"LOST" IN THOUGHT

In one of the fan forums in Live Journal which are dedicated to 'Lost', one of the other chatters brought up an interesting question:

What other shows are you so passionate aboutI hope this doesn't seem too off topic, but I am curious about the fans.

We're so into the minutia and the hidden meanings and the significance of this # or that #. Few shows inspire such rabid passion and attention to detail. I'm wondering if there are any other shows that you guys are into with such passion?

What shows keep you twisting week after week?

So I decided to respond:

For me there have been only two shows before this in which I was so slavishly attentive to detail.

The first is 'The Prisoner'. It's my all-time favorite tv series. At only 17 episodes, it had a beginning, middle and an end, but don't think everything wrapped up neatly and all the answers were provided by that final episode.

Trying to reconcile the discrepancies and the possible explanations could leave me feeling like Mr. Gumby, pounding my head with bricks!

It's over thirty years later and I still am finding something new all the time about that show. McGoohan never wanted to provide all the answers - he felt audiences had become "rotten cabbages"; too lazy and expecting everything to be spoon-fed to them.

The best way I can describe this show - it's over thirty years after it aired and it's still twenty years ahead of its time.

The other show, of a similar nature, would be 'Nowhere Man'which starred Bruce Greenwood. Although it didn't wrap up conclusively, it came to an ending with its single season that again left many more questions than answers.

This was the last series I religiously taped each episode as a keeper. This is the series I hope one day will find its way to DVD (as does Entertainment Weekly) so I can pore over it some more without risking those tapes.

It also came along when I first began exploring the Internet. I found my tele-visiologist voice in the AOL bbs about the show, and have this great sense of deja vu when showing up in this Live Journal several times a day to see what new theories and wild ideas my fellow fans have come up with. 'Nowhere Man' engendered such speculation back then as well.

For me, 'The X-Files' collapsed under its own weight by the end, and by a conflict of vision between its creator and its star.

Here's hoping the producers of 'Lost' remain true to their overall vision for the show and keep the exit strategy in sight. I'm all for letting them proceed at their pace and I don't feel compelled to urge them to give us answers quickly. But at the same time, I hope they don't fall to the temptation to keep the show running longer than it really should, to either please the network or the more rabid fan-base.

Otherwise, they'll fall victim to the same problems 'X-Files' had by the end.

BCnU!
Tele-Toby