If the passengers are the usual "Bridge of San Luis Rey" cross-section of humanity, they don't come off that way. The bass player from a rock band talks with a British accent and manages to rescue his stash of cocaine from one of the plane's toilets (the crash came just before the flush). Matthew Fox, really the star of the show (and for years the nominal patriarch on "Party of Five"), takes command by virtue of being a doctor who knows how to care for the various wounds and traumas suffered.
One awesome babe thought ahead; she brought along a supply of flesh-colored and tight-fitting underwear, just perfect for eye-popping baths in the surf. There's also a big fat guy with frizzy hair who, mercifully enough, shows no sign of having brought any flesh-colored underwear whatsoever.
"CSI" goes uptown: For good acting, there's Gary Sinise; for big hair, there's Melina Kanakaredes.
(Craig Blakenhorn - CBS)
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The episode begins with the survivors already on the island, but throughout the premiere -- and reportedly in the second episode as well -- we catch glimpses of the nightmarish plane crash (good grief, crashbacks again). In one of them, we see the tail portion break off and fly away into the distance. Anybody already afraid of flying -- surely the most rational phobia on earth -- will be truly unnerved by these special-effects displays, though producer J.J. Abrams saved money by not showing the exterior of the plane, just the inside.
"Lost" actually gives every sign of knowing where it's going and what it's doing. It's solid, suspenseful and fraught with frights. The Big Scary Monster may be a corny touch, but who's to say what does and doesn't exist on those mysterious uncharted islands where, for example, King Kong once holed up. "Lost" has the capacity to bring out the kid in adults and the adult in kids.
'The Mountain'
There'd have to be a guy named Travis in a show like "The Mountain," and there is. He and most of the other characters in this awful groan of a show appear to have wandered into the local cozy watering hole after having shot a big beer commercial out on the slopes. They have that blandly beauteous look of models who inhabit ads where everyone is active and laughing and full of life.
Unfortunately, life is not what "The Mountain" is full of. One of the season's worst new shows, this WB montage of cool cliches -- premiering at 9 tonight on Channel 50 -- proves that the song "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" should definitely not be taken literally. The mountain after which this series was named is, after all, "just a big rock," one of the characters notes -- a big rock with a pack of blockheads grasping for control of it.
In the opening scene, onetime TV star Chad Everett, looking white-haired but very fit, visits his heirs via a videotaped will and shocks them by leaving the family mountain -- now a "world-class ski resort" -- to the aforementioned Travis, who's considered among the least responsible and trustworthy of the group. But the geezer knew his oats, and his corn, and was sure Travis would rise to the occasion. About 10,000 feet or so.
"Baywatch" worked largely because its beauties and cuties scampered about in the equivalent of their underpants. Nobody is going to want to watch the comely cast of "The Mountain" as they bumble about in the equivalent of George Costanza's bulky Gore-Tex jacket on a certain funny episode of "Seinfeld." It makes you chilly just to watch the show, which may be okay during the last hot gasps of summer but won't be during the viciously icy winds of February.
The villain of the piece is a rich developer who wants to decorate the mountain with "condos and burger joints" and so of course must be stopped at any cost because ski lifts and snooty rich brats are ever so much prettier. It's easy to tell the good guys from the bad; the good guys have stubble and the bad guys are cleanshaven. Except that just about everybody shaves for the funeral.
Then it's back into that trendy face foliage again.
"Mountain's" surfeit of clothing may have some rankled viewers yelling, "Take it off!," but the excess of hokey old stuff you've seen a thousand times is more likely to inspire cries of "Turn it off," or the proverbial and very American equivalent -- a mantra, really -- "See what else is on."
