ABC has found something it hasn’t been used to in recent years: a hit. Lost, created by the same guy that made their only other huge success, Alias, is being heralded as an innovative, great show, and is being well-received by TV viewers. Frankly, I don’t get it. Lost is indeed a highly ambitious project about a group of shipwrecked plane crash survivors, incorporating perhaps the largest ensemble ever for a dramatic television series, but shows aren’t judged by their ambition alone.
Lost started off with a bang in its pilot episode with some poor schlub getting pulled straight into a jet engine. That’s what I call sucking in the audience. I have to admit, I was intrigued. The audience has a lot to chew on from the beginning: people panicking and screaming, a handsome doctor saving people, no one having any idea what they’re going to do. We get a nice little flashback of the plane crash that caused our castaways to be on the island. We find out that the plane crash may not have been accidental, and like everything else on this show, things are not as they seem. People on the island lie about their lives and become traitorous, and then there’s that whole deal with the monsters and such.
There is perhaps too much conflict. How many times can they run into bizarre creatures like polar bears on the island before it grows tiresome? How many times can a character swerve? After a while the characters will become so shaken up that you won’t care anymore. At least that’s what happened to me after the first two episodes.
Where Lost fails is in its heavy reliance on its concept, which isn’t that original in the first place. Lost would have worked better as a miniseries.
Even if the show stays afloat in the ratings, who would want to see the same people stranded and running for their lives for eight or nine seasons?
I’ll give Lost credit for handling such a large cast as well as the show does. The actors are satisfactory and not so nuanced to the point that they all come off as stereotypes. I also commend ABC for at least trying to do something outside of a reality show, even if it fails to be good. It may be Lost on me, but I’ll still take it over Survivor any day.
