LOST: Back To The Island is a new book from TV critics Emily St. James and Noel Murray that offers an insightful retrospective on one of the most iconic television shows of the 21st century so far: LOST, which first premiered almost exactly 20 years ago, on September 22, 2004.
While an excerpt from the book was published on The AV Club, I was much more drawn in by a recent essay shared via St. James's newsletter (one of my favorite pop culture-related newsletter, by the way; highly recommended). This passage in particular really stuck out to me:
My main beef with the whole "10-hour movie" mindset of today's prestige TV is that it generally doesn't allow the writers much room to make episodes into discrete units of entertainment, with their own arc, beats, and moments to make audiences sit up and pay closer attention. The lack of commercial breaks in the premium cable and subscription streaming eras also has a role in the decline of the "make each episode memorable" approach. Hooking and holding an audience was crucial on network television 20 years ago, so Lindelof and Cuse made sure that every Lost chapter had cliffhangers and payoffs and amusing little character moments sprinkled from beginning to end. Lost entertains. It's not just heavy chunks of plot, parceled out in 40-minute blocks (or enervating one-hour blocks, as so many series are today).
In fact, the reason I watched Lost obsessively every week when it originally aired wasn't just to find out what would happen next, but because I genuinely didn't know what any given episode would bring. Would Sayid be an international assassin? Would Sawyer become a trusted part of the Dharma Initiative? Lost's writers had all the time they needed to indulge in entertaining digressions like these. Because they had to fill that time, they designed the show in such a way that it basically required surprising little tangents.
This is something I think about quite often: there really was some value in the rigid structures of this sort of serialized storytelling. A-plots handed off to B-plots, there were built-in cliffhanger moments designed for commercial breaks—all of which may have been a utilitarian form forced on the show, sure, but all of which also kept it moving by necessity.
Later in that same essay, St. James and Murray also reflect on the lost (ba-dum-tisch) art of both making each episode stand on its own; and in having to fill the time. A typical LOST episode would focus on one character across two different timelines (or whatever). Ideally, these plots would have some sort of thematic resonance to one another. But combined, this turned each installment into a singular, cohesive unit. You could watch one, and get a complete experience. And if it sucked (which some of them certainly did, Nikki and Paolo*!), then all you had to do was wait until the next episode, and you might find something that you liked again.
There's a value to that episodic experience! Not only does it help the show appeal to a wide range of viewers, but it also forces you, as a viewer, to consider the bigger picture of the show, rather than your own immediate gratification. (Murray and St. James explain this much more articulately than I do.)
Similarly, Murray and St. James point out how some of the show's most memorable moments were a result of the need to fill time. You fell in love with these characters in part because you spent so much time with them—something that, again, gets lost in the modern 8-hour-movie-randomly-chopped-up-into-episodes format. Sure, that storytelling format is more direct and economical. But the sometimes the necessity of just producing content because you have to fill the time can force a story to make some other decisions that end up resonating more in the long-run. (Chris Claremont's original run on X-Men was similar in this regard.)
I think all of this contributes to the fact that so many people still have such strong feelings about LOST. Granted, some of that is disappointment and anger; I definitely have friends who committed so much of their lives to the show that they were never going to get the satisfaction that they hoped for by the end.** There are also people are still hung up on the fucking polar bears*** because they're idiots, but there's only so much you can do for those poor fools. But overall, there is something to be said about the fact that, well, they don't make 'em (TV shows) like they used to.
LOST: Back to the Island: The Complete Critical Companion to The Classic TV Series [Emily St. James and Noel Murray / Abrams Books]
Emily St. James and Noel Murray head Back To The Island in first book excerpt [Danette Chavez / The AV Club]
What we miss when we miss Lost [Emily St. James / Episodes]
*Just kidding, the Nikki and Paolo episode was a brilliant piece of a meta-commentary. I loved it.
**I crammed the first 5 seasons in over about two months of time, then watched the final season live every week with a group of deeply invested friends. As a result, I feel largely good about the show! Nothing felt dragged out to me! But I will never forget the tension in the air on the night of the finale (not least of which because Somerville lost power halfway through…).
***They were brought there by the fucking Dharma Initiative to use in their various experiments, it really wasn't that hard to figure out.
