A what? A why? It’s obvious that celebrity power couples have a very hard time identifying cataclysmic vanity projects that will damage their career. While reading the script for The Bounty Hunter, did Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston not notice the creeks of the floorboards and the spooky sounds of dragging chains upstairs, forever strapped across the backs of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s careers?

The reaction is unlikely to be that negative. It takes a coincidence of time, celebrity and arrogance to produce a train wreck for the ages. This is especially true of such a well-liked star as Aniston. Butler, however was a good choice for a film called The Bounty Hunter. In Hollywood, he would have a hard time getting arrested. Although, if “Impersonation of a Charming Leading Man” ever becomes a crime…

If any director seems destined to eventually end his career in a Gigli-like disaster, it is Andy Tennant. Aniston’s Friends episodes used to carry names like “The One Where Ross and Rachel Throw a Picnic and Get Mauled by a Bear” or such. Tennant’s romantic comedies fit those types of titles: “The One Where Will Smith Gets Kevin James a Hook-Up With a Cameron Diaz lookalike.” “The One Where Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey Fight Pirates.” Does anyone go to film school thinking, I really want to direct Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey in a movie where they fight pirates?

If there is a good point to Tennant’s films, it is the way that they are structured. To their credit, they are shaped, in ways, like classic screwball. To their discredit, they’re lousy. One doesn’t need to be a decorated film historian to tell the difference between Katherine Hepburn and Goldie Hawn.

Aniston, here, is a hotshot newspaper reporter arrested for giving an accidental butt-kicking. To a police horse. With a car. When she fails to show up in court while chasing a story, they send Butler, her bounty-hunting ex-husband, to retrieve her. Watch him stuff her in the trunk of his car! Watch them make up and make out! Ooooohh, what a perfect set-up for a Battle of the Sexes! You can only imagine how many times they fasten the handcuffs to the bed posts for a weak laugh.

How many movies so quickly and efficiently announce their intention to be awful? Granted, romantic comedies are supposed to aim below the waist, but The Bounty Hunter introduces itself with not one but two crotch-punches in the first five minutes or so. That’s at least one more crotch punch than there are laughs in the first hour.

And no, like most bad marriages, it doesn’t improve with time.

Musicians have raved about the nautical venue; Umphrey’s McGhee has said, “It’s like a three-hourversion of Bonnaroo on a boat.”

Founded in 2001 with just one boat and six cruises that year, Rocks Off has since enlarged to a fleet of five ships, entertaining thousands annually with more than a hundred concert and events cruises. Past musical voyagers have included Fishbone, RJD2, Ivan Neville, Clutch, Amon Tobin, Umphrey’s McGhee, Slick Rick, and Eyehategod.

Scheduled highlights for 2010 so far include:

Thursday, April 8th 
- Nashville Pussy,
 Green Jelly,
 Psychostick aboard the Jewel

Saturday, April 10th 
- Silent Disco
w/DJ Motion Potion 
and DJ Small Change
 aboard the Paddlewheel Queen

Saturday, April 17th 
- The 5th Annual 420 Cruise with
 The High Times Cannibus Cup Band
 aboard the Temptress

Tuesday April 27th – World Famous Arlene’s Karaoke Band
 aboard the Jewel

Rocks Off Concert Cruise’s first cruise of the season is April 8th and continues straight through until the Fall. For schedule info and updates, check the Rocks Off website, as well as its MySpace page.

Mick Jagger (Getty Images)

The Rolling Stones have signed a deal with Eagle Rock Entertainment that will see two DVD release from Eagle Vision this year.

The first release, Stones In Exile looks at the making of the classic album Exile On Main Street, released in 1972 as a double LP and considered by many critics to be the band’s greatest album (though some would say Beggar’s Banquet, Let It Bleed, and Sticky Fingers are also contenders).   The DVD is expected in June with bonus material, and will follow the broadcast of the main show by the BBC in late May and the reissue of the legendary album at the same time.

The second release, Ladies And Gentlemen…The Rolling Stones, is the band’s epic concert movie from 1972.  Fully restored from the original film, it will be released nationally in cinemas and then receive its first-ever authorized DVD release.  The title will also be released in high-definition on Blu-ray in Autumn, 2010.

The Rolling Stones line-up featured on both Stones In Exile and Ladies And Gentlemen features Mick Jagger – vocals, Keith Richards – guitars, Bill Wyman – bass, Charlie Watts – drums, and Mick Taylor – guitars.

For more about Eagle Rock CD and DVD releases, visit the company website.

Noomi Rapace (Getty Images)

When speaking with Noomi Rapace, it is difficult to discern which has more bite – the viciously large dragon tattooed on her bare back while playing Lisabeth in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, or the candid words she had to say about Scandinavian culture and society in a recent interview with Buzzine Magazine.

A graduate of Sweden’s Steiner Schools, an institute for creative and artistic students, Noomi spent a warm weekday afternoon overlooking the pool deck at West Hollywood’s The Standard Hotel candidly chatting with Buzzine about her role of Lisbeth in one of the most powerfully gripping films to come out of the northern tundra of Scandinavian Europe.

In her chat, Noomi mentioned how much she loved the opportunity presented to her in playing Lisbeth and how much The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo may have opened the eyes of the world to some of the dark-but-not-revealed secrets of her beloved Sweden.

“I loved her from the very first moment. She is such a survivor. She is like an underdog fighter, and she is so full of life,” Noomi reminisced to Buzzine about her role. “She went through so many terrible things, but I love the fact that she never felt sorry for herself and she doesn’t see herself as a victim. She doesn’t let anyone tell her what to do. I think she is kind of a rebel, and I like that.”

It was through the rebellious nature of her character that Noomi was allowed to shed a unique light on Sweden, a perspective the Swedish actress thought was necessary to reveal through the film in order to stay true to the message first shared by Stieg Larsson’s novels of which the screen adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is based upon.

“(Larsson) wanted to change things in society. He was working against violence against women and power abuse. He wasn’t really that popular when he was alive, and had a lot of enemies, but he was a brave man,” Noomi revealed to Buzzine about Larsson’s socially conscious agenda, adding that the very same perspectives needed to be present in the film adaptation of the novel series.

“There were many Nazis who were trying to figure out where he lived and where he went at night. He had a price on his head, and I know he was living in fear,” she added. “But he continued to do what he thought was really important. He really fought for weaker people around him.”

With the socially conscious context perfectly set up in Larsson’s novels, Noomi wanted to do everything she could to perfectly embody the true nature of Lisbeth in order for the film adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to bring life to Steig’s perspectives on the side of Sweden he believed the outside world was fully unaware of.

“It was really important for me to let her be as complicated and extreme, in a way, as she is in the books, and to let her be that way in the film also. It was a mission for me, in every scene, to make it more real,” Noomi shared. “It was a big responsibility for us when we were doing the film — we had to be true to (Larsson’s) mission. If it’s a rape scene, we really have to do the rape scene as horrible as it would be in reality. It can’t be entertainment because then it would not be true.”

Indeed, there was a gripping rape scene in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that is so disturbingly real, audiences will struggle to endure the moments it takes to play out on screen. Yet, it is that realism Noomi wanted to capture – both for the sake of the film and for sharing Larsson’s take on Swedish society with the world.

“I wanted the audience to believe her and see her as a real, breathing person. When (film director) Niels (Arden Oplev) approached me for this role, I said to him, ‘If you want me to play Lisbeth, I would like to transform into her. I would like to change my body and do everything for real,’” she said with candor and insight. “So I practiced a lot of kickboxing and Thai boxing because, in my action scenes, I did not want some stunt woman to come in and do fantastic action scenes. I wanted to be credible.”

With that credibility, Noomi hoped audiences would give credence to the thought that everything within Sweden’s borders is not what it seems, an overarching moral of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

“Sweden is very good at showing up this perfect surface — everyone is smiling in life, and everyone’s trying to not stick out and speak too loud. I think the Swedish society can be kind of a cage sometimes,” Noomi seriously told Buzzine, leaning into the table as she spoke. “We’re not really allowed to show much feeling, and I think people are bit stoic and repressed, and keeping everything inside. It is really hard to understand what people really think and feel. I wanted people to see we have a lot of real problems in Sweden.”

To that end, Noomi told this writer she thinks The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will really open the audiences’ eyes about the skeletons roaming around in Sweden’s closet, just like Larsson would have wanted the film to do, had he been alive to see it.

“I think people are a bit surprised of the picture, what the film actually says about Sweden, because people have another image of Sweden, and I think the politicians are very good at showing that picture — that we are neutral, diplomatic and a very equal country – and we are,” Noomi said, criticizing her motherland while also defending it. “We are a good country in many ways, but we also have this darker legacy and this darker thing we really don’t want to admit or talk about. I think it’s a bit of a twisted picture of Sweden, but it’s kind of true.”

What Noomi also thought would be true was a public backlash to both her and the film. Alas, to her surprise, the 30-year-old Swedish actress candidly told Buzzine she was pleasantly surprised by the reactions she actually received.

“I expected everyone to hate the film because expectations were so high and everyone was waiting for this film, so it felt like a suicide mission, in a way. But I had to just close my eyes and ears to the outside world and try to create something personal and something we really believed in,” Noomi reflected. “When the film was released (in Europe), I was pretty sure I couldn’t walk on the streets, but people loved the film in Sweden and Scandinavia and in Europe, and I was really surprised.”

The one thing she was not surprised by was just how much audiences, especially women, would be able to relate to both Lisbeth and the film, making The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo much more than just a movie about the strengths and weaknesses of Sweden.

“Ultimately, this is not a Swedish-specific movie, and Lisbeth is not a typical anything. She is (more than) a Swedish young woman,” Noomi compassionately told Buzzine. “There are many Lisbeth’s around the world. Many young women have been let down by their government and the politicians and police and schools and social workers. I think people can follow her and connect with her.”

This weekend, American audiences will have a chance to follow and connect with Lisbeth while also discovering some of the darker elements of Sweden, as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo hits screens in select cities on March 19th.

Officially titled Men Who Hate Women in Sweden, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo also stars Michael Nyqvist and is directed by Oplev. The film has already been released throughout Europe, Japan and New Zealand.

Putting visuals to page to the Swedish box office tune of over a hundred million dollars is acclaimed Danish director Niels Arden Oplev, who’s found his biggest hit and likely cross-over appeal to Hollywood with this thrillingly smart movie, especially given a heroine with the dark smarts of Clarice Starling. “When I read Stieg’s book, I knew that this was material I’d been looking for a long time,” he says. “European cinema complains that American cinema is taking away all of the tickets, but I thought The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo could have the feeling of a big American wide-screen film yet, at the same time, keep the exoticism of the Nordic countries and the edginess of European cinema. To accomplish that, we, wanted to have the same sense of mystery and strong characters that you’d find in Silence of the Lambs, and I think you get emotionally engaged in Elisabeth Salander’s character in much the same way you do with Clarice. She makes the whole thing modern and takes it levels over a normal crime story.”

A self-admitted “info-maniac” who’s addicted to newspapers and the Internet, Oplev’s energetic approach made sure to shine light into the closet that some older Swedes would be happy to keep closed — crimes that take murderous root in the computer-modern age. “If you looked at Swedish crime stories, you’d think people did nothing other than having dark alliances with the Nazis!” he remarks. “It’s been a vehicle for evilness in a lot of Swedish books and films. Yet at the same time, the country has never had a real confrontation with what their past was, along with their so-called ‘neutrality,’ which wasn’t as neutral as they thought.”

An admirer of John Cassavettes and Andrei Tartovsky, Oplev now resides on America’s East Coast, hoping to take advantage of Girl’s international success. “It is my desire to make an English-language film, and I’ve got several projects in development,” he says. “I’ve done consecutive box-office hits and television hits that have won international Emmys, so I can do anything I want to in Scandinavia, and that’s kind of why I left! With this being the most successful Scandinavian film in history, I think it’s a good time for me to be over here.”

About the only English-language project that Oplev won’t readily consider is the rumored remake of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. “Nobody has asked me, but I don’t think it would be wise. I’ve already made it, and I don’t think it would be wise to go back and try to repeat a huge success on the same film. The magic might not be there, but it would be interesting to see what someone else would do with this material. An American filmmaker could do something that would be really be challenging.”

Beyond the visceral thrills of bringing down untouchable industrialists with a firm gasp of Hollywood storytelling, Niels Arden Oplev sees a deeper reason for Dragon’s crossover potential. “Given that brutality against women, and rape is a huge problem in the U.S., I think Lisbeth’s character will be an enormous inspiration,” he concludes. “No matter what bad things happen to her, she fights back. She refuses to be a victim. She is the dark angel of revenge. The books have already been inspiration for women, and to see her on the screen is a very powerful experience. Besides that, it’s a damn good movie.”

Special thanks to Nancy Bishop and Venice Magazine.

Ninja Assassin

A deeply troubled and angry mercenary named Raizo (played by Korean pop star Rain) teams up with Europol librarian Mika (Naomie Harris, Street Kings), and together they fend off and fight nefarious underworld types. There’s a somewhat supernatural undercurrent to the pulverizing proceedings, but it probably won’t be enough for genre fans (or fans of logic, sense and reason). What’s more, the uber-villain, played by martial arts popcorn movie ’80s-fave Shô Kosugi, comes off far too cartoony; therefore, the flashbacks to Raizo’s abusive past at his master’s hands lose their punch.

The story is definitely loopy beyond all comprehension, and the license taken (I won’t even call it “artistic license”) is gob-smacking. The egregious overuse of CG and the too-dark cinematography is unconscionable…but I have to bring it back around to the pure adrenaline killing spree aspect of it all. There’s an impressive opening sequence which grabs attention right away and sprays a helluva lot of wet-work. There’s a cool Cube meets Resident Evil (and lots of others) man-slicing scene that’s sure to induce chills…but overall, the movie is a mess that quickly crumbles from menacing to maudlin.

Broken Embraces

Writer/director Pedro Almodovar and his longtime muse Penelope make movie magic in this melodramatic mystery, Broken Embraces. Fate, film and feelings all collide in the strange story of auteur Mateo Blanco (Lluis Homar), blinded years ago in a horrible accident…or was it an accident? Switch-backing in time from the early ’90s to present-day, Almodovar unfolds the clues sometimes too confusingly but always entertainingly. Cruz crackles as the sexy-secretary-turned-cinema-siren, and Rubén Ochandiano is most compelling as Ray X, a sinister director who will stop at nothing to collaborate with Mateo. The art-house cinematography, lavish color palette and super-smart costuming and makeup are icing on the already sweet cake.

Armored

When I heard about Armored, featuring an impressive-name cast (Matt Dillon, Jean Reno, Laurence Fishburne, Skeet Ulrich, Columbus Short, and Amaury Nolasco), I thought it would be a fun, spree-style crime caper along the lines of The Italian Job…but I was surprised — pleasantly. The movie isn’t about the intricate planning of a heist; it’s about what goes terribly wrong after it fails. Armored is tense, often gory, and quite arresting in that director Nimrod Antal does a grand job of building the characters up just enough so you care about them, but doesn’t tread into tearful territory (unlike the sometimes soppy Ninja Assassin).

Jimi Hendrix fans are salivating over this album of a dozen previously unreleased studio recordings. Most of the tracks come from sessions in the first half of 1969, when The Jimi Hendrix Experience was working on a follow-up to Electric Ladyland.  Those numbers include the title track and alternate arrangements of some of Hendrix’s best known hits — “Red House,” “Fire,” and “Stone Free.” The set also features versions of Elmore James’s “Bleeding Heart” and Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love.”  You’ll also find alternate recordings of previously released vault material such as “Mr. Bad Luck” and “Lover Man,” as well as tunes seeing the light of day for the first time. But is this essential? For Jimi completists, absolutely. For the casual listener into his biggest songs, no. But if you fall in between, it’s worth checking out.

The reissue of Axis: Bold as Love is another remastering of the second album from The Experience, which includes “Spanish Castle Magic,” “Little Wing,” “Castles Made Of Sand,” and “If 6 Was 9” from Easy Rider.  The release also comes with a DVD of documentary material and a booklet of photos and historical details.  But if you already have the album on CD in a previous reissue, you may want to pass, unless you’re rabid for all things Hendrix.  Many are, and not just old folks.

Dropkick Murphys
Live On Lansdowne, Boston MA (CD + DVD)
Born and Bred

Recorded over a string of St. Patrick’s Day shows last year in their hometown of Boston, this CD/DVD set finds the rousing and rowdy Dropkick Murphys on top of their game. Unlike their last live outing, things are a little less rough-and-tumble, the vocals not all gravel, but the group’s grown a lot, though there’s plenty of punkitude and ramshackle blasting to go around. The lightning set includes “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye” (the original “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”), the joyous “Sunshine Highway,” full-charge of “Your Spirit’s Alive,” traditional romp “Dirty Glass,” and a guest spot from The Mighty Mighty Bosstones for “I’m Shipping Off to Boston.”  The guitars slash, drums pummel, the bagpipe is hard rockin’, and the band doesn’t let up, even on the “softer” stuff (not that there’s much of that).  A winning live release summing up the Dropkicks up to now and capturing the wild energy and communal power of the band on stage.

Paul Revere and the Raiders
Complete Columbia Singles
Collector’s Choice

Despite the Revolutionary War outfits worn for a time, Paul Revere and the Raiders fall more into the garage rock camp for a good part of their output rather than just a pop group designation. Collector’s Choice, which has been on the rise as a prominent reissue label, gathers the band’s singles on this three-disc set of A-sides and B-sides (that means 45 rpms, if ya didn’t know) and also adds commercial jingles which are a ton of fun, retro-wise.  So you not only find hits like “Kicks” and “Hungry” but the band’s early-years versions of “Louie, Louie” and great “Have Love Will Travel,” as well as “We Gotta Get It All Together” and “Indian Reservation,” as the anthology collects material under the group’s changing names, from Paul Revere and… to Featuring Mark Lindsay, to just The Raiders. There are plenty of little or lesser-known goodies here, the singles all in glorious mono and then stereo.  Featuring 66 tracks in all, this is a real gem. And check out the Pontiac GTO Breakaway on disc two.

Fireball Ministry
Red

Not much metal-leaning rock floats my boat (hey, I haven’t been 14 in a long, long time), but Fireball Ministry grabs me a bit with this self-titled release that’s more so ‘70s-inspired hard rock. The Reverend James A. Rota II (guitar, vocals), Emily J. Burto (guitar), John G. Oreshnick (drums) and Johny Chow (bass) churn out riffs and hooks in songs like the crunchy “Hard Lines,” “Thought It Out,” and galloping “Kick Back.”   If you miss the likes of Bad Company and Southern Rock such as Molly Hatchet, Fireball may be the flamin’ band for you. Derivative, sure, but the appeal is there too.

Story of the Year
The Constant
Epitaph

Hammering with sensitive-guy vocals, Story of the Year avoids the cookie monster, wounded beast screamo thing.  The metallic crunch gives way to the plaintive vocals of Dan Marsala, followed by the churning “Ghost of You and I,” then the push and pull of “I’m Alive.”   The racing “The Dream is Over” is contrasted by the  romantic pop glide of “Holding On To You.”  The band’s a bit stuck in formula of soul-and-heart purge over guitar grind rhythmic bursts but nonetheless manages to rise above the pack in its modern rock genre.

Dailey & Vincent
Dailey & Vincent Sing the Statler Brothers
Rounder/Cracker Barrel

Presented by Cracker Barrel and (initially) only available at its Old Country Store in each restaurant, the bluegrass duo pay tribute to The Statlers before them.  There are versions of “Flowers on the Wall,” “Hello Mary Lou,” “Do You Know You Are My Sunshine?” and other songs originally recorded by the brothers.  The arrangements stick to those records, which is just fine, with crisp playing and fine harmonies.  A Saturday or Sunday afternoon record, nice and easy.

However, the shades of blue and yellow-gold might just be the only thing the urban public university just outside of Hollywood may want to have in common with the central Scandinavian country, after The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo hits theaters in Los Angeles and other cities around the United States on March 19th.

Already receiving a warm box-office and critical reception in Europe, Japan and New Zealand, Niels Arden Oplev’s screen adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s crime novel of the same name, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo may be a bit strong for American audiences.

Not only is it about 150 minutes in length – definitely too many minutes for a country filled with shortened-attention-span audiences – Oplev’s film also has some strong thematic elements that may be difficult for Americans to endure.

Still, mental toughness of prospective audiences does not change the fact The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is otherwise a compelling crime drama with ultra-personal character development and gripping social commentary.

Some question the film’s first half, which spends nearly 75 minutes building up parallel stories of the two lead characters in investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) and talented hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace). Sure, it is usually recommended to abbreviate character development through exposition in the name of getting to the meat of the story…except there is no way for Oplev to fully explore the film’s true message.

Indeed, the in-depth analysis that may be wasted in other films managed to work out just fine in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as a near-perfect understanding of both Lisbeth and Mikael helps make the film’s second half move along at a brisk and breakneck pace.

The story itself is quite intriguing, what with Mikael being wrongfully convicted of libel, framed by a devious Swedish corporation. All the while, Lisbeth, a hack-for-hire, keeps tabs on Mikael’s post-conviction life while being suffocated by a probation officer who threatens her very existence if she does not acquiesce to forced and violent rape.

Lisbeth manages to take control of her fate, breaking free of her probation officer before finding her way into Mikael’s life, himself biding time in the northern expanses of Sweden to investigate a heinous crime kept secret for nearly 40 years.

Both individual stories are fully fleshed out about halfway through the film and are subsequently united together due to Lisbeth’s sharp wits; Mikael and his new-found partner dig deeper into the dark world of the Vanger Group — industrialists who held onto a stunning secret that would threaten the very fiber of the founding family’s core.

At the heart of Mikael (and subsequently Lisbeth’s) investigation is the mysterious disappearance of one of the corporation’s founding member’s niece. As Mikael and Lisbeth make headway, they discover a truth which serves as a metaphorical social commentary of Sweden’s rather large skeletons roaming around its proverbial closet.

As the audience slowly but surely gets a grip on what the truth both Mikael and Lisbeth work so hard to discover (despite overwhelming odds against them), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ultimately becomes a social commentary flick that also doubles as a stellar whodunit mystery of a crime drama, complete with surprising twists and well-timed climaxes separated by insightful valleys.

Rapace is the clear driving force of the film, delivering a performance as Lisbeth that is superbly stunning and more powerful than any American actress can probably ever do.

Her meaty role is uniquely balanced by Nyqvist, who portrays a quaintly dull and monotone Mikael. While such a bland performance may be seen as a major flaw in any film that is more than 15 minutes long, let alone considered anything short of boring in a production that is actually ten times longer, Nyqvist needed to be steady to act as the perfect counterbalance to the emotional roller-coaster of a mind-job that is Lisbeth.

Beyond some very solid performances by the two leads as well as by the supporting cast, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo expands beyond its crime mystery genre by condemning Sweden’s secretive culture of misogyny and powerful men wrongfully taking advantage of helpless women in the most mutilating of manners.

A gripping, meaty, fast-paced crime mystery flick, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo finally arrives in the United States after essentially opening everywhere else in the world, all to the tune of a solid box-office run and overall critical acclaim. Accordingly, with equally rave reviews of Larsson’s novel series for which this film is based, expectations will probably be rather high once the lights dim at cinema halls this weekend.

Still, despite expectations and a running time that does not necessarily vibe with the short attention span of American audiences, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a perfectly deliberate film that will definitely please moviegoers seeking quality cinema, even if it s Swedish production complete with English subtitles and an original title of Men Who Hate Women.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opens on March 19th and is Rated R.

In the meantime, we have the good-cop/bad-cop approaches to Lost (or, dare I say, Cop Sawyer/Con Sawyer). Sometimes you want to see if Lost will give you information by treating it kindly, maybe getting it some coffee; other times you’re screaming and pounding tables. Either approach, like Sawyer, the same goal is in mind. In the case of the audience, it’s answers.

It seems in both versions of Lost world, James Ford was going to be the victim of a great pain, circa 9. A conman who likes to call himself Sawyer would con his mom eventually lead to a murder/suicide from his dad. This is dark stuff that doesn’t afford much room for a light tone, and didn’t in Sawyer’s life either. In the reality we’re used to, Sawyer became a conman on the trail of a conman, joining ‘em to beat ‘em, so to speak. In the reality we got last night, he went the Batman route — righteous vengeance. Both ways, he used his conman lying charm, though, and on the island, both Charles Widmore and the Locke Smoke Monster sought it out too.

Speaking of Batman, though, it seems, after being jerked around answer-less for six years on not-so-Fantasy Island, some of our characters have turned into The Dark Knight’s version of the Joker — agents of chaos who “just want to see the world burn.” I’m thinking of Sayid mostly, who calmly, almost boringly watched Claire try to stab Kate through the throat as if he were falling asleep to Leno doing an OJ joke — “ho hum, nothing new here.” (For the record, watching Leno is only excusable if you’ve been infected by some kind of evil.) But Sawyer, like the Joker, no longer has a side and, in pitting all of them against each other, wishes only to show them how ridiculous their whole battle for island justice is — not to mention that, through years of charming and cunning, he seems to be asking “wanna know how I got these scars?”

Lost is so easily described in metaphor because that’s how it describes itself to us. Hurley the Lotto player/winner = larger story of Jacob’s island raffle for leadership. Sawyer’s conman saga = Smokey’s long, long con for his escape. Nikki and Paulo’s spider bites = ummm…uh…well…so…hm.

I posit that, if one wanted to, they could even form a Lost theory based on potato chips or corn flakes as easily as literature or philosophy. I’m not going to, though, because I’m actually at work. Hey, did I ever tell you how Lost is just like a mail-room?

So why does Lost choose the metaphors it does? Well, because it makes the show make sense. A few years back, we were all wondering who had the advantage in the good guy/bad guy category between Charles Widmore and Benjamin Linus. I think last night, through inference, we got a clear answer. Widmore has always been the good guy, even if, at times, he’s seemed a little priggish. Ben was always meant to be the good guy, but he’s always been misguided in doing so. Widmore was Jacob’s agent; Ben Smokey’s, only Ben thought he was Jacob’s too. So pairing Sawyer’s conman story last night, chatting it up with Smokey and Widmore, helps us draw parallels to the larger conflict of the show.

PLOT BUMP: Without Batman, Jay Leno, or Corn Flakes, please pardon me as I try to explain Lost. Oh yes. All of it.

Setting: The Island. The Island is a place of special physical properties.

Characters: Jacob and Smokey. Powerful beings that, while not necessarily being good and evil, share very different outlooks on life. Jacob believes in trial and error, choice, acting on faith, and the potential good and purpose in anyone. Redemption. Smokey believes in knowledge, gratification, and that people are essentially bad, or at the least cannot be further perfected.

Conflict: One or both of these beings are tied to, trapped on, or charged with the Island. They oversee it. Smokey claims to clamor for escape. Jacob seems to be experimenting, again and again, for some kind of utopia or destined people to inherit or share in the “great power, great responsibility” sweepstakes. Smokey seeks to subvert the sentence of destiny. Over the years, which are many, different groups have become caught up in this gambit — seemingly all have failed. At the same time, other unwitting groups have stumbled onto the island as well. They have been known as the French, as the US Army, as the Dharma Initiative and who knows what else. Interactions with these in-over-their-heads factions have almost always ended in violence or aggression. This is because one of Jacob’s responsibilities appears to be the protection of this special place, and some of these groups’ aims have been exploitation.

Means of Telling A Story: From the outside looking in as a viewer, Lost, at least thematically, is about the battle between philosophies and belief systems. Is the nature of man good or bad? Is science or faith the ultimate answer? Incident or destiny the path of life? In some of these, say faith and science, Lost seeks a balance or companionship. In others, Lost hasn’t completely come to its conclusions.

As a story, Lost is about characters — flawed people who, divided from the mundane ritual of modern life and put in the prism of the island, are forced to confront and conquer or succumb to their faults. In doing so, they determine how they fit into Jacob’s contest or Smokey’s con.

The fusion of theme and story happens when the conflicts of our characters, like parables, illustrate the larger nature of Lost — the arguments, ideas and, again, themes it means to convey. Having the biggest answer provided of Lost thus far be the battle between Smokey’s con and Jacob’s contest also allows the storytellers to tell their story as a multi-season slow burn; after all, neither of these driving forces behind the show’s plot have any incentive to go revealing their plans at the outset. Our characters cannot know they’re being tested or conned, but their choices determine which camp they’ll end up in and the fate of the island — still making them integral and compelling. Good stuff.

It’s All In The Details: The years-old ritual of dissecting what Lost references for answers should, by this point, be less about plot and more about theme. In an earlier season, when we see Sawyer reading Watership Down, we weren’t wrong to try to figure how the tale of rabbits and their warren might relate to the mysterious island. When we see Watership Down referenced last night, we should now be focusing on how that book’s themes relate to Lost.

Lost is advantaged and disadvantaged by being a TV show. If Lost was a novel, or not disposed to be set in the current day, it could function as its own epic myth to be referenced in other entertainments. Star Wars (I just can’t avoid this reference), caught up in, let’s say, three films — no, I know, THREE FILMS — can focus on good, evil, the force. Set in a sci-fi a long time ago far far away, it has no need to, and actually cannot, reference anything. Period. Obi Wan could have been named Locke or Rosseau or Lewis, but even this would have seemed out of place.

Lost, as a TV show, has the gift and curse of telling a longer, deeper, more expansive story. It can take us on a more multi-faceted, layered journey. This also dictates that Lost take its time and not have an entirely singular focus. Set in the similarly-filled-with-crashes-and-hopes ’00s, it can make reference at whatever it would like to in order to hint, direct, or inform. But by its end, the larger, simpler plot will emerge and is emerging: Good v. Bad as great stories have always done.

Lost is parables within a parable. There’s this one guy who made parables pretty popular and had this to say in reference to his own:

“The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside, everything is in parables so that, ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’”

First, it’s worth noting what such a passage says about the power of storytelling. Second, some interpretation is necessary. Jesus (if you didn’t guess that I was referencing the Easter zombie yet — and I mean that in the best way) wasn’t saying he doesn’t want people to know about the “secret” of salvation; rather, he wants them to desire it. Parables are a map, not the destination. The reader, hearer, seer has to get there themselves, provided they make the decision to.

Lost functions this way because, on the surface, it’s a pretty darn entertaining TV show. There are cool fights, love triangles, spooky stuff, guys in rock bands, guys that say “dude,” girls that have to bathe in the ocean in their bras, bad guys with guns, polar bears, eye patches, candy bars and wheelchairs. But those that desire can follow the expansive list of references so I won’t go so far to say revelation, but education, illumination, stimulation at least. One person watches Lost to see who Sawyer will end up dating. Another person can watch the same episode and learn about literature, physics, philosophy…even music and history — a whole buncha stuff. More importantly, this pursuit will also lead to thematic and plot-line conclusions. They’re just subtly disguised.

Within the story of Lost, Jacob is a character of parable too, except the stories he uses to illuminate are the stories of the characters’ own lives. He hopes, through desire, they will seek salvation, fulfillment.

The trade-off for the viewer — the curse of the TV show — is that for some, the reward of depth does not compare to the frustration of length. The providence of parables being not as satisfying or quickly gratifying as simple answers.

To circle back again, therein lies the battle between Jacob and Smokey. And earlier than that, the battle between Jack and Locke seasons ago, before Jack’s recent conversion.

You see how this show works, reflecting the attitudes of its audience and the parameters of its format to best tell its story.

Now, frustrated reader, I will recognize what you’ve been thinking this whole time. “Okay, nice enough tangent, good red herring, but…uh, did you forget you’re supposed to be talking about Tuesday night’s episode, or do you really just not have anything to say about it?”

Well, you got me. Kinda. Let me review Tuesday night’s episode: That’s So Sawyer. I’m guessing anyone reading this column is already a fan and has already watched Tuesday night’s episode. By now, we all know these characters so well that when they behave a certain way, we don’t have to describe it, just name it. Like if you’re goofy friend Jerry does something goofy at a party, and someone else that knows Jerry walks in to see a beer bong, a rubber chicken and clown pants laying next to a frothy, permanent-marker-faced Jerry on the ground and they go “What?” You don’t really have to explain, you just say, “It was Jerry.” Or “just a Jerry thing” and everyone knows your shorthand.

So although I haven’t been short at all, last night was a Sawyer thing. Oh, there was some cool stuff. Sawyer being a cop? Definitely. Him using “LaFleur” as a code name? Absolutely. Dating the red-headed Charlotte just in time for St. Patrick’s Day? Yeah. So cool but not necessarily answers-laden.

Sawyer’s “God’s got nothin’ to do with it” line? Great. His longing, nostalgic polar bear cage panty-raid? Nice. Claire’s Crazy Creepy Skull Baby 2: Baby Revenge? Good stuff. A pile of dead bodies and Widmore schlub soldiers? Why not? Cool enough, no answers.

Even the episode’s final moment came up a little lame. Sawyer is talking to Kate about escape; she asks about the plane: “Think we can fly it?” Sawyer: “We ain’t takin’ the plane. We’re takin’ the… *DA DA DUM!* sub.” Well, duh. That was kind of like being like, “I’m going to the grocery store…ON MY BICYCLE!” So?

Worth exploring within the episode last night: The bunny exodus of Watership Down, the good cop/bad cop dynamics of Sawyer, not to mention the parallel reality implications of Lost’s own faux-book published a few years back, Bad Twin… Furthermore — and though I don’t read his column before I write mine — EW.com’s Lost analyzer (the best at it too, by the way) Doc Jensen is probably going the eff off about “The Third Policeman,” as well he should — it’s another piece of vital Lost literature that I first got turned on to by the Jensen column. And guess what! It’s set in Ireland and concerns itself will all kinds of trippy identity stuff. Happy Lost St. Patrick’s Day! So all that’s out there. It’s interesting too, after Sawyer’s affinity for Watership, that Kate would be eating rabbit at the fire. You gotta wonder: is Sawyer getting cooked, or cookin’?

Regardless, here’s the really important bit from last night: Smokey tells Kate he had a mum, that she was nuts, that it saddled him with lots of…oh, let’s just call ‘em plain evil issues and instincts. So far, Smokey’s been darn good at either relating exactly to all the other character’s issues or just plain telling ‘em what they want to hear. If Smokey was lying, no big. If he wasn’t…

THEORY BUMP: I say Smokey and Jacob share the same mother. This mother is possibly Tauret, the Egyptian fertility deity that Jacob calls Casa. To get all Biblical again, Jacob was the twin of Esau and the founding father of the nation of Israel…but he kind of stole the inheritance from Esau in a lopsided bargain. Later, to keep it, under the pressure of his mother, Jacob deceived his father. Jacob went on to become a better guy; Esau did not. Now, can you blame Esau for being bitter? Not really. But we are left to make the best choices of our circumstances and to overcome. Heard this before? Not to get all Smokey and blame mum and bro. So, in Lost theory, I say that Jacob is not the Jacob but of a type — again, another metaphor. Maybe he dicked over bro Smokey way back when, but, as omniscient beings that cast off people on magic islands can, this bad was worked out for good. Jacob learned the err of his ways and went about leading island nation. Smokey didn’t dig this so much. Bible Jacob founded the nation of Israel on 12 tribes — his children. Will Island Jacob be founding the nation of Island on our 4 8 15 16 23 42 castaways? Will he have to defeat his bad twin to do it?

I dunno, but something close would be a safe bet. What’s more important to me is announcing that betting time is almost over, though. I’ve said little about this episode itself because, and this should make answer-seekers happy, there’s less and less to extrapolate. When you watch Aladdin, you don’t spend the last 20 minutes trying to figure out if Jafar is evil or not. Or maybe, as a better comparison, from square-one in The Lion King you know Uncle Scar is an evil bastard who’s trying to chase Simba away from his destiny. What could be truer of Smokey?

It’s not as cartoon-obvious, but Lost is getting that simple. We’re better off not trying to figure out what will happen on Lost but what it’s trying to say. That being said, I did end my column last week by saying, “That being said, Lost has got some explaining to do…”

Maybe this epic stall of a column is in eager anticipation of next week’s episode which will flesh out immortal Richard’s whole back-story. (In the preview, we see Richard screaming, “You don’t even know what this island is!” Awesome.) I imagine next week is going to be like the benefit telethon for the answer-depraved as hosted by Richard, which is good because he’s already stage-make-up ready. (Eyeliner!)

A lot of people think Richard came to the island as a slave. Guess what, islanders! St. Patrick was actually a Brit who got kidnapped to Ireland as a slave, only to leave and one day return as a missionary before becoming Ireland’s patron Saint. Sound like Richard? Locke? Jack?

See? Lost is a proven great story because it can be related to almost anything — mostly great things. I may have not proven it by using my “Lost is Corn Flakes” theory, but the story is one familiar and timeless, here new and different in its telling but known to us and, more importantly, felt by us the same. And let’s be honest, Corn Flake theories are worthless. So go have a St. Patrick’s day beer and be back next week in your Tuesday best.

The time for theory is ending.

Despite her skin color, Taina’s rags-to-riches tale isn’t too much different from the likes of Belle and Cinderella. Set in turn-of-the-century New Orleans, Taina and her family live in a small shack in the outskirts of the city. Her mother is a nanny of sorts to a rich family, and Taina befriends Charlotte, a wealthy white girl. Flash forward several years, and Taina is still quite poor, working long hours in a restaurant in an attempt to save money to open her own place.

Everything takes an unfortunate turn for the worst after a series of events, most of which involve a serious business voodoo villain’s magic spells and an unfortunate kiss turn her and an opposing haughty prince named Naveen into frogs. They must, of course, figure out how to be human again in order to fulfill their love for each other.

This latest Disney effort oozes traditional Disney nostalgia, with cute and harmless song-and-dance numbers and beautiful (and at times jaw-dropping) animation. It’s a nice break from the more politically/morally charged PIXAR films; a shift in the direction of silly and heartwarming entertainment, which is certainly welcomed with open arms by this reviewer. As others have pointed out, however, The Princess and the Frog, while undeniably positive in its attentions, can be construed as being potentially racist.

While much of the iffy content of the film can be contributed to the time period, one can only wonder why Taina has pale skin and permed hair, and why the Disney “prince charming” archetype isn’t even black. Nevertheless, the two spend most of the film as frogs, which raises some eyebrows in itself. Tiana also has a fairy godmother — an old blind woman that vaguely resembles the “mammy” stereotype from 1950s film and television. The villain, a “voodoo wizard,” casts numerous spells involving African masks, which projects a questionable portrayal of African Americans to audiences. Are black people “spooky”? I don’t believe so, yet I’m not sure which stance Disney wants to take on the matter.

The Blu-ray presentation, on the other hand, is nothing short of flawless, as is the case with any animated film on the hi-def medium. Such as with Ponyo, I once again assure you that you shouldn’t accept anything less than the best with this type of film. The animation here is gorgeous and benefits greatly from the 1080p transfer, significantly boosting not detail but colors as well. While the film might not garner an A+ in my book, this Blu-ray is certainly the best of the best, and this Disney venture is sure to please those young and old, if you can get past the questionable content.

Elisabeth Salander brings on the kick-ass while revealing the truth for a movie that was a monster hit in Sweden and will probably be a hot item here. In any case, this Girl is most likely to be the international breakthrough for Noomi Rapace, an over-20 actress as slimly beautiful and vibrant as her 24 year-old character is anorexic and dour — not that a similar combo didn’t work like gangbusters for Anne Parillaud in La Femme Nikita. Rapace may have been in over 20 films and TV shows, but that won’t matter to action and mystery fans who will find her a bolt from the blue, especially from guys who like their punked-out screen ladies to pack a punch.

Created by the late journalist Stieg Larsson over the course of three best-selling mystery books, Salander always ends up being the coolest puzzle for audiences to try and solve. And damned if Rapace is going to give you the whole story, as Salander helps a reporter get to the bottom of an industrial family’s murderous misdeeds, for her heroine is all about attitude, barely speaking while bestowing her favors and calculating Tarantino-worthy revenge after enduring some horrific sexual abuse. Beyond the undoubted male fantasy roots of this superhero-worthy character, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has a disturbing current of victimization for which the motorcycle-riding, super-hacking Salander shall be the avenger.

Payback has never been a cooler bitch than in the hands of Rapace, who’s already shot the sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire (with The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest on the way). For a character who’d be happily mute in an isolation chamber if she could help it, Rapace’s determined inner performance speaks volumes for a star-making charisma that couldn’t invigorate Hollywood soon enough.

Daniel Schweiger: Do you think there was a key for you landing the part of Lisbeth Salander?

Noomi Rapace: When I first read the book a few years earlier, I felt an immediate connection with Lisbeth and liked her very much. I think I showed our director Niels (Arden Oplev) that I had a clue of what would give Lisbeth life at that first audition. It wasn’t so hard for me to find her because I always like to dig up things from my past and translate them into the character.

DS: I hope you didn’t have as hard of a life as Lisbeth’s…

NR: I think a lot of people feel like they’re outsiders, especially when they’re young. I felt like it was up to me to create my own life. I moved out from my family when I was 15. My father was a Spanish Flamenco dancer, but I only met him a couple of times before he died a few years ago. My mother married an Icelandic man, and we moved there for a couple of years before going back to Sweden. So I think I always felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere, which made me relate to Lisbeth’s feelings of being an “alien,” as Stieg Larsson described her. I’ve always been a bit far away from the Swedish society and how people are supposed to fit into it. Everybody is trying to keep in this middle, normal way of behaving and end up being repressed and stoic. That’s really boring for me, and I felt like a troublemaker because I was not that way. I’ve always been outspoken.

DS: You went through a real physical transformation to play Lisbeth…

NR: I exercised four to five days a week, doing cardio and Thai kickboxing with a crazy Serbian guy. I was on a certain diet because I wanted to be a tomboy like Lisbeth. She’s a bit cartoonish sometimes, in the book. It’s hard to believe that she can do all of these things, especially since she’s small, anorexic, only eats junk food and smokes all the time, yet Lisbeth can fight ten guys and win. She can run like a sprinter, so sometimes it was hard for me to get a clear picture of who she really was, and that made me want to humanize her and be credible and realistic. I transformed my body to be able to do everything from the fight scenes to driving a motorcycle. I cut my hair and had piercings to go as far as I possibly could with her character.

DS: As you said, Lisbeth is almost like a comic book superhero, in a way, with all of her abilities, especially since she’s the creation of a male author’s fantasy.

NR: Absolutely. She’s ugly, but she’s sexy. For me, it was important to fully understand Lisbeth and give her life. I wanted her to be complicated but extreme. She had to be a character you’ve never seen before yet still allow the audience to connect with her, so it was a balance between how much I should let her emotions out and how much I should keep in. I had many arguments about that with Niels, who would sometimes tell me that he wanted to see more of what was going on inside of Lisbeth, and I said, “No, I can’t do that.” Lisbeth has learned how to control her face and body so she can hide her feelings, and she wouldn’t be reacting the way Niels wanted me to in those cases.

DS: It’s interesting how the film sets up Lisbeth with so many abilities, not to mention aggressiveness, yet she gets her ass kicked severely for a good portion of the film, without seemingly being able to do anything about her victimization. But when she does strike back, it’s in a way that Quentin Tarantino would really appreciate…

NR: I hope so! I love his work. For many journalists, Lisbeth is like a sister to Tarantino’s characters. It was an important puzzle piece as to handle Lisbeth’s “payback,” especially when she walks home after being raped by a lawyer who’s supervising her parole. It tells something about her. She doesn’t call the police. She doesn’t catch a taxi. She just goes home and checks her camera to see if she has evidence against the guy. Lisbeth is not emotional. She just acts and is practical. That’s because cutting off her feelings is Lisbeth’s way of surviving. It was scary to feel what kind of emotions came up in me as I had Lisbeth giving this guy what he deserves. I was shocked by how much I enjoyed it.

DS: Both the rape and revenge scenes certainly go a lot further than you’d expect them to. What was it like to shoot them?

NR: We rehearsed the scenes in the lawyer’s office and his apartment for a week. It ended up feeling like we’d went down to hell, in a way. Those were dark and heavy scenes, but you see the light by the end of them. This story with the lawyer felt like its own movie. You really didn’t need it for the movie or the main plot, but I liked that because it was important to have those scenes in the film. They say so much about why Lisbeth has created this hard, protective shell around her. It’s like she’s wearing a uniform against the world. She’s learned to survive things like this all of her life, and she can turn them into her own anger and power. A huge problem in Sweden is that many girls who’ve been abused and raped turn to hating themselves. They cut and burn themselves instead of hating the one who did it, so this was a good message to send out — that it’s better to punish your victimizer than to punish yourself. Of course, we don’t want all the women to do what Lisbeth does, because it’s terrible to be that violent. She does go over the limit.

DS: Lisbeth’s bisexuality is another interesting “guy thing” about her character.

NR: There’s a long love scene in the second film, The Girl Who Played With Fire, with Lisbeth and her girlfriend, and the whole crew was red in the face while we were shooting it! People reacted very strongly to that when Girl came out in Sweden. They wanted to know why it was so long. But for me, I have to go into those scenes with the same decision of trying to be realistic and credible, whether it’s for a dinner scene or a love scene. I can’t analyze what people are going to think about it. Lisbeth certainly doesn’t analyze herself. She doesn’t consider herself a bisexual. She has sex with whomever she wants to and won’t let anyone decide what she is or what she’s not. She’s just sexual, and I think she’s a modern, young person. In Sweden, Lisbeth may have paved the way for people to be who they want to without the sexual labels.

DS: Was there any kind of “Wow, this is cool” moment for you when it came to enjoying Lisbeth’s prowess?

NR: Like Lisbeth, I love riding motorcycles and have continued to do that. But no, I didn’t look at myself from the outside at all when making the movie. I actually forced away all of the expectations that were on me. Everybody was talking about this film before we started. It was on the blogs and the papers — everywhere. Everybody wanted to tell me who Lisbeth Salander really was because they really “knew” her, so I made the decision to ignore everybody else’s picture of Lisbeth and pushed away the outside world. When I was done, I thought everyone would hate me because it felt like a suicide mission to play such a loved character. I was sure I wouldn’t be able to walk on the streets when the movie opened. Journalists from all over Europe came to the premiere in Sweden, and I was really shocked because I’d closed my eyes and ears to all of that, and it was like an explosion all of a sudden. This whole circus started at that moment, and I didn’t really expect it. I knew this movie would be big, but I didn’t really see this kind of success coming.

DS: When you alter yourself so severely for a part, people might not recognize you, especially in Hollywood. Are you worried about that preventing you from getting more demure parts over here?

NR: Many times, people expect me to be like Lisbeth and to come in as this aggressive, black-dressed, hard-rock girl! But I’m an actress. I can be fat and blonde, or skinny with black hair. I can transform myself for whatever it takes. After Tattoo, I had black, curly hair extensions to play Medea. Now I’m doing the Norwegian film Baby Call, which is why I look like this. When I came to the hotel this morning, I was standing right in front of Niels and he didn’t recognize me, even as I was waving and saying “Hello!” Niels told me that my energy is different today, but of course it is because I was so influenced by Lisbeth when we were shooting the film. She kept me in some kind of cage when I was her. I was really angry. I sat in a corner drinking coffee and not talking to anyone. I was very asocial and isolated. People who know me realize that I look different for each project I’m working on, but here in Hollywood, they probably think that’s me!

DS: If they do an American remake, who do you see playing your part?

NR: Everyone is asking, and I think it’s a difficult question to answer. I saw Hard Candy with Ellen Page, whom I like. Hopefully they’ll take someone who’s not so famous.

DS: What do you think it is about Lisbeth that will make her appeal to American audiences?

NR: I don’t think Lisbeth is particularly a Swedish young woman. I think people all over the world can connect to her because she’s a survivor, an underdog and a fighter. If anyone has ever felt that someone harmed them or let them down, they can understand and connect with Lisbeth. We’re in a world where people are living on the edge and they don’t know what the next day will bring, so it can be freeing to see someone fighting against the big demons of society that have made Lisbeth who she is. She’ll never give up, so she’s a good example, like a darker Erin Brockovich in a way! I think that will make people in the U.S. connect and understand her.

Special thanks to Nancy Bishop and Venice Magazine.

A serious Mormon polygamist (Bill Paxton) lives the principle: He is married to three wives, runs a really successful business (based on the fact that although he and his partner are polygamists, nobody else knows). There are three groups of polygamists: the good guys (Bill and his three wives and many children); the bad guys who run a bad compound — supreme prophet who arranges for young women to be “assigned” to older men who fancy them; and the very very bad guys, The Greens, who work out of Mexico and, for people who don’t obey, they drag down the trousers and brand them. Okay. Now Bill has three great wives who live in three adjoining houses. A serious sensible first wife, a rather not-too-reliable second wife from the bad compound — she occasionally lies and cheats and steals but she believes in “the principle”; and a pretty sort of innocent third wife. What’s appealing is that all the “sister wives” get along so well, run the community family, and the kids are most loved and cherished. Sexually, Bill services all each week (with the help of Viagra, which is rather ruining his vision, etc.).

One of the older kids is a true believer, the other wants to break away, and it was all fascinating because I trusted that they believed and Bill seemed to be an honest guy who was simply living the religious life he chose. Also, the “prophet” of the second compound is the really great Harry Dean Stanton, and Bill’s absolutely unrelentingly bad father is Bruce Dern. Any old-timers: remember him in Silent Running (1972) where he is flying this renegade spaceship containing the only greenery left on Earth and now they are going to destroy even that, and he leaves and goes off on a solitary odyssey? And Mary Kay Place as the prophet’s wife: remember her as the appealing friend in The Big Chill with the much younger Kevin Kline and Jeff Goldblum? Great Sunday night stuff. Go fix the sandwich, make the tea.

Then it all starts to go wrong. Bill announces that he’s buying gambling machines and setting up in a casino to make the family financially secure. Now, the guy has feet of clay. He falls for a new lady, waitress, and woos her, and it’s okay in that society for the husband to court a fourth wife, the purpose being to produce more children and ultimately they will all be together in heaven for eternity. Exactly how he was going to “service” a fourth wife when he had two nights each for the original and a night off. But however…

Secrecy was required for him to run his business, and in one great segment last season, Bill is at a convention trying to do casino business and other guys know he’s Mormon and square and tease him about his faults, if he has any, and he introduces his many wives. Powerful. But…I guess the writers didn’t realize that there was something called Twitter and Facebook etc., etc. That little piece of info was going into the Internet and from thence to the world. Okay, I bought it all. He rationalized the casino (an Indian Casino) and I ate my sandwich and went to bed satisfied and looked forward to the next Sunday.

And then…chaos.  The writers went off the ledge. Bill decided to run for political office. Crumbs spilled, tea splashed. What? Public office? And the reason? He was tired of hiding, he was going to win the office, and on election night, he would stand up with his three wives and announce publicly that he was a polygamist and perhaps change the law. I mean…how? Dumb idea! Once he announces, there goes his business, the privacy of his family, complications with the law. And when first wife chides him, he doesn’t care. Not only that, he outs his really sweet, very trusting business partner for his own interest, cruelly and self-servingly, and he lost me. Wife three goes into business and decides to help the pregnant, not-quite-wife four stay in the country with Bill’s baby by marrying her fiance. What? What? And Bill betrays his Indian partners for his own self-interest. Writers, were you drinking or smoking, or just having a psychiatric meltdown of big-winner guilt? And somebody is importing illegal birds, and Bill’s sweet beloved son is captured by the Greens and almost killed, and Bill rushes in and saves them all and somebody’s arm is chopped off? And the bad polygamy doctor almost implants incestuous eggs in wife two?

Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall. I liked Bill. He is in pieces. Who, oh who, is going to put this impossible mess together again? I guess I’m left with Dexter and Masterpiece Theater. But I am used to my Sunday nights. And my sandwich and my curl-up in the snuggy bed and my programs. But wife one has already said that she wants out. Wife two wants the stud all to herself. Wife three has gone and married another guy.

Is there a Writers’ Help Line? Is there a Writers’ Guild emergency crew? Dial TWM for “total writer madness” and get somebody out there before the next season. Hey I’m an old, old fan. I want to support my program. Give me something to go on. Think of this poor lady curled in her comfy bed with her sandwich and her tea waiting for the familiar voices and getting only a cacophony of madness.

Help!