I’ve been looking though some of the older threads on Lost lately and the main complaint most people seem to have about the show is that we aren’t getting answers to any of the big mysteries. Instead, the show keeps focusing on everyone’s backstories.
The thing is, it seems as if that is the writer’s and creator’s intentions. Consider this quote from this article.
The article goes on to say that the creative process they use is to come up with a flashback story first. Then, they come up with an island story to trigger or compliment that flashback. Then they look to see if they can tie one of the island mysteries into the story. If they can’t come up with a way to do so, they don’t.
This isn’t recent. Here are a few articles from 2005!
Now I know that I personally am more interested in learning how Alvar Hanso fits in than I am in who Kate chooses and from the comments here it seems to me that that is what most of us are interested in. But, from the above it is obvious that that isn’t what the producers think.
Have the writers and producers completely misread their audience, or are the fans like us really in the minority? What are you most interested in when watching the show?
(Side note: I have also read (though I can’t find a cite for it right now, sorry) that one of the reasons for the Lost Experience game they ran last summer was to satisfy the fans on the Internet who were examining freeze-frames and sound captures in detail by giving them something to do that would result in them getting answers without having to put them in the show itself.)
I’m mostly interested in the mysteries, although I do like SOME of the flashbacks. I think at this point, they perhaps shouldn’t have a flashback in every episode. I mean, we’ve learned plenty about Sawyer. Nothing new has come out of his last couple of flashbacks.
On the other hand, I loved, loved, loved Locke’s latest. And Desmond’s.
I do like how they reveal things about the characters. I’m sure I’m not the only one who went from hating Jin to loving him, after we saw what he REALLY went through for Sun, who just ended up cheating on him anyway. And on the flip side of that, I went from feeling sorry for Sun to thinking she’s a self-absorbed cheating liar.
And Jack went from Mr. Perfect to a guy who was kind of a dick to his wife and father.
So I do like seeing the characters change and evolve, but I also wouldn’t mind seeing a few more mysteries answered at the same time. Namely, what’s up with the 4-toed statue?
I like character-driven stories when the characters aren’t all complete assholes. Unfortunately, the characters that Lost has been focusing on the most are those that I like least (namely, Jack and Kate; and I wish they’d stop teasing us and kill Charlie already). Even characters who were once interesting have become less so, such as Locke (I did enjoy last week’s, though).
Of course, I’m coming at Lost from being someone who watched Alias through all its silliness, and ultimately wound up disappointed in its conclusion. I should know better than to expect it to all fit together and make sense, but that really is what I want. Lost seemed to have the potential to do both the character and mystery arcs successfully, and the disappointment comes from seeing both balls dropped.
I’d really love to see Jack-or, heck, anybody, really- the next time he’s got one of the Others in his power, to say, “Okay, now I want you to tell me what the hell’s going on with this island. Explain the smoke monster. Explain Dharma. Explain the three-toed colossus. Explain the damn polar bear. Explain everything. And if you try to tell me that I wouldn’t understand, or that I can’t understand, I’m going to shoot you in the knee… or worse.”
Of course, if he actually did do that, they’d cut to commecial and we’d never actually hear the damn answers.
Probably true today. However, I was one of those who dropped the show halfway through the first season because it soon became apparent that this was indeed their plan. I wanted answers to the interesting questions, not the backstories of rather dull characters. I knew I’d never get them to my satisfaction so I stopped watching.
From recent reviews they seem to have muddled both ends of the equation: not enough characterization and not enough answers. That’s losing them large numbers of the audience that did stick around.
The problem is the economics of television. Executives want a show that can run at least 100 episodes because that’s where the syndication money is. But nobody has ever proved that they can keep a central mystery alive and fresh beyond the first season. Desperate Housewives tanked during the second season when it tried to give ordinary people a new set of life-changing situations weekly. 24 succeeded only because it was designed to be a series of events in the lives of professionals who dealt in life and death. Heroes is still up in the air because we don’t know what’s going to get answered. However, I find the characters intrinsically have more interest than anyone on Lost, and they are not bounded by the confines of either their island or their mystery plot. That show took Lost’s mistakes to heart.
I’m interested in the mystery. I don’t mind the backstories, but I am always more intrigued by those aspects of the backstories that seem to have some direct significance to what is going on with the Island story. Like the stuff about Claire’s baby, or Mr. Eko’s brother and the drug plane.
I couldn’t care less whether Kate ends up with Jack or Sawyer. I do care somewhat about having more episodes that feature Naveen Andrews not wearing a shirt. My perfect episode of Lost would be Naveen Andrews organizing a powerpoint presentation where every character shares what he/she knows about the Island and they finally get freakin’ organized, while not wearing a shirt.
I enjoy the show. I like the dialogue. I like funny lines that come from Hurley and Sawyer. It’s nice when they make a big reveal but I don’t need it every week. What I hate is when they hype that there is going to be some huge mystery sloved this week and then it fizzles (the tattoo episode). I really enjoyed the Hurley Love Bus episode and last weeks Nikki/Paulo sand castle episode even though there was no plot advancement because they were both well written episodes. I just like the show.
Maybe my point of view is a bit different since I did not get to see most of the first season and basically started watching in season 2.
I have noticed that the vast majority of criticism for any TV show tilts in favor of analyzing realistic data. To put it glibly, TV shows are today viewed more like laboratory experiments than artistic endeavors.
The “rules” of the experiment are that what’s presented has to be 100% real in terms of the assumed premise of the show. In the case of “Lost”, this view casts events presented on the island as data points in a grand experiment whose payoff is the complete understanding of how the island works. For this idea of “show-as-experiment” to hold up, the viewer must assume the inner mechanisms of the island are already known to the producers, so that apparent contradictions in the presented data (Jack is bad one week, good the next) are explained by our imperfect knowledge of the ultimate goal.
Analysis of the experiment has gotten to the point where the presumed “rules” of TV production are included in the deduction. For example, given the limited time and enormous cost it takes to shoot even small scenes, the viewer presumes that no major data presented is ultimately irrelevant; it all has to fit in or “come back” somehow. Thus the outcry over the death of Libby near the end of last season, since a few episodes earlier it had been revealed that she was in the mental hospital with Hurley; the producers wouldn’t reveal this to us if it weren’t ultimately a part of the mystery, but now it seems the other castaways will never know this fact, so how can it work into the solution? Under this model of criticism, there is no possible purpose for presenting the truth about Libby other than as a data point in the mystery (I’m not saying there is another good reason for including this scene, only that the model of criticism limits discussion on the point).
This unspoken “experiment” analogy drives criticism to the point that people are actually discussing the properties of the presumed smoke-monster or the paralyzing spider seen in last week’s episode. That’s unavoidable I think, but folks that accept this analogy are unlikely to accept these items for the MacGuffins that they are: Devices which allow the writer to create artistic bits of storytelling, such as unexpected irony (the use of the spider backfires on a character such that she and her murderous boyfriend end up buried alive) or visual metaphor (Eko’s prolonged confrontation with and death at the hand of the smoke monster is a visual metaphor for his own sense of shame and need to atone for his brutal life). As a result, much of the art is overlooked.
To me, the spider and smoke monster satisfy my interest in good storytelling, rather than the exhaustive need to have my theories proven or disproven each week. As long as the mystery provides enough material to give the writers opportunities to engage in good storytelling (such as two week’s ago when the complicated motivations of Locke led him to blow up the submarine–the castaways’ only apparent means of escape), I’m in. Once it devolves into a grand but meaningless puzzle dissected nightly on the internet, I’m out.
I’m not interested in backstories, I want island, island, island. I haven’t watched any of this season, I just haven’t been that interested, even though last season ended in a fairly interesting way.
The characters are by far the weakest part of the show. They should be the strongest, but they simply aren’t written well enough. Sure, there are terrific parts. For example, “Walkabout” was good TV. But then there’s “What Kate Did”. Kate is dreadfully boring. Her backstory is ridiculous and borderline nonsensical. Yet she gets as much screen time as Locke, arguably the most interesting character left on the show. (R.I.P., Eko.)
Sawyer is the sarcastic con man with a heart of gold. Hurley is the comic relief. Jack is the reluctant leader. They only occassionally show nuances of character outside these archetypes, and when they do it’s often inexplicable. Recall the episode about Jack’s tattoo. Why did Jack act like that? It’s fine to explore the darker side of that character, but that just made no sense at all.
If they kept the same characters but set it in a mid-sized down in Iowa, would you (general you) watch it? I would not. Smoke monsters, hallucinations, and bizzare cult-like groups on a mysterious island are significantly more interesting than these particular characters.
All that said, the show has picked up quite a bit lately. Things actually happen. If they can keep up the pace I’ll keep watching it. But I have to admit that if I wasn’t able to watch episodes at my leisure on ABC’s website I wouldn’t still be watching the show.
What do I think? I think Lindorf is spewing complete bullshit. If the people on the island and thier character development are what are keeping the audience, why bother having mysteries at all?
It’s because the mysteries are the hook, they are the thing that gets people talking around the watercooler. Everyone in the first season was talking about the TCM, what it could be, etc. People were interested in Locke and WAAAAAALT’s interesting abilities. And yeah, they wanted to see Kate and Jack or Kate and Sawyer hook up, and hear Hurley get out one or more of his great one-liners, too, but the mysteries were what kept people talking.
And they have no idea how to resolve them in a satisfying manner. Just like their idol, Stephen King, they can write interesting charactes, but they suck at resolution. And their characters aren’t usually even all that interesting except that there’s something mystical about them.
So, here’s a big fart int he wind to Lindorf, Abrams, etc, for taking a really cool concept and royally mucking it up over the course of the series. Twice.
Locke has been the most interesting character on the show by far since its inception, and the producers have worked hard on revealing his character in ingenious ways. Our view of him has transformed over the series in truly startling ways: First he was a man who thought he had greatness in him, but had been stifled by fate (the wheelchair). But then we see his impulsiveness, his tendency to make bad decisions, and the growing awareness of his own inadequacies (the crushed look he has when he learns in the Pearl hatch that all his faith in pressing the button was misguided is just priceless, and when he says “I was never meant to do anything”, you believe his whimpering frustration).
Comparing him to Kate is a little unfair, if only because Locke is so well-written. The conflict for her, obviously is choosing between what she thinks is right and what she really wants. The backstories usually illustrate how badly she handles this conflict, but the island has crystalized this down to a simple “Jack or Sawyer” love triangle. I’ve seen over the past few weeks how she’s agonizing over her choices (she chooses the me-first Sawyer, but comes to appreciate Jack’s self-sacrifice in giving them an escape; then, when she tries to rescue Jack, she’s confused by his apparent selfish acts in wanting to leave the island without her), but I generally think this character’s conflicts have been poorly handled by the writers.
I disagree; think back on your own most-memorable moments from the show. Do you remember the specific revealations, or the drama that surrounded them?
It’s a subtle point, but think about, say, the final episode of the first season, when they blew the hatch open. What struck you as most memorable about it? I’ll say most people remember the conflict between Jack’s rationalism and Locke’s mysticism during the march thru the jungle, or the desperate Hurley screaming “The numbers are bad!” as a determined Locke lights the fuse, or Locke telling Jack “Let me go” as he’s being dragged into the “security system” (a leap of faith if there ever was one). These moments are memorable because we understand the characters and appreciate their motivation, not because we get some new clue about the island.
I’ll agree that most of the water-cooler talk revolves around “what the f@ck is going on”, but that’s a red herring. People remembered the show and want to watch because of these dramatic payoffs. The mystery may be the kind of thing made for internet dissection, but IMO it functions best as a mechanism that forces good drama, rather than an end in an of itself.
I don’t really care, for example, why the Black Rock ship full of dynamite is in the middle of the island. If figuring that out leads to an interesting plot twist, or a good character moment, or some other storytelling payoff, then I’m all for revealing it. Otherwise, barring some insurmountable plot-holes (the VW bus earlier this season is pretty close to this), I just don’t care if it remains unknown forever.
I knew while reading this thread that the “what are people talking about the next day around the water cooler?” test was an invalid one. But I wasn’t sure why I fel this way. You have articulated it for me. So thanks!
I shouldn’t be writing in, perhaps, since I haven’t been watching this series. On purpose. I was burned by Twin Peaks, and have avoided such continued open-ended TV mysteries ever since.
The essence of any good drama is characters and their interaction. But you can have drama with an existing mystery or coherent activity going on as well. In fact, that’s the way good story-telling generally works. Sherlock Holmes mysteries have both excellent dnamics between Holmes and Watson (and the others in the story), as well as a good mystery, with emphasis upon how it was that Holmes sought the solution. (The emphasis in those stories, particularly the earliest ones, wasn’t that a mystery was weird or insuloble, but really was about Holmes’ own MO in seeking the solution. It’s one thing that gave the stories their needed air of verisimilitude. It’s also why many would-be Holmes stories are so bad. They lack it.) The background against which the characters exist and the situations they strive against ought to be believable and credible on their own, or readers/viewers start to feel cheated. Doyle, to stick to the Holmes analogy, often wrote quite lengthy explanations for how the situations Holmes solved arose. In two cases half the novel was devoted to that part, without a hint of Holmes.
Make no mistake about it, the weird and mysterious things in Lostare the hook. (I may not watch the show, but my wife does). As has been stated above, if this was taking place in Peopria without those elements of the bizarre intruding, you wouldn’t have the audience that you do. That doesn’t mean that your viewers don’t care about the people, their characterization, and their actions. But it means that they expect bizrre things as paet of the story, and that ultimately it wiull all make sense. It’s not because they’re comic-book geek completists who obsess over trival details. It’s because they come from a tradition of storytelling that anchors things in a consistent universe. Lost upset the universe, and keeps holding out the promise that it’ll make sense. But it doesn’t seem to be heading that way, so it’s losing viewers. Just like Twin Peaks did.
People tuning in thought that they’d see the sort of story-telling they’ve been conditioned all their lives to see. You can get away with making things up or introducing miraculous elements if it’s understood at the start that’s what you’re getting. But the way the show appeared and was "sold’ certainly didn’t suggest that. In normal storytelling you really can’t get away with making up a violation of the universe just for the purposes of the story and complain because your audience is too fixated on that violation of reality, and not enough on the characters. They’re going to feel cheated.
Of course, now it’s starting to sink in that Lost is precisely that kind of show, and you’ll see if the audience numbers stay the same.
Basically, I just want an entertaining hour. I watch very little tv, so what I invest my time in must entertain me, whether it answers any ongoing questions or not.
I also watch Lost because I like the scenery (human and landscape); I think it’s well-written and well-acted (which is rare). And because it’s not a police procedural or a just a romantic comedy. I like the fantastical elements.