Heh. Oh, no, professional poker has villains (coughPhilHellmuthcough).

First, they do things that I would never do, things that I can barely think of doing, and that's a weird kind of escapism for me, a vicarious thrill.

Heh.

My evil twin would lie and steal,
And he would stink of sex appeal.
All men would writhe beneath his scythe.
He'd send the pretty ones to me.

And they would think that I was he.
I'd hurt them and I'd go scott free.
I'd get no blame and feel no shame.
Cos evil's not my cup of tea.

The Magnetic Fields. God, I love Stephin Merritt.

Yeah. If there weren't villains, and well-written ones at that, we'd all just be sitting around twiddling our thumbs and thinking, gee, wasn't that an entertaining night watching other people play cribbage on the shiny box.

Except to me some of the most interesting stories in the world have no villain at all; just the conflict that comes from having decent people at odds with each other. I think Austen was the greater writer than Dickens, even though I love them both, and Austen barely had villains; Wyckham was as close as she came, and mostly he was just weak.

I disagree. Mr. Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility seduced a maiden, then abandoned her pregnant with his illegitimate child. He then went on to flirt heavily with Marianne, knowing full well he wasn't free to marry her, and that in turn nearly led to her death.

Austen certainly considers him a villain.

Oh, and Mrs. John Dashwood is unquestionably a villainess.

I'm pretty sure that Catherine Moreland's eventual father-in-law in Northanger Abbey counts as a comic villain.

And P&P certainly has its share of people less thorougly destructive than Wickham but just as odious -- Miss Bingley, Lady Catherine De Bourgh, that vile little toady Mr. Collins. The last is just unpleasantly simultaneously cringing and smug, but the first two actively despise the heroine and do their best to thwart her happiness. And the conflict between them and her, and Darcy's pulling away from them and their view of the world and growing to see Elizabeth clear and whole, provide much of the meat and grit and forward motion of the story.

I rewatched the group go after Ethan and my big question is --- when did Jack get that tattoo on his forearm? It was not there before last night.

Sawyer's compelling for reasons mentioned before: he's damaged, the only thing he excels at is being an ass, and sometimes he fails at that. I'm not sure how I feel about characters being redeemed (I'm still bitter about what they did to Spike -- not that Sawyer is anything like Spike).

Kate's a much better at being a bad guy than Saywer--- her plans are better, she's done better at manipulation, she shot up people without blinking. She would have done a better job on Sawyer and Jack if they weren't all trapped together. Also, like Locke, I don't believe everything that she's told people. I do feel there was honesty during I Never, but I'm not sure I trust what she's said to Jack.

I should like Locke for the above stated reasons, but I don't. He rubs me the wrong way, Michael seems to be the only one who thinks he's creepy and worth avoiding. I just want someone to figure out his manipluations and beat him down. However, in small doses I find him interesting.

I think that there's a big difference between our (genre fandom's) take on the Lost characters and the general television audience who are discovering genre tv for the first time. The second group are a far bigger section of those viewing the show on a weekly basis, unfortunately, so I think that the network is deliberately having the creators/writers sand off some of the rough edges that the characters had to begin with. In today's TVGO Watercooler, the writer had what is probably a more common view of Sawyer:

Say what you will, I still think Sawyer's a turd. Even if he's haunted about killing the wrong dude for the murder-suicide of his folks, that's no reason to be rude. Honestly, he deserved to be stalked by that boar simply for not telling Jack that he'd met his booze-bag ex-doctor father in that bar Down Under. Just wrong.

Don't get me wrong--I think that the general TV viewership is more intelligent than the suits seem to think they are. However, not many of them are going to stick around for all-dark-characters, all-the-time; this is why shows like Profit and Buffalo Bob (and Angel) bombed in the ratings compared to shows like Friends and West Wing. Ironically, if Lost were less successful, the characters might be more interesting to us!

They're still genrefied enough for me - the attempts to make Sawyer and Charlie more likeable/understandable are the only character notes that rankle consistently (as opposed to intermittently, like KateNJack4Evah). But I wish to the Heavens above that the writers would get a better handle on plot momentum and have people act as if they have working brains with self preservation instincts.

Here is the promo breakdown for next week's Lost episode:

Hmmmm, I think the Canadian previews must be different from the American ones. Up here we got "a shocking connection between Jack and Sawyer is revealed" right in the preview last week, and the preview last night for next week's episode had the raft on fire, but not anything with Locke shouting.