When you ain't got nothin'...

...you got nothin' to lose. At least, that seems to be Josh Schwartz's attitude at the start of this much-improved season of "The O.C." An excerpt from today's column:

"You hear that news" about "Grey's Anatomy" and the smaller episode order, "and you suddenly become zen, or as zen as a neurotic Jew like myself can get. I actually feel like some of the decisions we made last year were made about ratings. The network was getting darker and edgier, and we were trying not to get canceled. We've always tried to walk a line between being part of a genre and tweaking it, and I think last year the genre side won out. A lot of that was because it felt like it was stuff we had to do. There was a lot of carnage."

Faced with a no-win timeslot and a network that, as he puts it, is "clearly moving in a diffrent direction," Schwartz and his writers decided to get back to "just doing the show."

NJ.com finally got the story up. To read the rest, click here.

30 Rock: I just got back from Ann Coulter's 60th birthday party

No major spoilers, but "30 Rock" gets a big thumbs-up just for that line, and for the rehearsal snippet of Jack's "Meep! Meep!" sketch. Last week's episode was more consistently funny, but this is turning out to be a good little comedy. Loved the Sorkin pedeconference parody.

Lost: Producers Against Drunk Driving?

"Lost" spoilers coming up just as soon as I go and have a good cry...

Okay, this is getting ridiculous. You wanna kill off Ana-Lucia and Libby for driving drunk, go right ahead. But capping Mr. Eko because Adewale was driving without a license? On top of Boone dying not long after Ian Somerhalder racked up over $200 in speeding tickets? Won't someone please think of the unsafe drivers? If I was Josh Holloway or Naveen Andrews (both of whom have committed moving violations in the greater Honolulu area), I'd have my agent on speed-dial.

More to the point, DAMN YOU DAMON LINDELOF AND CARLTON CUSE for killing off the ass-kickingest character on the show! Damn you to H-E-double-hockey-sticks!

What drives me nuts is that this was easily the best episode of the season, a good blend of the island regulars and The Others, a flashback that didn't have me reaching to hit fast-forward on the DVR, some kewl hints of the smoke monster several times before we saw it and the rare case of a character dying on something resembling their own terms.

But what a waste of one of the most compelling, original characters this show has ever introduced (and, as Triple-A showed throughout, one of the two or three best actors in the ensemble). As if I wasn't already sick of the two new Lostaways, now they get to live and bore me while Eko is gone? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

And yet, again, damn good episode, outside of the apparent revelation that The Others' entire plan is about getting Jack to operate on Benry. If that's all they want, these people are colossal morons. Instead of terrorizing, abducting and killing these people for months and then having to resort to convoluted head games to get what you need, why not just make nice from the start and say, "Hey, if you do this surgery, we'll let you come over and watch movies sometimes"?

What did everybody else think?