Here's something you don't often feel while watching TV these days: excitement. Watch Lost (ABC, Wednesdays, 8 p.m.), the new drama from Felicity and Alias creator J.J. Abrams and you'll feel the same kind of exhilaration you get from a really good action movie. Abrams and co-creator Damon Lindelof have come up with a great premise, and at least initially, have managed to keep the show unpredictable and full of surprises, something that's rare in TV drama. A plane crashes on a remote, deserted island and 48 survivors try to build a new life for themselves while waiting in vain (at least until the show goes off the air) to be rescued. As if that weren't enough to handle, the island seems populated by mysterious, deadly creatures and full of other secrets.
Abrams proved with Alias that he could build an intricate web of intrigue while still maintaining compelling, well-rounded characters. You'd think that a cast of 48 actors would be unwieldy, but Abrams and Lindelof achieve a good balance, focusing on a handful of central figures, including an excellent Matthew Fox as a doctor who becomes the group's de facto leader, while still getting in small, interesting moments with lesser characters.
Lost is certainly the most viscerally moving new show of the season, although whether it's the best will depend on how well it plays out over the course of more episodes. At least it doesn't follow a predictable formula, which seems to be the codified path to TV glory. Both NBC and CBS have their biggest drama successes with franchise shows that follow specific formulas. There are three versions of Law & Order on NBC now, with a fourth coming mid-season. CBS has added a third CSI, CSI: NY (Wednesdays, 10 p.m.), and the result should please anyone who finds comfort in predictability. Great actor Gary Sinise is wasted in the lead role of Brooding Cop With Dead Wife, and much of what makes the other two CSIs distinctive—being set in Las Vegas and Miami, respectively—is lost by putting the new version in New York, Cop Show Capital of the World.
Of course, CSI: NY is getting huge ratings, but then again, so is Lost, so things in TV land aren't completely bleak yet. Not that you'd know it by watching The Mountain (The WB, Wednesdays, 9 p.m.), a treacly, bland nighttime soap about which the less said, the better. It's a shame that usually clever producer Shaun Cassidy—behind such intriguing-but-quickly-cancelled shows as American Gothic and Roar—has come up with this dud about a family who owns a Montana ski resort. It's not as bad as some critics have made it out to be, but it's far from good, and all the more disappointing given the WB's solid history for cheeky, guilty pleasure soaps.
You'd expect something like Veronica Mars (UPN, Tuesdays, 9 p.m.) to be on the WB, with its sassy teen heroine, hipster dialogue and ironic tone, but instead it's a weird oasis of sanity on UPN amid "urban" sitcoms and wrestling. Smallville's Kristen Bell is the title character, a high-school-age private detective who helps her dad uncover the unsavory secrets behind her rich Southern California town. The pilot has a sometimes uneasy balance between Veronica's snarky attitude and serious issues like rape and parental abandonment, but her character has enough charm and potential to carry the show, and the writing is mostly intelligent. The premiere's ratings were low, but that doesn't necessarily mean much on UPN, and the show's been picked up to re-air on MTV, so it has a good chance of finding an audience.
Finally this week, I think I finally figured out why Joey is hailed as the best new sitcom of the season. It's because watching every other new sitcom is like having your soul die one little piece at a time. I subjected myself to Listen Up (CBS, Mondays, 8:30 p.m.), Second Time Around (UPN, Mondays, 9:30 p.m.), Rodney (ABC, Tuesdays, 9:30 p.m.) and Complete Savages (ABC, Fridays, 8:30 p.m.), in the hopes that you won't have to. There was not a single laugh to be had among the four, and Second Time Around emerged as the best, simply for not being entirely odious. If indeed TV comedy is changing, let these shows be the last gasps of the old guard.