Ahh, Carnivale.  Regrettably, I missed that one, too. 

Are the appearance and music of lost as dramatically distinct as that of Twin Peaks- unlike anything else on TV, not just recognizable?  Does an island of disaster survivors resemble a small, (endearingly!) quirky town?  From what Tero has said, the soap opera element seems to be there, but if you don't have, to use Montana's word "compelling" mysteries and drama, then you just have a scripted Survivor.  

I also think Kingdom Hospital and Northern Exposure have as many elements that fit my criteria.  But I can't say either are "like" Twin Peaks because, IMO, all of these shows are self conciously imitating a formula, although I enjoyed those two.

Maybe the people, (like Jon Stewart) who are comparing the shows are, like rocksandbottles said, just dismissing both shows as "weird."  The comparison and the dismissal give neither show due credit.    

So what you're saying here Tero, is that a person who watches / have watched both shows and thinks Twin Peaks is far better can't have an objective view on the matter?

(1)

Well, a lot to address there! I'll start in reverse order.

I'm not saying Carnivale and TP are similar - I'm saying that Carnivale is the best drama show that has been on TV since Twin Peaks. By this, I'm also saying that it has a similar kind of ambivalence to Twin Peaks. All the characters in Lost are pastiches. Even if a character is shown to be doing something unspeakably evil - the writers always include something which "excuses" that character's behaviour. That's called simplistic writing: it's done to appeal to as many people as possible (otherwise known as The Lowest Common Denominator) - this ensures good TV audience ratings. TP never tried to take such an easy way out - the characters were "real" in that they had their good and bad points, and the show never tried to make excuses for anybody. This is because the writers were bolder, and were not under pressure to appeal to The Lowest Common Denominator.

You seem to be saying that Lost has done the same thing for TV that TP did. This is patently untrue. Yes, there are a lot of reality shows out there - but Lost is not going to do anything to stop the flow of reality TV. Nothing at all. In fact, Lost was partially inspired by reality TV shows (Survivor, Shipwrecked).

(2)

It is a new kind of show that has not been seen in tv for a long time.

Well, which is it? It's either a new kind of show, or it's a kind of show which hasn't been seen on TV in a long time. It can't be both.

(3)

Finally, you list a bunch of shows and say they have nothing to do with Twin Peaks. This, more than anything else you wrote, suggests to me that you simply did not experience TP on its first run, but saw it on a re-run, or had to wait for it to be syndicated to whatever country you're from. The impact TP had was immediate and obvious to those of us who were watching a lot of TV in the early 90s. On the one hand, you have shows like Northern Exposure and The X-Files which simply would not have been commissioned if it weren't for TP. This is a statement of fact. TP was such a success, that TV Stations were commissioning shows left, right and center which borrowed thematically from TP. Project Blue Book? A city boy relocated to some backwater? Why did somebody commission shows which contained these ideas back in the early 90s? Seemed obvious at the time, and it seems even more obvious now.

Now you get a situation where shows appear which do not neccesarily borrow thematically from TP, but still owe it a debt, and shows like Desperate Housewives/Ally McBeal/Six Feet Under fall into this category. The storylines aren't similar to TP, but it's all to do with the look of those shows. Before Twin Peaks, TV shows looked like exactly that: TV shows. There was a kind of cheapness to the look of them. TP showed the world how to make a TV show look like a movie, and now all good US shows do the same. They owe a debt, no matter how small, to Twin Peaks, plain and simple. Sorry if you don't see this, but it's true.

(1) it's not bad writing, or simplistic writing or what ever. It's called realism. Like in real life behind every action there's a reason, nobody does anything because they are simply good or bad. To have a pure evil like in TP is one thing, to have it realistic is another thing.

(2) There has been as good series as Lost since Twin Peaks. That's what I meant. I don't think Carnivale is as nearly as good, it's really slow paced and doesn't always seem to be moving forward.

(3) I know very well how Twin Peaks affected those shows.

Personally I would hate modernized version of Lord of the Flies. When I first saw some episodes before buying the dvd box I was afraid that was just what the series was and I weren't too interested, what would the point of that really? or a tv-show version of Castaway? No thank you! Should all series be about a small town with nice people and pure evil to make them good? Why every series should be like Twin Peaks, why should they all be "touching" and "moving" and "funny" in the same way as TP? Yes, Twin Peaks shows the different sides of this town, these different sides that every town might have. But Lost is not about that, it's about something different. It's silly to demand every film/book/tv-series to touch you the same way.

This all really makes me feel like you don't want to see the good sides or are not able to see the good sides of Lost just because it's new and everyone is talking about, it's all in the commercials (some of the commercials are very very annoying) and you have heard just so much about it that you don't want to watch it or like it. What makes you think there is not deeper (different sides of small town, good and evil of people type of) meaning in Lost?

New Shoes: "So what you're saying Tero, is that person who watches / have watched both shows and thinks Twin Peaks is far better can't have an objective view on the matter."

No, I think that people in Twin Peaks Discussion Board wont say "hey, I think Lost is far better than TP!"

Well, I would if I thought it was.

I'm also a member of the Lost messageboard. 

Is there a comparison between Lost and TP? No, Lost is ****. Apart from the fact both are US tv series, there is no common ground.

Lost is a turgid, overlong, plotless piece of drivel populated by characters who are puppets of their stupid and implausible backstories. The premise of a drama set in a survival situation is very promising. A brief, well-scripted series following the struggle for survival of crash survivors would be compelling; a modern version of Lord of the Flies. The dramatic tension in such a situation is very rich (the opportunity to follow alliances, betrayals, jealousy, greed, envy and so on) and it is mark of how emotionally and dramatically unambitious the producers and writers are that such an opportunity is entirely wasted.

There is nothing realistic or compelling about a bunch oddballs fighting each other from the very start of their predicament. The plot is gibberish and included purely as a reason to sustain the series, it is not the wellspring of the series. With TP, the motor driving the first 16 ep. was the murder of Laura, her story, her secrets. We discover more about her and her world as the series progresses. Integral to the series is the realism of the setting. We see into the dark heart of a "normal" town, it's secrets, it's cruelty, it's indifference to casual evil and the goodness of those who search for the truth. Grief and loss are an absolutely central and compelling part of the story. There is a human heart to the story of TP which Lost completely lacks. Lost has no basis in reality. Nobody believes that survivors would act the way the characters do. They suffer none of the privations of reality. They are never fearing for their lives because of sickness or malnutrition. Because there is no sense of reality and no plot, the series relies on crass flashbacks. Flashbacks are the chewing gum of tv drama, the first resort of tired, uninventive writers hacking their way through a series which precludes the real drama of survival. There is no human drama because the characters do very little except respond in accordance with their backstories.

Montana

Let me remind you that there was as much supernatural happenings in Twin Peaks as in Lost. I know that mostly what you meant was the realism of the characters... well, I don't know if you have been watching the show as close as I have, but the characters have been upset about what happened, concerned about sickness and lack of food. And the inner psychology of the characters is as deep as in TP.

I don't know about anybody else, but I'm turned off to new tv.  How can people who've had the best be satisfied with anything less? 

Carnivale is the only show since Twin Peaks that truly reminded me of Twin Peaks. 1) very diverse cast of characters 2) very slow pacing and 3) the supernatural ascpects of the show, but you've heard me say all this before. * wink wink. The two best dramas to air on TV since Twin Peaks are Homicide: Life on The Street and Six Feet Under. I love Six feet Under so much I might go so far as to say I like it better than Twin Peaks (will that get me ostrasized?). I love Carnivale though and though it ranks right up there with those two shows and would very much have like to see Carnivale still on the air. Another show that is fantastic and if it stays on the air will certainly be placed up there with Homicide and SFU, well you all know what it is....House...