I was done with “Lost”, I was tired of it and never wanted to watch it again, and then what did Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof go and do?

Make me care again.

You bastards!

The people behind “Lost” must have noticed that our household was getting tired of their little televised social experiment, because out of the blue they’ve started putting on far better shows than we were used to seeing on ABC on Wednesday nights. Except for a few glitches this season (like the horr-i-ble Jack-centric “Stranger in a Strange Land”) the second half of season 3 hasn’t been too shabby, with episodes like the Desmond-centric episode “Flashes Before Your Eyes” being the stand out for me this season, followed by “The Man from Tallahassee” and last week’s fun (for me, at least) “Expose” where they killed off the latest clumsily introduced members of the Losties.

The producers definitely were yanking our chains when the season started, what with the downbeat episodes of Jack, Sawyer and Kate’s captivity and Jack’s growing relationships with Ben and Juliet. I love Ben now, he’s just so creepy/weird and you really (up until “Expose”) didn’t know where he was coming from, but he’s either manipulating people to do what they wouldn’t normally do and he’s a mastermind of sorts, or he’s delusional and thinks he’s some amazing puppet master. And Juliet has evil written all over her. Just a feeling I get.

John Locke has been infuriating this season though. You can’t stop playing with computers, can you John? First Mikhail escapes because you want to play chess on the Fire Station’s computer, then you blow up the Fire Station out of stupidity, and then you kill Mikhail because he knows you were a paraplegic, and to top it all off you go and take that C4 that you found and blow up the one reliable mode of transportation off of the island? What’s your angle, John? You better pray that Penny Widmore rescues your ass, or at least your compatriots, since you’ll never want to leave the island now that you can walk.

Charlie can die anytime he wants now. After the drug storyline was done with he started feeling extraneous, like Shannon. Hey Desmond, don’t tell Charlie when he’s going to die so he won’t know you didn’t save him, okay?

Where did Rose and Bernhard go? I liked both of them and they’ve just disappeared, but of course, in “Lost” time, they’ve been gone for probably 5 days.

I keep hoping we’ll see Michael and Walt again someday. I like to think that the coordinates that Ben gave Michael when he left at the end of last season took him straight to the second island and that they’re both there. They’re probably locked up somewhere, but I wish they’d explained Walt’s weird gift with animals and drawing them to him. Guess that’ll go straight into the crapper, won’t it? Along with so many other mysteries.

And I don’t miss Eko. He had the ability to become cool, like Locke, but he used all of his street cred up with me. RIP, Eko.

Battlestar Galactica Season 3 is officially done and I have mixed feelings about it. It started off with a real bang and I just loved the occupation of New Caprica by the Cylons and the ensuing struggle/escape from the planet, but once they got off-planet the show started to waver. It started off great with “Collaborators“, which was amazing and hard to watch and was probably my favorite episode of the year, but then they started throwing in the “story of the week” episodes, like “Hero“, “The Passage” and “The Woman King“. And yeah there were some exceptional episodes thrown in the mix in between the valleys (like the soon to be classic “Taking a Break From All Your Worries“), but the season just didn’t have the tight feel that the majority of season 2 had. From listening to the Ron Moore Podcasts, you can tell that the season’s storyline went through a large metamorphosis concerning the presidency/legacy of Gaius Baltar and his relationship to that sub-genus of humans, the Sagitarans. There was supposed to be a big hullabaloo in regards to Baltar shooting Sagitarans during the Occupation and how it was filmed and how Lee was supposed to suddenly come into possession of this film and how there was more to in that it seemed, but that all got scrapped when they realized that no one really cared about the Sagitarans (my opinion). The film was going to feature heavily into the trial of Baltar but that was also scrapped.

This is more just rambling, isn’t it?

The infected basestar episodes (“Torn“, “A Measure of Salvation“)were excellent in execution but made me furious when a potentially huge new plot line was discarded just because Helo had a conscience. Adama should have shot him himself. Or else Tigh could have eaten him, which I think he would have gladly done.

Tigh continues to be my favorite character of the series, and when he isn’t on screen for long periods of time I miss him. He’s a complete jerk and a drunk, but it’s priceless lines like “It’s in the frakkin’ ship!” and that little laugh he gave Helo in “The Woman King” that make me wish someone would recognize how great an actor Michael Hogan really is. But he’s Canadian and a recluse, from what it sounds like, so he may never get the recognition that I think he deserves.

Next favorite is Chief, Galen Tyrol. Everytime they want to have a heavy mythos-centric episode they seem to allow him to shine. Whether he’s coming to grips with the idea that he may be a Cylon, or trying to decipher the Eye of Jupiter, or even in Crossroads, where he and others, for some reason, keep hearing “All Along the Watchtower”, Aaron Douglas as Tyrol is great, and he plays the tortured part well.

Is it okay to think that Grace Park (Sharon/Boomer/Athena) isn’t that great an actress? Yes, it is okay. Because she’s not.

And I miss Brother Cavill (Dean Stockwell). We need more of him next season. He’s just so slimy.