Lost, American Idol, 24. Three Great Tastes that Taste Great Together

So it's been a long week since the Season Finales of the only three shows I watch on television. This is good news because it means that now, I can resume my life and get those three hours of my week back. What will I do for entertainment this summer, you ask? Watch reruns, of course.

I'm kidding. So here are my thoughts.

24 FINALE

I will start here because it's the least interesting. So another season ended, with our hero Jack Bauer once again not getting killed. I hope I haven't given away too much by revealing that plot point. At the end *spoiler alert* Jack is kidnapped by the Chinese Government, but because I haven't seen Season 4, I don't know why, or what he did to anger all the Chinese. I can only imagine it has something to do with Toy Manufacturing and trade embargos. Perhaps the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. That'd be some good TV.

Regardless, I'm still fundamentally unsure what this whole season was about. The President of the US - played by an actor who looked an awful lot like Richard Nixon - invited Russian extremist terrorists to release Sentox Nerve Gas on US soil to ...force the American people to take terrorism more seriously? Well, of course I'm going to take it more seriously if the President is inviting terrorist groups to give their WMDs a free whirl.


Tell me this man isn't Richard Nixon.

Reminds me a bit of that Michael Crichton novel "State of Fear" where passionate, but ill-advised environmentalists engage in eco-terrorism to try to wake up American and the world to the dangers of bad environmental policy. I haven't read the novel, but I guess these eco-terrorists try to steal a nuke to shift a techtonic plate to cause a massive flood/tidal wave that they'll say is the result of Greenhouse Gases and emissions. So, sort of similiar ideas.

At any rate, both plots would undoubtedly anger China.


American Idol Finale


So this is a show I haven't watched much this year, and my wife and I are in utter disagreement about the show thus far. Every week, I have had my Tuesday Night Men's Bible study, and I don't have TiVo - mainly out of principle - so I just download the MP3s each Wednesday morning and listen to the singers sing on the way to work. Saves hours of time. It's been clear since the beginning that Taylor, Chris and Katherine were the three best. I love Elliot, he's got a great voice, but he's boring.

But Chris Daughtry was clearly the most easily marketable singer. His voice is the best, he clearly could fit into a genre, and he'd be pretty easy to market. Proof? His duet with the band Live, which you can hear here. Taylor, though, was the best performer. So he won. And Katherine is utterly forgettable. Really attractive - but forgettable. Apparently, lots of Americans disagree with me.

But the American Idol Finale was pretty amazing. You had the resurrection of Meatloaf, who sang - if you can call it that - with Katherine. He was so awful. And then Dionne Warwick came out, and that was really quite sad. It was like watching Jordan when he played for the Wizards. Once great...but not so much now. And then, of course, there was Prince. I love me some Prince. I don't care if he is less than five-feet tall. Show me another Hobbit that can dance and sing like that.

The whole thing just makes me miss Clay Aiken a lot.

*ran outta time - I'll discuss LOST in a little bit*