ABC dominates Wed. with 'Lost' power

CBS' dramas showed a little spunk Wednesday, but ABC still owned the night with "Lost."

The new Freddie Prinze, Jr. comedy "Freddie" also got off to a reasonably good start for ABC at 8:30 p.m., improving slightly on its " George Lopez" lead-in and capitalizing on its proximity to "Lost." UPN was in the game at 8 p.m. with "America's Next Top Model."

ABC's 9 p.m. hotshot yielded an average of 21.7 million viewers and a 9.4 rating/22 share in the adults 18-49 demographic, according to Nielsen Media Research. "Lost" has cooled a little since it opened its sophomore season last month with 23 million viewers and a 25 share in adults 18-49, but it is nonetheless duking it out with CBS' "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and ABC's "Desperate Housewives" for the top rungs of primetime's 18-49 demo rankings.

CBS' freshman "Criminal Minds" (13.8 million, 4.2/10) moved the needle significantly from its past two airings despite facing stiff competition from ABC's 9 p.m. monster. NBC's "The Apprentice: Martha Stewart" (6.9 million, 2.6/6) also inched up from the previous week, but not by much.

At 10 p.m., CBS' "CSI: NY" (15.2 million, 5.3/14) built on "Minds' " momentum to top ABC's freshman "Invasion" (11.6 million, 4.8/12) -- a noteworthy feat given "Invasion's" lead-in advantage -- and NBC's "Law & Order" (10.9 million, 3.5/9).

At 8 p.m., ABC led the hour with "Lopez" (8.8 million, 3.4/10) and the debut of "Freddie" (9.4 million, 4.2/11), which took its lumps from critics. NBC didn't do much business in the hour with the drama "E-Ring" (8.7 million, 2.3/7), nor did CBS with its comedy combo of "Still Standing" (7.5 million, 2.3/7) and "Yes, Dear" (8.8 million, 3.0/8).

UPN's "Top Model" (5.5 million, 2.7/8) continued its forward motion, growing from last week in all key measures and hitting an impressive 5.2/15 in women 18-34. Its 9 p.m. companion "Veronica Mars" (3 million, 1.3/3), however, is still struggling to hold on to that lead-in.

WB Network slogged through the night with lackluster turnouts for the dramas "One Tree Hill" (3.1 million, 1.4/4) and "Related" (2.6 million, 1.1/3).

Fox was in baseball zone again on Wednesday with regionally divided coverage of Game 2 of the American League Championship Series and Game 1 of the National League Championship Series. For the night, Fox averaged 12.6 million viewers and a 4.0/11.

Still, ABC had no competition for the nightly bragging rights with an average of 14 million viewers and a 6.0/16 in adults 18-49.

From: Reuters

Mad for the mythology of 'Lost'
Fans of the ABC drama about plane crash survivors on a mysterious island love to search for clues.
By Stephen Kiehl
Sun Reporter

Alarm bells sounded for Brigit Wampler while watching an episode of Lost one day last spring. She noticed that Boone, a pretty young man stranded on the island with his sister, was wearing a red shirt. Of course, Wampler knew, he was going to die.

She remembered the old Star Trek cliche that any character who didn't have a last name and was wearing a red shirt would be dead by the end of the episode. Sure enough, two weeks later, Boone was checking out a plane trapped in a tree canopy when the plane fell to the ground. Boone was killed.

"I got the reference but I didn't really think they were going to kill him off," says Wampler, 46, a Western Maryland resident who says Lost is the only show for which she puts aside her knitting. "It's pretty much the only show I put all my concentration into, and not because I'm lacking in the brains department."

Lost, a sort of Gilligan's Island update with more attractive castaways and a spookier island, has become one of TV's top shows. Now in its second season, the ABC drama is drawing more than 20 million viewers per week. A fraction of them have become Lost fanatics, poring over every episode to find literary, cultural and mythological allusions that may explain the show's mystery - what is happening on the island, how are the characters related, why did their plane crash and what does it all mean?

These hyper-fans tape every episode so they can go back to pause the action and search for clues that appear onscreen for only a split-second. The briefest glimpse of a character reading, say, Watership Down, can lead to days of speculation on Lost message boards.

"I watch Lost twice," Wampler says. "I watch it once on the edge of my seat, with my hand over my mouth, going, 'Oh my gosh!' And the second time it's a little more relaxed because I know what the story's going to be and I go, 'Oh yeah, this makes sense.' "

The Lost obsessives have formed communities on the Internet, where endless debates rage about the meaning of certain numbers and symbols that appear on the show. Thefuselage.com, which Wampler moderates, has 20,000 registered members, while lost-tv.com has 11,000 members.

The college radio station at the Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport has established a weekly two-hour Lost radio program. It's broadcast live over the station's Web site, but the computer servers often crash because so many fans from around the world are trying to listen at once.

Lost's writers and producers seem surprised - in a good way - about the rabid nature of these fans. Some of the writers answer questions on the fan Web sites, though they are often hopelessly vague. Or just confused. One fan wrote in seeking confirmation of the title of a TV show being watched by a character experiencing a flashback (Sentai or Power Rangers, the fan wondered).

Javier Grillo-Marxuach, a supervising producer and writer on the show, responded, "Wow! you guys are like the talmudic scholars of Lost - seriously, I have NO idea."

A recurring mystery of the show has to do with the numbers that keep popping up. One of the characters had once won the lottery with the numbers 4-8-15-16-23-42. Viewers note that the flight number for the doomed plane that crashed on the island was 815. Also, they note, there was a $23,000 reward out for the capture of the Kate character.

The castaways have found a hatch on their island. When they open it up, they find a man inside who says he must punch those numbers - 4-8-15-16-23-42 - into a computer every 108 minutes or something terrible will happen. Of course, if you add up those six numbers, you get 108.

What does it mean? Are the writers just having fun with fans?

"We know that there's very little that occurs in Lost that was not planned by the creative staff," says Kit Cleary, a San Diego financial adviser who helps run the lost-tv.com site. "They're not just throwing pasta up against the wall and seeing what sticks. They know what direction they're headed in. They know what the mythology of the island is, and that's key."

Cleary has some of her own ideas. She thinks the survivors are part of a social experiment gone horribly awry, since they are so dysfunctional. She's also picked up on the show's biblical references. She notes that the first season represented 40 days on the island.

"That is not accidental," she says. "That's a magical number that represents some sort of a cleansing process where you go into yourself and then you come back and you're a different person."

Cleary has also picked up on parallels with Joseph Campbell's book The Hero's Journey, in which an individual goes on a journey, dies and is reborn. "These people have died, so to speak," she says of the Lost characters, "and are reborn. This is their second chance."

Lost fans have held parties in hotels and attended conventions to meet one another. Often on Wednesday nights, they gather to watch the show together. This past Wednesday, Caren Chancey invited Wampler, thefuselage.com moderator, and her friend Melissa Cavanaugh to her Mount Vernon townhouse.

They ordered pizzas from Papa John's and sat on the edge of the couch through the hour-long program. "There's the bottle - oohh!" Wampler said when a wine bottle filled with messages from the survivors washed back onshore.

They were careful to watch for recurrences of the magic numbers. Sure enough, when one survivor encountered a woman from another group of survivors, he asked how many were in her group. "Twenty-three," she said.

Chancey and her friends also noted that a dharma symbol that had appeared on a shark's skin was now on a wall in a bunker. She wasn't sure what to make of it, or much of anything in the show.

"Every time I come up with an idea for what it means," she said, "the writers shoot it down in the next episode."

From: The Baltimore Sun

ABC Finds Wednesday Win with 'Lost'

Fast National ratings for Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2006
Two hours' worth of "Lost" -- one new, one a clip show -- helped ABC hold off CBS and score a ratings victory Wednesday night.

ABC drew an 8.9 rating/14 share in primetime to beat CBS' 8.3/13. NBC finished third at 6.2/10. There was a fairly steep drop from there, with fourth-place FOX coming in at 3.3/5. The WB averaged 1.9/3 and UPN 1.6/2.

Among adults 18-49, ABC's 5.8 rating was enough to score a healthy win. CBS, 4.1, finished second, followed by NBC at 3.0. FOX averaged 2.2, The WB 1.3 and UPN 1.0.
"Lost: Revelation," a clip show catching viewers up on the events of this season, scored an 8.5/13 for ABC at 8 p.m. "Still Standing," 6.0/10, and "Yes, Dear," 5.9/9, put CBS in second. NBC's "E-Ring" took third with a 5.3/8. "That '70s Show" and "Stacked" were fourth for FOX, with The WB's "One Tree Hill" coming in fifth. The premiere of UPN's drama "South Beach" struggled, scoring a 1.7/3.

At 9 p.m., a new "Lost" snagged the night's biggest audience with an 11.9/18. "Criminal Minds" was a strong second for CBS at 10.3/15. "The Biggest Loser: Special Edition" fell from its premiere last week, managing only a 4.5/7 for NBC. FOX stayed in fourth with "Nanny 911," 3.5/5. A "Beauty and the Geek" casting special on The WB was fifth, edging the second hour of the "South Beach" premiere on UPN.

"Law & Order," 8.6/14, gave NBC a first-place tie with CBS' "CSI: NY" at 10 p.m., though CBS had a slight edge in total viewers. "Invasion" was third for ABC at 6.2/10.

Ratings information is taken from fast national data, which includes live and same-day DVR viewing. All numbers are preliminary and subject to change.

From: Zap2It

Gross Indecency Star Lands Role on ABC-TV's "Lost"

By Andrew Gans

Emmy Award winner Michael Emerson, who portrayed Oscar Wilde in Off-Broadway's Gross Indecency, has landed a recurring role on the hit ABC-TV series "Lost."

Emerson, according to a spokesperson for the actor, will begin his "Lost" stint on the Feb. 15 broadcast. Emerson is scheduled to appear in at least six additional episodes. "Lost" airs Wednesdays at 9 PM ET on ABC-TV; check local listings.

Michael Emerson won a 2001 Emmy Award for Best Guest Actor for his work as serial killer William Hinks on "The Practice." He was most recently seen onstage in the New York Theatre Workshop's production of Bach at Leipzig. His other stage credits include Gross Indecency and the Broadway revivals of Hedda Gabler and The Iceman Cometh.

From: Playbill.com

ABC to Launch `Lost' Interactive Game

ABC Says It Will Launch a Global Interactive Game Based on the Hit TV Show 'Lost'

ABC will launch a global interactive game based on the hit TV show "Lost," the network announced Monday.

Details, however, are about as mysterious and convoluted as the plot of the island castaway drama. The "Lost Experience" will be Internet-based and will feature a parallel story line that is not part of the TV show.

It will begin May 2 in the United Kingdom, May 3 in the U.S. and May 6 in Australia. There is no winning prize, but the experience will offer clues that could unlock some of the island's many secrets.

"It's like a giant, worldwide mysterious jigsaw puzzle that will come to life for all the world to solve," Mike Benson, senior vice president of marketing for ABC Entertainment, said in a statement.

What is known about the challenge is that it includes the introduction of new characters and the mysterious Hanso Foundation. The first clue requires finding a toll-free number that will be released during the show or commercial breaks.

Clues will vary by continent, so participants will benefit from coordinating their information. ABC said the game is designed to appeal to both fans and people unfamiliar with "Lost."

From: ABC News

Castaway says, 'Bring it on, dude'

By DAVE ITZKOFF

The more hopelessly complicated life becomes for Hurley, the husky and big-hearted castaway on the ABC drama Lost, the simpler it becomes for Jorge Garcia, who portrays him.

In the two seasons that Lost has been on the air, Hurley (whose real name is Hugo Reyes) — a wryly laconic guy who punctuates his sentences with "dude" — has been exposed as the blessed and cursed winner of a $114 million lottery jackpot, a former patient at a mental institution, and a recovering psychotic for whom the television series might simply be an extended hallucination.

While Hurley suffers, Garcia thrives, knowing that he has turned what could have been a bit part into an enduring, endearing creation: an easygoing wisecracker very much like who he is after the cameras have stopped rolling.

"You've got to have the confidence to sell what you know you have," Garcia, 33, said in a telephone interview from his home in Kailua, Hawaii. "I always had this thing in the back of my mind that said, 'Wait till they get a load of me.' "

As a college roommate at the University of California, Los Angeles, used to remind Garcia, there is no one out there who looks quite like him: he is a hulking figure of Cuban and Chilean descent, with curly, shoulder-length auburn hair and thick sideburns, and a John Belushi-like countenance that can shuttle between sincerity and irony with a single raised eyebrow.

When Garcia began his acting career, those distinctive qualities helped him build a portfolio of broad comedic performances, ranging from a cocky fast-food restaurant patron with an oversized clown hat in a commercial for Jack in the Box to a marijuana dealer on the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm who explains the difference between costly "hydroponic scientific stuff" and inexpensive "schwag."

That performance caught the eye of J.J. Abrams, one of the creators of Lost.

"J.J. saw Curb Your Enthusiasm, came in the next day and was like, 'We've got to get that guy,' " Garcia said proudly. "It makes you feel like you're pretty good at what you do."

Before he was cast, the role was essentially a cipher, a working-class man of unspecified age and ethnicity, whose earliest character sketches described him as a "red shirt," a term used by Star Trek fans to denote a supporting player who gets killed off quickly. ("I just assumed he wore a red shirt," Garcia said.)

But after Garcia's auditions, the producers of Lost started to make Hurley more like Garcia. To begin with, he became Hispanic. "It was kind of a no-brainer," said Javier Grillo-Marxuach, a supervising producer. "If you've got a guy named Jorge Garcia on your show, why call his character John Smith?"

He also has to carry the increasingly outlandish plot twists that befall his character. In a flashback sequence from the show's first season, Hurley got his winning lottery numbers from the ramblings of a fellow mental patient. An episode shown in April, "Dave," revealed that Hurley had emerged from a catatonic state in which he was constantly eating, and that he was plagued by visits from an imaginary friend named Dave (played by Evan Handler) trying to goad him into suicide.

Though these developments can seem harsh, the writers of Lost point out that they are also opportunities for Garcia to demonstrate that he can be more than just comic relief.

Garcia said he does not spend too much time worrying about what fresh hells the producers of Lost will concoct for Hurley, or how he will respond to them as an actor. "I get a certain freedom in the fact that Hurley was written for me," he said.

So while Lost fans spend the summer contemplating the myriad mysteries of the underground shelter called the Hatch and the belligerent islanders known as the Others, Garcia will more likely be relaxing in the company of the antique Polynesian weaponry and framed Howard Pyle pirate illustrations that decorate his walls, and maybe — just maybe — the $15,000 casino-quality card shuffler he's thinking about buying to go with the poker table he recently acquired. "I'm, like, 'Oh, man, it's so sweet,' " he said. "But my girlfriend's, like, 'If you buy that, I'm leaving you, because that's such a blatant expenditure.' "

Garcia put the telephone down momentarily to have an inaudible conversation with his girlfriend. Then he got back on the line: "She's calling me a geek right now."

From: Chron.com