FENCED IN

Jorge Garcia, who played Hurley, was probably the most beloved character on LOST. As the symbol for the average viewer, the jolly survivor was the counter-weight to the violent drama of many story arcs. But even in the LOST world, Hurley's character made an out-of-character move by mowing down the Others with his VW van in a beach rescue. No one thought that Hurley could be homicidal.

Also, no one thought Garcia would have trouble finding new work after LOST. He had the personality to be a character actor with a long career. He got a co-starring role on Alcatraz, a sci-fi mystery with the same plot elements of LOST: an island and time travel. But this mid-season replacement just got canceled due to falling ratings. It's sister sic-fi show, Terra Nova, also met its demise. Terra Nova had a big problem with its premise: if you were going to save mankind, why go back in time where you are not the top species in the food chain? To the era of dinosaurs, who are known to be extinct by a massive event, would find man a mere appetizer. So the big budget, big cast show fizzled from the start.

Garcia's show had another problem. It tried to be LOST but not LOST and got lost in the process. It started to raise the mystery questions and answer some of them within the same show. But the series suddenly turned into cookie-cutter hide and seek episodes of a new prisoner appearing in the present time, and Garcia's team had to track them down.

And that may be part of the LOST after-effect in Hollywood. Cast members may not be blacklisted, but stereotyped into a genre which audiences are not willing to invest great time in understanding a layered story line. Good science fiction can yield great franchises like Star Trek. But poor ones are lost to the annals of historical footnotes. Instead of being a ground breaking exercise, LOST may have actually fenced in creative types who want to take risks in television.

And the networks, with dwindling audience base, are not willing to guarantee a big cast, expensive, mystery show several years to develop a web of mysteries and back stories. Networks are not big risk takers today; they are recyclers of past successful, simple formula shows.

Even newer cable channels, who have 24 hours to fill, have not embraced the six seasons of LOST for syndicated reruns. There is a definite chill surrounding the LOST franchise.

THE NEXT LOST

Jorge Garcia was the first hire in JJ Abrams sci-fi series, LOST. One of the reasons may have been to find a secondary anchor character that would place viewers into their own screen surrogate in Hurley. Another reason was the initial plan to kill off a lead (Jack) quickly in order to heighten the danger element of the show.

Garcia has joined the cast of the next Abrams sci-fi series, ALCATRAZ. Still not wanting to get sucked into a seemingly weak premise in the adverts leading up to the premiere, I passed on viewing. But I did read the initial reviews which were mostly positive, but led to some critical flaws in the story construction and plot movement.

ALCATRAZ appears to be a combination of the X-Files, in a secret government conspiracy within shadow organizations, and Lost, in another Island as a main focal point for supernatural elements. In this case, prisoners had vanished from the high security prison before it closed and now, decades later, they begin to appear in modern day San Francisco with evil intent.

This new Lost has an X-Files nicotine free Smoking Man, a cute street wise female police officer who suddenly gets transferred (for no logical real world reason) into the secret organization tracking down the re-appearing menace of Lost Prisoners. Garcia's character is an academic who has studied Alcatraz in minute detail, including the missing prisoners, so he is drafted to be the police woman's non-trained law enforcement partner (yes, that is another real life stretch).

The reviewers said that unlike LOST, the pilot episode had a self contained resolution of the first prisoner's story, and then threw in some real plot twists at the end. Reviewers thought that the creators of this show were aware of the LOST story arcs that went into tangential dead ends were the main criticisms when LOST concluded and the writers made a conscious effort to tie up story leads quickly in a clear, understandable way.

I will probably still wait and see how the reviewers see how the show is progressing before wading into another Abrams show pool. Then, it may get a chance during the television re-run season.