Is Lost Losing Its Way?

My favorite new show of this fall's TV season is Lost, ABC's new show about a bunch of airline passengers stranded on an island after a crash. It's definitely unlike most TV fare, innovative in many ways, and a critical success.

But on last night's episode, I found two things to gripe about. First, the reliance on fireworks in a complicated attempt to triangulate a transmitter of some sort. Who the hell brings fireworks on an airplane? Also, the tough guy's metaphor of the moth emerging from its cacoon to help the drug addict kick his jones was fair enough the first time, but by the third time he sees a moth that episode, with tears in his eyes as it climed into the smoke-filled air after he ditched his stash in the bonfire, it was a bit too schmaltzy for the tone of gritty reality, not-TV-as-you-know-it that the show is striving to pioneer.

Some habits die hard.