Silliness or serious? 

2. DOES NBC’S HEROES TAKE PLACE IN THE SAME WORLD AS ABC’S LOST?
(Too-Good-to-Be-True Conspiracy Theory of the Week!)

LAST WEEK Unranked

ANALYSIS Roughly 13 million-plus Americans have fallen hard for Heroes, television’s newest cult-pop sensation, and I am proud to say that I am one of them. My friends and family have applauded the expansion of my geek-TV interests; they were worried that Lost had begun to take over my life. Of course, Heroes isn’t much of a leap from Lost, considering how much they overlap: Both shows have a diverse, multicultural, interconnected cast; fixations with fate, coincidence and destiny; mysterious comic books; an inexplicable recurring motif (in Lost, it’s the Numbers; in Heroes, it’s a helix-shaped pattern); a mythology grounded in weird science and possibly sinister scientific experimentation; and even a potentially superpowered kid with estranged parents. Hmmmm…

In fact, after watching the most recent chapter in the unfolding Heroes saga, my conspiracy-theory senses began to tingle and twitch in that crazy Brad Pitt-in-12 Monkeys kinda way that makes my wife very, very nervous. Because it suddenly struck me that Heroes’ fantastical premise — that human beings are breaking out with superpowers as an evolutionary response to environmental changes (overpopulation, global warming, war) threatening the survival of the species — is conspicuously similar to the sci-fi conceit of Lost’s Hanso Foundation/Dharma Initiative mythology. And by ”conspicuously similar,” I am indeed suggesting that both shows occupy the same creative universe.

THEORY The mysterious island on Lost was a mad-scientist laboratory focused on accelerating human evolution that created the superpowered heroes on Heroes.

According to the Lost revelations disclosed this past summer through The Lost Experience (and if you haven’t seen the mother of all Lost orientation films, check it out here), the purpose of the Dharma Initiative was to develop radical scientific solutions that could save the world from an impending apocalypse, as predicted by a mathematical formula called the Valenzetti Equation. The Numbers belong to that equation; it seems that each digit in the sequence — 4 8 15 16 23 42 — is a value in the equation that corresponds to a key variable in Valenzetti’s recipe for disaster. Those variables include overpopulation, global warming, and war — the same environmental factors that are (allegedly) triggering Mother Nature to sire a world full of X-Men on Heroes.

Apparently, Dharma financier Alvar Hanso believed that if just one of the values in the Equation could be changed, Armageddon could be averted, or at least delayed. Dharma’s activities on the island somehow had the ability to have an impact on the rest of the world, perhaps via the ”unique” electromagnetic energy that radiates from the same section of the island where Station Three: The Swan was located. Remember the radio tower that was broadcasting the Numbers? It was basically a weather report, updating the scientists on the condition of the world; when and if they heard that the core values of the Equation had been changed, they would know that their work had succeeded. Alas, according to The Lost Experience, the Dharma Initiative failed to accomplish its mission.

But what if the Dharma scientists did have an impact on the world, one that defied calculation and measurement at the time? Remember, Dharma was active on the island during the ’70s — about the time that all the superpowered characters on Heroes were conceived and born. What if Dharma spiked the world’s gene pool with some superpowered hooch? According to The Lost Experience, Hanso is affiliated with a prominent confectionary marketer called the Apollo Candy Company; maybe one of those Apollo candy bars gave Nathan Petrelli on Heroes a real high-flying kick, if you know what I mean.

Okay, maybe I’m the one who’s high. But I think there’s enough reason to be suspicious, especially since the two shows in question share one unquestionable link: the creator of Heroes, Tim Kring, and the co-creator of Lost, Damon Lindelof, used to work together on Crossing Jordan and remain good friends. So: Are the brilliant buddies quietly engaged in some kind of clandestine creative collaboration?

RESPONSE FROM HEROES CREATOR TIM KRING Hey! Look at this! Turns out we’re onto something, at least in a wishful-thinking sort of way. Asked if Heroes and Lost are in a secret alliance, Kring says, ”Well… Damon and I did talk about a lot of stuff. And unfortunately, we’re on different networks, because otherwise, a lot of those things would have been really, really fun to have done.” By ‘’stuff,” do you mean you guys actually discussed the possibility of mythologically linked shows? ”Oh, yeah,” says Kring. ”We’ve talked a lot [in general] about how two shows could dovetail. But again, we are limited by the fact that we are on competing networks.” But couldn’t you guys conceivably do this idea without ever technically acknowledging it in any formal way? ”That’s true. That’s true,” says Kring with a laugh.

TRANSLATION Keep dreamin’, Doc J. (BTW: Thanks to Mr. Kring for kindly indulging my obsessions.)

ESTIMATED CHANCE OF A LOST/HEROES CONNECTION Oh, like they would ever admit it if this were true!

Source: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/commentary/0,6115,1547154_3_0_,00.html