I just read this article and it has me worried. Side note: It is about a possible Lost spoiler but none are revealed in the article, so don’t be afraid to read it, I am commenting on a different point he makes anyway. (I didn’t even read the spoilers).
I am new to Lost as I started watching it this summer, and having now just finished watching all the episodes on DVD I missed. I am eager to watch the next season as it airs. I do worry about how it can sustain the mystery element while revealing enough to satisfy viewers, though. The article brings up X-Files and Alias as shows that failed to come through in the end. (Alias is still running but the author seems to have given up on it.) Worrisome since they have the same creator.
Do you think Lost will eventually just peter out (please, no!) or will it come through? I hope it is not just one of those shows that goes on for too long. As the article points out, in a perfect world Lost would have only a few seasons and be done. Even though I would miss it when it is gone I would rather have a few brilliant seasons with a well thought-out end than continuing the show past its prime. However I don’t see a quick end happening as long as it gets the ratings (which is kind of a hopeless take on it…the better it does in the ratings the worse the show will get? Argh.)
Obviously the writers don’t know how long the show will continue so it’s not like writing a movie or book series that has a definite end, they need to be able to keep it going and still answer some of the mysteries so people don’t get too frustrated with it. Do you think they will pull it off or am I setting myself up for disappointment? Will it drag on and on or (even worse?) end suddenly and without resolution?
Are there any examples of TV series that have done this kind of premise successfully? Give me hope here that this can be done!
Twin Peaks and Babylon V were pretty successful at this. The problem the writers of Lost have is that they don’t really have it all plotted out–they’re writing pretty much episode-by-episode, and slapping things together by means of artistic fiat to make all the foreshadowing work out. This works fine if they’re really, really good at their jobs. We’ll see.
Didn’t read the article, don’t want to take any chances that I’ll get even accidental inadvertant Lost spoilage.
I’d include Angel and to a lesser extent Buffy although they stray a bit from the path of “mystery/drama series.” I think if John Doe on FOX hadn’t been unceremoniously killed it had the potential of wrapping itself up nicely, and so did Tru Calling and Wonderfalls from the same network (are we sensing a pattern here?). And I guess we’ll see in a couple of weeks if Serenity wraps up the plotlines left dangling by the premature cancelation of Firefly (damn you FOX!).
I didn’t see any of the TV movies from The Pretender; how did people think that series wrapped up? One show that definitely suffered was Profiler. It sustained the Jack of All Trades mystery very well for several seasons then went to hell almost immediately after.
First, I’d take with a grain of salt an NBC article telling me that an ABC show might not deliver. Gee. Wonder why they’d do that. Especially when it’s going up against their new, and not very critically loved drama.
Still, I have to somewhat agree. When you don’t know if your story is going to be 6 or 12 or 22 or 100 hours long, it must be hard to create a story arc, keep it going, and stretch it out appropriately. And many series have failed to do a good job. Plus, when a team of writers is involved, and not all of them have a full understanding of the arc, the episodes stop making sense. And finally, when the series last longer than it can be stretched, you end up with the final seasons of the X-files, which were just awful. Planned season long arcs tend to work (e.g., 24. Desperate Housewives.), but that indefinite end just doesn’t.
I have no idea if the Lost writers and producers know what they’re doing (but based on Alias, I would guess not.) I’m feeling the same apprehension about Threshold. It started well, but sooner or later, they’re going to run out of plot if nothing is ever conclusive.
This is exactly what I am afraid of - they are building all this suspense and they are good at that part, but will it go anywhere? While we are all wondering about the plot points, are the writers wondering right along with us?
This season better explain at least a few major points. I would rather have the story resolve some things and then move along to new ones than try to stretch what they have too much. By the end of season one I felt like there are almost too many questions raised for it to have any hope of fitting together coherently. On the other hand, if they do pull it off it will be amazing. I would hope they at least have basic plot outlines and resolutions done so they have an end point to go to, even if they take more twists and turns to get there than originally planned.
It just makes me uneasy to consider that no one knows what the deal with the island is! Someone out there must know!
If “Lost” can actually pull this together, it’ll be the greatest drama in the history of television. I mean that with absolute seriousness; if in fact they pull this off it will be remembered, revered, decades from now, as the show against which other shows are compared. Because you have to admit that up to this point it has been some of the finest television ever aired.
Whether or not they can do it is another matter.
I admit I would be far more confident if
Anyone else had ever been successful at this sort of thing, and
The producers of “Lost” would come out and say “We are doing this show for X number of seasons/episodes and that’s it. Once you find out the answer the show’s over because there will be nothing else to write.”
I give them oh, a 10% shot at it. Let’s be honest; it just hardly ever works. Most shows with the Great Ongoing and Multiple Supporting Mysteries just become a sad joke, like “The X-Files.” I also started getting worried towards the end of last season as they layered on a few more mysteries than I think they can reasonably tie together. But, we shall see.
But that’s not true at all, it didn’t. The original series was a pretty good peice of work, for the time.
When they came up with a sequel and a spinoff series it sucked donkey balls, but that’s not a condemnation of the original work. And in any case, “V” had a twist, but it wasn’t really a mystery series. The only mystery was whether or not the aliens were bad, and it didn’t take long to sort that out.
But if you want an alien mystery series that went off the rails within one season, I give you Earth: Final Conflict. Great premise, which the creators betrayed after a very few episodes, and then from the second season on it was just terrible.
I would say the same for Sci-Fi’s First Wave but it was less of a mystery series and also it sucked from episode one.
The biggest obstacle seems to be studios wanting situations resolved out of fear or alienating or losing the audience (Twin Peaks), or studios not wanting to let go of something that continues to draw an audience (X-Files). And then you have the problem with cancellation (Angel). And probably the biggest obstacle is the nature of this kind of drama as an ongoing series instead of a mini-series, and a new problem when a mini-series turns into an ongoing series (Battlestar Galactica, The 4400).
24 is lucky in the respect that each season is self-contained. The X-Files had a number of very successful episodes that were stand alones, within the framework of a huge story arc. But then the huge story arc crumbled under the weight of the FOX network refusing to let go, Duchovny leaving, Cartner not knowing when to quit and stretching himself too thin over various other side projects that all suffered in quality.
Buffy got lucky, and Wheedon and his writers were able to pull of a very satisfying, cohesive ending, but that whole last season getting there was grating, overlong and repetitive. In the hands of someone else, the ending could have been disasterous.
While Lost has what I would say are pseudo-stand alone episodes through the flashback storylines, overall the story arc is the reason for its uniqueness, and like 24, if you miss an episode, the viewer is lost. Because of this story arc the show will probably end in a literal crash and burn that pleases no one. I think the odds are against Lost ending in a quality manner, but hopefully the writers are smart enough, and it seems like they are, that they will be able to finish off the show on top of things.
I return with hope. I had time to watch some of the extras on the DVD set last night and there was an interesting feature about how Lost was created. The 2 main writers / creators (JJ and the other guy, can’t remember his name) claim that they had 5-6 years of storyline / plot planned out before they even filmed the pilot.
The island itself and the hatch were early plot points they focused on. It is true that some of the characters have been added or changed as they go along, and some were even created just for the actors because they were so impressed by them (Jin and Sun are examples.) I enjoyed seeing the actors read for roles, especially Hurley reading for the Sawyer part!
Other reassurance came from, believe it or not, Jimmey Kimmel. They had a feature on the DVD from his show where he went to the set and interviewed actors. He specifically asked Jack (forgetting actors’ names here, sorry) “does somebody know what the real deal is or are you all making it up as you go along?” Jack replied that the actors were kept in the dark until they received each script, but he knew that ‘somebody knows the whole story.’ (paraphrased)
Just for fun I will include here a teaser they put on for next season - It’s not really a spoiler I don’t think but in case somebody doesn’t want to know anything at all about the new season I will put it in tags. This is paraphrased from memory:
On the other side of the island… the survivors will discover… they are not the survivors they think they are.
I agree with RickJay that if they do pull it off it will be one of the great TV shows to remember.
Then there’s the “better wrap things up in case we get cancelled… oops, we’ve got another year to go” problem that afflicted the final season of Babylon 5.
Argh!! You read them? I can’t wait until tomorrow! I do wonder if they are fake though, I can’t believe they would stay on the ABC website for that long if it was real.
