The Culture Beat

Fans of the groundbreaking ABC series have, depending on the depth of their devotion and available leisure time, numerous ways to indulge in their favorite series as they await the Feb. 2nd season première of Lost’s last season, the one in which their patient waiting for answers will be rewarded with some sort of grand explanation of the island’s many mysteries. I absolutely love the series but, perhaps by temperament, have never immersed myself into the vast ocean of website, plot minutiae or peripheral activities spun off by ABC. But I hope to pursue my own line of research of the series as an exemplar of what I call the television Maxi-Series, a dramatic program with an intended ending and thus a limited numbers of episodes, rather than the typical rolling episodes until the series expires creatively and ratings-wise. So here are some ways to prepare for the last chapter, volume or whatever you want to call the last season of one of television’s most magnum opi.

Readers of this blog will recall my love and appreciation for Entertainment Weekly’s Jeff “Doc” Jensen’s brilliant “Totally Lost” blogs that at least double the pleasure of the show. Jensen, one of the magazine’s most energetic followers of pop culture, is also highly intelligent and continuously delves into the more esoteric theories, mythologies, philosophies and scientific ruminations to offer highly entertaining interpretations of the show’s meaning. During last season’s his EW colleague Dan Snierson joined Jensen in an online video series that riffed on the current plotlines and was screamingly funny. I look forward to the guys’ return to the small computer screen.

But meanwhile, Jeff’s latest theory, on the island as a place where addictive behavior of various characters may perhaps find healing, currently the lead piece at Totally Lost, ponders the series’ redemptive theme, and Jensen’s Christian faith again serves him in understanding the need for healers, like castaway Dr. Jack Shepherd, to look at the mote in his own eye before he can truly help others.

Speaking of redemption, I teach a class at Palm Beach Atlantic University called “Redemptive Storytelling in Television and Film and I used this video last year since it encapsulates the various situations from which so many of the characters need redemption.

Another place to look for those wanting very in-depth discussion of whole episodes, there’s “Lost in Translation,” a blog by Shawn McEvoy, Senior Editor of Crosswalk.com. His blog appears at the same place mine is carried, theFish.com. He’s currently going through every episode “looking specifically at Christian/religious themes, other important or interesting concepts, literary references, and the theory that it’s largely been about a game in which someone has won, and someone has… LOST.”

Finally, there’s the ABC Lost site full of clips, interviews and entire episodes to help you get up to speed for season six. Soon we will begin to see just what will become of these complex and compelling characters as they deal with the new chessboard they will find themselves on after Juliet hit the “reset” button on the nuclear device.

How many times have you experienced the long slow decline of a favorite television show as it runs out of steam, drifting into low ratings, its beloved characters fading into ghosts of their once vibrant selves? The nature of network programming, set up to keeping popular shows on the treadmill till they die of creative exhaustion, usually insures that we will see such sad spectacles rather than the rarer cases of a show that goes out strong.

Long ago I wrote an article entitled, “The Titan Who Eats His Children,” about this problem of network series. Saturn was, in Greek mythology, one of the titans that gave birth to the gods of Mt. Olympus. Fearing they would overcome him and rule in his place, Saturn would devour this children as they were born. His wife finally gave him a rock wrapped in swaddling clothes allowing Jupiter (Zeus in the Greek nomenclature) to grow and defeat him, banishing the old Titan and allowing the flourishing of Olympian rule.

Television executives need programs that consistently bring in a certain audiences both in numbers and types of viewers, the number between 18 to 49 being a preferred demographic. Thus each fall they launch a new slate of shows, most of which don’t survive the season. Those that succeed must continue to draw their viewers to the ads placed on the series’ which is of course where the networks get their revenue. A network will stick with promising or strong shows, the happiest outcome being warhorses like the Law & Order and CSI franchise that go for many years. But pity the poor show that falters as the writing staff begins running out of ideas. Whether this happens in the fourth season or tenth, producers can hear the chimes at midnight tolling their imminent demise and will often resort to stunt plots to excite viewers with weddings, deaths of ongoing characters, births or other attention-getting events. But when the audience starts feeling the show is stale, their attachment to a once strong cast of characters wanes and the ratings numbers drop–the best hope at this point is for a show to know the date of its last episode to wrap up any dangling plot threads and depart gracefully for the afterlife of syndication and/or DVD releases of each season.

Happy is the program whose producers negotiate an exit strategy that allows the faithful audience the closure of a farewell. Comedies like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, M*A*S*H*, and Everybody Loves Raymond had happy endings, and perhaps the first drama to quit while it was ahead was the The Fugitive, running, literally, from 1963 to 1967’s big event conclusion where Richard Kimble (David Janssen), finally caught up with the one-armed man. Similarly, other shows were able to end their runs without abrupt cancellation, such as Star Trek: The Next Generation (and the other series in the Trek franchise), and as I recently noted, the recent end of Battlestar Galactica. It’s particularly fortunate for fans when such epic-sized series are able to bring their stories to an end. Crime-oriented shows like The Sopranos and The Shield were able to do notorious or acclaimed finales as well.

The announcement two years ago that Lost would run three more abbreviated seasons put fresh fire back into a show that was clearly running in place since the producers were uncertain when they would need to finally begin paying off all the clues and mysteries they had concocted and thus agreeing with the network on an endpoint revived the show’s energy and my own engagement with the unique series.

Last week’s Entertainment Weekly addressed the question of whether is was time for networks to start conceiving of shows with a serial storytelling format and deep mythological backstory, like Lost, as a sort of maxi-series with a pre-determined endpoint–in other words, like a real, complete story with a beginning, middle and end. This is similar to what the British television has done for years with limited run, just like a novel or play, so that audience attrition, with some viewers tiring of myriad detailed plot points, doesn’t doom a show before its denouement.

The challenge for network executives is that this would be a radical departure from the model of dependably long-running shows to base strategic programming decisions around. They would have to think in two modes–episodic programs, such as the CSI shows, and serial storytelling, with strong creator control of a complete series’ execution. The result would a sort of “maxi-novel” for television that could allow a new form to emerge, capable of complex narratives able to surpass feature films in their multiple storylines and characters and thus gain the potential for greater artistic achievement. Think what J. K. Rowling achieved with her Harry Potter series, always intended as a seven-book epic, and imagine how that might greatly widen the storytelling boundaries for television. (Of course this has been happening for years on soapy Latin American telenovelas.) As television network and cable executive work to solve the challenge of declining revenues during the recession, it may be a good time to rethink the way television tells its stories.

Ever since, at the end of season 3, when Lost’s producers negotiated a deal with ABC to end the show in three shortened seasons, the momentum returned to a series that had premiered to high ratings but, as mysteries and plotlines multiplied, began to lose steam and audience numbers. Although ratings are currently not back to the level of earlier seasons, those who stayed faithful to the densely textured series are being rewarded with a continuous series of revelations that have begun to explain the island’s enigmas while continuing to spin new intrigues.

I was one who was sorely tempted to give up on the seemingly stalled series after the going-nowhere season 3, but when the 4th season started last year, I was back in the fold after the second episode–the peculiar thrills and unique pleasure this series gives me (and which has inspired several dreams) were back again. Creators Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof admitted in an interview that the the third season doldrums reflected their own sense of running in place because they didn’t know if they would have three or nine years to complete their intended story–since the networks typically want a show to continue until it runs out of steam and gets canceled. The ABC deal set the show’s destiny back on track and revived its energy.

The new season which started in January has seen the gathering of the Oceanic Six, the castaways who, despite warnings against leaving, found a way to depart from the island just it time to see it disappear in a flash of light. It’s now apparent that the island is somehow moving through time and space, putting the remaining castaways in various “time zones,” that reveal missing puzzle pieces from earlier seasons. The sense that this is more than just a time travel story arises from the overriding impression that some spiritual force–the island itself?-is controlling the lives of the characters even as they seek to control the island’s careering through the time/space continuum.

One of the best ways to follow and understand the possible meanings of the narrative is Entertainment Weekly’s Jeff Jensen whose EW blog features huge in-depth discussions and recaps twice a week, along with a video package with co-worker Dan Snierson called “Totally Lost.”

What makes Jensen’s blogging more than the usual fan blog is his vast knowledge of literature, pop culture, science and other areas where he finds allusions galore embedded in the episodes. For example, a few weeks ago when we saw that Jack awoke back on the island, Jensen, a professing Christian noted in page 2 of his recap:

No longer was Jack the Doubting Thomas of the Caravaggio painting in Ms. Hawking’s church. He had undergone what they call a ”Pauline” conversion — named after the former persecutor of Christ, Saul, who beheld a vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus, became a believer, and renamed himself Paul — and I’d love to note that my most favorite painting in the world, ”The Conversion On The Road To Damascus,” is also by Caravaggio. (Sorry to make it all about me.)

The Caravaggio painting had figured prominently in an earlier episode, when Benjamin Linus, of all people, had used the painting, hung in a church sanctuary, to persuade Jack to believe in the island’s call to return. Jensen’s theorizing is often rapid-fire and dense, and therefore, completely appropriate for a series that requires close attention to detect the manifold clues and references. I find that I get twice as much out of a week’s episode by reading his before and after analyses. If you’re a Lostphile who has hung in there or would like to get back on board for this revelatory season, you should looking into Jensen’s excellent “guidebook” to help you get back in the groove.