Quake1028

Seriously, what in the blue hell do Surface, Invasion or Threshold have to do with Lost? Even slightly? Can anyone tell me? Who the fuck made up this idiotic term?

Tazwolff

Show me a "Lost clone" and I'll show you some beach front property in New Mexico..... Neither exist.

DeadLamb

Theme for theme? Nothing but they were still made pretty much to due to Lost taking off like a rocket..

This happens every few seasons.. Tv networks always tend to fall into HUGE ruts as far as programming.. If last years show themes worked, then do it again.. year after year.. If you're going to make a new show, make it like the ones that are already working, don't take a risk.

Then all of sudden someone will do something different one season and the show takes off huge. Lets call it XYZ theme being it could be anything that works: Reality tv, lost, xfiles, cop show, game show ect etc..Then all of a sudden, even when for the last few seasons they did not have a show with any sort of XYZ theme, the NEXT season they pop up everywhere...

If they were "going to make that show anyways" they would have tried it the season before.. So it's NO accident that other networks saw Lost and set out to draw the same sort of audience this season. Did we have any long story line "wtf is going on?" sort of shows the last few seasons before Lost? No, it was mostly law drama and CSI like shows everywhere being that was the XYZ theme of the moment..

Now it's longer more drawn out story lines that build all season like one really long tv movie.. That is the Lost XYZ theme.. The fact that they are not on a island etc has nothing at all do with that it really seems like network big wigs sat people down and said "We need a show like Lost"

Just don't get hung up on the fact that Lost in on an island etc.. If one was going to boil down Lost to one theme it would it would not be "Strangers on an Island". It would be more "Long running story line over a whole season with a mysterious edge to it." That's your Lost XYZ theme.. So how many shows match that idea last season? One? How about now after it was a huge hit? A ton more, so they get the "lost clone" tag..

spainlinx0

That is soooo vague that you could have a million shows fill that category. I guess Desperate Housewives would be a Lost clone. Oh wait, they started at the same time.

shawagg

The point they're making is that if it wasn't for Lost those shows would probably not be greenlight.

Count Dooku

Change "with a mysterious edge" to "with a sci-fi/supernaturally themed mysterious edge" and see if that makes it a little less vague.

I don't even understand why this is an argument.
Even the people making Surface, Threshold, and Invasion admit that their shows got on TV because of the success of Lost.
And the people running the networks admit that they wanted shows like Lost.

Michael Corvin

Exactly. When was the last time one of the big three networks had a sci-fi show on? Quantum Leap? They don't do sci-fi, never would have if it wasn't for Lost's success. So they take the formula, "with a sci-fi/supernaturally themed mysterious edge" , and make their own version. A clone.

Groucho

A clone is an exact copy. Some vague sharing of themes does not a clone make. I've watched both "Invasion" and "Threshold" and neither is even remotely similar to "Lost".

Geofferson

While not exact replicas of Lost (or even close to the level of Lost) they are similar in their supernatural theme -- which was what helped dramas trump reality shows last year. Without Lost, we may very well have had three new reality shows instead of these 'clones'.

AGuyNamedMike

Buncha damn "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" clones.

riley_dude

Lost allowed some genre shows with ungoing storylines to exist. They aren't nearly as good and they are all very simular. Too simular in fact that that may count against them. The first week they all premiered and I was getting the shows confused.

Jimmy James

Actually, you hit on my explanation for what happened inadvertantly:

The networks took to pilot a crapload of shows that really were Desperate Housewives clones. The lazy press had all these stories ready about how DH created this clone phenomenon, but none of the pilots got picked up. Faced with deadlines, reporters replaced the names of the shows and pilots picked up and made a case for there being all these Lost clones. The lazy press perpetuated the idea to the point it got stuck in the collective thought process, and we only found out when the shows aired that it really wasn't so much the case.

HN

didn't yoda predict this?

riley_dude

I dont see how Sci Fi/Invasion shows could be labeled as Desperate Housewives clones.

Jimmy James

No -- there were this whole other set of shows that they took to pilot but didn't pick up. Maybe this will help:

1) Desperate Housewives spawns clones Soccer Moms (the only name I recall), clone 2, clone 3, clone 4

2) Lazy reporters create stories in anticipation of all of these clones being picked up -- they hate deadlines

3) Networks see the supposedly sci-fi influence of LOST and greenlight different sorts of sci-fi shows. They don't greenlight Soccer Moms and its ilk.

4) Lazy reporters sub in LOST for DH and Invasion (et, al.) for Soccer Moms (et, al.)

das Monkey

"Lost clone" is a lazy way of saying this: a bunch of average premises were picked up because two mysterious arc-based shows (Lost and Desperate Housewives) were immensely popular last season. It's a take on the phrase "C.S.I. clone", which is more accurate. The term "Lost clone" is somewhat of a misnomer, but the phenomenon of networks carelessly greenlighting flimsy premises (anything mysterious -- supernatural is the laziest way to write mysterious -- with an arc) in hopes of recapturing Lost's success is real.

As always, though, they don't have a clue why Lost and Desperate Housewives are actually so successful, so these attempts are all miserable failures.

das

cdollaz

I'm with the OP. Invasion, Surface, and Threshold have nothing in common with Lost other than the story is ongoing.

Jadzia

After Survivor was such a huge hit, the slew of reality shows that were released were called "Survivor clones". Probably even The Amazing Race.

It's not really the show itself that the network is attempting to clone; it is the success. The big news last year was that sci-fi and drama was back, so we got a slew of dramatic sci-fi series this year. After CSI hit, we got a lot of crime procedurals. Every year, the networks throw a bunch of crap against the wall to see what sticks. When something sticks, the other networks all point and say "Gimme".

They fail to see that interesting premises and good writing are generally what makes a show good, but they usually only see the one-dimensional "high concept" aspect of the show and try to duplicate that.

Jimmy James

Example: NBC's trio of Dark Skies, Profiler, and The Pretender back in the day

DeadLamb

one did and it's a clone's clone, right down to a voice over etc... Sex, Love & Secrets, it stars Denise Richards playing the role of a bitchy hot chick... Sep I think pretty much no one watches the show. Don't see any talk about it here. I think it pulled 1.8 million viewers? So sounds sort of doomed..

keep in mind also for the tag of "lost clone" that writers and business groups always try to box in and drop a term on something, even if it's a leap.. Just look at how SUV gets throw around for anything now.. Even for rides that seem a whole lot more like a mini van or just a station wagon based car..

Companies just love tag words..

Jadzia

That reminds me of how movies are always pitched with one line. "It's blank meets blank" etc.

I remember reading an article once about how after the movie Die Hard hit it big, everyone was pitching Die Hard clone scripts. "It's like Die Hard but on a plane/cruise ship/harpoon boat" etc. One executive interviewed said he actually got a pitch from a young executive that described his movie as "Like Die Hard except in a building".

Jimmy James

Do we have our first "Prison Break clone"?

http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve_main/1,1002,271|97908|1|,00.html

Shannon Nutt

Relax. Almost all new shows are compared to old shows...even the ones that turn out to be hits. When The X-Files first came on the air, it was being called the "next Twin Peaks," believe it or not. When Twin Peaks premiered, it was being called the "next Peyton Place,"...and so on. A lot of people were calling Lost a dramatic version of Survivor before its premiere last year. Execs are always looking to compare their shows to a previous success, in the hope of getting people who were intersted in the successful show to check out the new series.

Jimmy James

I imagine it was really annoying when we were first getting TV because everything was like (some radio prorgram) with pictures!

ChrisHicks

I thought Invasion was supposed to be a Lost clone in the fact that it would move along at a snails pace like Lost did.