KEY POINTS:
The prospect of going gaga, which is surely imminent, is beginning to appear rather appealing. I'll be able to watch television shows without knowing that I know I don't have the faintest idea what is happening.
The Lost Room (last night, Prime) had me lost from the beginning,
and I never managed to discover what room I, or any of the characters, was in, or what the hell we were doing there. It's all very new-fangled, this modern telly, even when it's about a 1960s motel room on Route 66.
There was a pawn shop, some menacing guys with guns, a little door and an old-fashioned motel room key. When I say old-fashioned, I don't mean it was some enormous, rusty, gothic-looking thing: it was an actual key rather than one of those swipe cards.
There was a guy with a pen who made annoying clicking noises with said pen, and I longed for one of those menacing guys with a gun to blow him away.
"Who the hell are you?" said another guy to pen guy. I hoped pen guy would say, "A guy with a pen," but no. Another guy said: "Why's he keep clicking that pen, man?" "Don't ask me," said guy number one. At least I think he did. It may have been me.
"Who's that guy?" I said. Somebody in the room sighed. "It's that guy [Peter Krause] who played Nate on Six Feet Under," he said. I know him. What's he doing in this show? Playing a cop with stubble and an ever-so-cute girl child. He's got problems: a custody dispute. And now there's this business with that damn key.
The kid gets hold of the key and goes into a room, that old-fangled motel room, despite being told not to. "Dad, what's in there?" said the kid. "It's just a dream, sweetheart," said dad. That's all right then, it's not supposed to make any sense.
Funny things can happen in dreams. There was quite a funny sequence where dad, detective Joe Miller, got hit by a guy with, I think, a wet bus ticket and landed, face down on a road in the middle of nowhere, twice.
There are other objects. "One hundred at least ... some useful, some not." There's an umbrella that makes people think they know you. I wonder whether there will be an object that helps almost gaga people know what's going on on the telly.
It's a game, I think. A spooky sort of game involving that motel room, somehow.
"What happened in that motel room?" Miller asked. "Something terrible." Yeah, like somebody had to stay the night there. Bed bugs, I bet.
Don't let that kid go inside the room. Too late. Of course. Bye bye kid. "What's it going to be? The kid or the key?" See, just like a game. Now, does anyone know where I put my keys?