At the end of the pilot episode of “Lost” in 2004, Charlie asks “Where are we?” Over six seasons, we’d get those answers. At the end of the cold open of “The Crossing,” which premieres at 10 p.m. Eastern Monday on TV and was available in advance on the ABC app, sheriff Jude Ellis (Steve Zahn) stares at the hundreds of corpses washing ashore in his coastal town and asks “What is this?”
By the end of the episode, we get a lot of answers, and “The Crossing” has turned into a sci-fi show filled with ideas already used in other sci-fi franchises. I’m not saying creators Jay Beattie and Dan Dworkin err in their choice to provide quick answers – the slowness of “Lost” was generally to its detriment, and it’s why a rewatch doesn’t appeal to me. Just that these plot threads seem familiar.
Along with the dead, 43 survivors wash ashore. They had time-jumped from around the year 2200, and it is harrowing when Caleb (Marcuis Harris) describes how people were drowning before they even got their bearings. Since the story is consistent among all the refugees, federal investigator Emma Peralta (Sandrine Holt, a veteran of the U.S. version of “The Returned,” another “What’s going on?” show) believes them. Refreshingly, we don’t have to go through the steps where the time travelers prove they are time travelers.
Meanwhile, Reece (Natalie Martinez) – who had split off from the group and been rescued by a fishing boat – attempts to get back to her 8-year-old daughter. In the process, we see that Reece has “X-men”-like super-speed and jumping powers; she could just as easily be a character on “The Gifted.” We also learn that Emma’s government boss, Craig Lindauer (Jay Karnes), is an evil breed of superhuman time-jumper. One of the refugees has shared his knowledge of previous time-jumpers with – woopsie — Lindauer. This illustrates one of the unknowns for those who study whistleblowing: How many whistleblowers shared their information with exactly the wrong person? Statistics aren’t kept by people who don’t want the stats kept.
So while the pilot episode is directed with panache by “X-Files” veteran Rob Bowman, it takes us on a journey from “What is this?” to “Oh, so that’s what it is,” and it feels like what’s coming next is predictable. We’ll watch Lindauer, like a Skynet agent from “The Terminator,” try to bring the USA to a state of war where he and his fellow evil superhumans can take control. Jude and Emma will learn to trust Reece. Caleb and his wife will try to start a life amid suspicious new neighbors. And a romance between an aid worker, Marshall (Tommy Bastow), and a refugee, Hannah (Kelly Missal), seems likely, as he breaks protocol and gives her a pair of sunglasses. The zeitgeist-tapping “fear of refugees and immigrants” will cast a pall over everything.
It’s possible that Beattie and Dworkin — who collaborated on “Surface,” “Vanished” and “The Event” — aim to resurrect plot threads they didn’t get to explore before those previous Big Mysteries were canceled. “The Crossing’s” wider question is: Do enough people want to watch this type of series again? ABC is betting they do, with its “From the network that brought you ‘Lost’ ” promos. But the answer feels more unpredictable than what’s unfolding on screen.
