Has Mark Burnett Lost His Mojo?

What's happened to Mark Burnett, the once unstoppable TV producer who gave audiences revolutionary shows like Survivor? Has he lost his touch? If last night's episode of Fox's On the Lot, which he created with Steven Spielberg, is any indication, then the answer is yes.

I'm still trying to get my mind around the two-hour program, which seemed interminable. First of all, what happened to the contestants shooting one page of script in one hour? How exactly did we end up with 18 finalists? When did the format shift? And when did they make these short films? Another question: who is Adrianna Costa? Where did original host Chelsea Handler go? And why does Costa keeping making those strange steeple-to-V hand gestures when she talks?

What started as a show with vague promise has completely gone off the rails and now just feels like a cheap American Idol knock off without a Simon-esque judge to hold it all together. I struggled to watch all 18 short films while listening to the constant repetition of website plug and phone numbers. Last night saw another new judge make an appearance; this time it was director DJ Caruso, who directed DW's Disturbia (nice synergy, guys). But it really could have been anyone. The judges were indistinctive as they repeatedly damned each filmmaker with faint praise. Carrie Fisher was more flummoxed than funny (as when she tried to explain to Jason from Kentucky why you can't make fun of the mentally handicapped). And Garry Marshall seemed continually surprised that women can actually direct movies. Overall, I found the films themselves--the only even vaguely compelling part of the show--to be subpar to what you can find on YouTube (a number of them relied lame on fart, barf and piss jokes) and the entire episode had an anxious air to it.

Where's the tension, the action, the drama--all the elements that has made Survivor so eminently watchable for all of these years? Caruso repeatedly evaluated the filmmakers by saying they had decent execution of a under-developed concept. You're better than this, he'd say. I hope that Spielberg and Burnett were listening.

UPDATE 5/29: Apparently, I'm not the only one feeling this way about On the Lot, which came in fifth last night among the broadcasters with less than 3 million viewers, according to Variety. Mondays are the show's regular time slot, followed by a "box office" review show on Tuesdays.