Damon Lindelof On The Writers Strike

On November 11 Damon Lindelof, writer and producer of Lost, wrote an excellent article which was published in the New York Times.

Los Angeles TELEVISION is dying. I should have realized this four years ago when I first got my TiVo box, but denial is always the first stage of grief. I simply couldn’t acknowledge that this wonderful invention heralded the beginning of the end. TiVo stores your favorite movies and shows on its hard drive, allowing you to pull up last night’s episode of “The Daily Show” as easily as you click open documents on your laptop. In fact, once you download the original broadcast — sorry, I meant to say “record” it — you can watch it at your leisure. The next morning. Next year. Your call. Because now? You own that episode. Best of all, you got it free. Television has always been free. Sure, if you want all the N.F.L. games in high definition, you have to pay the piper, but the broadcast networks still offer their entire schedules for absolutely nothing. The only catch, of course, is that you have to watch commercials. Economically, it’s a fair deal. The network pays for the shows, gives them to viewers, and makes its cash back through advertising. Which regrettably brings us to the most wonderful thing TiVo does: It enables you to ignore the commercials that keep the whole system running. Twenty percent of American homes now contain hard drives that store movies and television shows indefinitely and allows you to fast-forward through commercials. These devices will probably proliferate at a significant rate and soon, almost everyone will have them. They’ll also get smaller and smaller, rendering the box that holds them obsolete, and the rectangular screen in your living room won’t really be a television anymore, it’ll be a computer. And running into the back of that computer, the wire that delivers unto you everything you watch? It won’t be cable; it will be the Internet. This probably sounds exciting if you’re a TV viewer, but if you’re in the business of producing these shows, it’s nothing short of terrifying. This is how vaudevillians must have felt the first time they saw a silent movie; sitting there, suddenly realizing they just became extinct: after all, who wants another soft-shoe number when you can see Harold Lloyd hanging off a clock 50 feet tall? Change always provokes fear, but I’d once believed that the death of our beloved television would unify all those affected, talent and studios, creators and suits. We’re all afraid and we’d all be afraid together. Instead we find ourselves so deeply divided. The Writers Guild of America (of which I am a proud member) has gone on strike. I have spent the past week on the picket line outside Walt Disney Studios, my employer, chanting slogans and trudging slowly across the crosswalk. The motivation for this drastic action — and a strike is drastic, a fact I grow more aware of every passing day — is the guild’s desire for a portion of revenues derived from the Internet. This is nothing new: for more than 50 years, writers have been entitled to a small cut of the studios’ profits from the reuse of our shows or movies; whenever something we created ends up in syndication or is sold on DVD, we receive royalties. But the studios refuse to apply the same rules to the Internet. My show, “Lost,” has been streamed hundreds of millions of times since it was made available on ABC’s Web site. The downloads require the viewer to first watch an advertisement, from which the network obviously generates some income. The writers of the episodes get nothing. We’re also a hit on iTunes (where shows are sold for $1.99 each). Again, we get nothing. If this strike lasts longer than three months, an entire season of television will end this December. No dramas. No comedies. No “Daily Show.” The strike will also prevent any pilots from being shot in the spring, so even if the strike is settled by then, you won’t see any new shows until the following January. As in 2009. Both the guild and the studios we are negotiating with do agree on one thing: this situation would be brutal. I will probably be dragged through the streets and burned in effigy if fans have to wait another year for “Lost” to come back. And who could blame them? Public sentiment may have swung toward the guild for now, but once the viewing audience has spent a month or so subsisting on “America’s Next Hottest Cop” and “Celebrity Eating Contest,” I have little doubt that the tide will turn against us. Which brings me to the second stage of grief: anger. I am angry because I am accused of being greedy by studios that are being greedy. I am angry because my greed is fair and reasonable: if money is made off of my product through the Internet, then I am entitled to a small piece. The studios’ greed, on the other hand, is hidden behind cynical, disingenuous claims that they make nothing on the Web — that the streaming and downloading of our shows is purely “promotional.” Seriously? Most of all, I’m angry that I’m not working. Not working means not getting paid. My weekly salary is considerably more than the small percentage of Internet gains we are hoping to make in this negotiation and if I’m on the picket line for just three months, I will never recoup those losses, no matter what deal gets made. But I am willing to hold firm for considerably longer than three months because this is a fight for the livelihoods of a future generation of writers, whose work will never “air,” but instead be streamed, beamed or zapped onto a tiny chip. Things have gotten ugly and the lines of communication have broken down completely between the guild and the studios. Perhaps it’s not too late, though, for both sides to rally around the one thing we still have in common: our mourning for the way things used to be. Instead of fighting each other, maybe we should be throwing a wake for our beloved TV. Because the third stage of grief is bargaining. And bargain we must, because when television finally passes on, there will still be entertainment; there will still be shows and films and videos, right there on a screen in your living room. And just as the owners of vaudeville theaters broke down and bought hand-crank movie cameras, the studios will figure out a way to make absurd amounts of money off of whatever is beaming onto whichever sort of screen. And we’ll still be writing every word. Damon Lindelof is the co-creator and head writer of the television series “Lost.”

Heroes 209

Well, I come to you after another installment of Heroes Season 2. This epidose has finally picked up the pace a little bit and is proving to be far more interesting that it's predecessors. Suresh gets more annoying by the day though. Bennett should have put a bullet in him when he had the chance. Oh, well.

This episode surrounds mostly Hiro and his family as he tries to save his father but realizes that it is not his place to change history any more. He is starting to fall more into the Hero category while Matt Parkman seems to contrast Hiro and is actually turning to the dark side a little bit. He uses his power to pull information from an unwilling but helpless Angela Petrelli. The Women's name he was looking for is Victoria Pratt (He had it written on the photograph at the end of the episode). Who could she be????

Kaito Nakamura, Hiro's father, is eventually killed by the end of the episode after Hiro decides to let him go. Hiro stops time and finds that it is Adam (Kensei) who is the murderer which fulfills the promise that he made to Hiro 400 years ago when he said, "I will destroy everything that you hold dear!"

Of course another aspect of this episode is Noah trying to save his family and Bob and Elle trying to take Claire. At the end during the exchange when Bennett gets shot, It almost seems as if Bob looks a little sad. He then of course uses Claire's blood to heal him. It will be interesting to see how this story pans out. Elle may even turn against her father. Oh, and by the way, at the end of the episode why did Bob sit in the passenger seat letting his daughter drive when she had just been shot in the arm? The least he can do is drive! Geeezz! I guess she was perhaps already healed by Claire's blood at that point.

Heroes 208, "3 Months Earlier"

Ok Guys, I spent the last 3 days redoing the website so I did not have time to blog on Heroes this week. I did watch the episode and did like it better than the last few but there were some noticeable flaws. Instead of giving my own rant I am going to quote a post from a forum that Brian came across and pretty much sums up the whole thing. I would give the guy credit but have no idea who wrote it.

"Okay, I've been watching this show since day one last year. I've read all the magazines, all the interviews. I've read stuff where Kring is talking about how he understands television and how guys like Loeb and the comic brains understand superpowers. I've read interviews (see Wired, May 2007) where Kring is going on about how he and the writers have story ideas for two, three seasons down the road. And I felt overjoyed. I had faith. But this season has been a phenomenally trying on someone who has gotten used to suspending disbelief in the comic book side of things while being absolutely in awe of how these characters behave and interact and something has gone seriously wrong. This ep, Four months ago, finally made me understand clearly how Heroes has lost its way. On the surface this ep is very flashy. We were dying to know how people ended up the way they were, dying to see how all the little parts of these people lives unraveled after they were tied together in Kirby Plaza. Parkman's wife, why Nathan kept seeing his face disfigured, where his family went, what happened to the election, how they explained the nuclear fireworks, SYLAR, DL, Hiro, the Nightmare man, the Haitian, Claire and probably above all, Peter and where he goes from here. Does he embrace being a hero or does he live in seclusion like a hermit in the mountains? And this ep told us and showed us most of what we were dying to know. But there are 5 MASSIVE things that they did in this episode that I'm having a very hard time forgiving and I love this show, and I'm praying that someone can tell me I'm taking this too seriously or looking too much into things. So if you have an answer to any of these question please respond: in increasing levels of incredulity 1) Nathan Petrelli telling his wife this fantastic story about how the last season of Heroes went down without a shred of proof. This guy's a politician for Christ's sake. He's going to tell someone a story like that without anything to back it up and expect them to believe that he can fly WIITHOUT GIVING A DEMONSTRATION. That's how he lost his family!?! Nathan is supposed to be shrewd and intelligent; he'd never do something so unbelievably stupid. 2) Peter leaving Nathan's side after taking him to the hospital. Did I miss something? I thought that I left the room for a second and missed another nuclear explosion. Because that's what it would have taken to take Peter away from his CRITICALLY IRRADIATED BROTHER WHO JUST FLEW INTO THE CLOUDS WITH HIM AND PROMISED NEVER TO LEAVE HIM. That was such a beautiful moment, that kind of hardcore courage, and Peter drops him off at the ER, sees a rent-a-cop eyeing him funny,...AND BAILS!!!!! YOU'RE BROTHER IS DYING IN THE OTHER ROOM!!!! And BTW, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU RUNNING FROM? DID YOU JAYWALK OR SOMETHING? Peter's not a coward, he'd never do that. 3) Peter Petrelli asking this guy that he's never met how to get out of a room with a door and windows. Okay guys, pop quiz: You're Peter Petrelli. You KNOW that you can a) move objects with your mind fly c) pass through objects d) punch a guy's jaw off e) stop time f) teleport and g) turn invisible provided you stop taking you tablets. Would anyone reading this wonder how to get out of a room with a door and windows? And by the way, how the hell did they find Peter in the first place? They didn't have Molly Walker, did they? But Bob and Elle know what hospital he's taking his brother to, what corridor he's walking down, and when he's going to stop being INVISIBLE!! Did anyone see IR goggles like when HRG and the Haitian went after Peter and Claude? Nope, not gonna explain that... 4) DL Hawkins, an evolved human with the ability to pass through matter, being shot twice in the span of 4 months. Maybe he's just unlucky. But to have us think that he died from being shot by Linderman (at the beginning of the season), only to have him recover, in order to die the EXACT SAME WAY in a club in LA. When exactly did these writers go on strike? If they wanted him off the show so badly, why did they bring him back, just to throw him out AGAIN THE EXACT SAME WAY! So that Niki will feel guilty for what she's done? She didn't feel guilty already?!? Killing him the SAME STUPID WAY, not saving his wife's life, not doing something heroic, doesn't that seem like just good old fashion lazy writing to you guys!? This show is supposed to be defined by imagination... 5) and I realize this may just mean I'm a fanatic. I just have watched the episodes too much. But I remember a pretty important scene last season where Peter's trying to get training for his powers from this Invisible Man. And Isaac Mendez rats him out and the Invisible man bails. And Peter's thinking 'I'm going to go nuclear and kill millions of people and this guy's trying to kill me over a girl' (Simone Deveaux). So he goes over there and he's so ****** off he's about to rip Isaac's head off. He throws him across the room, roughs him up and if Isaac didn't go and shoot Simone, one of them would have probably killed the other. So Peter was pretty worked up over this 'I'm going to kill millions of people' thing... Then Bob and Elle capture him and he wakes up in a room. And he says I know you Bob, you know my parents. And Bob says were going to help you and get rid of those powers so you don't go 'nuking half the eastern seaboard'. Peter asks how. And Elle says we're doing it right now. Peter tries to use his powers. They're gone. How did you do that? Oh this guy behind you, the Haitian, he can nullify your powers. So Peter almost went mad trying not to kill everyone he loves. Then he almost killed everyone he loves. Then he almost killed his brother saving everyone he loves. He scared, he's on the run. He wakes up powerless. This Haitian guy could have stopped everything, EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING THAT HE'D BEEN MOST AFRAID OF HIS WHOLE LIFE - NUCLEAR ARMAGGEDON, THE END OF THE WORLD, MILLIONS OF DEATHS. AND HE DOESN'T EVEN SO MUCH AS ASK WHY THEY DIDN'T COME FOR HIM BEFORE HE WENT NUCLEAR!! If Bob said they knew he was having problems with his powers and we had a guy that could have solved all that and we just didn't bring him by, PETER WOULD HAVE GONE BALLISTIC! WHY HAVE I BEEN TORTURING MYSELF, AND FIGHTING SYLAR TO THE DEATH, AND ASKING CLAIRE TO SHOOT ME IN THE HEAD IF YOU HAD A GUY WHO COULD HAVE STOOD NEXT TO ME AND MADE ALL THIS CRAP GO AWAY!?! Or better yet, why don't you let me absorb the Haitian's power so I could turn my powers off myself? Instead Peter's sitting in this room surrounded by people he doesn't know, powerless...AND HE TRUSTS THEM?!? That whole scene was just so empty. It felt like there was a millions questions he should have asked (like why did you shock me unconscious instead of just offering to help me) and he just went along with it. What about Sylar? Did you see him die? What if he still feels like going nuclear? What about your freaking mentor, Hiro Nakamura, the man that told you to 'Save the Cheerleader, Save the World?", the man who put you on the path? Did Peter spare one thought for either of them while he's telling his new best friend Bob, "Take my powers away. I don't care." Is this guy a hero or not?!? Did none of this bother anybody? Are we really just okay with the way all this went down? The Haitian does Peter a favor by WIPING HIS MIND CLEAN!! If he does that to his friends, what does he do to his enemies? I'm sorry this post is so long. But I need to know what serious Heroes fans think of this!!"

Next week I promise I will do a review of the episode. See you then!!!!!

Lost: Missing Pieces, "The Watch"

Well, today we got our first taste of LOST in quite a while.  After hearing that there could be possible delays because of the strike, this became even more delectable.  Well, when watching the mobisodes, you may notice the quality does not match that of LOST.  True, they seem to be shot on digital video as opposed to super 35mm film and the editing and sound does not match that of the show.  However, you have to remember they are doing this as a little side project.

In this episode, we open with a shot of Jack tossing rocks into the ocean which makes you almost think he is on the Island(except he is wearing slacks and a nice shirt) until the camera pans and you see many sun bathers and beach goers.  Jacks father, Christian Shepherd, walks up and asks him how he is doing.  He goes on to explain that it was either toss rocks into the ocean or help decorate for the wedding.  As they stand outside, just hours before Jack is to wed  Sarah, his father gives him a memento.  He explains that this watch was given to him by his father on his wedding day but that he never wore it because his father told him he had made the wrong choice for a wife and hated him for that.  He does however tell Jack that he is making the right choice and wants Jack to have this watch that his father gave him. 

The scene closes with Jack's father telling him that if he ever does have children to please treat them better than he had treated Jack.  Jack responds with a smirk and not know what to say, simply says "no pressure, right?". 

Probably the only thing we learned from this episode is that Christian did not like his father.  But it is interesting to see our favorite characters back in action.

Heroes 207, Out of Time

Well, this week we received an episode entitled "Out of Time".  I learned several things from this episode, one of which is that if you have even the slightest clue of how to hold a samurai sword, you can probably dual an actual samurai who has slain thousands and perhaps disarm him within 20 seconds or so.  But don't let me get started on the bad, just let me give you a quick rundown of what happened this week.

Japan, Kensei and Hiro.  In this storyline we had a few developments since last week.  We know that last week Hiro kissed Kensei's girl/princess/whatever and upon witnessing this Kensei was quite upset; and rightfully so.  White Beard offers Kensei a deal.  Give him Hiro and the girl (and her father I guess) and he can rule over Japan alongside him when they defeat the Emperor.  The girl had a trick up her sleeve (literally) and helped Hiro escape at which point he teleported her and himself away from there, apparently leaving the father behind :) I love it.  Hiro then tells the girl that he must destroy the gun stockpile and save Japan and the Samurai way.  He gets into a sword fight with Kensei while trying to destroy the guns and refuses to use his 'time stopping' skills.  He then actually sword duals Kensei and disarms him after Kensei makes a remark about his girl.  The fight leads to a lantern tipping over mixed with barrel upon barrel of gunpowder blowing the entire place up.  Hiro inspects the site the next day to find a charred body in samurai gear along with Kensei's famed mask.  Hiro then teleports back to modern time to be with his good buddy Ando.

On our Peter storyline we find him in the year 2008 in New York City where he is confronted by masked men in biological suits who take him in.  He learns about the outbreak and how 93% of the worlds population has been killed by the Shanti Virus.  While onsite he meets his mother who helps him recover from his amnesia (this has got to the quickest recovery ever).  His mother then tells him of how he is the most powerful and that it is up to him to stop all of this by traveling back in time.  He then sees his girlfriend being carted off and departed...See YA.  He lands back in 2007 where he started and is confronted by Adam who claims to be a friend of his and is working with him.  Well, Adam is Kensei....back from the dead.  It looks as though he may have picked up a few powers along the way as well.

For Suresh, Matt and Molly this is a big episode.  Matt's father Maury(the nightmare man) comes to kill Bob at 'The Company'.  How come both Prison Break and Heroes have 'The Company'??? Are they one and the same??? Geez...a little creativity people.  Anyway, Maury shows up and creates an Illusion around Jessica, making her believe DL is present and then witness him being shot by Bob.  Well after he goes on and on about how she is this and that and they will take Micah away..blah blah...yes they shot him..thank you.  Needless to say,  Jessica is upset and tries to kill Bob herself.  Nathan talks her down and she injects herself with the virus to essentially stop herself.  Nathan is always saving the day. They should make that guy president! While the whole Jessica and DL thing was going on, Matt was with Molly and entered into her dream (I guess) and saw where his father was keeping her.  He then managed to use his mind controlling abilities to pull the father into the  nightmare as well.  Matt confronts his father about leaving him when he was a child to be raised with just his mother.  In short he gets real mad and locks the father inside his own nightmare leaving him in a coma in the real world.

While Nathan and Bob are waiting for Maury to show up (they were baiting him basically), Bob told Nathan about Adam (sound familiar), the strongest of all Heros.  Believed himself to be a God.  He brought them altogether speaking of saving the world and then became deranged and spoke of Holocaust and Plague to save the poeple of the world from themselves.  The other Heros, the older ones who have been marked for death, locked Adam up a while back to stop him.  He escaped two weeks ago and this is when the killings began.  So now you gotta wonder...Is Peter's new friend Adam(Kensei) a good guy?  Did he create the illusion of 2008 New York to get Peter to work alongside him? Was any of that real?  When Peter teleported back to 2007 it did not appear as one of Hiro's teleports but rather as one of the Nightmare Man's veils of illusion being lifted.  This is what it seemed like to me anyway.

OK, now for Claire.  Mr. Bennett finds and uncovers all the paintings.  One is of Suresh holding a gun which we see is given to him at the end of the episode.  Mr. Bennett flies home to find that Claire has brought(well actually he just invited himself) her boyfriend home.  West sees Mr. Bennett and Claire has to explain that it is her father but West believe it is a trap since he has been previously abducted by this very same man.  Nothing real interesting here.

The episode ends with Bob giving Suresh a gun.  I guess Suresh feels like a man now with a gun because he decides (without even taking 10 seconds to think about it) to tell Bob that he is working with Noah (Bennett) to take down the company.  Ok Suresh.  Maybe you have within the last 13 seconds decided that Bennett now has his own agenda but telling Bob this will give you no advantage.  Work both angles...figure it out before you say anything...As Napoleon Dynamite would say, "Gosh...Idiot".

Well, all in all I thought that the Peter storyline was, again, the most interesting.  Thankfully there was no Micah and his Cousin this episode.  We have solved the mystery of Adam and learned that it is actually Kensei.  Next weeks episode looks like a flashback that explains what happened to Peter and maybe Nathan.  Kristen Bell appears in the previews for next week....Nice!

By the way, if you have been reading so far and gotten to this point and agree with most of my assumptions, you may be coming to the conclusion that this is all Hiro's fault.  If Hiro had not kissed that girl and pissed off Kensei, maybe he would be a good guy and not live through history wanting to kill and destroy up until this present day when he seeks to reek "Holocaust and Plauge" upon mankind.  Thanks Hiro.

Oh, time for PIC of the week.  My favorite part of this episode is when Jessica busts Suresh in the nose sending him flying.  Kudos to Jessica. This has got to be the most gratifying moment in Heroes history.

Now if they could just kill off Peter's girlfriend, show more of Kristen Bell, and maybe delete the Micah/New Orleans storyline.

Well, until next week............