The J.J. Entertainment Block

A pretty solid two hours of entertainment tonight from J.J. Abrams and Co. Some moments that jumped out at me:

On Lost, it was a very nice flourish at the end of the Sayid's backstory that he delayed his return to LA for a day to claim his friend's body, and consequently ended up on the doomed Oceanic flight.

Sawyer's scenes, though a bit of a re-tread of the classic "crying baby" cliche, were still pretty damn funny.

I think the writers made a serious mistake letting Charlie refer to the baby as Turnip-Head. Cause I don't know about you, but I think I'm probably always going to call him Turnip-Head forever, no matter what Claire ends up naming him. (What do you think the odds are she goes with "Boone?")

On Alias, I found the "dressing up as Evil Mom" to be a fairly compelling plot. I still want to know what happened to Arvin Clone, though.

Michael Vartan has a very asymmetrical face. Every now and then, directors reverse camera angles in editing, or deliberately choose to shoot into mirrors as they did tonight while Sydney was preparing to portray her mother. With some actors, you can't tell the difference. But our agent Vaughn looked just wrong. (Jennifer Garner, however -- perfect as always.)

I'm always amused to see what sort of "cover up" the props department on a TV show will use to conceal the Apple logo on the cover of a laptop computer. On this week's Alias, it was a big red dot. Dots of various colors seem to be the popular choice -- I see them on most shows. But my favorite cover up ever was in an episode of Angel where a Post-It Note was stuck on the top of Cordelia's laptop. Nothing written on it. Just stuck there.