Keeping up with Lost

Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Steven Johnson is the author of six books, most recently The Invention Of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution and the Birth Of America, for which he is currently on book tour. He's also the co-founder of the hyperlocal community site outside.in.

All the hullabaloo about the news from Washington yesterday has been a distraction from the real event of the week: the fact that S05E01 of "Lost" is airing tonight, which means we are all about to be treated to another few months of utterly baffling prime time television. Though I've been known to argue in public for the growing complexity of today's popular culture, I've long since given up on trying to figure out what is actually happening on "Lost," and prefer to just sit back and let the byzantine plot twists and spatial-temporal jumps wash over me. But like many fans of the show, I suspect, I've always been fascinated by the question of exactly how much of "Lost"'s web the producers and writers of the show have planned out, and how much they're making up as they go along.

So it was delightful to read in the Times this weekend this profile of "Lost"'s script co-ordinator, Gregg Nations, who has apparently been maintaining a master document of all the various events and connections over the show's four year run. This line caught my eye:

Had he a background in computer science, Mr. Nations now says, he might have approached the “Lost” project differently. “The best thing would have been to create a database where everything’s linked, and if we’re talking about Jack and what was established in his first flashback episode, you could click on something that takes you there,” he said. But as an accountant, he was more inclined just to make notes in a ledger. “I’ve just created these Word documents, and I just write everything down.”

I think this captures exactly what makes these ultra-complex shows ("The Wire" being the other canonical, non-sci-fi example) so different from what has come before them on television: if you're trying to synthesize the entire history of the show, the proper form for conveying all that information is not a linear narrative. It's a relational database.

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Brainspore

@ #34: It’s not hard to plan out a story arc while still leaving some flexibility in the individual episodes. There are several examples of shows doing that in the past, “Babylon 5″ being one cited earlier. Talented writers can work around unexpected factors without stalling the whole storyline. Another approach is to give each season its own self-contained story arc, a-la “The Wire,” “Dexter” or “24.”

In any case, I think I’m finally off “Lost” now. I just sat through the two-hour season premiere without getting any more questions answered or any significant story developments from where they left off at the end of last season. You broke my heart, J.J. Abrams. You broke my heart!
Destiny

I remember being so excited when “Lost” came back after its 7-month hiatus last year that I collected “Six Secret Lost Videos” from YouTube!
bex

I am glad that I never got into watching Lost, like is too short
Mojave

Does anyone know if you can watch this on ABC.com tonight, or do you have to wait a couple of days…?
Brainspore

That show is trying my patience. I stopped watching “The X Files” around 1998 when it became clear that Chris Carter didn’t have any more of an idea what was going on than I did.

I’m just glad that “Lost” was finally given an end date. It’s hard to create a compelling story arc when you don’t know how much longer you’re supposed to make it last.
buddy66

I no longer watch TV programs that are interrupted by commercials, unless it is a breaking news story. Life is absurd enough and too short to waste precious time being sold soap.

I watched a Tivo’d episode of “Lost” last summer. It would take four men and a bulldog to get me to watch another.

Ditto with BSG. It jumps so many sharks it looks like a feeding frenzy.
WarEagle

I agree Brainspore, I was about done with Lost until they finally announced the end date. Ever since the first season that’s always been the biggest question I had, how will it end??
yri

Lost has lost me. Endlessly throwing never-resolved plot twists at an audience is, in the end, just boring to me.
davyl

Have you ever heard of the band “Previously On Lost” They recap each episode of Lost. If you’re a fan of Lost you might find them amusing. here is there myspace page:

http://www.myspace.com/previouslyonlostmusic
Beanolini

#22, ab5tract:

assuming you actually understand what people are saying, I wouldn’t say The Wire is all that complicated plot wise

I’ve recently watched (and greatly enjoyed) some of The Wire on DVD, and I’m ashamed to admit that I found it necessary to use subtitles. I shall never again laugh at Americans for subtitling UK programmes.

As for Lost; I watched the first series, and felt that the writers had no idea where it was going; haven’t seen it since.
Daemon

The more i’ve heard people go on about how awsome this show is, the less interested i’ve become in actually watching an episode.

Of course, other than doctor who, i don’t even watch english-language tv programs anymore.
zuzu

I’ve always been fascinated by the question of exactly how much of “Lost”‘s web the producers and writers of the show have planned out,

I’m nearly certain that stopped when the hatch was opened at the end of the first season.

and how much they’re making up as they go along.

That’s everything that followed.
Drhaggis

There is a “Lost” linked database, of sorts, the Wiki-driven Lostpedia. It’s the only way I could keep up with all the twists and sly references.

I agree that having an end date and a target makes for better stories in these kinds of shows.
arkizzle

Buddy, the problem is:

“I watched a Tivo’d episode of “Lost” last summer.”

Frankly, I don’t imagine I’d like it half as much if I’d started in the middle. When it originally aired, I missed the 3rd and 4th episode of season 1. So I made it my mission to avoid all contact with it (tv/internet/magazines/friends discussing it) until I the boxset came out so I could catch up, without discovering the “reveals” accidently.

Well, I did it and it took me two years, around the time season 3 started, so by that time season 1 & 2 were boxed. But what a treat, having two whole seasons to get through, all at once with no ads and no waiting-til-next-week.

If you care to, you should sit down with a season 1 boxset, and watch without preconceptions, sequentially, from the first episode.

If you are anything like me, you will come-to about 18 hours later, full-bladdered, empty-stomached, sans job, sans a clue what time it is, hogging bandwidth on rapidshare or torrents to d’l seasons 2, 3, 4.. neeeed my fix.. :)

If you go in cynically you probably won’t enjoy it, but if you (as others in the thread have observed) let it wash over you, and just watch it, you might just find a great story, with a long back catalogue to invest some time in.
buddy66

Arky,

I think the ”waiting-til-next week” is an important part of the appeal of a successful series. The previously mentioned masterpiece, ”The Wire,” sure used to hang me up all week. I can’t imagine how one could not O.D. with a compilation; all the symptoms you mention would absolutely be mine, since I am so piss-poor at the deferred gratification routine.

Maybe it’s a glitch from fondly remembered Saturday morning serials and our gang’s collective plaint, ”How’s he gonna get outta that shit?”
Chris Spurgeon

re #3, “Lost” was given its end date before the beginning of season 4 (actually, the show producers *asked* for a known ending time, and ABC agreed).

This has given the Lost writers an extraordinary opportunity…one that’s never happened before in TV as far as I know…the ability to tell a three-year-long story while all the time knowing exactly how much time they have left.

I think it’s one of the reasons the last season of Lost was (IMO) so great…they were free to come up with some really way out there stuff while KNOWING that they’ll have the time to tie everything together.
SeattlePete

Here’s how I wish the quote had read:

“Had he a background in computer science, Mr. Nations now says, he wouldn’t have tied an 80′s Apple II to a 70s real-to-real tape drive and used it as a dummy terminal to punch in numbers, because that is stupid. But as an accountant, he was forced to hire a scientific adviser for the show.”

Seriously…how do geeks watch this tripe? I got through the end of season 2 and when I realized that they were going to try and explain the computer surviving an EMP generated just a few meters away as a result of the “Faraday cage” surrounding the room I called BS, took my remote and went to go watch some MythBusters. Lost is all fi, no sci.
El Stinko

Nuts on all of ya. I think Lost is one of the best TV shows ever created, period. The show was definitely trying my patience seasons 2 and some of 3, but 4 was excellent, with more structured plots, less pointless episodes, and actual explanations (which usually led to more questions but at least there was a feeling of progress). I am really excited about S5 starting tonight.

I agree with Steven in that, you have to be willing to let go of a lot of stuff and just let the show wash over you. But I find it’s complexities and apparent incongruities acceptable, and even enjoyable. But you have to just let the tide take it where it will.

I think, once it is all wrapped up, it will be a hallmark series in the history of television. It might even make sense.

Disclaimer: I do *not* work for ABC’s PR department!
PolishQ

@el stinko:

Agreed.

Lost follows in the grand tradition of The Prisoner, Twin Peaks, and the X-Files, with the important distinction that the show has not been canceled before its time and will not outstay its welcome.

IMO, they’ve always provided just enough answers to reward long-time viewers, while bringing up enough new questions to sustain the element of mystery that the first season thrived on. It’s a tough balancing act (which Twin Peaks flubbed), but they pull it off.
arkizzle

”How’s he gonna get outta that shit?”

Yeah, that’s why I kinda think you’d like Lost, it’s all cliffhangers. Maybe just not your cup of tea.. :)
monstrinho_do_biscoito

i’m just going to wait until it’s all over, then read the wikipedia page.
himynameischuck

Finally, someone who agrees with me! Friends and family get so mad at me when I refuse to speculate on what is going to happen or what it all means. And I love the analogy of just letting it wash over you.
Brainspore

…Lost is all fi, no sci.

It took you two seasons to realize that a show about a magical island full of ghosts and psychics wasn’t exactly science-based? Good thing you bailed before they pulled out all the time-travel stuff.
cory

Boo relational database. The proper way to do this is with a Triplestore. Yay semantic web. This is literally a web of semantics.
Brainspore

“Lost” has had some interesting stories to tell, but stretching them out over so many seasons has hurt the show. Had I been a producer for “Lost” this is how I would have planned out the story arc:

SEASON 1: More or less how the actual first season panned out. Story focus is on the passengers and the mysterious circumstances that brought them to the island. Also introduce the mysterious “Others” as antagonists.

SEASON 2: Focus is on the Others, including retelling of Season 1 events from their perspective in a way that actually explains their actions. The season ends with survivors getting off the island.

SEASON 3: The survivors struggle to adjust with returning to normal life as the last secrets of the island are revealed.

There you go! All the cool stories still get told, nobody has time to get sick of the show, and we don’t have to sit through yet another episode of Locke having flashbacks of his daddy issues or Charlie’s life as a washed-up rock junkie. Then, instead of Season 4 we get a brand new show from the creators of “Lost!”
arkizzle

SeattlePete, if you missed the whole of season one, I’m not sure you can offer a valid criticism of the show, beyond the snardpickering you did.
FarrisGoldstein

#12 POLISHQ:

The Prisoner was not cancelled. In fact, Patrick McGoohan (RIP) stated emphatically that he originally only wanted to do 7 of them, and only stretched it out because the studio said he had to.
John Hudgens

@#10 Chris Spurgeon – Lost isn’t the first – Babylon 5 did it ten years ago, telling a five-year story that had been mapped out ahead of time…

Lost has gotten better since they finally had a concerete end date and episode to work toward – it was really spinning its wheels for some time…
minTphresh

lost? me likee~!
execbp

I agree that the best way to enjoy Lost is to not try and figure it all out. Last season was the best yet and early reviews I have read about tonight’s new episodes (there are 2 on back to back) say that they are stunning and amazing.

I would take issue with the comments that the producers and writers don’t know where the story is going, in fact that is why they wanted an end date. To plot their story into the allotted time left.

From Wikipedia, but widely available elsewhere:

Executive producers Lindelof and Cuse stated that they “always envisioned Lost as a show with a beginning, middle, and end,” and that by announcing when the show would end that viewers would “have the security of knowing that the story will play out as we’ve intended.”[71] Lindelof and Cuse stated that securing the 2010 series-end date “was immensely liberating” and helped the series rediscover its focus.[74] Lindelof noted, “We’re no longer stalling.”[74] Matthew Fox is the only cast member who knows the ending of the show.[75]
dignam

I just created a piece for 3quarksdaily.com that works exactly like a relational database. Please take a look at it here:

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/01/the-history-of-tomorrow-the-silent-generation-speaks.html
Brainspore

@#17 posted by execbp,

Well, that’s exactly my point. It took the producers years to get an end date, and by their own admission they spent much of the interim “stalling” and losing their “focus.” Imagine how good the show could have been had they STARTED with an end date.

Just one example: the entire subplot of the “tailees” could have been cut completely without impacting any of the major developments in the show. That’s almost one superfluous season right there.
Mojave

Anyone else remember when the Tsunami hit in the Indian Ocean a few years back? The very first episode of LOST that aired immediately after that opened with an unusually high tide washing up on the beach the Losties used. Very weird synchronicity.
gabejones

Lost is as good a teevee show as we are likely to ever get, certainly of the wierd scifi variety.
If you have watched all the episodes, it is not that disjointed. Sure, there’s alot we don’t know, but I have always had the feeling that THEY knew, and that all that withheld information was for very successful dramatic effect.
I think this season will be where a lot of the mystery is revealed.
Thorzdad

Way back in time, I sat down to watch the very first episode. The ads made the show look very intriguing. I got about 20 minutes in and lost all interest.

Flash-forward to last year when SciFi channel started re-running Lost. By then, it had become such a pop-culture sensation that I decided I must have missed something. So, I sat down and settled-in to enjoy episode 1. Twenty minutes later, I once again lost all interest. My loss, I suppose. It just didn’t click for me.
arkizzle

Sorry, that was probably a bit dismissive, but c’mon..

I won’t take the accusation of snardpickering back :)
ab5tract

Do you really think that The Wire was all that complicated, in terms of plot structure?

A relational database for Balmerese, but assuming you actually understand what people are saying, I wouldn’t say The Wire is all that complicated plot wise. As to its spot in my history of television, it gets #1 and nothing comes close to touching it.

I stopped watching Lost after watching a special feature from the Season 1 DVD in which some writers are talking about how they already had the plot worked out for 7 seasons, with the implication that they were going to keep that open ended. I cannot stand open ended TV shows and IMO they are the number one reason for TV sucking so bad. Let alone the fact I was watching 10 minutes from the last episode at the beginning of each new episode, and Season 2 looked like a classic example of taking a great idea and spreading it around until it resembled monkey shit flung directly in my face. It was obvious to me that the network execs were asking the writers to stretch their little money maker as far as it could go. Maybe I’ll give it a chance once its over, but I don’t have the patience for being strung along by a show that was so obviously sacrificing story for extending the franchise for financial gain (which pretty much sums up season 2).

If Cowboy Bebop were still airing, would it be any good? Chances are definitely against it. If it weren’t already awful, it would at least surely have lost its compelling nature years ago. What is the big disconnect in the US where network execs think the public would rather watch a good idea die slowly and never fully blossom over a complex _story_ (emphasis on the Beginning, Middle, and End here) told over 5 (or hopefully fewer) seasons?

Maybe preordained conclusions of Lost and Battlestar Galactica signal and end to this cultural sabotage. One can only hope.
minTphresh

mmmmm, snardpickles.
SeattlePete

@#30 BRAINSPORE:

“It took you two seasons to realize that a show about a magical island full of ghosts and psychics wasn’t exactly science-based?”

Nope. I missed Season 1, and the first couple of episodes of season 2. The ghosts and psychics didn’t really get started until S3…up until that point it was mostly stuff that could be explained with dreams (walt) crazy people (hurley) or science experiments (polar bears). Once I saw that computer set-up though, I thought “this is total crap”.
thievedrelic

abrams has also claimed, at one point, that it would all come together in some kind of sense at the end…
Hyouko

I just wish they’d spend more time on the properly interesting characters. Jack, Kate, and even Locke are pretty well played out at this point; we know what makes them tick.
airshowfan

I agree with PolishQ. I don’t mind that new questions keep coming up, as long as some of the old ones get answered. It’s like a casino, or a video-game: The rewards have to come just often enough for us to want to suffer the unrewarding times in between, to develop the feeling that a big reward is “just around the corner”. (Look up “Unpredictable reinforcement”).

And I kinda LIKE the fact that not ALL the old questions get answered. Any good sci-fi/fantasy will occasionally give you a glimpse of something grand but never really explain where it came from or how it works. I’m sure there’s some literary term for this. It allows fans to fill in the gaps with their own imaginations, which is part of the fun.

But yeah, sometimes there’s too much “filler” material, even entire “filler” episodes that are totally 100% skippable. But as others have noted here, since the middle of season 3 this has not been much of a problem. Maybe at the end someone can make a “compressed edit” of Lost (at the very least a list of episodes excluding the filler content, at the most a series of DVD with all filler content removed, i.e. each episode being somewhat shortened). If any show has the fan-energy for something like this, Lost does.
Karlos

Yup, Smart Culture + You Learn as You Play.

It’s shocking that it’s still hard for public libraries to get funding because budgets are controlled by people who think “Fiction? Drama? Culture? but that’s _just_ recreation! No real value”.

Fictive constructs allow us to perceive issues from many viewpoints, and the basis of a civil society is an ability to see the other guy’s (and your own) perspective. Not to mention the advantage that gives in business and the Sciences.

Duh, no smart culture, no smart society.
arkizzle

zingy.
musicpsych

I love Lost, mostly because I like the mind-blowing, WTF moments, and because it’s hooked me enough to where I want to find out what happens. It’s hard to find a show as engaging, that pays off for viewers who invest their time in it. I agree, there have been episodes (and seasons) that could be seen as filler, but most shows do. (I was really irritated when almost all of the characters introduced at the beginning of season two were dead by the end of the season.) I expect that by the time the last episode airs, it will make more sense, but there will also probably be some mysteries that won’t be explained, probably because anything they put down on film won’t be as good as what we could speculate.

I was thinking about this, in terms of TV writers planning everything out from the beginning, and it’s probably too difficult and unrealistic to do that. There are many factors at play, from writers to network feedback to actor availability to budgetary concerns ratings to audience feedback, that having everything mapped out from day one might be a sure way to failure. If one single thing changes, your whole plan could go out the window. It’s also bad to cling to plot elements that you see as necessary, but that simply don’t work with the assembled cast and crew.
ian_b

They’re totally winging it.

I’ve never seen a subtle detail in an early episode that later related to a bigger plotline in a way that must have required serious forethought. This is what you would expect if there was a grand vision in place from the get-go.