Cognitive Dissonance Moment of the Day

I’m a huge fan of Lost–airplane crashes, polar bears, a non-Hodgkins-lymphoma-free Jack, aka Charlie Salinger–I mean, what’s not to like? So somebody suggested I check out Alias, another show by the creator of Lost, J.J. Abrams.

Months, I guess, later I finally watch the first episode of the first season of Alias. And here’s where the cog dis kicks in: as Sidney (Jennifer Garner) is telling her fiance about her secret life in the CIA, Cat Stevens’s song “Trouble” begins playing on the soundtrack.

I’m sorry, but there’s only one set of visual images that I could ever possibly associate with “Trouble” and that’s Harold’s last fake suicide in Harold and Maude as he drives his jaguar hearse over a cliff, escaping from the car at the last moment. It’s one of the most poignant cinematic moments from the seventies.

And here the song is, hijacked for a spy story, bearing no relation to the narrative, the characters, or anything else on my television screen for that matter.

Trouble, oh trouble, can’t you see, you’re eating my heart away and there’s nothing much left of me. Except secret agents and double-lives and lipstick GPS units.