Most fans of "Lost" will tell you the moment they fell in love with the series: The conclusion to "Walkabout," the third episode and first glimpse into the life of John Locke (Terry O'Quinn). While I've since become disenchanted with that series, viewing "Walkabout" remains one of my greatest experiences in watching television. O'Quinn, a second-tier but reliable character actor, turned the charming menace he was best known for ("The Stepfather") into a pathetic pathos that damn near broke my heart. With his performance, he set a bar so high for "Lost" that it never reached again and created a character that he'll forever be identified with.
Now, let's see if he can do that again.
That kind of surprise from an actor is one of the greatest things about watching television. So many times, we can come to know an actor who, years later, gives us another, completely different performance. Fred Savage, the tititular Kevin Arnold of the nostalgic "Wonder Years," built a new career for himself playing rapists on shows like "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit." Both the current presidential candidates on "The West Wing" are TV icons--Jimmy Smits of "LA Law" and "NYPD Blue" and Alan Alda of "M*A*S*H*." Of the two, Alda is best at making us forget about his past roles, but you can't help Smits for trying.
For me, it happened with O'Quinn, one of my main reasons for watching "Lost" in the first place, and with Adam Baldwin (an actor, like O'Quinn, best known for playing military guys), turned in two very different yet stellar performances on "Firefly" and "Angel." More recently, I've been surprised by Peter Krause, who I loved so much on "Sports Night" I decided to watch "Six Feet Under" after years of holding out (and am astonished by him there, too), and Treat Williams (fan favorite "Deep Rising") of "Everwood" as a brokenhearted country doctor/widower of two in Colorado.
Right now, there are two performances fresh in my mind that sum up why we keep watching. The first is Eric Palladino, who played Dr. Dave 'NAZI DYKE!' Malluci on "ER" and is one of the stars of "Over There." As I've said before, I found "Over There" so intense, I only got through ten minutes of it, but Palladino's performance in that ten minutes left me stunned. He plays the Iraqi War version of Gunnery Sgt. Hartman from "Full Metal Jacket" crossed with Dr. Cox on "Scrubs." So yeah, a lot of yelling. If you can handle "Over There" (and hopefully, I'll be able to talk with you more about it this week), Palladino makes it appointment viewing.
The second performance comes from an actor who got me thinking about this whole phenomenon in the first place: Michael J. Anderson, of "Twin Peaks" and "Carnivale." Like "Six Feet," "Carnivale" was a series that I resisted watching for a long time, and I even found the first three or so episodes to be bafflingly cryptic and uninteresting. I'm glad I kept going--now, the acting in this show is enough for me to whip through it as fast as I can. I like many of the supporting players (particularly Tim DeLay and Amy Madigan), but if any actor ever deserved Emmy nominations for this show, it's Anderson.
There's a scene in the episode "Pick A Number" where the three-foot-tall man goes from disarming affabilty to cold vengance to frightened heartbreak within the course of a few minutes. And Anderson makes you believe it all.
Watching that scene, I thought about the first time I heard John Locke say "Don't tell me what I can't do" and a million other moments in a history spent in front of the TV. But those are why we're willing to sit through all the reality shows and the formulaic sitcoms.
Moments like those are why we watch, waiting for the next great turn from the place we least expect it.
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