Thursday, May 10, 2007

The End of Lost

I assume most of you Lost fans have heard the news that the show is ending in 2010 -- just three more seasons. I think it is a fantastic idea. Some shows, like 24 and Heroes are designed so that they can continue to run indefinitely. Their stories are structured that way. But others, like Lost, that center around a mystery have a definite end point. The traditional Hollywood approach, of course, has been to drag that end point out as long as possible if the show continues to be successful. I applaud the creators of Lost and ABC for having the foresight to take a different approach for a change. It means both that we won't be disappointed by a show that suddenly tanks in the ratings and gets canceled before we have sufficient resolution and that the remaining episodes should be of high quality since the writers can now focus exclusively on moving towards the ultimate resolution. Personally, I would like to see more shows adopt such an approach. There are some shows with a limited story to tell that should just annouce from the outset that they will run X number of years and then end. I think more viewers might be willing to jump on board for the ride if that were the case.

5 Comments:

At 10:20 PM, Blogger Eric said...

Babylon 5 had a plan from the beginning for a 5 year story line. It made for a very interesting episodes when they did do time travel. Weird things early in the first couple of season made more sense.

 
At 8:38 PM, Blogger aaron bell said...

i want to echo the frustration you expressed a few posts ago... my favorite new show of this past season, Jericho, was not brought back on CBS's fall schedule. the biggest frustration comes with the fact that the announcement was not made until the day of the upfronts. which means the season ended with a huge cliff hanger. my faith in network execs is further diminished.

 
At 8:43 AM, Blogger Greg said...

I watched the Jericho finale so I know how you feel.

 
At 10:36 AM, Blogger Publius said...

One of my favorite shows of all time was called, "Millenium". It starred Lance Henrickson and was the lead in show for X-Files back in the late 90's. The show was ahead of its time and ratings tanked. It went 3 seasons and then was canceled in the middle of an awesome story-line. I was bummed.

Lost is a great show right now and I'm hoping it doesn't lose its luster in the next 3 seasons.

Smoke If You Got 'Em

 
At 11:32 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Those of you hurting over Jericho's cancellation; you may enjoy this. I found this site protesting by sending CBS mass quantities of nuts.
http://www.nutsonline.com/jericho
According to the site, "fans from all over the world are pooling their resources to send thousands of pounds of peanuts to CBS to protest the cancellation of Jericho. In addition to sending individual orders to CBS programming executives, as a Jericho fan you can now contribute money to massive shipments of nuts. NutsOnline will do our part by pooling monies and supplying nuts at a steep discount! At the end of each day we will tally dollars collected and ship out huge quantities of roasted peanuts in the shell!"

 

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