Objectively Speaking

Chuck Tryon admits to having enjoyed Sci-Fi's miniseries The Lost Room, so I suppose I might as well do the same. It's goofy pulp that takes a fun concept and does a reasonably good job of seeming to complicate things without ever getting actually complicated. It's like the series is wall-papered with the look and feel of complexity, but underneath it all is a fairly standard, sturdy, plain--and mostly enjoyable--pulp concept: The world is filled with so-called Objects, each of which came from a mysterious hotel room and each of which has a special ability, some useful (stopping time), some not (boiling an egg). In combination, the Objects take on new properties, and there are various organizations of differing beliefs about the nature and origin of the Objects that have set out to collect all of them and exploit whatever properties are available from the array of combinations. In the midst of this is Joe Miller (Peter Krause), who has lost his daughter in some sort of time/space void created by the room.

Ok, so maybe it is a little complicated.

But mostly it's just zippy, shameless sci-fi storytelling, with a strong, scalable concept: any time things slow down, you can bring in a new Object, a new sect, add a little bit of backstory to the room, and exploit the possibities inherent in each. And because each Object has its own special properties, and usually an offbeat owner to go with them, learning the stories of the Objects and their possessors always feels as if you're discovering something new. In other words, it doesn't get bogged down in go-nowhere mystery like that other show with the word Lost in the title.

Addendum: Scratch that. The (non) ending sucked.