Lost Causes

Well, another TV season has just about come and gone, with more than the usual quotient of geek/sci-fi/genre fare represented (thank you, Lost). Among this year’s winners and losers…

Winners: The American viewing public. Our long national nightmare is over. Heroes has been canceled by NBC. Don’t know how that happened; they must have thought it was a good show.

This show has never been good. It had a couple of episodes the first season that were less cringe-inducing than the others, but the dialogue was always soap opera expositive. Every story point telegraphed, spelled out and reiterated. I didn’t even care that the special-effects were cheesy because I also didn’t care about the characters, almost all of whom have behaved stupidly from scene one. This show was a rotting carcass hanging on NBC’s marquee for four smelly seasons. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Losers: The American viewing public. Lost is going away. The final episode airs Sunday night at nine p.m. and runs two-and-a-half hours and that can’t be anywhere near long enough to answer all the important questions. Like: Why did we never get a Charles Widmore flashback/forward/sideways episode? He was the only major player who never got his own episode. That surprised me since I’ve long thought that, somehow, Charles Widmore is the son of his daughter Penny and her time-traveling husband Desmond.

The guy from the local ABC affiliate was interviewing The Missus today about the show from an academic’s perspective, and somehow I ended up on camera too. The guy asked me how I thought the show would end. And since I went on record with him, I’ll tell you, too: I think Not-Locke will kill the remaining four candidates and Jacob’s worst-case scenario protocols (the flash-sideways) will kick in. Good will conquer Evil and Hurley will end up in charge of the island. He was way too quick to act relieved when Jack (the too-obvious choice) stepped up this week. Plus, Hurley’s the only one of the four remaining candidates with happily-resolved daddy issues. My money’s on Hugo.

Other than that, though, I’m resigning myself to never having satisfactory resolution to so many lingering questions—but I also like that. The brain continues to be engaged long after the broadcast has ended. Heroes, by contrast, I would literally forget what show I was watching while fast-forwarding through the commercials on the DVR. Lost will be rooting around in my subconscious—screwing with me—for years to come; Heroes will be a first-season set that I’ll sell in the yard sale before we move. And claim The Missus bought it.

Lost’s two most obvious band-wagoneers this season were V and Flashforward, both of which I’ve written about before. V kinda sucked from the get-go but improved slightly toward the end. Casting that actor from The 4400 is a black mark against any show. No disrespect to him, but I just don’t buy him as a conflicted priest, or an action hero, or anything he’s pretending to be. And poor Elizabeth Mitchell seems lost in the crappy lines she has to read, like a part of her soul dies with every take.

Flashforward is also a little explainey, but still less stupid than V. The thing that bugs me about this show is the British leading man’s Nowheresville American accent. He’s so tense and terse and one-note and boring, plus his accent is obviously fake. I’m pretty sure Damien Lewis is available, and he can nail the accent. It would have been a much stronger show with a more convincing protagonist.

Over on Smallville, they’ve picked up another lease on life for next season, but one has to wonder: Why?

Super-boy is growing like backward dog years on this show. For God’s sake, he was in high school when this show started seven or eight years ago, how long is it gonna take him to learn to fly? Yes, seriously, he’s pushing thirty and he hasn’t learned to fly yet. As a sexual metaphor, it’s embarrassingly apt for this entire long-in-the-tooth endeavor.

The best thing about this show used to be the Clark/Lex relationship in the first few seasons. Smallville worked great as a doomed bromance. It began its long, inglorious trek to complete suckitude when they altered that dynamic and set the former friends against each other. Which should have worked. It could have worked. It should have been powerful. But they milked the storyline well past its sell-by date, just like they’re doing with the series now. I say end it next year. Bring Lex back as the super-villain we know and love from the funny books, have Clark suit up and leap a couple of tall buildings and end the series with at least a grace note of dignity.

What else have I been watching every week? Fringe. Definitely improved in its sophomore year. I daren’t say too much about it; if you’re unfamiliar with it, you’ll appreciate that I didn’t spill any beans. But the look, the characters, the use of music and sound; this is a show running on all cylinders. Definitely more Lost than Heroes.

I would put Medium in the genre category, even though its star is a deliberately doughty, middle-aged woman, which is atypical to say the least of the sci-fi genre. It plays a little fast and loose with its concept (local psychic helps town’s DA solve crimes), but the formula’s elasticity has actually led to some of its best episodes. Sometimes it just absolutely shreds the envelope, while at other times it just stretches credulity. But the leads (Patricia Arquette and Brit Jake Weber) are so likable and the plots often so outlandish it’s hard not to have fun.

Chuck is in the same vein. Not great, but A+ production values, likeable, attractive stars… the only thing that bugs me about it—and it bugs me a lot—is the way they constantly refer to each other as “spies.” Even their military boss refers to them as “spies.” Not agents, not operatives—spies! It’s like there was so much stupid on later in the evening on Heroes, some of it splashed back onto Chuck. Still, I’m glad it escaped cancellation. It’s usually the last DVRed thing I get to in the week, but occasionally it’s a pleasant surprise.

Oh, and 24. Except for last season, I will miss it. It was never about tickling your brain bone, it went straight for the adrenal gland, and most seasons hit the mark most of the time. I’m glad it’s going out before another sucky season required a mercy killing by the network.

If anyone is looking for the formula for Lost and what made it work, here is a good place to start: Storytelling integrity. It was the same reason 24 worked. The creative teams were freed to write to a pre-ordained end point, allowing them to craft epic stories with a distinct beginning, middle and ending. That’s the same reason the first couple of seasons of Mad Men worked so well. The viewer trusted that even the slow episodes (or in Lost’s case, the downright confusing ones) were building toward something which, when revealed, would knock your socks off.

We will miss Lost like crazy. Everything else is just TV.