The Lost Carlton of Z

The fact that Lost is no longer on television and will never again return to grace our screens makes me sad all day. Often I shake. I become slathered in cold sweats. I get chills. I'll find that I have been quietly weeping for hours without noticing.

Perhaps I exaggerate the symptoms of my withdrawal. But as much as I miss the show, I daresay that Carlton Cuse, one of its producers, misses it more.

It's a nice, droll little piece about how you are completely, totally, up-to-your-neck immersed in a project for a long time, and then suddenly it's gone from your grasp in one fell swoop. And you find yourself either quietly going crazy as you sit in your chair at home or loudly going crazy as you look for something else to do.

I'll follow these guys to whatever their next project ends up being. As the essay mentions, this sadly won't be an adaptation of Under the Dome, Stephen King's latest novel. When I read it, I couldn't help but notice that its characters were basically stand-ins for most of the Lost characters. Which, of course, would have been perfect for Cuse and Damon. Alas, this particular sideways world is not to be.

But like I said, they accumulated enough capital and goodwill with Lost -- there really isn't another show anything like it, not even on DVD -- that whatever their next project is deserves a long, sustained look. Even if it is, as he describes, "a show about a hot dolphin trainer and her dolphins who work at an aquarium by day but perform secret missions for the government by night."

Perhaps fortunately, that is not his next project. But I'd still watch it.