The Lost Ending

This weekend, I caught up with the new SciFi Channel mini-series that aired last week, The Lost Room. I'd originally taken interest in watching it because it stars Peter Krause of Six Feet Under and Sports Night (two excellent shows). But my interest built as I heard a few people give generally favorable reviews of the mini-series.

Five hours and forty minutes of this six hour event were really good. It was an intriguing concept, well-executed, fairly well-written, very well-acted, well-paced, and fun to watch. I found it had a good "can't put it down" quality to it, that made me want to cram it all in as quickly as possible to see how it ended.

And then, in the last 20 minutes, the wheels just came completely off the wagon. I don't know what the hell happened. Suddenly, new concepts were introduced into the story that had no prior set-up. They seemed to almost violate the "rules" of the show's premise. An apparent conclusion was suddenly thrust onto the story, but without any real explanation of how it all worked out the way it did.

Maybe the writers pitched a four part mini-series, got chopped down, and didn't know how to fit their story into less time. Maybe someone thought there was a chance a full television series would follow this up, and the writers couldn't quite bring themselves to end the story in a satisfying way. (Not that they left it in any open-ended way that a series could easily pick up.) Maybe they just plain didn't know how to end their story. Whatever it was, the ending sucked out loud.

In a way, it was like Deja Vu all over again.

Still, if you missed The Lost Room and later have the chance to catch it (likely, since SciFi Channel is running it every other hour), it's probably worth your time, even with the crap ending. It's that interesting along the way, with interesting ideas, twists and turns, and straight-up fun. Maybe just invent your own ending.