The Lost Room--The Eye and the Prime Object

The Lost Room winds its way to a conclusion--sort of--showing us a bit more about the Objects, the underground cabals, and just what these people are willing to do to get their hands on these odd mystical items. But in the end, the origin of the Objects is left unexplained, as are several other plot points. I blame Sci Fi for not treating this as a miniseries per se, but as a possible kickstart to a weekly series. The trouble with that is that if the show doesn't get picked up, we're left with a story that has far too many loose ends. I have no idea what the ratings looked like, or if SciFi has any intention of continuing the story. It would have been nice for this to have been self-contained, though, rather than working so hard to build up a lot of intriguing questions, then leaving them unanswered just in case.

Miller and Kreutzfeld gather more information and a collection of objects--the clock, the scissors and the key--which together will open the vault where the Collectors hid several of the Objects forty years ago. The scissors, which cause things to rotate, seem fairly innocuous at first, until Miller gets his ass rotated out a window.

Miller and Kreutzfeld finally track down the vault, using Barbara Stritsky's Polaroids, then use the Objects to make their way inside it. It's here that Entertainment Weekly's comparison of the show to Riven started to really kick in for me. They have to figure out how to use each individual Object to make their way into the vault. I'm terrible at those games. This is about where I would have started Googling walkthroughs.

In the meantime, Jennifer determines Kreutzfeld is trying to duplicate the Conroy experiment, and thus is up to no good. This is, in fact, true. He abandons Miller in the vault. Fortunately Miller has the bus ticket and uses it to escape. Kreutzfeld is, indeed, trying to save his son, but the boy doesn't have leukemia--he's been dead for nine years. The only way to bring him back is by changing reality with the Objects.

While Kreutzfeld prepares his experiment, with the addition of the glass eye, Miller reunites with Wally (the earlier owner of the bus ticket) to track down the Occupant of Room Ten, assuming he's the Prime Object. A beef here--it didn't appear that the glass eye was used in the earlier experiment, so how and why did Kreutzfeld decide to use it here? Also, its powers weren't sufficiently explained. It can heal all damage to the user, but at the same time causes people to disintegrate. And the scene where Kreutzfeld prepares to implant it? Ewww.

In a strange subplot that doesn't seem to tie in elsewhere, Martin is dumped in the desert with the Gallup Polaroid. In it he sees a "vision" of the Occupant (possibly just a hallucination, because the Occupant looks just like Martin). When he is finally rescued, he tells Bridgewater and Margaret that he's now the Prophet of the Objects. It's not clear if something has really happened to him, or if he's just gone off his nut.

Miller finally tracks down the Occupant by finding a spot in the US where none of the Objects have ever been. Somehow the Occupant was ripped out of reality when the Objects came to be, and he himself was also turned into an Object. He tells Miller he can help retrieve Anna, and they head for the Sunshine Motel (actually referred to in this episode as Motel Sunshine), where Kreutzfeld's experiment is already underway. As the time rift comes into existence, the Occupant and Miller walk into the room. The Occupant tells Miller the only way to get Anna back is for Miller to kill him and become an Object himself. Miller is reluctant, but does so, and is reunited with Anna.

Overall, I found this miniseries interesting, though if I hadn't been blogging it I probably would have given up after the first installment. And the conclusion didn't really conclude, which I found disappointing. I understand why they did it that way, but I wish they'd chosen to go a different direction with this particular story. There was enough there to manage a satisfying ending and still leave elements available to spin into a weekly series, without leaving all the loose ends they did.

The Lost Room--The Comb and the Box

Somewhere about the thirty or forty-five minute mark of Part Two, The Lost Room finally got interesting.

Framed for the murder of his partner by Martin (Dennis Christoper, Angel), his supposed ally, Miller continues to search for the Objects in order to rescue his daughter. His search leads him to the Sunshine Motel, in Gallup, Texas, where there is no Room 10 (you have to use the Key to get there), and Room 9 is home to mysterious goings on that have literally driven people insane. While Miller forges an uneasy alliance with Kreutzfeld (Kevin Pollak), who's trying to collect the Objects to cure his son's leukemia, Martin makes an even uneasier alliance with the Order, who want to collect the Objects in order to communicate with God.

Miller also hooks back up with Jennifer (Julianna Margulies), who wants to destroy the Objects because they and Room 9 drove her brother insane. But it's Room 9 that brings them the first information about Anna, when they use Objects in tandem to bring back a woman trapped in the room since 1966 as a result of her experimentation. She tells Miller she's seen Anna.

The introduction of a few more characters, most notably the leader of the Order, played by Harriet Sansome Harris (another familiar face--she was Frasier's nutty agent Bebe, and played Dr. Sally Kendrick, aka Eve, back in Season One of The X-Files). The Order seems willing to stop at nothing to acquire the Objects, and have built a religion around them. In addition, there's an Object tracker, Suzie Kang (Margaret Cho), who won't have anything to do with them, but seems to be making a nice income off of telling people where they can be found. We also learn about a few more Objects--a comb that stops time, the watch box, which dampens entropy, and a Polaroid photo which, when taken to the right spot at the Sunshine Motel, shows Room 10 exactly as it was in 1961, just before the objects changed to the Objects. It also shows a man in the room. Miller thinks the man himself is actually the Prime Object, and thus a new quest is begun.

This episode gave a stronger sense of the conspiratorial nature of the Objects and those wanting to collect them, making these groups feel more intrinsic to the plot rather than just the obligatory shadowy cabals. The Objects themselves start to make more sense, as well, as their seemingly random powers start to form pieces of a larger picture. Though the beginning had some painfully trite moments (Martin and Helen sitting at opposite ends of a really, really long table, for example--and please, who has a table like that in real life?), the story finally began to take off. I still see no earthly reason for the sheer weirdness of Harold Strizke (aka the Guy With the Comb), though. Unless they provide a really good explanation for his behavior later, that was just over the top. The only thing I can think of right off is that somehow the comb made him odd, but the Objects don't seem to have that kind of effect on other people.

In any case, I hope Part Three lives up to the promise of the last three quarters or so of Part Two. Back to the DVR...

The Lost Room

Tonight's two-hour intro sets up our premise. There are mysterious Objects spread throughout the world. Singly, they have magical powers. Some of these powers are cool, some deadly, others lame. There's a pencil that makes pennies, a nail file that puts people to sleep, a TV that makes you three inches taller if you tune to the right station, a pen that microwaves people, a watch that hard-boils eggs. And there's a secret cabal called the Legion gathering all the Objects to destroy them. Apparently there's also another secret cabal trying to collect them because supposedly if you have all of them you can see the mind of God.

The Object in play in the main plot is a motel room key that can open any door. When you use it, you end up in a particular hotel room, where supposedly some Very Bad Things happened. Upon leaving the room, you can apparently go wherever you want to go just by thinking about it. Our hero, Detective Joe Miller, comes into possession of this key. Unfortunately, in a run-in with the Bad Guys, who want the key, his daughter Anna disappears into the Very Bad Hotel Room. When the door is shut, the room resets itself, and things that are put into it disappear, including Anna. As if that alone wasn't dramatic enough, she disappears on the eve of a custody hearing with Miller's ex-wife.

Miller's quest of course becomes to regain his daughter. He encounters members of a sort of underground, all of whom have experienced the powers of the Objects. They suggest several plans for getting Anna back, all involving collecting certain Objects, including a Prime Object, a clock, that controls all the other objects. (One clock to rule them all?)

While I was intrigued enough by the premise to tune in, I found tonight's installment to be rather slow, and it didn't really hold my attention. Although things picked up a bit at the end, at this point I'm wondering how they're going to stretch this out for six hours. Peter Krause's forays into badassitude were unconvincing, and at times the seemingly promising premise became laughable. It's the kind of setup that could work really well in the hands of a Neil Gaiman or a Clive Barker, but this presentation is just missing that certain something that makes the viewer willing to suspend disbelief and go along for the ride.

And this really bugged me--Miller has a tiny little closet, and the door opens inwards. Why in the world would you have a door that opens inwards into a coat closet? That's just bad architecture.

The Lost Room

In the face of multiple reruns and hiatuses this week, I'm going to catch The Lost Room on Sci Fi starting Monday night. Starring Peter Krause (Six Feet Under, Sports Night) and Julianna Margulies (ER), as well as Dennis Christopher (Deadwood, Angel) and Kevin Pollack (Santa Clause 3), this miniseries looks pretty promising. Entertainment Weekly describes it as "Riven meets Lord of the Rings."

This week's TV Guide has a short article about the show, in which Julianna Margulies says, "I'd never heard of hte Sci Fi Channel when I was offered this role." Sorry, but I gotta wonder what rock she's been living under...