One of the best and worst things about the show was its tendency to be self-referential—especially in having the characters criticize the show’s own convoluted plot lines. I began to notice this in the fifth season, when the character Hurley announced his confusion when other characters tried to explain the time-travel aspects of the plot. Knowing we needed it, the writers wrote an ombudsman into the show. Hugo Reyes, audience advocate!

By season 6, we had Miles playing the skeptic. After a really contrived scene in which Sun is said to be suffering from aphasia after getting knocked out, Miles asks, “She hits her head and forgets English? Are we supposed to buy that?”

The writers became the show’s best and most obsessive critics. They identified places where bubbles of cynicism were be growing, and used the characters to pop them. By the time we got the finale, these there was a lot of bubble popping to be done. After a particularly corny bit of exposition in the first few minutes, Hurley, a Star Wars fan like much of the “Lost” audience, chimes in with a well-timed, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Then there’s this one, also from the finale. It primes the audience for the finale’s heavy-handed reliance on Christian imagery, and addresses “Lost”‘s annoying tendency to give characters obvious, symbolic names.

Kate: “Who died?” Desmond: “A man named Christian Shepherd.” Kate: “Christian Shepherd? Seriously?” Desmond: “Seriously.”

History may remember the way the show’s writers tailored the scripts around the fan chatter on the Internet. When fans decided they hated Paolo and Nikki, the show offed them in one of my favorite episodes. First blogs and, later, Twitter (invented two years after “Lost” went on the air) acted as a real-time focus group for the show. And it felt like writers and producers read the blogs and genuinely wanted to be liked—not only to make a commercially viable show, but to make something that the geekiest of the fans would enjoy.

As an added bonus, it’s hard to hate on a show that’s so smartly self-aware and self-deprecating. All these meta references built a wall of criticism-proofing around “Lost.”

And so I often wanted to abandon “Lost” but kept watching it because it was fun. Six seasons is a long time in TV years. Call it a success. If we’re lucky, there will more shows like it. See you in another life, brother.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

There’s lots of buzz this week about 3-D TVs at CES. I don’t buy the hype. Here are 5 reasons 3-D TV is a non-starter.

1. The Internet. Barring any huge leap forward in technology, 3-D video (which requires a steady, high frame rate) is incompatible with Internet streaming (which adjusts frame rates depending on your connection speed). As such, 3-D TV is a naked ploy by the entertainment industry to push viewers back toward buying DVDs and cable subscriptions, rather than enjoying free online video. It won’t work. Trying to steer the freeloaders back to paid video once they’ve figured out Hulu and Netflix and torrents is pushing water uphill.

2. Glasses. Nobody has solved the 3-D glasses problem. Are you and your buddies going to hang around a sports bar watching football, drinking beer, eating wings, while wearing identical sets of flimsy plastic glasses? No. Glasses are for squares.

3. Production costs. It’s waaay more complicated and more expensive to produce TV shows in 3-D than in 2-D. Amateurs can’t do it. But for years, the trend toward digital video has meant cheaper TV shows, often with user-submitted content. This has been both good (CNN’s iReport) and bad (“Jon & Kate Plus 8″) but there’s no sign that really expensive television is due for a rebound.

4. Hardware costs. Except for hard-core home theater enthusiasts, it will be hard to convince people to buy new TV sets for 3-D alone. With the digital switch, it seems like everybody has shopped for, bought, and had installed a new TV in the last couple of years. That’s a lot of Best Buy-induced trauma. But people endured the shopping madness for a reason. Even though research showed that most people couldn’t tell the difference between HD and standard-def digital TV, we preferred HD TVs anyway because they’re wide, bright, flat and can be mounted on the wall. They just look high-tech. 3-D TVs offer no advantages other than being able to accommodate 3-D signals. Would you pay more to see “The Jay Leno Show” in 3-D?

5. Porn. Secretly, all advances in video technology are about making porn better. Face it: You don’t want 3-D porn and neither do I.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

But the Macy’s parade delivers a single, visual quality that towers (literally) over the sloppy choreography and humiliating celebrity appearances. The balloons! Round and colorful, they bob like hallucinations past the flat, stone edifices of the city. Tiny ants at the ends of guylines ease these cartoon behemoths around the corners of Midtown office buildings. The feat has become so routine—this is the parade’s 83rd year—that our eyes miss seeing it for the remarkable spectacle it is.

Some of my earliest, dimmest impressions of New York—before I ever visited the city—are of the Macy’s parade on TV. At no point did I ever imagine being there. As childhood impressions go, New York City was similar to the Land of Oz—vivid, fun and purely fictitious.

Now this is my 8th November in New York. I have never actually been to the parade, since I always travel to Maryland to spend Thanksgiving with my family. But I always catch a few minutes of the parade on TV, or I see the photos later. Don’t let familiarity spoil how cool those images are. Balloons and buildings, speaking to one another: A pairing of color and monochrome, soft and hard, fleeting and permanent. The Macy’s balloons are a perfect artistic response to the canyons of Manhattan.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Geddes and I disagree on this point. As I wrote back in November, I enjoy watching Fox News at the gym because it makes me angry, and anger helps me exercise harder!

Since November, however, I have changed my mind about something I wrote.

Back then, I said “Fox & Friends” has “shockingly sloppy production.” In fact, it has gotten better. The entire show looks and sounds sharper and more professional. On Monday they switched from 4:3 to widescreen. Somebody is putting money into this show.

My theory is that they’re saving money by cutting down on reporters. There are almost no remotes on “Fox & Friends” any more. Some mornings you can watch for a full half hour and never leave 48th Street. “Fox & Friends” has always been an opinion show disguised as a news program, but now it’s essentially not even bothering with the journalistic window dressing.

“Fox & Friends” feels like it’s scripted by an evil genius who is a master of rhetoric and human psychology. In a typical segment, the anchors spout fast bursts of facts, all of which are irrefutable, but which add up to nothing. Then they shrug their shoulders and basically say, “The people in charge don’t get this, because they’re fools.” That means: Apply this raw data to whatever nutty conspiracy theory you’ve got. Or be a fool.

The facts are gibberish, and the conclusions are never even spoken. They’re supposed to be our little secret. Out-of-touch people don’t know them, but you, the Fox News viewer, do. Here’s what you know:

• You aren’t a racist. The black people in your neighborhood are good people. But the blacks in the city are bad and scary. Nobody knows what kind of black person Barack Obama is. That’s why he’s so dangerous!
• Community organizers ruined the economy. Now they’re going to take away your medicine.
• Russia, Cuba, Venezuela and Iran are setting a trap for Obama, and he’s going to fall for it. This could lead to global nuclear war—or worse, socialism!
• White Christians are oppressed by secularists.

Then they spend 10 seconds on a wacky YouTube video. Then graphics. Then cut to a commercial for a diet plan or male enhancement product. Or my favorite, the commercial for the home security system in which a man in a dark hoodie forces his way into a McMansion on a sunny afternoon, while a terrified white mom and daughter cower in fear inside.

These days, “Fox & Friends” seldom dwells on Al Qaeda, 9/11-style terrorism, Iraq or Afghanistan. That’s old news. We don’t talk about the war anymore. Is this because Fox News ended up on the wrong side of popular opinion, and it’s un-American to dwell on your mistakes? I don’t think so. I think it’s just a ratings decision.

And FNC knows ratings. The top 13 programs in cable news are all Fox News shows!

“Fox & Friends” is so fascinating to me that I could easily write another 1,000 words about it. There’s a real threat to democracy here, but I’m not quite ready to articulate it yet. For now, this channel is just helping me stay in shape.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

If you’ve never seen the 1960s TV show “The Prisoner,” now is the time: AMC is streaming all 17 episodes for free here. (A remake of the show is supposed to air on AMC this summer.)

Be seeing you!

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

(If you can’t view the clip above, you can watch it here, at about the 1 minute mark).

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

“Flight of the Conchords” comes to the Slope Wednesday: No parking!

(These signs were up around 5th Ave and 13th.)

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

This election season, I picked up an odd habit. At the gym in the mornings, I’ve started watching Fox & Friends. I’m totally obsessed with this show. I know, weird.

Fox & Friends is beamed from a newsroom in another galaxy where everybody is batshit, spit-flying, crazypants. There is an election happening in this parallel universe, but it bears no resemblance to any election happening on planet Earth. For one thing, there only seems to be one candidate.

This candidate, Fox & Friends tells us, is a closet socialist, a terrorist sympathizer and a con artist. His head is so clouded by messianic ambition that he spins outrageous lies about his own tax plan. An endless loop of talking heads appears via satellite every morning to denounce him as a conniving snake. But alas, everyone agrees this candidate is predestined to win, thanks to the all-powerful and all-biased mainstream media. His opponent is practically irrelevant, seldom mentioned, never pictured.

Occasionally, the Fox & Friends storyline drifts from this villainous character to the world’s only other news story – The War. In this war, proud generals strut through hallways, helicopters fly low over sand-hued cityscapes, and important men shake hands. A well-oiled defense machine hums with purposeful confidence. It is a great war. May it never end.

I have been trying to psychoanalyze why I find Fox & Friends such compelling television. For one thing, it is broadcast live and has shockingly sloppy production, so watching for goofs is part of the fun. It also stokes my ego when I realize I know more about the news than a professional news anchor. But those are superficial satisfactions. Bottom line, I think it helps me exercise better. As I watch this show on the elliptical or the treadmill, I am thinking: I have to be faster, smarter, stronger and better than the schlubs who take Fox & Friends seriously. I owe that to my country.

So thank you Steve, Brian, Gretchen, and friends for helping me stay fit!

Below, please enjoy some Fox & Friends video from this morning’s show – a conversation about the rich and the poor that practically could have been written by Joseph Heller.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Generally, film and TV productions cause minor disruptions. They will take over all the street parking on a block, set up a bunch of trucks with diesel generators, and spread heaps of cables and equipment all over the sidewalk. Sometimes they’ll close a restaurant or a coffee shop for the day. And rarely, for the biggest movies, they’ll block a sidewalk or a road entirely. I think most New Yorkers get such a kick out of seeing our city fictionalized in movies and on TV that we accept these small inconveniences.

The Times has a story today explaining why there are so many shoots going on right now: Tax credits.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.