Pilot Season

One of the annual recurrences this time of year(apart from those demonic hurricanes which are having their fill, literally, of New Orleans) is the return of original programming to the free TV networks--otherwise known as "Premiere Week." This more encompassing term includes the seasonal openers of episodic shows, each of which is scripted to resolve issues left dangling in their May cliffhanger conclusions. Tivo takes care of covering those shows that engaged my interest. More challenging is the effort to sample as many of the pilots in the genres that intrigue me. This year there are a plethora of mystery/alien/Unknown dramas that have been spawned by the success of the elusive "Lost," but which don't seem yet to have stumbled upon tht show's secret recipe for of success, which is deep emotionally drawn characterizations. I'll have more to write about these various efforts once I've begun to distinguish from among "Supernatural," "Surface," "Invasion," "Threshhold" and there's probably another two or three whose memory eludes me.

Meanwhile there was a wholly different Pilot story in the recent news, and this one, thankfully, was more upbeat, though at least as chilling as any of the fictional pilots. On Wednesday afternnon a Jet Blue flight leaving Burbank for JFK had to be diverted because its front wheels became jammed. For three hours it circled the region before the pilot was able to land it successfully, amid a stream of scary sparks, at LAX. I was unaware of this incident till much later, since I was otherwise engaged (interestingly I was in a theater watching "Red Eye," to keep well within the aeronautic theme of this blog). But had I been linked as usual to the media I'd have become involved with the ongoing drama as it was reported on the web and carried on news channels. I don't know if I would have had the stomach to watch it, given all the bad news happening over the globe. Yet the passengers on the plane did get to watch, thanks to the in-flight TV service of which Jet Blue is so proud. Many later spoke of the surreal quality of that experience. I had lived an event almost as surreal during the L.A. riots of 1992, when I watched on my big Mitsubishi as storefronts burned on Hollywood Boulevard, three blocks down the road. And with gunfire punctuating the background, no less.

Jees, this all makes you want to move to a Buddhist monastery, doesn't it?

Back to my point, I wish to officially salute the pilot(s) of this plane, whose steel nerves and professionalism saved the lives of these people. I don't think we appreciate either the experience and skill of the folks in the cockpit, or the relative safety of flying in general, whose record, despite some recent malfunctions, is pretty damn remarkable. Because of poor economic management, higher fuel prices and security restrictions, air travel has become a rather burdensome necessity. And if they permit unlimited use of cell phones in the future, it may become utterly intolerable. But in the meantime the reliability of a system so vital and so complex is one of the success stories of International commerce.

And to return to another fictional offshoot of aerophobia, the blockbuster "Lost" series, I found their season opener quite satisfying, but for a more compelling reason than the silly reveal that underneath the mysterious hatch lay a combination bachelor pad/1987 bomb shelter occupied by a mysterious Scotsman Jack once met while running up the aisles of a stadium (TMI, don't ask). Frankly I'm getting weary of all the conveniences that keep popping up on this otherwise forbidding isle, from the great Hawaiian scenery to the lavish fresh-water sources. Now there's Dr. No's Underground Lab with a running loop of "Make Your Own Kind of Music." What next, will Jeff Probst come sailing in withcartons of Lays potato chips and home videos from the castaway's relatives?

However, the back story involving the self-doubting gloomy Jack and a problematic surgery ended with an unlikely but wildly happy moment, well-acted by the patient and Matthew Fox, which had true emotional resonance, and reminded me again of why this show will outlast so many of its clones. The glow that I felt in that moment was not unlikely a similar glow I felt when listening to the account by one of the passengers on the Jet Blue plane. I was myself suffused by a small adrenaline rush of relief and, well, damn happiness for the successful resolution of a crisis situation.

During this sad, frenetic Bush era when it's almost a survival mechanism to grow callous to the disasters that inundate us (hey, 20 old evacuees got blown up in a bus by their oxygen tanks, the Pontchartrain levees have collapsed, and Rita hasn't even hit Texas yet), I'm grateful for any source, fictional or real, where the light hope and optimism can stay kindled.