'24', 'Lost' to go out with a bang after proving network drama still viable
Even more than most popular arts, television tends to bend to seemingly arbitrary decade demarcations.
Maybe that's because the medium is so obsessed with staying au courant. In the years before and after the turn of a decade, it gets even more so, then settles in with what seems to suit the temper of the times.
Look at groundbreaking shows like "All in the Family" (January 1971 debut), "Hill Street Blues" (January 1981) and "The Simpsons" (December 1989), all of which defined their decade or the decade to come.
The aughts, the decade just completed, constituted the age of reality TV, from "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and "Survivor," both of which debuted in 2000, to "American Idol" and the rise of YouTube and other user-generated content as television and the computer came closer and closer to the mythical "convergence" analysts have been predicting for decades.
Yet through it all the major broadcast networks have found a way not just to survive, but thrive (except for NBC, of course). They halted audience erosion to cable not just by developing their own reality shows, but by revitalizing traditional genres like the sitcom and the hourlong drama, especially the latter.
Which brings me to "24" and "Lost," both wrapping up their TV runs in the next few days.
"Lost" and "24," I'd argue, were not great shows - not among the all-time greats, that is - although "Lost" may yet place itself up there if it can somehow tie everything together in its 2½-hour finale at 8 p.m. Sunday on ABC's WLS Channel 7. In fact, I don't think we'll really know how good "Lost" is until the all-inclusive DVD collection comes out and it can be studied for consistency and coherence, whether it left more ends loose than it tidily knotted up - which likewise makes it emblematic of the era, in which DVD box sets proliferated and people came to devour several episodes in a sitting.
Yet if they didn't offer the realism of shows like "The Sopranos" and "The Wire" - HBO's brutally authentic series and just maybe the best dramas of the decade - they were, undeniably, network TV of a high order, bold in their own ways. They were not content to stick to formula the way, say, CBS' "CSI" and NBC's "Law & Order" franchises were.
Let's start with "24," with its conceit of casting the show in "real time" over a single day with 24 hourlong episodes. By all rights, it should have been dead on arrival, after it was cursed to debut immediately after Sept. 11 - yes, the Sept. 11, 2001 - with a previously filmed pilot that began with a terrorist blowing up a jet plane.
Yet despite or perhaps because of that topical terror it made for compelling viewing. Yes, "24" tended to play fast and loose - with the truth, with torture, with clichés (how many times in the early seasons did Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer tell his forever-in-distress daughter Kim "we'll get through this?"). But with its split screens and fast tempo, in which one all-or-nothing, end-of-the-world deadline followed another, it made for engaging, challenging TV.
And in its fifth season it achieved a certain perfection. Charged by a Nixonian president played by Gregory Itzin and a First Lady Macbeth played by Jean Smart, the show played by its own rules to create one weekly cliffhanger after another. It was masterful series television, and to this day that season is recommended above all others as the definitive day in the life of "24."
In later years, the real-time conceit seemed more of a gimmick, and the show got more and more shameless about its jump-the-shark moments. (How many times did Jack or Tony Almeida or someone else come back from the dead or worse?) It even found an excuse for Itzin's Charles Logan to return for this year's swan song.
Still, "24" had a top-flight run while it lasted, and it goes out as one of the more interesting if not one of the best TV dramas when it concludes with a two-hour finale at 7 p.m. Monday on Fox's WFLD Channel 32.
"Lost" never attained the same sort of consistency over an entire season that the fifth year of "24" did, although the debut season came close, right up to the abduction of Walt by "the Others," the first of many jump-the-shark moments this series indulged in. Indeed, "Lost" soon proved itself willing to do anything to keep a viewer transfixed, and that's why many - myself included - gave up on it.
Yet it also developed a reliable formula, melding the back stories of each individual character with the struggle to escape the island they'd been stranded on with the crash of Oceanic Flight 815 - or, later, in an even more unlikely scenario, with the return to the island to set things right, whatever right there might be in the world of "Lost." That, however, is what gave the show its human element, what made the characters so empathetic, and what enabled it to transcend its contrived "Gilligan's Island"-meets-"Survivor" premise. When three main characters were killed off in a recent episode as the series all but lowered its head and charged toward its conclusion, it created wrenching moments for both viewers and the other characters.
Not for nothing was J.J. Abrams brought in by ABC head Lloyd Braun and charged with reconfiguring the original idea along with Damon Lindelof. Abrams was known for creating engaging characters in "Felicity" and "Alias" and then sort of stumbling around trying to find things for them to do, and "Lost" too had more than its fair share of missteps and tangents.
They've maintained that they've kept track of the show's "bible" all along. If the movie-length finale can somehow create a unified theory of "Lost" that explains tropical polar bears and time travel and unlucky lottery numbers and a host of other mystical elements that have been tossed in, while glorying in the natural melodrama provided by the characters - Kate and Hurley and Jack and Sawyer and the other last survivors - it may yet prove itself worthy of a place in the TV pantheon.
If that turns out to be the case, I'll be more than happy to revisit the show's entire run on DVD, because as we move forward into the past with the wonder of series box sets, it seems very little in TV history is ever completely lost.
"Lost""Lost: The Final Journey," featuring a review and cast interviews, airs at 6 p.m. Sunday, May 23, on ABC. The 2#189;-hour series finale follows at 8."24""24": The two-hour series finale airs at 7 p.m. Monday, May 24, on Fox.False13332000"Lost" may have lost its way at times, but characters like Kate (Evangeline Lilly) kept us watching. False <script type="text/javascript" src="http://img.video.ap.org/inline/js/ga.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://img.video.ap.org/inline/js/qos.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://img.video.ap.org/inline/js/qos_mps.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://img.video.ap.org/inline/js/swfobject.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://img.video.ap.org/inline/js/util.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://img.video.ap.org/inline/js/inlineutil.js"></script><div id="commmanagerDiv"></div><div id="divPlayer">To view this site, you need to have Flash Player 8.0 or later installed. Click <a href='http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer/' target='_blank'>here</a> to get the latest Flash player.</div><script type="text/javascript">playerTitle = "Associated Press Video";playerFParam = "ilarl";playerCategory = "Editors Picks";directPID = "US-DARLTON-20100520E";playerAuto = "false";playerPID = "PSlvHKIjOdolYsUhSjbpf7ROOkJP5EYR";embedInlinePlayer("commmanagerDiv", "divPlayer")</script><div class="infoBox"><h1>More Coverage</h1><div class="infoBoxContent"><div class="infoArea"><h2>Stories</h2><ul class="links"><li><a href="/story/?id=381360">A 'Lost' fan says farewell <span class="date">[05/18/10]</span></a></li><li><a href="/story/?id=381355">A fan says farewell to '24' <span class="date">[05/18/10]</span></a></li><li><a href="/story/?id=381345">Comparing 'Lost' and '24' <span class="date">[05/18/10]</span></a></li></ul></div></div></div>