YOUR FAVORITE SHOWS … UNINTERRUPTED

July 21, 2006

The fall schedule for "Lost" was unveiled this week, an announcement that's usually worthless except perhaps to make note of when the first episode of the season airs. This year, though, ABC has done something exceedingly smart. The show will air weekly with no interruptions, save for a 13-week break that will last throughout the holiday season (and during which the network will broadcast the new series "Day Break" in the Wednesday at 9 time slot).

Yeah, "Lost" will be missed during the break, but the benefit of this type of scheduling far outweighs the aggravation of waiting more than two months to find out what happens after what will undoubtedly be a major cliffhanger to close the opening act of season three.

"Lost" and shows like it live and die by serial storylines, quickly changing character alliances, and those shocking, end-of-episode plot twists, and they work best when you can watch them every seven days without fail. Just ask any fan of "24," which for the last two seasons has debuted in January and then run nonstop through May. Having short strings of new episodes broken up by weeks of reruns mutes the enjoyment that can be had from big-picture shows like "Lost" and "Veronica Mars." The scheduling of "Veronica," television's best whodunit, proved especially irksome last year because by the time new episodes returned after a four-week break, you'd already forgotten all the clues and red herrings the writers threw at you a month before.

Quite honestly, it's that kind of on-and-off scheduling that drives many TV fans to just wait for the DVD release. Why let ABC dictate how you watch "Lost" when you can string a full season's worth of episodes over a long weekend? ABC doesn't want that, though. ABC wants you watching their commercials. So ABC has wised up. Like "24," it should be so much more satisfying viewing an unbroken string of 15 new "Lost" episodes in early 2007.

Something similar will happen on The CW next year as "Veronica Mars" jumps to its new network. Instead of one season-long mystery, the writers are planning three separate smaller mysteries that will be told in chunks of nine, seven, and six episodes. (That is, assuming "Veronica" lasts the full season. Can I again ask everyone to give this brilliant little show a shot?) The CW plans to run each chunk uninterrupted, saving us from having to file away in our brains the questionable motivations of shady secondary characters for weeks at a time while we wait for new episodes.

Here's hoping this kind of scheduling quickly becomes a trend, something so normal that there's no point to even writing a column about it. I'm not suggesting that every series be scheduled as such. Something like "CSI" and most of today's sitcoms utilize self-contained episodes that can be enjoyed at any time in any order, and reruns of those shows still prove valuable because, as the saying goes, if you missed it the first time around, it's new to you.

But for heavily serialized dramas such as "Lost" and "Veronica Mars" and "Prison Break" and all the new series coming this fall that fit the mold, network execs should plan from the outset to run them either straight through, nonstop start to finish, or in a few large chunks. That way, audiences can properly enjoy the breathless pace of these stories without crummy network scheduling shattering all the dramatic momentum.