During the three years it took Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, quite a few people must have stopped in for a peek. It seems entirely possible that curious onlookers saw his work in progress and loved it, but wondered whether the finished product would end up a masterpiece or a mediocrity. I’d say roughly the same thing about ABC’s “Lost,” which after three new episodes this season has ramped up its storytelling to new levels of inspired lunacy. With 24 million Americans watching each week, “Lost” has become to this generation what “The Prisoner” was in the 1960s – an innovative, brain-tingling suspense thriller with the hint of larger questions at play. One crucial difference: “Lost” has become a huge hit for ABC, which means its story will stretch out over at least 100 episodes, and maybe even longer. Can its producers possibly sustain its current level of quality for that long? “The Prisoner” only lasted 17 episodes over one season, and I doubt if even Michelangelo could have produced 100 straight hours of brilliant television, though I’m sure he would have enjoyed the syndication money.

The enterprise is still running smoothly, as evidenced by the hugely entertaining “Orientation,” this season’s third episode, which aired last Wednesday. The producers unveiled several bizarre and provocative new strands of information for us to contemplate. At its center, a Kubrickian instructional film called “The Dharma Initiative, 3 of 6, Orientation” purports to lay out their new purpose on the island: to push a button every 108 minutes for 540 consecutive days. Or what? No one knows, and that becomes the central question of “Lost.” The 108-minute time span, as any “Lost” aficionado knows, represents the sum of the numbers that won Hurley his lottery millions, and seem to have since cursed everything in his path. Hurley – the show’s comic relief and, at times, its conscience – played a pivotal role in the recent, crazed events that have placed the island’s main characters in mortal jeopardy, or at least fear of it.

It now seems clear that the writers of “Lost” want us to speculate on the story’s connection to religious and existential themes; what once seemed a fun parlor game for TV addicts on Web sites has spread to the masses for legitimate reasons. The “film” introduces a pair of graduate students at the University of Michigan who are disciples of the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner, and suggests that the island has been home to experiments planned by them under the supervision of the Hanso Foundation, funded by Swedish industrialist Alvar Hanso. (“I think we’re going to need to watch that again,” Locke says to Jack after watching the film, a sly homage to the classic “Jaws” line, “I think we’re going to need a bigger boat.”) Locke and Jack debate destiny and faith like a couple of theologians at sherry hour – the main difference being the flipping numbers over their heads that count down the minutes before they must punch in the numeric sequence. What would happen if they didn’t press the button? At least for now, we don’t know; Locke has persuaded Jack to play along in this crazy, creepy game.

If only the producers of “Desperate Housewives” could match the audacity and wit of their “Lost” colleagues. The second season of ABC’s other mega hit drama has demonstrated what happens when soap-opera writers don’t understand the true (and unrelenting) demands of the form. The show has become an endless roundelay of emotional shifts; characters once considered bad now seem good, and vice versa. It’s a hall of mirrors, and those don’t stay fun for very long. The series needs to embrace the silliness of daytime soap operas, with more death and mayhem and upheaval. The characters try too hard to repress their emotions and maintain their civility. These women should have long since clawed one another’s eyes out. Instead they’re still meeting for coffee.

Stories surfaced recently involving the poor health of Marc Cherry, the show’s creator; he apparently worked so long and hard last season that the network feared a collapse, and brought doctors to the set. Now he seems recovered and it’s his show that needs resuscitation. The mini-dramas of Eva Longoria’s marriage and Felicity Huffman’s work life just don’t have the pull of, say, “All My Children,” where characters marry, divorce, and die so regularly that the comedy plays in the mere act of watching. “Desperate Housewives” has become way too self-conscious of its perception of itself as a comedy. Audiences will tire quickly of its thin storylines and two-dimensional characters, if they haven’t already.

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It was back in mid-September when ABC’s “Primetime” delivered a terrific, chilling segment on the threat of a flu pandemic, several weeks before most of us started talking about one. In one of the first detailed reports anywhere on the topic, investigative reporter Brian Ross brought together experts to convey the terrifying threat posed by the bird flu, in a way only television can. The only thing that kept me from feeling more panicky, at the time, was my suspicion that this news was coming from the same series that earlier this year devoted an hour to Paula Abdul’s private sex life. Maybe if “Primetime” abandoned its occasionally trashy impulses and stuck with legitimate journalism, it could actually get an audience of loyal viewers. I know, I know, it’s crazy – but it just might work.

dblum@nysun.com