Invasion of the ‘Lost’ wannabe

Paul Brownfield has been filing online dispatches from the Television Critics Assn. meetings in Beverly Hills. Here’s the latest from Wednesday:

ABC, Day 2: “Invasion” panel. This is teen-idol-turned-TV-creator Shaun Cassidy’s show. This is the show that’s coming on after “Lost.” This is the show that has possibly the single best tagline in the history of television: “Mommy, you smell different.”

I take a seat in the back, among several rows of ballroom chairs. I think I’m sitting among half of the television department at CAA or UTA or whatever agency is repping the show. They’re dressed high Hollywood casual, future power agents of America, and they’re thinking, or so I’m thinking, about trading in the leased Beemer for the new Range Rover they’ve heard about; they’ll be upgrading from the three-bedroom share house to the West Hollywood bungalow inside of two years.

They are all listening very intently to Cassidy, who is flanked by his cast, handling this press conference with what I can only think of as Cassidy-like aplomb.

Asked what’s made TV more welcoming toward open-ended, otherworldly shows such as “Invasion,” Cassidy says, “ ‘Lost,’ ‘Lost’ and ‘Lost.’ ”

“Invasion” is “Lost” in the aftermath of a hurricane, to be reductive about it. But the show has a Hurley, and a Jack, and a Kate, and instead of an island it’s got this town hit by a hurricane and some weird kind of presence. Cassidy says the show is about divorce in a family, about survival, about the emotional recovery of a town, about the recovery of a species, about survival, about a father trying to protect his family, a sheriff trying to protect his town.

“Hi, for Mr. Cassidy on your right.” “Yes, for Shaun, in the back, straight ahead .... “ When the questions come fast and furious for the show runner and the actors onstage fall to the status of mannequins, you know the pilot’s turned on the press.