LOST!

No, this isn’t a plea for help, it’s about the new ABC TV show that airs on Wednesday nights.

I don’t watch much television. I know a lot of people say that, but in my case it’s true. We (voluntarily) have no cable, relying instead on a pair of rabbit ears to pick up the signal off the air. That automatically cuts down on the amount of dreck…errr…programming available to us. I watch the occasional CSI (mostly the original), Cold Case (I like Lily!), 2-1/2 Men and a few reruns when I get home from work. That’s pretty much it.

However, the trailers for LOST impressed the hell out of me, and I decided to give it a shot. The two-part debut was split in half and run over two weeks, and at the end of two hours, I’m intrigued. If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the set up — a flight from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles goes wonky, the tail falls off mid-flight and the plane crashes on a remote island…somewhere. According to the pilot, they’re over a thousand miles off course, so any search parties are looking in the wrong place.

Forty-eight people survive, most of them uninjured except for one guy who has a piece of metal protruding from his chest. The alpha male of the series is a doctor…last seen on the flight gulping down very strong drinks even before there was any trace of trouble, so he has something he wants to forget. He also has mysterious tattoos on his body that have yet to be mentioned by anyone.

The alpha female is a sexy, resourceful young woman who is clearly attracted to the doctor, and vice versa. At the end of the second part of the premiere, we learn that there’s a LOT more going on with this woman than meets the eye, and it is a tantalizing revelation. Very well done, very surprising.

Oh, yes, there’s also something on the island with them that stomps around like Godzilla and snacks on people. The series creators promise the beasties are not dinosaurs, but that’s what comes to mind. Whatever they are, they’re big. Huge, even. And, in part 2, a smaller, equally dangerous, and totally perplexing creature is killed by a team of survivors seeking higher ground to try to make contact with the outside world on a transponder. My jaw dropped and I said aloud, even though there was no one else present in the room with me, “I didn’t see that coming.”

The series makes the viewer ask a bunch of questions…but it doesn’t keep all the answers hidden. It doles out information, but immediately asks a bunch more questions. We find out why young Pippin (or is it Merry?) for LotR made a mad dash for the bathroom before the crash. We find out who was once shackled up in the handcuffs the young boy discovered. We find out why the young boy’s father knows so little about him.

But some huge questions remain. What’s the deal with the Korean couple? So far they speak only Korean, but the woman at least seems to know more than they’re saying. What’s the story with the angry chain-smoking dude? What’s going to happen with the extremely pregnant woman? Why was the doctor drowning himself in booze on the flight? And then there’s the scary bald guy who sits out in the rain and tells the young boy he has a secret. What’s a former Iraqi Republican Guard officer doing on the flight? Why did the plane go down in the first place? Who left the distress signal that seems to be several decades old?

I hope the quality of this show persists. If so, I’m going to add it to my very small list of must-see programs.

If you haven’t seen it yet, ABC is running the entire two-hour debut on Saturday night. Check it out.