EVIL PUPPET MASTERS

In this week’s Ask Ausiello over at TVGuide, Michael dropped the bombshell that a new female role was being cast for Lost. Now, before you Castaway Ken and Barbie haters go ballistic, you should read this first (from the same AA column):

According to exec producer Carlton Cuse, “She does not appear in a flashback, she is not an Other, and she is not one of the survivors of Flight 815.” What does that leave? You tell me!

Hmmmm…very intriguing. If you click on over to the Ausiello Report, you’ll see that the role has been cast!!

The video recap for last night’s Lost episode is up at The Associated Press. It includes an interview with Jorge and discusses the lower ratings for the show.

I just checked last night’s numbers, which were better than the past couple of weeks. Hopefully that trend will continue.

Okay, here are my notes on last night’s Lost episode “Tricia Tanaka is dead”:

• Appearance of Vincent should quash all the rumors in the fandom that Walt and Michael had him on the boat with them. There were fans who claimed they saw Vincent on the boat — obviously they were wrong
• The “Tricia Tanaka” in the title was the tv reporter who got killed, along with her cameraman, when a meteor hit the Mr. Cluck’s that Hurley owned.
• Hurley’s old boss, who then worked for him at the Mr. Cluck’s, is named Randy Nation. Also, Hurley mentions in his ramble about all of his bad luck that his best friend Johnny ran off with his girlfriend Starla — she was the chick from the record store that he was flirting with after he and Johnny quit Mr. Clucks the day Hurley won the lottery.
• Old light blue VW bus that Hurley finds has a Dharma logo in place of the usual VW logo on the front of it. The skeleton has a Dharma jumpsuit on with his name “Roger” on it, then “Work Man” underneath. Hurley thinks the guy’s name is Roger Workman.
• Kate picks on Sawyer when he refers to the television show “Little House on the Prairie” as just “Little House” indicating that he used to watch it. His excuse is that he had mono for two months and that was the only thing on. Also, they discussed having a “clean slate” which Kate acts like she doesn’t understand what that means — but her first centric episode was called “Tabula Rasa” which means “clean slate”
• Hurley tells his mom, after the meteor, that he has to go to Australia to try to break the curse with the numbers. He says that is where they came from, according to Lenny in the institution (the Connect 4 guy).
• When Jin and Hurley are pulling Roger’s skeleton out of the van, his head comes off. Hurley says “We’ll get that later…” Then later, Sawyer freaks when he sees the skull and Hurley just says “That’s just Roger” I thought that was hilarious
• When Charlie asks Desmond when he was going to die now, Des responds “it doesn’t work that way”
• Sawyer was in rare form with nicknames in this episode. Just a few I jotted down — Charlie (Oliver Twist, Jiminy Cricket), Hurley (International House of Pancakes), Jin (Jin-bo…which is very Southern; I had a friend named Jimbo so that made me giggle), and even Roger the skeleton (Skeletor — which is the name of the bad guy from the animated tv show He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, which ran from 1983-1985).
• Hurley refers to the beer being old — like before Rocky III (which would mean before 1982) or maybe even Rocky II (which came out in 1979).
• The Jesus centerpiece statue is carved from solid gold. Mrs. Reyes says they got their butlers, Mr. and Mrs. Tron, from Benigans (which is a restaurant chain). When Hurley asks where his dad is going to stay, his mom says “it’s been 17 years” — Hurley doesn’t know what she means, so she covers the ears of the gold Jesus statue and explains to Hurley about her needs. Hurley’s response is to cover his own ears and scream. The next morning, when Hurley’s dad comes to wake him up, Hurley has headphones on because of how loud his parents were.
• As they are looking through the VW bus, Sawyer asks what was with “all the recycling” and finds a blueprint of some sort that looks like it is for a road. When Kate and Sawyer were on the work crew for the Others, there was mention that they were also working on a road of some kind.
• Hurley’s motivational speech to Charlie ends with “Let’s look death in the face and say..’whatever, man.’” That has to be one of my favorite quotes now.
• I think this was the song that was playing when Hurley got the van to start and as they rode around — Shambala
• When Kate is searching through the jungle, she leans down and touches a net on the jungle floor which is what she was looking for. That was the net that her and Jack got caught in during episode 2.19 “S.O.S.” and that they said was one of Rousseau’s nets (like the one that Rousseau had trapped Benry in). She figured that the nets had to be close to where Danielle lived on the island.

That’s the main stuff that stuck with me. You guys pick up anything else?

The scribes of last night’s Hurley-centric Lost episode, Eddy Kitsis & Adam Horowitz have signed a contract with ABC that keeps them in house through 2010. Congrats guys! It was well deserved

Okay, when I read the synopsis from ABC for the Lost episode 3.12 that will air on Wednesday, March 14th, called “Par Avion” (which is French for “By Air”), it was unclear whose backstory that is for. Usually you can tell by the tease or by who the guest stars are, but this one was very vague.

Well, a little birdie told me that the episode is a Locke-centric one. Taking into consideration the names of the guest characters (doctors and mention of a “crash site”) and the aforementioned “little birdie” telling me that this will be one of the best episodes of Lost…EVER…I am going to take a guess that this may be the episode that we learn how Locke got in a wheelchair! Now, this is PURE SPECULATION on my part, but c’mon…what else could it be????