The Lost Room

This miniseries, starring the fascinating Peter Krause, intrigued me from the beginning, but left me with a bitter taste in my mouth by the end of its run.

The story centers around a series of objects that seem to posses amazing 'properties' that make them extremely valuable. For example, the key allows you to open any door in the world, the comb stops time, the glass eye heals any wound, the bus ticket throws everyone who touches it somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Kansas.

All these objects come from a mysterious motel room, where something happened to cause them to acquire their powerful properties. The objects have been sought after, collected and lost again through the years by individuals and groups, all seeking them for their known powers and the possibility that by getting them back together unknown ones would be unleashed.

The story is well developed, interesting, even fascinating, at least for the first 5 parts. Then, when you get to the last one, right when you'd expect to get some kind of answer to all the questions posed throughout, you're left empty handed, stranded on your couch, looking around for answers to the question, "Did I black out and missed half the show, or what the hell happened?"

That's too bad, because the premise was good, but the flaw in the execution of the last part of the show is unforgivable. They spent a lot of time showing us what many of the objects can do, which is great because that's at the core of the whole concept. They tried to flesh out the main characters, sometimes effectively, often not so much because there are so many, and not enough time, but you can still root for or against them. And then, in the end, it looks like they suddenly realized they had no more time left to dilly-dally and so they rushed to close up the main character story line, and be done with it. But what about all the other lose ends that got left in the dust?

Up to that point the quality of the show was pretty good, but I really can't recommend it because of its length and the lack of a serious conclusion to the story. At the end, you really feel like you've invested so much time in this, and you ended up with nothing.

Grade: 5.5