Dear Hollywood: please stop giving Michael Crichton money. Nothing good ever comes of it.

Crappy! Fringe! How dare you sir...

And I quite enjoyed ALL of Lost...even the ending cuz I was just happy they all got to be together... :D

Of course I watched both on Netflix in binges...which allows one to gloss of over bad episodes; and there's no waiting, so the investment (possible frustration and disappointment) is considerably reduced.

@2, seeing is how he died 5 years ago...I don't think they can.

They'll have to find a bunch of 20-something robots to take the jobs of the really old robots from the Westworld that my Dad used to go to.

Something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B22Uy7SB…

Lost and Fringe are crappy?

@4: I'm sure his estate is still happy to cash the checks for his crappy, crappy scenarios.

I can't WAIT to see the cheep CGI and dumbed down story lines Abrams will provide audiences with!!

It used to be that HBO was one of the few places you could go to avoid dumbed down television but not any more!!!

#6

Based on his other offerings, I'm almost ready to go back and re-evaluate Lost (and Fringe) as crappy. Yes. It just seems inconceivable that someone who makes so much dreck could have produced something really good. Of course, M.Night Shyamalan.

@9 Don't worry, you won't be able to see the cheap CGI through all the lens flare.

Abrams version of Star Trek is an abomination. Abrams admitted he wasn't a fan of the series and nothing could be more plain than the resulting mess of those idiotfests. He basically took a giant shit of fourty years of Star Trek canon and shit on hundreds of millions of fans to produce an egotistic unimaginative shit fest of fake grittyness and lensflares. Abrams greedy exploitation of a built-in fan base ignored all the progressive thinking and optimism that Roddenberry had long established in favor of moneymaking check-box fanboy horseshit.

@8, fair enough....just wanted you to understand that he was actually dead. (and some of his 'crappy scenarios' are decent enjoyable fluff)

@10, Just remember that with Lost (past the pilot and initial idea) JJ had nothing really to do with the show. It was all Lindelof and Cuse for the most part. Its been the only Bad Robot production that I have ever been able to stomach as even partially acceptable. Anything else that has JJ's hands all over it have been terrible ridiculous projects.

Abrams has always struck me as something of a hack. Even his most enjoyable fare is riddled with stupidity and nonsense. But he is successful, and that is why any network would be happy to buy one of his shows. It has nothing to do with quality.

Speaking of, can you really 'trust in HBO'? This is the network that (albeit grudgingly) cancelled "Deadwood" to air "John from Cincinnati", dropped "Rome" because a million dollars a season was too much to shoulder alone, and which continues to foist "Newsroom" on the world.

I liked Fringe.

@14 "Deadwood" wasn't canceled for "John from Cincinnati."

"John from Cincinnati" was written and produced by David Milich who also produced and wrote "Deadwood." It also stared many of the same players from Deadwood, including the awesome Dayton Callie and Paula Malcomson.

Deadwood was canceled for... well, a whole bunch of reasons, really. Deadwood" wasn't canceled for "John from Cincinnati," though.

And I thought JFC was pretty god damned cool if you stuck with it.

I liked Fringe! Although I must admit Star Trek does not hold up to multiple viewings and actually is starting to piss me off.

Fringe was great until the last season. Then it kind of became "Fringe Babies."

@17, I recommend a cure! Should you find yourself getting angry about Abrams rape of Star Trek I suggest you watch some ST:TNG. I suggest "Measure of a Man" as well as "Chain of Command". It will help to reestablish the faith Roddenberry built up that Abrams destroyed.

I also recommend some of the novels for the original cast such as "Tears of the Singers" as well as "Spock's World".

Do that and Abrams two movies just fade from memory!!

And you're welcome! Glad to help!

Westworld was a theme park right? along with Futureworld, etc ... ?

Just realized that Terminator is Westworld.

I hated the ending to Lost, they really screwed that one up. Fringe was better, but still the last episode had more than a few WTF moments in it that made no sense.

Jar Jar Abrams can vomit up a decent idea for a show, but he and his writer friends are incredibly lazy and leave so many holes in the plot that some have personally sworn the guy off for good. He's ruining Star Trek, will ruin Star Wars and is now appears to not have any original ideas left.

I'm hopeful. However, if we're going Chrichton I'd rather have a Timeline or Jurassic Park TV series.

Aahh, Westworld. Unwittingly stumbled across this excellent nightmare fodder during my babysitting days.

Nobody does robot zombie like Yul Brenner.

Man, those dystopian flicks from that fertile period from the mid-60's to the mid-70's nailed it so goddamn well. Westworld, Rollerball, Soylent Green. So many others.

Back when a director had to tell a story, and couldn't rely on CGI effects and (ugh) artificial lens flare. Remember kids, cinematographers DIED (figuratively) if lens flare spoiled their shot. Back when people gave a shit about storytelling more than they just wanted to make bank.

When Husky Stadium collapses and kills all those Husky fans, please Gawd, let J.J. Abrams be at the bottom of the pile.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's not the original trailer.

@16, IIRC Milch wanted to do John from Cincinnati, and basically used any continuation of Deadwood as a bargaining chip, which didn't work so well after JfC became an incoherent, silly mess and drove away viewers episode by episode, causing HBO to cancel JfC, which more or less lead to Milch refusing to finish Deadwood. I know I was simplifying to the point of being misleading, except when we look at what effect all the rather opaque behind-the-scenes wrangling had, i.e. Deadwood was effectively cancelled with John from Cincinnati effectively taking its place.

I didn't mind this bit of simplification because (1) brevity and (2) the less succinct story still leaves one less able to simply 'trust in HBO', at least in my opinion. Granted, if HBO had had their way, Deadwood would have finished up, in some form or other, but the network doesn't exist in a vacuum, and hiccups happen to almost every production. In the end, it's the results (in this case, the product) that matter. This dovetails with the next example I used, where HBO's actions were once more negatively impacted by a production partner.

To put it simply, not every show they green light is good, and not every action they take with respect to their shows works out. This isn't really a fair criticism of anyone, since no one (and especially no network) is perfect, but it is a fair rebuttal of the idea that we should blithely set all doubt or skepticism of a prospective production aside just because HBO is involved.