

 Yet it's been enjoyable to watch these stories for what they offer: a chance to see other versions of the characters take -- and ultimately pass-- tests that their island selves had failed.

 Unfortunately, the chance to see John Locke -- a man doomed by his inability to accept his own limitations on the island -- come to terms with his paralysis and lead a happy life last week set the bar kind of high for this week's episode. And Jack's "Cats in the Cradle" story just couldn't compete.

Damages: A Very Merry Unbirthday

 One of the things I like about Damages is the way the show picks its episode titles from lines of   dialogue. Sometimes it will come from a scene that's key to the overall story, other times, it will be something crucial from a thematic or storytelling point of view.

 Tonight's was "It's Not My Birthday," a reference to something Patty Hewes says to several characters who wish her a happy one. Maybe she just doesn't believe in celebrating it until the day actually arrives, or maybe it's the unsettling dream she's been having involving a horse in her apartment and her beloved Uncle Pete, her late fixer/confidant. 

 For a show grounded in cold hard reality and concerned far more with story than with character, Damages does dream sequences well. Not as good as The Sopranos, but they're always pretty effective, even if the show's creators apparently frown on using them.

  

Big Love: Bill and Ben's Mexican Adventure

 After watching an episode like "Blood Atonement," it's easy to see why some critics are accusing Big Love of shark-jumping lately.

 Of course, that article mentions things that have already happened this season -- new actors replacing old characters, a surprise wedding, a previously unheard of child -- and is fairly complimentary of the show.

 And with a cast this strong, and writers this good, it's easy to forgive things like that.

 It's harder, however, to forgive how busy the show has become, and even more difficult to overlook an episode like the one that aired last night. 

 Gun play, arms getting hacked off and Jack Bauer-style rescues are all things that have no place on this show. And they were all elements of this episode's main storyline, which therefore felt cartoonish and distracting.

LOST: He's Got Your Number

  Much like the season premiere, "The Substitute" tempted me to simply fill this space with "Terry O'Quinn rocks!" over and over again and call it a night.

 For nearly six seasons now, Locke has been the best character on a show full of great characters, and it was always a joy to watch O'Quinn portray him:  his hope that he was made for something greater, his frustration at realizing he'd been had.

 Now, in the show's final season, he has an even more interesting job: playing a new version of Locke who accepts his limitations and seems much happier for it, as well as the entity pretending to be John Locke: a powerful force, unlike Locke, never seems scared or doubtful.

And the contrast between those two characters, and the way the episode balanced mythology and character -- the way the best Losts do -- made it one of the series' better hours.

Damages: Down the Hatch

 For a guy whose crime forms this year's main Damages story, Louis Tobin didn't get a lot to do in the first three episodes of the season.

 He showed up in a few scenes in the first two episodes -- and then not at all last week -- and what we saw of him was a weak, apologetic man. You almost didn't want him to go to jail, and you felt sort of bad when his son Joe would show up to yell at him.

 Now tonight's Louis Tobin? 

 Yeah, this is a guy who could pull off a massive investment fraud and not think twice about it, very commanding and calculating.

Big Love: Father of Lies

  Dear lord, how many different kinds of creepy was this episode?

 As Bill and the wives all struggle to create something of a normal life for themselves, "Under One Roof" reminds us how futile these dreams might actually be by showing us all sorts of unpleasant if not flat-out horrific stuff circling around them.

 It was an episode that was even more overstuffed than its predecessors have been this season, but it was one that I thought worked a lot better than previous weeks, thanks in part to some excellent work by Chloe Sevigny, as well as by Matt Ross and Ben Koldyke as doomed lovers Alby and Dale

The Office: Meet the New Bosses

 They could've done a lot more with this premise.

 Don't get me wrong, Kathy Bates has been great in her limited amount of screen time, not so much a foil for Michael Scott -- the way Idris Elba's Charles Miner was last year -- as a force of nature. 

Where Miner was a buttoned-down company man (and a character who might not have worked without an actor of Elba's intensity), Bates' Jo Bennett is larger than life. She's also not someone who seems to care all that much about who does what job at Dunder Mifflin -- or what questions the employees might have for her -- as long as it's done her way.

A Snow Day Quiz: Whedonverse Demon or Prescription Drug?

 It's a slower day here than usual, and if you're reading this from anywhere in the mid-Atlantic, chances are you're stuck inside with not a lot to do. Why not pass the time by taking a goofy and meaningless quiz, one I came up with awhile back at the old blog.

Six of these names are medicines manufactured by major drug companies. The other six are supernatural characters that have appeared on Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Can you pick which is which? (Answers on the next page)

1. Flagyl

2. Lasovic

3. Zocar

4. Acathla

5. Lurconis

6.  Januvia

7. Halfrek

8. Gardasil

9. Nardil

10. Vyasa

11. Illyria

12. Cozaar

LOST: Paging Dr. Goodspeed...

  In preparation for tonight's episode, I went back and watched two earlier Kate-centric Lost outings: the first season's "Tabula Rasa" and the second's "What Kate Did."

 Now "What Kate Did" isn't a bad episode. As its title suggests, it answers the big question about Ms. Austen, and it has a very cool scene between Locke and Mr. Eko, in which Eko tells a sort of parable -- interestingly enough -- about "rebuilding a temple."

 But "Tabula Rasa"? That's great stuff. It doesn't dwell too much on Kate and Kate alone, but rather how she connects to the other characters, while still telling us a lot of what we need to know about her. 

 She's "born to run," as the title of another episode would tell us one day, but her fear of being caught/tied down never allows her to completely abandon her humanity. She saves the farmer who's turned her in from a burning car -- sure, she had caused it to crash -- and makes sure the marshall has his oxygen mask on as the plane starts to go down. 

 Plus, the episode managed to spend a little time with pretty much all of the characters, and established how cool Locke is/was by having him carve a working dog whistle to track down Vincent. 

 It set a standard that all future Kate episodes really failed to live up to, including tonight's installment, "What Kate Does."

 Still, this one came pretty close, although it lacked a lot of the zing of last week's premiere. But with the end of the season this close, the show can't afford to waste a lot of time, which meant the episode moved the island story forward while bringing us back to the other reality for some interesting, puzzling glimpses of what might have been. More on that -- and that means spoilers -- coming up.

Damages: On The Rocks

 With its third episode of the season, Damages tossed out its usual time-jumps and went with an episode that took place over the course of a single evening. The result was a really tight, effective detective story that really only had one weak spot: the Let's Shoehorn Rose Byrne Back Into the Story subplot.

 Last season, Byrne's Ellen Parsons could have been written out of the show. She's not a bad actress, but there really wasn't anything for her character to do once she left Patty Hewes' firm. As season three began, Ellen was working for the DA's office, but not on a case that had anything to do with Patty.

 That meant in the first two episodes, we had scenes of the characters reaching out to each other: Patty does a favor for Ellen, Ellen tells her it's not necessary, Ellen does a favor for Patty. 

 It could only go on like that for so long, which is why the show reintroduced Ellen's family tonight, to help usher her back behind the walls of Hewes & Shayes.