We need the TV equivalent of a novella: the limited-run show. Series driven by a central mystery (Twin Peaks, The X-Files) peter out precisely because they have indefinite life spans. The writers are forced to serve up red herrings until the shows choke on their own plot twists.

I actually have more patience for this than most people, I think (I stuck it through with Twin Peaks for the Lynchian weirdness more than for the story). Lost may be faltering, but there's still enough goodness there to keep me coming back and the writers SWEAR they have a destination in mind and that they could solve the mystery and end everything in a single episode at any time.

What the New York piece fails to mention, however, is that some shows have done this successfully already. I didn't care for Babylon 5 but it did have a planned out 5-year run that it stuck to. The show had a beginning, middle and end. Likewise, Farscape had a finale that they were leading up to just when the series got cancelled. SciFi had to grant them a special 4-hour movie so they could wrap up the story and appease the fans. History seems to be repeating itself with Deadwood, which was cancelled early and the producers had to fight HBO to get an additional 4 hours to wrap things up.

The most recent example is the well-made but underwatched Kidnapped on NBC. The idea was to have season-long stories with relatively big names playing the characters (Timothy Hutton, Dana Delaney & Delroy Lindo are in the first one) and the story wraps up at the end of the season with a new kidnapping story beginning in season 2. It's a formula that would probably work well but Kidnapped won't get to prove it as it was not picked up for even a full season.

Veronica Mars has long story arcs that last a season each. There are other examples too, mostly from genre fiction apparently. Mainstream TV just needs to take more cues from SF.