Wednesday, May 10, 2006

"Lost" Continues UK Collapse

UK audiences seem to have wised up faster than the US ones -- or maybe they were primed to reject "Lost" by all the grumblings over here. In any case, "Lost" opened poorly last week and then plummeted more than 35% in the ratings in week two. It opened with 3.9 million viewers and then dropped to 2.8 million -- and was even beaten by the evening news and a rerun of "Mission: Impossible II." I wonder if this is happening in any other countries? This franchise has sprung a leak for one very obvious reason: the show's creator JJ Abrams hasn't been involved at all this year. He says the finale is terrific, but what do you expect him to say? With "M:I:III" in the theaters and "Alias" over, you'd hope he might try and bring this series back to life. But it doesn't seem like that is in the cards -- he's working on "Star Trek XI." ABC should be begging him to get involved again.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I see two problems with Lost, which I watch religiously:

1. Timing of episodes, which has been discussed ad nauseum. I am hopeful that this will be corrected with three 8 episode uninterrupted runs next season.

2. Drawn out plot lines. 24 has shown that you can quickly advance a complex plot line without burning viewers out (as long as you avoid repeats). Lost hasn't really found that equilibrium yet...almost as if they're afraid to give away too much too soon or they'll run out of material. Lost needs more episodes where a lot of stuff happens the entire episode, not just the last five seconds leaving a cliffhanger until the next week.

I believe these are both very correctable, and I believe ABC knows what an asset they have and will fix these issues for next season.

At least I hope...

Michael in New York said...

I'd feel more confident iof JJ Abrams were back in charge. Of course, he never resolved the problems of Alias, which similarly had a great premise and then superseded that with another high concept plot and then another high concept plot and so on until nothing could have any weight or meaning.