checking in 7/26

hello again folks! just wanted to take some time this morning to give a little progress update.

despite my relative silence over the last couple months, i've been working on a lot of stuff. when i talked about the DARK video being the first of an informal series on modern TV, i'd intended for there to be a couple more coming out in june/july that were shorter, filling in some gaps in the leadup to Everyone Is Wrong About LOST later this year. but after releasing the Doctor Who video (part 2 of this informal series) i struggled to find what the other entries wanted to be in the meantime. basically, i had a grab-bag of thoughts about various recent TV shows that were relevant to the LOST video, but none of them was strong enough to merit an entire vid on, like, Yellowjackets or whatever. then a few weeks ago i got to season 2 episode 5 of Interview with the Vampire, which flipped on the light bulb and got me working again. the result is an admittedly hectic, unfocused script-- literally a collection of arguments presented as a stream of consciousness ramble. it starts by talking about Interview, but quickly veers off to talk about the FNAF movie, the Halo show, Yellowjackets, FROM, Station Eleven, and of course LOST. i've recorded and edited the audio for it, i just have to get the video component finished. my hope had been to get it out before the end of the month, but i've been occupied helping my gf get the finishing touches on one of her projects. unforeseen crises notwithstanding, this one will be out within two weeks and hopefully sooner than that.

otherwise, i've been writing a lot! so far i've banked scripts about the death of theaters, the old-age discourse around joe biden, a lifelong nerd's defense of sports, escapism in I Saw The TV Glow, and the fear of dying young. obviously not all of these will make it to the finish line lmao but the point is that i'm getting back into the habit of writing more. i may end up formatting some of these as pure essays to be published here. at some point in the next few months i've got another barn-burner of a video cued up talking about the inimitable Sinkdog. i already interviewed the creator of Sinkdog for precisely this purpose. that'll probably be the last Big Video Project before LOST.

speaking of LOST: i've formally begun preproduction on my video! which is sort of a silly thing to say when this video has arguably been in preproduction since my channel started back in, like, 2014. there have been so so so so SO many versions of this video over the years, you really have no idea. what makes the difference in this case is that i finally know what i want to say and how i want to say it. a little over a year ago i did a pretty comprehensive outline that felt like a solid spine, but then a big expose was published about the rampant racism in the LOST writer's room, something i'd always kind of expected to be true but was still deeply disappointed to read about at length. this is the biggest reason why the LOST vid has taken so long to get off the ground since i first started seriously talking about it in 2022. i needed time to let it all sink in. but i think now i've finally fully processed those allegations and integrated them into my thesis on the show, and know how to talk about them without devolving into rank rubbernecking melodrama.

it's hard to say how long this video is gonna be. my aim is to keep it below 2 hours at all costs, but until the script is closer to done i really can't know for sure. i want to write each section as a self-contained essay, with overlapping elements that build up over the course of the video analogous to the way episodes work in a season of LOST. my goal is to film the sections in blocks throughout the remainder of this year, with a tentative release window in december. i know the 20th anniversary of the show is in september, but i don't want to rush this video by pegging it to an arbitrary release date. besides, everyone and their mother will be releasing a video essay about LOST come september, not to mention the huge "Getting LOST" documentary. this way, i'll have time to watch the crowd for new information and see if anybody else is wrong enough to get the pointing finger. i expect the answer to be yes at least once.

alright, what else? i've been thinking about getting back into streaming and podcasting, but i'm not about to make any promises there. i've gotten a lot better at playing guitar! otherwise i think that's it. thank you as always for your patience and support. i look forward to inundating you with even more special interest monologues in the near future. take care of yourselves!