By Tim Surette - TV.com
April 14, 2008 at 10:46:00 AM | more stories by this author
Two-hour, two-week finale becomes three-hour, three-week event with break in middle; Grey's cap also stretched an extra hour.
Lost must be feeling a little bit like its time-jumping Scotsman Desmond right now. It's on one week, off for another few weeks, is getting rebroadcast with "enhanced" versions at other times--a bit confusing in the space-time continuum of television scheduling.
"You kids stay off my lawn! Don't tell me what I can't do!"
And things just got a bit more complicated--probably for the best for Lost fans. As rumored last week, ABC has approved an extra hour of Lost this season, extending the series to a total of 14 hours for season four, according to E! Online. The program was slated to have 16 hours of run time this season, but complications from the writers' strike lopped off a few episodes from the schedule.
For Lost fans, more Lost trumps any other small inconveniences, so an extra hour of the sci-fi drama this season overshadows what ABC had to do to squeeze the additional 60 minutes.
The final two episodes are being branded as a Lost three-hour finale, with one hour on May 15 and two hours on May 29. Why no Lost on May 22? Apparently Lost masterminds Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were able to convince the network that the final two hours of this season had to be shown together.
In making the arrangement, Lost--which begins airing at 10 p.m. when it returns April 24--then bumped its final episode a week, presumably to move up to the more viewer-friendly 9 p.m.-11 p.m. slot.
This, in turn, opened up the May 22 10 p.m.-11 p.m. time period, which ABC has decided to use to add another hour to the finale of Grey's Anatomy. A two-hour Grey's Anatomy season finale will now air that night after the one-hour Ugly Betty season finale.
An extra hour of Lost at the cost of another (short) break between episodes--is it worth it? More Grey's Anatomy! Comment below!