Lost: Miles Straume

(Indulge me. As we near the Season 5 premiere of Lost, I’m going to run through the current crop of main characters. There are spoilers.)

This guy is great! He’s a little asshole, a smart-mouthed clairvoyant who seems to be able to listen to the voices of the dead. Strangely, he has trouble relating to the living; he’s arrogant, obnoxious, rude and pushy. I think he’s great.

Miles joined Lost last season as one of four newcomers to the island, people recruited by Charles Widmore for his mysterious mission. We first found him tangled in his parachute, lying on those rocks where Desmond killed Clancy Brown in Season 2. He got off to a rough start with Jack and Kate, pulling a gun on them, which led to one of the best scenes of that episode: “Right now, our friends are in the jungle with guns pointing right at you.”

Ken Leung was drafted for Lost after Carleton Cuse and Damon Lindelof saw him on The Sopranos. The role of Miles was created for him; had he refused, the character would not exist. And he went from recurring character to series regular in this month’s Season 5. I’m looking forward to it.

Highlights:

• Being traded to Locke for Charlotte. This is also one of Sayid’s finer moments.
• Trying to extort Ben, and offering up that cryptic line: “I know who you really are, and what you can do.”
• Having a live grenade stuffed into his mouth, by John Locke, to warn him against talking to Ben.
• Finding the dead kid’s drug stash and cash (in his flashback scene), pocketing the cash and offering the grandmother a small refund for his ghostbusting services.
• Rose chastising him about the peanuts. I love Rose.
• His name sounds like “maelstrom,” which is intentional.

Problems:

• As weird as Lost is, I’m still uncomfortable with the idea that a real psychic ghostbuster is walking around. Until now, psychic powers (like Walt’s) were only alluded to, not shown so blatantly.
• No explanation is given as to why Miles is suddenly Sawyer’s jungle hiking buddy, although the interplay between the two is pretty fun to watch.
• Why did he stay on the island, facing certain death even after Keamy’s strike force hit the Orchid? We get a sense of why Charlotte wants to stay, but Miles really had no reason not to head back to the freighter.

Today’s Moron: The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation

Can a government-run corporation be a moron? Sure. In this case, it’s pretty clear.

Here’s what happened: a guy won $135,000 playing a scratch-ticket game called Fruit Smash. And he wasn’t alone. Something like 15 people have come forward over the past couple of days with big jackpot-winning tickets.

But there’s a problem. The OLGC, which administers lotteries in Ontario, claims the tickets were misprinted, and are, in fact, null and void. All the winners will get for their troubles are replacement tickets.

What a crock.

Thomas Noftall, the guy who didn’t win $135,000, is livid. “I think my wife told me (the OLGC has) $1.4 billion in unclaimed prizes over the past few years,” he told reporters yesterday. “All that money from unclaimed prizes? They haven’t offered it in another lottery, right? They haven’t offered it up. Why not pay my ticket and pay anybody elses who comes to them with a ticket with that money rather than let it sit in the bank and make interest and make them richer again still?”

He has the support of a leading advocacy group, too:

“It seems to me that there’s absolutely no question if they produced the ticket, they gave it to the guy, it’s printed in the right manner, indicates he’s got a prize, they should pay the ticket without question and get on with the rest of their business and make sure that they do it properly in the future,” said Bruce Cran, a spokesman for the Consumer Association of Canada.

But the OLGC is standing by its policy, saying misprints are a mistake, sure, but that doesn’t make those tickets winners.

I’m with Thomas Nuftall on this one. We’re talking about an organization with a lot of money to distribute, and it wouldn’t hurt to pay up. Besides, the lottery system has been stung in recent years by the discovery of widespread “retailer fraud,” which saw ticket vendors tell customers their tickets were losers when they weren’t, then pocketing the ticket and claiming the win. The OLGC sat on that one for a long time before the media broke it open; the stink is still in the air.

Just for the sake of PR, give these people their money.

UPDATE: A few hours after I posted this, it was reported that the OLGC had reached a settlement with Thomas Nuftall — not because of the misprint, but because an employee told him he would be paid despite the mistake. The corporation has acknowledged that was a mistake, and Nuftall got some cash. How much? Nobody knows. The whole thing is sealed in secrecy. Way to go, OLGC … keep us guessing.