Sadly I can safely say that I’m not as hooked or riveted by Lost as I was by the debut season of Alias, another show borne from the mind of J.J. Abrams.

Now at episode seven, I still have that ‘Pilot’ feeling. You know when you are watching a pilot of something, you simply try to enjoy it and ignore the frustration that it’s not really a ‘proper’ epsode, and next episode it will actually begin? I’ve finally pinpointed that as the feeling I’ve had about each episode of Lost to date. They are still introducing characters, which on the one hand is great because it’s a show FULL OF FLASHBACKS (and what more could a girl ask for, really?!) with plenty of background being given to each of the characters. This fact is what has me watching each week, as I love knowing as much as I can in background story about characters as is humanly possible. Conveniently, they all have highly dramatic background stories. Especially Sun and Jin — phwoar! But, back to my point, introducing characters endlessly for a quarter of a season gets very tiresome. It’s been one long, imperfect pilot.

When Alias began, even the pilot gave me a flutter of excitement. The premise of the story was awesome, the way it was being told was stimulating, and the characters were somewhat enthralling. All those elements are seemingly there for Lost also, but for me it just hasn’t all clicked into place as I would have hoped. I say hoped because gradually my loved shows are dropping out of production and are being replaced by yet further tacky yet inexpensive reality TV or the like. I used to hang out each week for Buffy, then when that left I eagerly awaited new Angel episodes all the more. After Angel‘s demise, Stargate was flooded with the brunt of my unexerted fan-girl energy, but sadly has not been at its peak of performance for the past couple of seasons. Stargate: Atlantis, which possibly does not deserve the half-strength adoration I was giving it when being aired, also helped fill that gap. Both are now on hiatus until February, along with Alias, which promises to pick up a bit next season.[ftn]

All this unspent television-loving energy needs to be released in some way, otherwise our mentally delicate Shannon will dive off her volatile precipice of sanity, which while undoubtedly amusing to some, would ultimately prove annoying and messy. A good response would therefore be to create some new shows that can fill a gap in the section of my heart reserved for love of television programs,[ftn] but sadly those US TV networks I was counting on have, even with their squillions of dollars to play with, come up with little that impresses.

Lost is shiny. It has pretty characters that seem like they will have interesting developments. Eventually. It has creepy lurking monsters which have yet to be revealed[ftn] and an already bustling romance that will take at least the entire season, possibly more, to come into fruition. All good things, mostly. It also has characters named both Shannon, and Claire. Lots of jokes to be made there. The fact that Shannon is an annoying cow is irrelevant, however that they are both gorgeously hot women — I’ve no doubt plenty of comparisons will of course be drawn.[ftn]

I will certainly keep eagerly anticipating each episode’s release (as I have to get my kicks somewhere)[ftn] but it seems I am doomed to be left unsatisfied each week. At least there is always Gilmore Girls.

Footnotes

1. Season Three didn’t in fact suck overmuch, it just dropped in standard a bit from its two predecessors.
2. This is a VERY SMALL SECTION. I’m still a girl, after all.
3. And I expect these will be the series’s Rambaldi — intriguing, but vague and never actually confronted.
4. See how wavering that sanity thing is?
5. And you may even get a review or two out of me.[ftn]
6. This statement is not legally binding and does not need to be upheld if said party can in fact, not be stuffed.

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Shannon Jones on Wednesday, November 10th, 2004. It concerns such pressing issues as . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.