It must be TV week.

I’ve been resisting writing about LOST even though I religiously make sure I am home each Tuesday night to watch every new episode as it is broadcast.

I was going to write about LOST a little before now but I wanted to use writing about the series as an excuse to put up some wonderful drawing that Mike Wieringo did while he was still alive - but more on that in a moment...

I’ve really been enjoying the season thus far and like every other series there have been high points and low points throughout the season. Episodes where I am joyful over what I have seen and others where I think the producers might have wasted a bit of the precious time remaining in the series’ life.

I think we’re only about four episodes out from the series finale and its been quite a ride so far. The series too has moved so far away from its original premise, there have been a lot of answers which has been good mostly. Part of me though finds I could drive a truck through the logic of some of those answers at times.

Last week’s episode offered up that the voices characters heard on the island were the voices of people who had died on the island and couldn’t ‘move on’ for whatever reason. It didn’t explain though how it was that Shannon saw Walt at one point as an apparition (since Walt wasn’t dead) or how Jack’s father Christian was one of those who was stuck on the island (since he died in Australia).

I have my favorites among the cast in terms of actors and characters. Characters I like and characters I’m not crazy about. I’ll write a little more about that on another day (if I have the time) but, today I was going to write about one thing that had been running around in my mind and that was how there was one character that had never really been a favorite of mine, a character I didn’t identify with or feel strongly about either in a positive or negative fashion but who over the end of last season and beginning of this season became something of a favorite even though he hasn’t been seen much of late.

Yes, I’m talking about Sawyer.

Again I didn’t feel strongly about Sawyer until the second half of last season and only then what appealed to me about the character was the way the writers followed such a logical path towards his redemption. Beyond that Josh Holloway did just a terrific job of selling it. Even more was the chemistry between him and Elizabeth Mitchell as Juliet. The two actors just worked really well together and I don’t think there were any fans out there who would’ve seen the romance between the two coming.

And it was so strong and so believable.

Which made it all the more tragic when ‘Sawyer’ lost ‘Juliet’. I mean maybe I’m just a big softie but it was truly a gut wrenching thing to watch, Juliet dying not just once (at the end of season five) but again at the beginning of season six. The impact of losing someone you love is horrid, it’s like an amputation of the heart and here they had two characters doing it twice - the horror.

And the resultant bitterness of Sawyer’s character in the aftermath, the resentment towards Jack, the way the character just moved from grief to the numbness of not caring all was so exquisitely plotted out, I think it was one of the series high points for the entire run.

And in the process, what happened is what happens whenever a writer does a really good job writing something... this character who was remote to me suddenly became a character I cared about - a character I felt empathy for.

Just amazing.

Anyway, that’s been just one of the things I’ve been enjoying when I get a chance to watch some TV (although I find myself watching less and less TV).

I’ll be trying to throw up some other things about LOST before the series eventual finale in a few weeks and I wanted to note once again the beautiful image that graces this blog post.

I asked (and got) permission to use it and I want to make a tip of the hat to Matt Wieringo. There still are a bunch of really wonderful images up on Mike Wieringo’s blog and if you’re any kind of a Mike Wieringo fan I heartily suggest you take some time to go over and look through the blog to see a lot of great unpublished work. Also note there is a wonderful scholarship program that has been established in Mike Wieringo’s name at his alma-mater.