As we all know, the networks have been searching for the next Lost for some time. There was The Event, Persons Unknown, V, Alcatraz, and a whole bunch of other short-lived shows I can't even remember that failed to hook and capture the public in the immediate, visceral way that Lost did. I was reading an interview with Zeljko Ivanek where he was talking about being bummed he didn't get to work with Blair Underwood more on The Event, and while I love Zeljko and I love Blair Underwood, the sad truth is that The Event was terrible. Just really, really bad.
My love of Lost got me into a quandary with some of my best friends when the sixth season aired. I had been pretty obsessed with Lost since about mid-way through the second season, when I watched the first season DVDs and then went off to a new college and realized I could buy episodes on iTunes. That shit hooked me pretty hard. After I graduated and moved back home, I made a bunch of people start watching. I swore to them that the writers knew what they were doing and all the loose ends would be neatly tied up if they would just be patient. Now, I still maintain that Lost was, for the most part, a great show, and after careful consideration, I even became a fan of the finale. But fuck, the writers really dropped the ball during season six. The episodes aren't all terrible and we do get some satisfying answers, but they spent WAY too much time introducing unnecessary new characters, faffing around with Charles Widmore, and getting to the heart of the Jacob/Smoke Monster thing and not enough time wrapping things up satisfactorily with the original cast and some of the mysteries they'd been developing for years. Don't even get me started on the alternate reality/limbo thing - while I do like the finale, the build-up to it was frustratingly dumb. Anyway, this is all to say that Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof robbed me of some of my well-earned reviewer credentials and to this day, my friends still give me shit when I recommend a mysterious drama.
Well, I'm hoping that I can redeem myself now. There are two new dramas this year that have already found some success with the Lost style of a large, diverse ensemble cast and gradually-revealed mysteries, and it turns out that they're both pretty good. One is already pulling ahead of the other in my book, though.
