Buddy ball

My big viewing extravaganza for the evening was going through the special features disc on my new DVD copy of "Hoosiers" (only my favorite movie and the inspiration for my hopeless addiction to underdog sports stories). Thanks to the deleted scenes, I now know how Buddy winds up rejoining the team and what Barbara Hershey was doing in the movie in the first place. Good times.

I saved the new "South Park" to watch tonight, but I got to Wednesday's other two big shows, with mixed but mostly positive reaction to both:

"Lost": Another flashback with no real new info, but Jin and Sun are two of the show's best (and most underused) characters, so I was happy to see them get some time in the spotlight. In the present tense, I like Mr. Echo a lot, especially now that I'm no longer expecting him to throw Sawyer over a table and do to him what Adebisi did to Peter Schibetta. On the other hand, Ana-Lucia seems to exist solely to complain whenever any of our heroes (and, by extension, the audience) try to get answers about what's going on, and if I didn't think she could stomp me good, I'd want to punch her. Good to see Jack has temporarily removed the stick from his ass, and that Jin is slowly getting to use English outside of dream sequences. From a What Did We Learn standpoint, not much here; from a Did I Enjoy It point of view, lots to chew on.

"Veronica Mars": Shortly after season one's "The Girl Next Door," Rob Thomas told me that he wasn't crazy about Veronica getting involved in adults-only cases, that it felt too "Rockford Files" for him. (No disrespect intended for ol' Jim Rockford, TV's greatest private eye, but this is a very different kind of show.) The A-story about the paranoid fiancee-to-be was a slight improvement -- Veronica's airhead bimbo routine is always worth some laughs -- but still felt like it didn't belong here. Lots of ongoing subplot business in the background, though I think I need to rewatch the Veronica/Weevil scene at least three more times before I can figure out what the hell they were talking about. Good to see the return of Mac and the Mars Investigations office, but outside the Veronica/Logan argument (because when aren't those great?), a B- episode.