10 Flop TV Shows That Made ONE Huge Mistake

In the wake of J.J. Abrams' series Lost becoming a veritable pop-culture phenomenon, there was a clear push by networks to hype up every tangentially themed sci-fi/mystery series as "the next Lost," and there was arguably no greater casualty of this than FlashForward.

Also produced by ABC, FlashForward began airing shortly before Lost's final season commenced, and despite being based on a novel which predates Lost by five years, the network did everything they could to push it as a spiritual successor to Lost. Hell, it even had Lost alum Dominic Monaghan in it.

Now to be clear, this is less the fault of the show's creatives than ABC for aggressively marketing FlashForward this way, as putting it on a pedestal did it zero favours at all.

Was FlashForward an entertaining show? Absolutely. Was it a Lost-caliber mystery? Not at all, and when viewed on its own terms it didn't need to be. 

It also didn't help the series' declining ratings that ABC put it on a three-month hiatus mid-season, which stalled its storytelling momentum and basically encouraged audiences to drop off.

But the overall consensus being "It's pretty good, but it's not Lost" was something ABC set the show up for themselves, by selling it as the Next Big Thing rather than just letting it be its own beast.