In the Church of J.J., a Congregation of 'Lost' Souls

"I have no idea why anything doesn't work or does," J.J. responded calmly.

"I think the idea is to take a premise that is maybe a B premise and, whether it's the spy world or characters who crash-land on an island, say, 'How do you do this A?' "

Speaking of B premises, that big, scary monster seemed difficult for the critics to swallow. But, J.J. assured them, the monster is not the star. And though he said he understood their skepticism, he asked them to believe.

"If you have a monster and it's, you know, you call it a monster, it's like, then it's sort of disposable and silly and feels kind of irrelevant or gimmicky. If you have something that represents terror and represents fear and represents sort of the darkness of this place, to me, that's incredibly valuable."

"Lost" is not "Gilligan's Island," critics were assured, because guest stars will not be washed up on shore each week, though they will be featured in flashbacks to the survivors' precrash lives, J.J. explained.

And "Lost" won't be like "Survivor" in that the big, scary monster won't devour one of the survivors each week, as it did in the pilot.

What, then, is it? critics wondered aloud.

"I've just got to say that the fact I don't know how to answer that question in a way that would satisfy anyone who's not seen the first few, six episodes of the show is why I'm so excited," J.J. replied.

After nearly an hour of this, critics finally asked him to reveal whether this island is on Earth and whether Big Scary Monster had a master, to which J.J. replied: "I have to say, the fact that you would ask that question is one of the things that gets me excited. It's, like, you don't want to do a show that is so weird, you go, 'Oh, it's like this creepy science- fiction show only.'

"But to me, if this show were on, I would watch it," he said.

Another of the show's executive producers, Bill D'Elia -- apparently unaware of the very special relationship between Kelley and critics and therefore oblivious of the pain behind the question, responded brightly that Kelley had just moved to northern California, north of Palo Alto, and is conducting business from there.

"He flies in to see us about once a week; during the course of the week we're on the phone with him daily, and we're in the course of setting up this video link so we can actually see each other daily," D'Elia explained, thinking the question was all about him and the show.

"It's not much different than when he was here every day, actually," said D'Elia, mistaking critics for people who cared about what he was saying.

"No offense to this esteemed panel, but it would seem that David E. Kelley's comments about this show would be the most important," groused another critic a few minutes and a few questions later. "When did he decide not to be here and why did he choose not to be here?" Critics understandably thought this was pretty cheeky-casual for a guy who, for the first time in years, had only one show on the fall lineup and needed them now more than ever.

D'Elia finally grasped what was going on and said he apologized on everyone's behalf, adding: "But we're not certain, since his move to Palo Alto, whether or not he would be available. Obviously we all wanted him to be here and he would like to be here himself, but this coincided with his move out of the Los Angeles area and he's just literally unpacking and coming back and forth, and it just didn't work out that this day worked. It's as simple as that."

"Is he [angry] at us?" a critic asked.

Like I said, a very special relationship.