The "Lost" wannabes

Let's talk about "Lost."

One of my all-time favorite TV shows that for some reason I haven't (yet) had the urge to re-watch since it wrapped up 18 months ago. A critical hit for a network that needed it, whose fans are kind of obsessive, and that the networks have thus far failed to repeat in terms of appeal. This piece from Entertainment Weekly explores what might make the next "Lost" successful, and concludes that trying to repeat the formula isn't the way to go. I agree.

The thing is, those TV shows that fans don't just watch, but truly love, are successful because they're original. Trying to rip off something that worked once is attracted to executives, but pretty boring for the people who actually tune into the shows themselves.

But in particular, I think that a lot of the people who parse "Lost" miss the point of "Lost." Yes, by the end of the series there was this massive, intricate mythology that you had to understand backward and forward to even follow the plot of a single episode, but that only came over time. In the beginning, it was just 40-odd people crash-landed on an island trying to find food, water and shelter. There were inklings of weirdness, but most of those early-episode conflicts came the characters just learning how to live together.

(And keep in mind how many people griped about the mythological aspects of the show that weren't paying off fast enough - or ever. The fans that stuck around did so because they cared about what happened to the characters they'd come to know, not because they'd never rest until they found out who built the Temple.)

In my experience, that's where the "Lost" wannabes have messed up. "Lost"didn't break out time travel in the pilot episode; there were entire first-season episodes about asthma medicine, for crying out loud. The show's writers started with characters that you wanted to spend time with each week, and then built from there. "24" did the same thing - remember how much of the season one plot was driven by Jack's daughter going missing? The shows (cough "The Event" cough) that dish out the supernatural jujitsu before I even know who anyone is yet, they just make me change the channel.

So, if you're an aspiring TV writer or executive trying to create the next "Lost," consider this a bit of free market research: don't try so hard to be the next "Lost." Just tell your story, make me care about it and then carry on.