I never liked Charlie all that much. His having found the balls to shoot the guy who hanged him made me respect him for about 30 seconds, but that's gone now too. Sure, he's cute and charming, but that only goes so far; I want some cake under the icing, some meat under the gravy. Charlie's always come across (to me) as weak, without enough strength of will to accomplish anything on his own, someone who desperately wants the approval and guidance of others. His pathological need to take care of someone fits right in with his pathological inability to take care of himself. Sure, he killed Ethan to protect Claire, because otherwise he'd have to have killed him because he was scared of him, and Ethan made his uselessness very obvious, which was possibly even more offensive than hanging him.

I'm sorry Ethan's dead. He had a backstory that was actually interesting. I hope we get to see it. (Plus, I kinda thought he was hot. Despite the violent and crazy. Or maybe because of. Since he's not actually real and here, I'm safe to be as twisted as I like.)

it's ALL. ABOUT. CHARLIE.

My feelings for Charlie are inconsistent. The woobie Charlie bugs me, but I find myself overcome with the cute. The self-centered-all-about-me Charlie fits one profile of the rock star character ego that is a part of the Charlie package. His character would not be so interesting for me if not played so well.

Profit

On DVD in September! Finally!

Whee! I have the tapes from the Bravo showing, but that DVD must be owned.

The sum total of my analytical thought about this episode: Mmmm. Sawyer pretty.

No, I'm lying. There was also: Mmmmm. Sayid pretty.

I love Dana. Also, she is pretty.

I enjoyed this week so much more than last. It is quite a job to balance creative characters and plots with mass audience appeal. I wish them well.

My love of the interesting villain character shocks my loved ones. My hippie chick personality embraces make love not war and rejects all things confrontational in real life. DH is still baffled that I will leave the room when fights break out in sports events or the news shows violent events, yet I love my fictional bad guys and squee with glee over gory death and big explosions. My Evil has to be far removed from reality though. Lost and Alias can have Evil delicious characters and I will enjoy the hell out of it. When I find Evil characters in media that resembles reality I get shaken and can’t enjoy the character because in my self-imposed sheltered existence Evil doesn’t exist.

DH is still baffled that I will leave the room when fights break out in sports events or the news shows violent events, yet I love my fictional bad guys and squee with glee over gory death and big explosions. My Evil has to be far removed from reality though. Lost and Alias can have Evil delicious characters and I will enjoy the hell out of it.

I get this. It may be the same sort of thing that lets me watch Pulp Fiction with no problem, but that won't let me watch Hotel Rwanda. Even though the latter is a recreation of appalling events, I'd still be sitting there thinking that these particular awful things happened to real people, and I would have trouble watching that. But made up characters doing awful things to other made up characters? Yeah, sure, if that's what the story calls for. I'm enjoying the heck out of Sayid's character, even though he's done some really dreadful stuff in both the main story and his flashbacks, things that would make me not much care about his inner journey of redemption or whatever if he was a real person. But as a character it's interesting to me.

I totally get where you're coming from Laura. I can watch charismatic villains do awful things to people in fictional shows and cheer them on, but seeing violence and horror that actually happened, as in City of God and all the Holocaust movies, just destroys me.

Dude, me too. That's why I love Alias and Lost violence but cannot stand 24 and CSI - the latter are way too "real". The BF does not understand this attitude either - I always end up arguing that showing things like bioterrorism and hijacking etc. in such elaborate detail is like encouraging people to do these things in real life - not only that but in many cases practically showing them how to do it! Like I forgot the name of it but there was one movie that was like a how-to of creative ways to smuggle weapons & bombs etc. onto a plane - or maybe it was a John Doe episode, I forget. The other argument I have is that there's too much horrible shit happening in the real world, why on earth would I want to watch fictional recreations of it? I prefer my scariness to be as far removed as possible from reality.

CSI [...] way too "real".

FWIW, I think real criminal forensic specialists laugh and laugh at that show. For one thing, the crimes always get solved. For another, they always get solved on the basis of evidence, rather than Jimmy being a dumbass and blabbing to all his friends. It is about as realistic as the fact that everybody who spends more than 20 minutes in contact with Jack, who is not his biological relative, is killed before the day ends.

I know, that's why I put real in quotes... it's not really all that realistic but compared to vampires, Sydney's SpyJinks and the InvisiMechaSaur, it is - put it this way, for people without any knowledge of real forensics or being in the FBI/Secret Services, it comes across as being way more plausible than it actually is.

But that's good! All the dumbass criminals will be properly misdirected, and you can't do much about all the criminals smart enough not to take advice from a TV show anyway.

That's why I love Alias and Lost violence but cannot stand 24 and CSI - the latter are way too "real".

This is why I prefer to read cozy mysteries. Real murders involve death and pain and loss and icky stuff like that.

Betsy is me.