Great introduction to an amazing premise. One negative is what happened at the end of the episode. Is it just me or did the doctor (the guy who was investigating the objects outside of the core team) immediately become Gollum upon seeing the key? I mean the pace of his transformation was quite breathtaking. Otherwise, I am enthralled!
2 Reviews
Between Friday the 13th, and Warehouse 13, lies... The Lost Room.
Gislef15 May 2021
Warning: Spoilers
The Lost Room is the best of the three. Perhaps because it's a mini-series, so it never has to provide explanations. What happened in Room 10 at the Sunview Motel? Who knows? It's never explained.
Part of is that the series is so... normal. No Satan-cursed antiques, Secret Service agents, and secret conspiracies here. The Objects are just normal objects that you'd find in a motel room, given supranatural powers by... something. Some of them apparently don't do anything, some of them are uber-powerful Objects, most are somewhere in-between.
It also helps that most of the characters are normal. It helps that the show is cast with HITG actors like Kevin Pollak, Peter Jacobson, and Roger Bart. They're not studly superheroes or cackling bad guys. They all have reasons and motivations and are portrayed as just normal guys who have stumbled into power.
Even Peter Krause as the protagonist, Joe Miller, isn't bad. I like how as a viewer stand-in and everyguy, he asks the questions and figures out the things that everyone involved with the Objects don't think to ask. Later he'll ask about the Occupant, which is one of those questions that is blindingly obvious but no one else asks. Because they're all too consumed with just _getting_ the Objects.
Ella Fanning is cute as a button, and Peter Jacobson as Wally is off-kilter enough to be interesting. Even if he's basically Exposition Guy, and you wonder how he knows so much about the Objects. Jacobson isn't a great actor, but as a Joe Schmo he's good here as he was on 'House'.
Part of it is that the Objects, and the Room, have rules, and Joe hacks those rules. Like using the Room to get an Object from a safe, breaking into Kreutzfeld's house, and later using a shirt Object as a bulletproof vest of sorts. In the other two series, the main characters were often bound by Da Rules. Here, Joe thinks his way around them.
It's clever writing by creators Christopher Leone and Laura Harkcom. And I wish they had done more television work. It makes me want to seek out the movie they co-wrote, 'Parallels'. It sounds like that suffered the same fate as 'The Lost Room': intended as a TV series, but didn't get picked up so was turned into something else. A movie, a mini-series, whatever.
A big part of the show's appeal is that the writers put a lot into the world-building. There's Cabals, and Objects, and bystanders, and not-so-bystanders. All tossed together into one big stew.
The first part sets everything up. I would have liked to see 'The Lost Room' as an anthology series, with a different person getting the Key each story. Then again, I would have liked to see more 'The Lost Room', period.
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
Part of is that the series is so... normal. No Satan-cursed antiques, Secret Service agents, and secret conspiracies here. The Objects are just normal objects that you'd find in a motel room, given supranatural powers by... something. Some of them apparently don't do anything, some of them are uber-powerful Objects, most are somewhere in-between.
It also helps that most of the characters are normal. It helps that the show is cast with HITG actors like Kevin Pollak, Peter Jacobson, and Roger Bart. They're not studly superheroes or cackling bad guys. They all have reasons and motivations and are portrayed as just normal guys who have stumbled into power.
Even Peter Krause as the protagonist, Joe Miller, isn't bad. I like how as a viewer stand-in and everyguy, he asks the questions and figures out the things that everyone involved with the Objects don't think to ask. Later he'll ask about the Occupant, which is one of those questions that is blindingly obvious but no one else asks. Because they're all too consumed with just _getting_ the Objects.
Ella Fanning is cute as a button, and Peter Jacobson as Wally is off-kilter enough to be interesting. Even if he's basically Exposition Guy, and you wonder how he knows so much about the Objects. Jacobson isn't a great actor, but as a Joe Schmo he's good here as he was on 'House'.
Part of it is that the Objects, and the Room, have rules, and Joe hacks those rules. Like using the Room to get an Object from a safe, breaking into Kreutzfeld's house, and later using a shirt Object as a bulletproof vest of sorts. In the other two series, the main characters were often bound by Da Rules. Here, Joe thinks his way around them.
It's clever writing by creators Christopher Leone and Laura Harkcom. And I wish they had done more television work. It makes me want to seek out the movie they co-wrote, 'Parallels'. It sounds like that suffered the same fate as 'The Lost Room': intended as a TV series, but didn't get picked up so was turned into something else. A movie, a mini-series, whatever.
A big part of the show's appeal is that the writers put a lot into the world-building. There's Cabals, and Objects, and bystanders, and not-so-bystanders. All tossed together into one big stew.
The first part sets everything up. I would have liked to see 'The Lost Room' as an anthology series, with a different person getting the Key each story. Then again, I would have liked to see more 'The Lost Room', period.
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
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