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Sawyer Has A New Show and No One Told Me?!

By Joanna Robinson | Miscellaneous | January 4, 2011 |

By Joanna Robinson | Miscellaneous | January 4, 2011 |


So I was flipping through my friend’s copy of Entertainment Weekly the other night and I stumbled across this full page ad that got me all hepped up. The feathery, golden locks! The rumpled shirt and jeans! The water fall! They’ve given Josh Holloway from “Lost” a spin-off show! Set the DVRs! Reconvene the West Coast chapter of The Hot Tailies! Will Nestor Carbonell and his guyliner guest star? Dude, will Hurley be on it?!??! All these thoughts went screaming through my brain pan before The Reasonable Side of My Brain piped up with, “Hang on a tick, poppet. That isn’t Josh Holloway, just some slightly neckless chap. Also, love, note the stethoscope. Something’s amiss.” (The Reasonable Side of My Brain is British…obviously.)

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So the show, “Off the Map,” is a sort of Jungle Fever meets “Grey’s Anatomy.” (Without the racial tension. Just sex in the jungle, that’s what I’m getting at.) I kind of want to call it “Doctor’s Without Borders…or Pants.” Who’s with me? So “Doctor’s Without Borders…or Pants” stars Martin Henderson (who you may know from insidiously tricking me into thinking he’s Sawyer, or playing the blandest, most criminally American Mr. Darcy in cinema history, or getting killed that one time by a scary girl who crawled out of the TV), Mamie Gummer (who you may know from having the worst name in show biz, or being Meryl Steep’s daughter, or cracking me up repeatedly on “The Good Wife”) and Zach Gilford (a.k.a. Matty Saracen, a.k.a. the Pride of Dillon, Texas a.k.a. erstwhile Alamo Freeze employee a.k.a. The World’s Cutest Grandson a.k.a. “Seven”). I would like for “Doctors Without Borders…or Pants” to do well based solely on my enduring love for Gilford and his puppy eyes. So I forgive you, ABC promo department, for blatantly trying to fool me into thinking Sawyer is back if you’ve found Matty Saracen a nice home where he can be frequently shirtless.

Anywhoodle, all this got me thinking about our Losties and what they’ve been up to since they went to that non-denominational, Unitarian Universalist meeting place in the sky. So many of the actors are indelibly those characters to me and I have trouble, at times, envisioning them in other roles. Alas, they’ll likely be cleaned up, showered and shaved for their next projects, and I always preferred my Losties sweaty and tousled. So let’s check in on some of them, shall we? (Some, I said some. If you must know what Naveen Andrews and his lethal thighs are up to, I suggest you purchase some night-vision goggles and hie thee hence.)

Freckles and The Doc

The ostensible leads of the show, Evangeline Lilly and Matthew Fox were never fan favorites. Lilly did earn a lot of cred for filling out a bikini and dating a hobbit but her acting skills failed to impress. She’s got a film in the can called Real Steel wherein, and I quote, “2,000-pound robots that look like humans do battle.” Ah, so. Well she’s billed just under Hugh Jackman and that’s somewhere a lot of us would like to be. Just under Hugh Jackman. Amiright ladies and gay dudes? Thought so. Matthew Fox declared he was done with Hollywood and moved to Portland, but has also been cast in Neil LaBute’s play “In a Forest, Dark and Deep” opposite Olivia Williams and that’s someplace a lot of us would like to be. Opposite Olivia Williams. Amiright-ohhh, fine, I’ll stop.

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Desmond and Pen

The heart of this show, I felt, was the lobster love between Desmond and Penny, portrayed by Henry Ian Cusick and Sonya Walger. Walger, of course, hopped onto the “FlashForward” train…which has since derailed. She’s filmed a thriller with John Cusack called “The Factory” and, I promise you, I will always have a soft spot for her, no matter what she does. Unless it’s Lifetime. I can’t follow you to Lifetime, Pen. Henry Ian Cusick, my darling, clairvoyant Scotsman, rather disgusted and alienated folks with repeated on-set reports of sexual harrassment. This might possibly explain why the only thing on his C.V. recently is a few episodes of “Law and Order: Sports Utility Vehicle.”

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Stay Puft and Sawyer

Jorge Garcia and Josh Holloway simply owned two of the most popular characters on, arguably, the most popular television show of the past decade (not counting any of that reality show crap, which I don’t, no I don’t, not even you, Tim Gunn). It’s this kind of popularity that got Jorge Garcia’s mug on Weezer’s album, “Hurley.” Garcia also played an exuberant version of his Hurley character on “How I Met Your Mother” and will be guest-starring in Matthew’s Perry’s new show “Mr. Sunshine.” Josh Holloway has a lot of options and I know some folks are slavering for him to play either Jim Rockford or The Gunslinger (I know, I know his name is Roland! Give me some geek credit!). Holloway is currently filming the new Mission Impossible flick, which has Simon Pegg in it, so it can’t be all bad. Right? Right??!?!

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Benjamin Linus and John Locke

If Desmond and Penny were the heart of “Lost,” John Locke and Benjamin Linus were its sinew and marrow. Terry O’Quinn and Michael Emerson could pack more emotion into a squint or a bug-eyed stare than any impassioned cry of “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLT.” Their post-“Lost” story is potentially the rosiest as they are slated to star together in a new J.J. Abrams show once called “Odd Jobs” now likely called “Grown Men With Daddy Issues” (not actually likely, folks). Set the DVRs! Reconvene the West Coast chapter of The Hot Elder Statesmen Tailies!

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Joanna Robinson realizes many of you hated “Lost” with a burny, stingy passion. Hated it from the beginning, hated it at the end, want to punch a polar bear. Go ahead and smear me with your Hate Spackle, I can take it.