Love Lost

I love Lost. Never miss it (or, rather, my DVR never misses it). But, lately, my mind has been wandering. Something was missing in my favorite show and I couldn't quite pin it down. Then, last night, those cliffhanger-hawking geniuses at ABC answered my secret prayer and, finally, plugged in the missing piece of the show--and my heart--with three little words: Billy. Dee. Williams.

That's when you know you have a hugely successful hour of TV on your hands, when the Mayor of Cloud City can take even one minute away from his busy awesome-ing schedule to be on your show. Billy Dee appeared, as if a vision from God, only in the first two minutes of the show but I only stopped squealing about twenty minutes ago.

I don't know what it is about the Velvet Olivier (like that? spread it around) that affects me the way it does. Maybe it was the embarrassment of riches at my childhood home that first sold me on Billy Dee: Lando was the free action figure you got by mailing in Kenner proofs-of-purchase, so we had a gaggle of them. But those little figures of pose-able cool weren't free after all....they cost me my heart. I've just never gotten over that Lando stride, that Cloud City voice ("Why you slimy, double-crossing, no-good, swindler!")...the way he calls people "pirate" even though they dwell in the sky. *sigh*

But if it wasn't Lando that hooked me on Billy Dee it may have been a chance encounter on a remote island a few hours outside of Seattle. My sister and I were at this rustic little island hotel, killing time for a day or two until our cousin's wedding. The rain, the polite chit-chat with total strangers, and a little PMS drove us inside for half-days at a time. While holed-up, we discovered that the hotel TV got only two channels: 24-hour Bollywood and a channel that seemed to, inexplicably, show Mahogany on a constant loop. Guess which one we picked. The more I watched, the angrier I was that I didn't come up with the "all-Mahogany, all the time" idea myself. I mean, the marketing potential is infinite: "Do YOU know where you're going to? WBDW Portland 45!"

Whoa. I just realized. I was trapped on an island and there was Billy Dee Williams. The people on Lost are trapped on an island and there was Billy Dee Williams.

Dude. That's so eerie. (Ya pirates.)