In the 1960s, there still were hundreds of motels with thousands of rooms along Route 66 as it twisted its way from Chicago to L.A. and back. None of them stood out from the rest until one day when some unknown event at the Sunshine Motel transformed ordinary things into items of wonder.
Room 10 of the Sunshine Motel and many of its mundane contents — a pair of scissors, a comb and so on — gained unique and inexplicable properties on that day, transforming them from ordinary objects into indestructible Objects.
The Scissors can turn and rotate any item in three dimensions. The Comb stops time for 10 seconds when you run it through your hair. The Eyeglasses inhibit all combustion in a 20-foot radius. The Room itself is an unchanging haven and a portal to any destination. But it can also take that which you value more than your own life.
To possess an Object is to possess its power.
Using each Object exacts a physical, emotional or psychological cost from the owner. Just holding one makes you a target for murder.
For decades, maybe since the first moment that the Motel Room was ripped from this reality, cabals have formed to collect all the Objects. As always, some just want unlimited power, and they believe getting all of the Objects will give them that. Others want to prevent anyone from ever again using the Objects.
And though their motives vary, the cabals' tactics are similar. It's said that while you have one of the Objects, you have no friends, only people waiting for an opening.
Police Det. Joe Miller was introduced to the Motel Room when a fatally shot young man gave him one of the most powerful and coveted Objects of them all: the Key to the Motel Room. His life is immediately turned upside down when his young daughter becomes lost in the room. In his relentless quest to rescue his little girl, Joe becomes the target of shadowy figures who will stop at nothing to take from him his only hope of saving her — the Key.
Premiers Dec 11 (this monday night) 0n SciFi channel. It's a miniseries, so it will be repeated in reruns later.
The trailer for it, which I have seen numerous times while watching BattleStar Galactica, makes it seem like a Matrix ripoff.
They are driving the black Lincoln with the suicide doors from the Matrix. The tagline is "Did you ever feel something is wrong with the universe?" They show some guys that are wearing Matrix style black sunglasses, Agent types.
It's only 6 hours of it. I will give it a go. You can tell if something is good or not in the first 15 minutes. That guy combing his hair and disapearing made me laugh.
I guess he stopped time for 10 seconds and ran off.
Oh, it's like BSG, with a mini series, to see if it is launchable? I might give it a try then. That way, it's not another show that I'm committing myself to, but rather a mini show. That works.
Yeah, from what I understand, it's a two part miniseries that will wrap itself up.
I wouldn't be into a series, as you would be waiting years to find "the answer". And they might burn you and not give you any answers, who knows.
I know the Alias fianale was a letdown. Just stupid. Hopefully LOST will give us something good. Or they might pull a Stephen King and just give you a cop out ending. With a mini series, if you get screwed, you don't have that much invested in it.
It sounds fascinating, but before I heard it was a miniseries I was wondering how they could make a whole series out of this premise. Mini series sounds about right. Also, I like Peter Kraus a lot from 6 feet under. Fantastic actor.
Lawless said this in post #9 : I agree... there's really nothing lost in a mini-series. We haven't invested ourselves for multiple seasons, with no answers, like LOST. *sigh*
Thank goodness I got out of that one while the going was still good
It was a big letdown. I'm going to finish the series, tonight and tomorrow, because it is very interesting. But it was nowhere near as cool as I thought it would be.
It was like they just took some Stargate SG1 director and handed it over to him. The writing was lame, the directions sucked, the edit and flow was cheesy. The whole thing was pretty stupid.
I realized how bad it was when the dude gets the key, goes to other worlds with it, knows that people have been murdered over it, and he just leaves it laying on his kitchen counter top and goes and does some household chores. Which of course, his daughter finds it and uses it.
The writing there was just sloppy. No one is that stupid.
The music sucked, the soundtrack, the acting, it all was low dollar.
HOWEVER, the plot surrounding the room and the objects was very interesting, and they did some neat things, that I thought was pretty cool, like using the room to crack safes, using a doll house door on a kids play castle to enter a doorless house, stuff like that.
After the first hour, it grew on me, and even though it was a general turd, I got into it. I would not recommend it to anyone, but I'm going to catch the last 4 hours of it. I did think about it a lot today, the story ideas behind the poor written dialog are quite good.
Hmmmmmmmmm, I don't know that I will like it, after reading your review. I have it on the dvr, and will be recording the rest, but don't know that I will make it pasy for the part.
Part Two was a lot better. Real convoluted. If I tried to write what all happened, I wouldn't even be able to remember it. I found it enjoyable, not as sucky as part one.
What's funny is how these mundane objects like combs, clocks and keys, well after awhile you get into it, and you are like "dude has the comb now!!"
OH man, I hope he gets that joker from the card deck. Will he ever find the prime object? It's like McDonalds Monopoly and the guy has boardwalk, and all he needs is St. James Avenue.
I mean, yeah, still a cheesy t.v. movie, but it got pretty darn interesting.
So, what you're saying is that there is hope, and to not delete the mini-series off of my dvr. Okay. I will give it a try, but I'm not promising anything.
Well, wait till I see part 3 tonight. Last night was pretty darn good. Only thing that can ruin for me now is a cop out ending. If they give me a cheesy stupid ending, I can live with it as long as what happened in that room is explained.
They pull some stunt and don't explain it, then I will be very very pissed.
Last night was fun though, dude was doing all kinds of crazy things, like stopping time with the comb and taking out bad guys with guns, one dude had a bullet going right for him and he stopped just in time to see it floating in the air.
He also deflected a bullet with a shovel while stopping time that was gonna hit his girlfriend.
Dude had sex with his woman in the room. I thought that was funny.
As you know, night two was pretty good. I sat down to watch night 3 with something like hope. That was a mistake.
The two hours was pretty darn awesome, not the best show in the world, or even up to LOST standards, but it's was good for a made for T.V. series. I was into it.
Then they did the worst. They just had the dude rescue his daughter, end of story. Oh yeah, the Room, the reason we been watching the show, well yeah, NOT EXPLAINED at all. Take that general viewer.
So, Sci Fi said, "lets do a show, and make it about this lost room, and lets have every character in it ask repeatadly what the room is and how it was created, and lets give more and more clues, and lets build it up so they really want to know what the deal is, then just ignore the whole deal and just end it."
So, the Whid was burned. I stayed up late 3 nights this week, got sick, was tired, worn out, all for a cop out ending.
I guess I could go into the standard rant about how an author of a story owes it to the reader to give them a beginning a middle and an END that makes fregin sense. But I'm pretty much done with the whole deal, so Sci Fi can eat it.
With exactly one minute to go, April the cat threw up all over the cable box, fried it, and killed the cable. We got the cable still, but only what the t.v. will take, which is about 60 channels. The converter box is dead.
So, now I have to watch the last minute of the Lost Room someday, just to see what happened in the last minute, like if he hugged his daughter or what.
And I get no BattleStar Galactica tonight, it's the fall finale. That's on channel 175.
Well, just a thought, because of what you said about the way that it ended, with no explanation. Could it be that they didn't answer things, because they are hoping that the mini-series did well enough to make a show out of it... like they did with BSG? Just a thought... don't know, but I'm just guessing here.
I think that's the plan. Make a series out of it. Hook you with the mini, then do some episodes.
Thing that pisses me off, is they could have wrapped it up, answered what the room was, then still make a show, based on him using the room.
As it stands, I'm hooked now, I want to know what the room is, and I like the characters, so if there is a series, I'm in. Which makes me mad, since I got cornholed with the no answer ending.
Well, that's what they want, Dave... to HOOK people into the show, because they want to know what the room is, and you will have to watch the series (if they make one) to find that answer out.
It's like Lost. A lot of people are tired of the crap where no answers are being given, but keep watching, because they want to know what the island is. Who the others really are. What that monster is. Why they all have a connection to each other, without knowing it, before coming to the island. So many questions that need an answer, and they will continue to watch because of that.
That is what producers, for these types of shows, are banking on. That you WILL continue to tune in, week after week, to get anything close to an answer to those questions that you have.
Well, they know what sells, and what doesn't. It works... whether we like it or not. Obviously, we like it, because we fools keep tuning in, to see what happens next.
Cheap *** synopsis by Whizzle. For those who don't want to watch it. (no names, too confusing, general descriptions will do)
The plot is very simple, but takes a bunch of twists and turns. Gets really complicated all the stuff that happens. But, if you boil it down, it's really just the good guy cop going around and meeting people and doing things to learn more and more about the room, finding more clues, more facts, more leads, etc.
The good guy cop gets a key that when you use it, it opens up into a motel room. The room is always lit with a super amount of sunlight. Very bright room.
He can use any door with a doorknob and a place to insert the key. So wherever he is, he can open a door and enter the room.
Once in the room, he can go anywhere he wants, simply by thinking. So it's like his own personal transporter machine.
The dummy leaves the key laying around, and his daughter gets it. She learns about the room. She discovers if you open the door, put something in the room, then close the door, then open it again, whatever you put in the room vanishes.
Long story short, she is kidnapped by a minor bad guy, who lets her enter the room, then he resets it. She is gone forever.
Good guy cop is devastated. He will stop at nothing to get her back. So he spends about 6 hours of mini series time learning about the room, the objects from it, and meeting people, some good some bad, and trying to find his daughter.
The plot is complex, but basically he learns over time that:
the objects from the room do various things, like stop time, heal people, act as weapons, transport people to gallap new mexico, move objects, etc.
the objects from the room are indestructible.
if the objects are in the room, they are not indestructible and they lose their power.
If things are placed in a room, they go away for good, but if an object if placed in the room, and the door closed, the object remains in the room, and resets itself to where it was in 1961.
Cabals or cults have formed that try to collect the objects.
Something happened in the room in 1961. What, no one knows. Some of the Cabals think that God died and became the objects. Some think that God is the objects.
Hero cop goes to the real hotel in Nevada, the one with the room. It's run down, abandoned. There is no room ten. His key says room ten on it. He talks to people and they say there never was a room ten.
Good guy cop has an object, a Polaroid picture. He uses it to walk around where room ten would have been, was there one. The photo shows him in real time the objects in the room and the room itself.
While looking at the pic, he sees a man in the room. The occupant.
He tracks down the occupant, who himself is an object. He doesn't know what happened in the room either, but he was erased from history. He was in room ten in 1961, and whatever happened in there, erased room ten from existence and his wife did not remember him or history.
Meanwhile, the main badguy has the quarter. The quarter brings memories into existence. Main badguy's son died 9 years ago, so he uses the change to bring his son back for temporary periods of time.
Now main badguy gets the glass eye. With it he can heal all flesh and it's also a weapon.
He does some mumbo jumbo experiment, in which he puts various objects on room number 8 of the real hotel, and plans to get his son back in some scheme I didn't quite understand.
The experiment was tried by others in the late 60's and almost destroyed the universe. But dumbass wants his son back, so he places the objects in some silly design on the door and implants the glass eye in his own head. (plucks out his own eye)
of course when he opens the door, (he stole the key from good guy cop) all hell breaks loose and the universe starts to implode, rend, collapse, whatever.
Good guy cop shows up with the occupant just as this is happening and enter the room while the door is still open. Somehow the occupant entering the room stops the end of the universe, and bad guy is just gone. End of story.
Good guy cop wants his daughter back and the occupant tells him to kill him with his gun, as the occupant is an object and indestructible. However, in the room he can die. And objects if destroyed will replace themselves. Something about conservation of objects.
So if Good guy cop kills him, he will become an object and somehow get his daughter back. The occupant wants to die, so Cop dude kills him. Leaves the room, has his lady friend reset the room with him in it, and he gets his girl back.
He is now an object and indestructible.
He opens the door to the room, throws in the key and closes the door. Trying to end the nightmare that is the room.
He cruises off with his girl and his woman.
The end? Not quite, it shows the door to the abandoned hotel open up, and the key is laying on the floor in the "room".
So anyone who happens along can get it now.
Set up for a series now. No explanation as to what the room is or how it started or nothing.
There was also a sub plot about a second bad guy that is somehow a false prophet, truly evil fellow. They will go somewhere with that in the series I figure.
