Remember the “Previously on Lost” band that played on the Season 5 Finale LOST Untangled video?
They’re going to be in New York tonight, playing at the Mercury Lounge in lower Manhattan, where they will be performing their Season 5 Finale recap song live for the first time. Also appearing are the headline act Malajube — a French-Canadian indie rock band — and two other bands. Only $10! 21+
Here’s a clip of the band in a concert they did last year at the Knitting Factory in NY, singing a catchy recap of The Constant:
And here’s the Season 5 Finale LOST Untangled video:
You can listen to more of Previously on Lost’s songs on their MySpace page.
I hope the third time will be the charm for Michael Emerson, who has just been nominated again for an Emmy for playing Benjamin Linus, after being nominated for that role, but losing, twice before.
Emerson did win a much-deserved Emmy for an earlier role as a guest actor on the legal show The Practice in 2001. He played William Hinks, a man accused of being a serial killer.
Michael Emerson as William Hinks on "The Practice"
The first segment of the story is about Hinks’ trial. You can watch it in five YouTube videos, which is not as daunting as it sounds, as several of the videos are very short. All together, this segment runs about 15 minutes. If you watch all five videos, you’ll be rewarded with a clever plot twist.
(The network may pull these off of YouTube, as they did previous copies that were posted, so enjoy them while you can.)
Michael Emerson is mesmerizing in this multi-layered role. He acts rings around the other actors. You can also see the similarities between William Hinks and Ben Linus. Hinks is like Ben on a bad day — or, perhaps, on a good day, depending on your perspective:
Continued here: Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 <-- This one gave me chills! | Part 5 <-- Wow!
There are several more scenes which are (I think) from subsequent episodes. While the previous scenes reminded me of a chess game, the following scenes are more like a horror movie: Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9
According to Wikipedia (citing audio commentary on the Season 3 DVD), the LOST producers offered Emerson the role of Ben because they liked his work on The Practice. Emerson, though, in an interview a few months ago, said he thought he only “indirectly” got the job on LOST because of The Practice.
He added, laughing, that the two roles are “at least in the same temperature zone.”
Would that be cold (as an icy heart) or hot (as the inner circle of Hell)?
The Practice (c) 20th Century Fox. The screenshot is from video #4, when Hinks is on the witness stand.
Great news: LOST got nominated for best drama series, Michael Emerson got nominated, for the third time, for best supporting actor, and Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof got nominated for best writing for the season finale episode, The Incident
Here’s the complete list of all the nominations for LOST:
Outstanding drama series: LOST
Outstanding supporting actor in a drama series: Michael Emerson
Outstanding writing for a drama series: Cuse and Lindelof, for The Incident
Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing For A Drama Series: Stephen Semel, Mark Goldman, and Chris Nelson, for The Incident
Outstanding Sound Mixing For A Comedy Or Drama Series (One Hour): Robert Anderson, Ken King, Scott Weber, and Frank Morrone, for The Incident
In 1992, Michael Emerson was already playing characters that hang out with people wearing jumpsuits 😉
In this 1992 training film for prison employees, Michael Emerson plays a prison counselor. He looks so young! He’s a better actor now, and, I think, more interesting-looking. Time has been good to him.
He first appears in the video about a minute-and-a-half in:
Posted on YouTube by mariloulem, who has a whole collection of Michael Emerson videos.
I found an article published on TV.com back in 2005 which said that Spinner had sued ABC, J.J. Abrams, and Damon Lindelof in August, 2005, claiming they stole the idea that he had pitched to the network in 1977 — the same claim he is making in the new lawsuit he filed this week.
It looks like LOST is being hit with another lawsuit, on top of the sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Henry Ian Cusick in April.
Anthony Spinner, who was a producer on Baretta and Babes in Toyland, claims that he wrote a 121-page TV pilot script called Lost for $30,000 in 1977.
My opinion: this doesn’t smell right.
What about all the stories Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof have told, over and over in podcasts, and panel discussions, and episode commentary, about the origins of the show, about how it started off as a twist on Survivor and they didn’t really know where it was going, figuring it out as they went along. Could all that have been a ruse to distract people from their having stolen the story? I don’t think so. (If true, it would have been such a spectacular long con that even Sawyer would have impressed.)
As for the question of why Spinner waited to bring the lawsuit now, rather than four years ago when the show started, Spinner said that it took three years of litigation to get his former employer to concede that he, personally, had the rights to the script. So that part of it, I guess, is plausible.
I’m betting, though, that nothing will come of this.
This is the 7th short video in the Ask LOST series. It appears to be the last one that ABC is going to put out, at least for now. So it’s fitting that this portion of the series ends where it began — with Michael Emerson.
He’s my favorite actor, of all the LOST actors, to watch being interviewed. I just love the way he thinks about what he’s saying — you can almost see the gears turning in his head. I love the sound of his voice, as I’ve mentioned before — his stage actor’s diction. Most of all, I love his sense of humor. A great example of that is in the last segment of this video, where he gently pulls our leg with an almost straight face — and then, holding off until the very last moment, he breaks out in a grin.
I do disagree, though, with Emerson’s notion that Ben hasn’t fundamentally changed. I think Ben changed a lot, in this last season — or else we are seeing a radically different side of him that we had never seen before. Ben had always been such a powerful presence, the alpha bad guy, but in Season 5 he became greatly diminished, losing alpha status first to Locke (or, rather, to notLocke), and then to Jacob. In his last scene in the Finale, he seemed to regress back to being a wounded child, which was something far different, though no less lethal, from the terrifying puppetmaster he had been in Seasons 2, 3, and 4.
I found an article published on TV.com 
