The writers' strike may explain it, but doesn't excuse it. The "enhanced" hour of Lost that precedes tonight's new hour of Lostis even worse than a week-old rerun.
It's a week-old rerun that doesn't add to the viewing experience. It detracts from it.
Let's be clear about this. A fresh episode of Lost, such as the one shown tonight at 9 ET, is one of broadcast TV's crown jewels. It's one of the best-written, most ambitious dramatic series on television, and a new episode is a highlight of any discerning viewer's week. So I love Lost. Make no mistake about that.
But for a month now, ABC has been leading into each week's new Lost by repeating last week's episode. Not just repeating it, but peppering it with subtitled notes, as if it were a episode of Pop-Up Videos.
Some of the things it points out are laughably, irritatingly obvious. Others are astoundingly, irritatingly arcane and obtuse - the sort of references not even Dennis Miller would get, much less craft a joke around.
But here's the thing. Lost is so visually dense already, it doesn't need the footnote equivalent of a news crawl to keep viewers from being bored. Calling the bottom-third messages an "enhanced" episode of Lost is a heinous misuse of language.
It's more like a "defaced" episode - and it's a waste of an hour on ABC.
These days, though, that's not so unusual an occurrence.