Lilit Marcus: March 2007 Archives

Sanjaya Malakar, the 17-year-old American Idol finalist, has had a rough couple of weeks. His singing has been eviscerated by the judges, and he's being criticized for remaining on the show when other, more talented singers have gotten the boot (as if it's his fault how people choose to vote). The guy whom bloggers have nicknamed "Sendjaya Home" is as aware as anyone that, as much as Idol purports to be a singing contest, it's also a popularity contest. And Sanjaya is popular. He's been embraced by Howard Stern fans and by the brains behind www.votefortheworst.com. And, courtesy of a crying girl in the audience of last week's British Invasion-themed show, we know that the under-12 set loves him.

Not so popular? Sanjaya's hair. Every week it's different- crimped, curly, blown out. Sanjaya's hair is analyzed on the Web more than most of the contestants' singing. So, how did he respond to the criticism? By coming out this week with the most insane hairstyle I have ever seen on this show (and when you're competing against Paula Abdul, that's saying something): a "ponyhawk."

What is a ponyhawk? It's a mohawk made of seven small ponytails along the crest of the head. After Sanjaya's performance, Ryan Seacrest immediately wanted to talk about "The Hair." Sanjaya said that the seven ponytails represented luck.

I know seven represents luck in Vegas, but I'm not sure what tradition Sanjaya is referring to. Numerology, where 7 means Completion? A reference to the biblical creation story, where God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh? The number of heavens (and of earths) that Muslims believe in? The seven lucky gods in Japanese mythology? The number of Hindu sages (and the number of Hindu sages' wives, or Seven Mothers)? The Duran Duran album that probably came out before he was born? That movie with Gwyneth Paltrow?

Regardless of what makes the number 7 lucky, something is keeping this guy on the show.

Some people send their friends e-cards. Some people send their friends plagues. Wait ... what?

If you're like me, you've seen the recent spate of ads for upcoming horror movie "The Reaping" starring Hilary Swank and featuring the tagline "What hath God wrought?" I'm not sure what the plot of the movie is, but the Biblical plagues definitely play a major part--just in time for Passover.

If you want to send locusts, blood, or darkness your friends, go here for a full selection.

Nearly 24 hours later, I am still thinking about last night's episode of "Lost." It's official: My favorite show is back. After a rocky mini-season, I was almost ready to give up for good, but this particular string of great episodes has gotten me hooked all over again.

And what would an episode of vintage "Lost" be without daddy issues? Everybody has them. In fact, last week we learned that Claire and Jack have the same daddy. This week, it was Locke's father, the con man formerly known as Anthony Cooper, who made a shocking appearance on the show. After Anthony killed the son of a rich widow he was trying to con, Locke confronted him--and the scene ended with Anthony pushing Locke out of an eighth-floor window. This was the answer to a long-held show question about how Locke ended up in a wheelchair. (His legs were magically "cured" by the island.)

Flash forward to the island a few years later, and Locke is now hell-bent on sabotaging any possible escape route from the island. He's certain that ever leaving the island means the healing magic will be undone. So instead of just staying on the island, he wants everyone to have to stay with him. Even if that means blowing up communication centers and submarines.

At the end of this very tense episode, Locke butted heads with Ben, the leader of enemy group The Others. Ben remarked that Locke's reason for staying on the island was that it was the one place where his father could never get to him. Ben then led Locke to a room with a man tied up inside it. The man? None other than Locke's father.

One theme of "Lost" is that you can never change who you are. As Sawyer likes to say, "a leopard don't change his spots." Sawyer still cons, Kate still runs away, Jack still tries to fix people. Locke may no longer be paralyzed, but he still has to deal with his relationship with his father. And now his father is on the island.

Perhaps the theme of "Lost" is that you can go anywhere in the world, but you can never hide from your problems. Others have speculated that characters on the show die as soon as they resolve some central problem, like when Eko died after "reconciling" with his brother. Maybe the monster on the show takes the form of whatever the person is trying to escape from. In typical "Lost" fashion, the appearance of Anthony Cooper raised more questions than it answered. But I'm happy to stick around and see what happens next.

Do You Love "Lost"? Discuss the show with others here.

I love to hate "The Apprentice." While the first season of the show was actually kind of good and taught legitimate lessons about business, the show has devolved into something beyond caricature. This season takes place in Los Angeles, because what better thing to do with a dying show than uproot the whole cast? This week's task was to create and star in a 90-second TV "webisode" of a fake soap opera to sell … soap.

Team Arrow, led by the manic but kind of endearing James, won the task by creating a webisode that was light on plot but heavy on mentioning the name of the product as many times as possible. Team Kinetic, led by Kristine, lost mainly because Muna, the contestant playing the main character, spoke with a heavy Jamaican accent and was deemed "hard to understand" by the soap company executives who judged the task. The executives wanted to fire Kristine for her bad casting.

Most of the sick pleasure I get from watching this show is seeing a bunch of wannabe-reality-stars run around in expensive suits and make idiots out of themselves in front of Donald Trump. It's hard for me to feel sorry for the contestants when they make stupid decisions. But this week's episode angered me.

I knew things were going to end badly when the first scene after Kinetic's loss showed Muna and Kristine sitting side by side--Kristine reading one of Donald Trump's books and Muna reading the Bible. Kristine, who had directed the skit and been the team's project manager for the task, knew that it would be either her or the "hard to understand" Muna who got fired that week. In an interview Kristine criticized Muna's choice to read the Bible, saying "I've never seen God in the boardroom."

In her interview Muna noted that "The Bible says you can move mountains with your faith. Today, my mountain is the boardroom."

In the boardroom, Muna and Kristine went back and forth about why the other should be fired. The two other Kinetic teammates, Angela and Heidi, admitted under some duress that they preferred Kristine as a coworker. This convinced Trump to fire Muna, and she went on her way.

There was a lot going on in this episode that made me uncomfortable. The God/Trump comparisons were horrible and made me kind of sick, but at least the show’s editors were upfront about how they chose to portray the situation. Trump has always been the God of the Boardroom, but this episode was too heavy-handed. The religious overtones of the show almost made me forget about how awful it was that Muna was criticized for her accent (criticisms that were laden with race issues). Muna may not have been an Oscar-level performer, but isn't this show supposed to be about business? Oh, who am I kidding?

After being fired, Muna got into a cab and did a final interview in which she said that if "one little boy or girl believes in God," then she was glad she appeared on the show. It's nice to see that she was capable of being better than the farce of a show she was on.

Curly-haired Chris Sligh is one of the contestants to watch this year on American Idol. In the short time we’ve known him, he's already managed to annoy Simon Cowell more than once, and he's had multiple opportunities to show off his sense of humor. But there could be more to him than meets the eye.

According to Chris' official bio on the American Idol web site, he's an alumnus of Bob Jones University, a conservative Christian college in South Carolina. However, that’s the only religion reference you’ll find in Chris' bio, a rarity on a show where many contestants credit God for their singing ability. On Chris’ personal blog--which went offline shortly before he made the Top 24--he admitted that he attended BJU because it was the only school his religious parents would pay for. But as soon as Chris distanced himself from religion, he performed a song by Christian rock band dc Talk. What gives?

It looks like Chris' strategy might actually be brilliant. He chose a dc Talk song that isn't overtly religious. Any diehard fan would know the song, but an audience member who isn't into the Christian rock genre probably wouldn't have noticed.

If Chris has been paying attention to past seasons of the show, he probably knows that past winners like Carrie Underwood and Fantasia Barrino won lots of votes from Christian viewers, who are a valuable demographic to have on his side. He's trying to court the Christian vote while simultaneously win the favor of kids who think it's punk rock to sing "obscure" (read: not Stevie Wonder) songs on the show. If his strategy works, he could make it all the way to the top.

As a diehard "Lost" fan (and a diehard Jack hater), I’m always thrilled for an episode based around Sayid. As a former member of Iraq’s Republican Guard, he knows way more about technology, strategy, and well, everything, than Jack. I’ve...