League of Melbotis

THE LEAGUE GIVES UP ON LOST

On the coattails of Lost's success, several would be contenders have leapt aboard the "One Hour Drama Mystery Train" this season. Kidnapped. Nine. Heroes.

Well, Hollywood, The League would love to make an easy buck, and will be happy to let you buy my idea for a show. My show is called "Nonsensical Mystery @#$%".

On "Nonsensical Mystery @#$%", several people who seemingly have nothing in common come together in, oh, say... Cincinatti. And really bad stuff happens to them. It is key that nothing is ever explained as to why these bad things happen, but we will hint that there is a mysterious agency at work which will always have seeming omniscience. And make the protagonists (who seemingly do not have any common bond) really upset alot. Too bad they can't get along. Or just walk away when they smell trouble.

To spice things up on NMS, the agency will occasionally kill cast members and find ways to beat them up. As a rule, all members of the agency will spend a lot of time looking off camera and refusing to blink. Oh, and they will have a seemingly decent pretty one who will play traitor to our "heroes".

It is of the utmost importance that absolutely nothing anybody, hero or villain, ever says be the truth. Why, what better way to keep our audience guessing than to make sure whatever they THINK they understand to be what is happening is actually a tremendous fib. THAT'S how you keep folks coming back week after week. You THOUGHT you were watching a show about people in Cincinatti? You're so stupid! The characters only THINK they're in Cincinatti. They're actually on a huge floating platform built to resemble Cincinatti in every way! Suckers. Or are they actually in Cincinatti? You can't tell? The mystery deepens...

The great thing is, we'll keep dropping "clues" for the audience to figure out what the "Nonsensical Mystery @#$%" means, but as the writers, we won't actually know what the clues mean ourselves. Or remember what half of the big clues pointed towards.

Don't worry, when the show limps into it's final season and we have to finally poop out a conclusion, the writing staff (most of whom will be new to the show by this point, the original writers having left before season 4 to chase new projects) will have a retreat in Vegas. As a "producer", I will lock our hung-over staff in a ballroom until we find a way to tie most of the major plot points and clues together. No, it does not matter how weak the "big reveal" shall be. When a lot of the conclusion makes no sense to die-hard viewers (who helped buy our mansions and Mercedes) we'll post internet interviews making fun of them for taking a TV show too seriously. Dorks.

In case you can't tell, I thought the season premier for Season 3 of "Lost" was pretty awful. Granted, I only watched a few episodes of Season 2, so I don't actually know what's going on, but I don't think that really matters at this point. Tonight I watched the three characters I do know get treated inhumanely for an hour by people I was unfamiliar with. It was the "Saw" of TV shows.

Is it too much to ask for characters on a TV show to occasionally answer a question anymore? Yes, it's MYSTERIOUS when people walk out of a room after being asked a question like "what's going on?" or "where am I?", but, to me, it's lazy writing. How long can I be expected to care about what's happening when I have no idea what is motivating a character? Even our creepy island people? And, really, what can they possibly be doing other than taking extreme measures to protect their perfect island intellectual retreat... blah blah blah...

I know this is a TV show and this was but a single episode, but if this were a movie, I would have walked out after half an hour.

Also, "Lost" producers, 110 pound girls cannot knock out muscle bound dudes with a single punch to the jaw, especially when they're thrashing around in the water. And especially when the punch leaves no visible mark in the next scene occuring a few hours later.

All sci-fi shows should be 22 episodes. And there should be a moritorium on anonymous, omniscient evil government agencies on TV for at least the next five years.

Remember when Lost wasn't about unlikely people living on an unlikely island under unlikely circumstances acting in a completely unlikely fashion for unlikely reasons?

I miss the possibility of a giant monster on the island. As much as the idea now seems almost quaint, it now seems insanely original, even if it did parallel Land of the Lost.

Sleestacks! Now that was a show...