In hindsight, Shooting Star might have been a more fitting title for the fall schedule’s breakout network drama, given the advance blaze of glory with which Lone Star appeared on FOX, only to promptly disappear after two episodes due to dismal ratings.

Originally titled Midland for the small Texas town in which it was partially set, the series centered on the double life and times of Bob Allen (played by breakout actor James Wolk).

Allen is a twentysomething con man in the oil business who spends half his time as “Bob” in high-society Houston posing as husband to the daughter of one of the industry’s bigger magnates, there to penetrate his father-in-law’s corporation from the inside, and the other half as “Robert” in provincial Midland posing as boyfriend to the daughter of just two of many unsuspecting townsfolk who have signed away their savings to fraudulent investments in non-existent wells.

Shuttling back and forth between the two worlds, with a split (if not guilty conscience) in tow and the father who raised him a con boy shadowing his every move, the two-headed Bob stands somewhere in the middle. When he’s forced to choose between the two women for whom he feels equal devotion, he is unwilling to sacrifice one life for the other.

Bob’s problem is that he’s determined to have both lives at once.

Hence the subtle resonance of the original title, Midland, pointing to the doomed position he occupies in between. And yet by the end of the pilot episode there’s a sense that he may just be capable of maintaining that position against all odds.

Undoubtedly the title was a bit too subtle for network purposes; FOX was already taking a risk with a series premise that many felt was more suited for cable. But here was a network upping the ante, pushing the envelope—something for which the Emmy has crowned cable programming again and again. The networks may have the numbers, but for the most part it’s been cable that has the glory: The Sopranos, Deadwood, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, the list goes on.

Given the golden pilot directed by Marc Webb then released as a screener inside the industry last spring, a 42-minute tour-de-force that packs all the punch of a feature film in a third of the time, it seemed FOX was taking a risk that would more than pay off. Met with resounding praise from critics in every corner, Lone Star was poised to seduce prime-time television in September with all the same magnetism of its leading man—and, for writers like me, make some cable-esque inroads in network programming.

Not that I didn’t have other reservations of the ethical kind, given certain family history that makes me particularly adverse to the subject of adultery unless portrayed in all its destructiveness. Far be it from me to root for someone like Bob Allen, who is sowing the seeds for unspeakable pain to come.

Yet there I was, if not rooting for him exactly, then rooting for the show. Alright, I’ll admit it: I was rooting for him, if only because the writing and the acting and the directing were so damn good. In one scene that so deftly expressed his double devotion to the wife in Houston and the girlfriend in Midland, a woman at a hotel bar asks him despite his wedding band to give her one good reason why they can’t head upstairs. Bob replies: “I’ll give you two.”

Perhaps I was also swindled by Bob’s charm, but what intrigued me was the sense that he was developing a real, if stunted, conscience about the lies he was living. It seemed that he was taking his first steps to stake out a life apart from the one that his father had been plotting for him since the day he was born.

“Remember,” I said before showing the screener to my screenwriting/playwriting class at this summer’s Glen Workshop, “forty-two minutes long. Not a single moment, not a single line of dialogue, that isn’t driving the story relentlessly forward.”

If the discussion afterward was any indication, they, too, seemed convinced the show was bound to be a hit.

In the weeks before its premiere I found myself bothered by the promotional posters that featured mirrored images to represent the double life of Bob Allen: sitting on the edge of a bed with his respective nude beloved behind him, he wears a suit for Houston in one panel, jeans and boots for Midland in the other.

It was disappointing to see that FOX had resorted to selling the show for its sex—the least significant element from what I had seen in the screener.

Nevertheless, I thought that once it aired, the show would sell itself.

How wrong I was.

The pilot not only failed to retain a promising lead-in from House at the top of the hour, but also bled countless more viewers between the first and second half-hours—a veritable death sentence for any new pilot. In the blink of an eye Lone Star had descended from the coveted auction block of a 9:00 p.m. time slot on Monday nights to the inevitable chopping block.

Theories abound as to why something so good failed so miserably: that it really was a show better suited for cable; that America at large isn’t really game to get behind a two-timing Texan, what with a down economy thanks in part to the Enrons and Bernie Madoffs of the world; that FOX did a misguided job advertising the show.

But one thing is certain: so much for those cable-esque inroads in network programming, for the time being, at least.

Kudos for trying, Lone Star, and condolences.