Finales Finale

There you have it, the last of the finales for this season. Sure, there are a few shows coming up this summer -- The 4400, The Dead Zone, Six Feet Under, Battlestar Galactica -- but for now, things are pretty much on a break.

I have so many disjointed thoughts about tonight's Lost and Alias, I've decided the "fragments" presentation that's been so popular lately would be most appropriate.

The "Previously on Lost" clips package seemed unnecessarily thorough. It basically started with "once upon a time, there was a plane crash," and ran for like 3 or 4 minutes. If you haven't watched the show by now, maybe this isn't the episode you should be starting with. DVDs are coming in just a few months.

Best exchange of the night --
Hurley: "How did this happen?"
Rousseau: "Are you on the same island as I am?"

Exploding Arzt! (And I was pleased to later see Hurley make the "you've got some Arzt on you" reference I myself was making already.) Of course, he should have known better than to be "the new guy" going off with the gang of five established characters. He had everything but the Red Shirt.

Locke asks Jack if he's ever played Operation. He's pretty much moved onto the real thing.

Walt's GameBoy makes Donkey Kong and Atari 2600 Pac-Man noises.

You'd think they'd be more careful about carrying around those backpacks and the torches after what happened to Arzt. (Again, leave it to Hurley to later say what I was thinking.)

Dominic Monaghan is gonna have to spend the rest of the series getting a makeup scar applied to his forehead now.

The sheer number of 4s, 8s, 15s, 16s, 23s, and 42s in Hurley's flashback sequence was staggering. The dashboard readout on his rental was pretty cool, but the soccer uniforms took top prize.

If I was the gate agent, I would not be very happy about Huge Sweaty Guy giving me a hug after I let him on the plane.

The sound of the radar blips during the raft scenes sounded an awful lot like the noise we get when the local affiliate crushes up the screen to run weather advisories across the bottom. We've been getting those a lot this May. Very distracting.

No, Walt! Don't let them take you! Quick, think of polar bears or something!

Come on, you didn't seriously think they were going to show us what was inside the hatch yet, did you?

And as for Alias...

Look, it's that guy that was in the season premiere for like 10 minutes. What an odd, obscure character to bring back for another short 5 minutes, ending in untimely death. Of course, he's part of the J.J. Abrams Repertory Company -- he used to be on Felicity.

Ooo, look, Zombie Apocalypse #647! (Well, it's new to Alias, but still... seen it.)

I don't understand the point of Jack picking up the cell phone and the whole "Leonid is dead" beat. I thought for sure it would pay off later in the episode, but nope. Was it supposed to make Jack look sympathetic somehow? Has he really been such a jerk lately that he needed softening up? I thought his behavior in past seasons was far darker.

Hmmm. Zombie Nadia looks like she's possessed by the Kosst Amojan.

If it takes as long for Irina Derevko to reappear next time as it did this time, we might not see her again before the show is cancelled. That makes me sad.

Is it wrong of me to be rooting for Nadia not to come back next season? She's not as obnoxious as pre-evil Lauren Reed, but still, I think the show would improve without her.

Ugh. Santa Barbara gets the "destination title card" treatment. Kyle will never let me hear the end of this.

Holy crap! Big surprise car crash! Reminds me a bit of the first episode of Six Feet Under, but still -- totally shocking. Of course, that's what Vaughn gets for driving like he's on a TV show, looking at the passenger instead of the road.

I sure hope Vaughn's "big secret" is better than what Sydney ended up finding in the box following last year's cliffhanger. That was a big, fat letdown.

See you in September, you Bad Robot, you.