Now, I Shall Vanish From The Internet Until "Lost" Has Aired

Erin Farley of Oregon has the right approach to watching the series finale of "Lost" tonight:

Erin Farley has her plans for Sunday all laid out. Two hours before the last episode of “Lost” is broadcast three time zones away, she will shut down her home Internet connection. TweetDeck? Off. Facebook? Off. Her cellphone? Stashed out of reach.

“I’ll turn off the whole Internet just to avoid having anything spoiled,” said Ms. Farley, a 31-year-old freelance writer in Portland, Ore. “I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

That's an excerpt from this article by Jenna Wortham from Friday's New York Times.

This is the best way to handle tonight's finale, and I plan to adopt that approach, as well.

Until tomorrow, dear readers.

Lost - The Series FInale

LOST

(September 22, 2004 - May 23, 2010)

Tonight sees the airing of the two and a half hour series finale of TV's "Lost," and you can bet I'll be watching. (I'm not certain I'll catch the two hour clip show beforehand, but I'll stay tuned for the special post-show wrap-up hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and featuring most of the cast.).

"Lost," to me, is a perfect example of how television has evolved as a storytelling medium. When I was growing up in the 1980s, there were few television producers that saw their programs as an opportunity to tell a single story over the course of twenty, or even a hundred, hours. These days, however, showrunners share stories over the course of a single episode, but arcs also span an entire season, or as in the case of "Lost," an entire series. This trend has made the viewing experience all the more satisfying and rewarding, and it should be encouraged.

"Lost" has always been a show about characters and their evolution, and the manner in which the storytellers play with the concept of time has been fascinating. During the first several seasons, we learned about who the characters were through a series of flashbacks. Then, in a twist, we began to learn where they would end up through a series of flash forwards. The penultimate season played with time all the more, hurling characters back into the 1970s and allowing them to participate in, and perhaps even cause, events in the future (but in their subjective pasts). What better way to explore the concepts of fate and free will?

Back in my long ago college days, a film professor of mine commented upon the concept of "post hoc reconstruction," namely, a narrative conceit that requires the viewers to order and put together the events of a narrative after it has been viewed. At the time, the term was used in reference to Pulp Fiction and its series of out of temporal order vignettes. But so too does "Lost" require this of the viewer, meaning that in addition to entertainment, it is also a neat puzzle of sorts to be solved (both between episodes as well as the vast expanses of time between seasons).

Sure, there has always been the mystery and mythology of the show, and that too has been fun to watch unfold. But as many canceled copycat series learned, all of that is nothing without the character development. Sometimes, "Lost" characters could no longer evolve and served no other narrative purpose; but no one could argue that the producers were shy about dispatching them. (Thankfully, though, they never took out the lovely Evangeline Lilly, who as I noted here not too long ago, never really diversified her career beyond this popular television series.). Unafraid of bold narrative choices, and resistant to a stale status quo, the show took risks.

But tonight, all of that comes to an end. To be honest, I haven't a clue how it will all end (despite my previous speculation on that subject). I suspect, though, that showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof have a few tricks up their sleeves, and no doubt, they've learned from the mistakes of and reactions to other series finales, such as "The Sopranos" and "Battlestar Galactica." (It helps, also, to know that no series finale could ever be as good or emotionally satisfying as that of HBO's "Six Feet Under," which aired just five years ago.). I doubt any of us will be able to avoid the news stories, summaries, blog entries, and general speculation to be published on the web immediately after the finale tonight and well into this coming week. But at this point, with just two and a half hours left in the series, I can say it's been a fun ride.

"March Has 32 Days"

As we approach the end of the month of March, we should pause to reflect upon the comic book story "March Has 32 Days" and its relation to ABC's "Lost." You can read this four page story here from Mystery Tales #40, published in April 1956, at a blog dedicated to this very issue of that comic series. It was featured prominently in "Cabin Fever," the eleventh episode of the fourth season of "Lost," some of which takes place in 1956. (You can learn more about this comic book's significance in the "Lost" universe here, and as per a commenter below, here). Enjoy. And remember how many days has March.

The Week That Was (3/13 -3/19)

1. And you thought the flash sideways on TV's "Lost" were confusing. I'm not entirely certain what is going on in the video above, but there is something very sinister about the way Michael Emerson (who plays Benjamin Linus) professes his fondness for cake. Yikes.

2. I can't believe I missed this post over at A Sampler of Things, in which the author shares with us his old Pep Cereal advertisement featuring none other than Superman, the Man of Steel.


3. Finally, in some sad news, this week saw the passing of Alex Chilton, who as a teenager was a member of The Box Tops (known for their single "The Letter") and Big Star, a hugely influence early alternative band. Many of us first come to know of Chilton and Big Star from the 1987 Replacements song, "Alex Chilton," which we suspect has been getting a lot of airplay these past few days. Here's a collection of links to a number of blogs tributes to Chilton:

• Perfect Sounds: "R.I.P. Alex Chilton"
• Slicing Up Eyeballs: "Big Star's Alex Chilton, 1950-2010"
  
• Pop Candy: "R.I.P., Alex Chilton"
• Pop Culture Safari: "So long Alex Chilton"
  
• New York Times Arts Beat: "Alex Chilton, Rock Musician, Dies"
  
• The Music Slut: "RIP Alex Chilton"
  
• The Post Punk Progressive Pop Party: "R.I.P."
  
• Stereogum: "R.I.P. Alex Chilton"
  
• Brooklyn Vegan "Alex Chilton, RIP"
  

Evangeline Lilly as Lois Lane? (2004)

As ABC's "Lost" progresses through its final season (with a new episode tonight), one mystery that may never be solved: What ever happened to the idea of that show's star, Evangeline Lilly, as Lois Lane in the rebooted Superman franchise? There was a time when the Internet was abuzz with casting rumors as Bryan Singer's Superman Returns entered pre-production. (According to this 2004 report, she was among the four finalists for the part, despite the fact that "Lost" had only been on the air a month at the time of that report.). Although the part ultimately went to Kate Bosworth, Lilly would have been a more interesting choice based on her six seasons as the enterprising and independent minded Kate Austen in ABC's most mysterious series. Although Singer purportedly wanted an unknown to play the part, perhaps Lilly was too unknown at that time? Or perhaps the ultimate reason for the casting decision is lost to the ages. Whatever the case, in the five and a half years since "Lost" premiered, Lilly has not made the transition to films. In fact, since 2004, she's only appeared in three films, the most recent being last year's critically acclaimed the The Hurt Locker. Interestingly enough, Lilly actually has a bit of a Superman pedigree; prior to "Lost," she appeared thrice on TV's "Smallville," although you can ascertain the size of her roles from the names of her characters: In 2002, she played "Wade's Girlfriend" and was uncredited, in 2003, she played "Girl in Cinema" and was uncredited, and in 2004 - just eight months before "Lost" would premiere - she played "School Girl," a character without even a name. Alas. Lilly has exhibited an ability to play spunky and independent female characters, which would certainly have been an asset to playing the fabled Lois Lane.

Namaste! Lost Begins Anon.

The first episode of the final season of "Lost" begins only minutes from now. Namaste!

Off Duty XVI

Tonight is the season premiere of the sixth and final season of TV's "Lost." Sure, I could try to reconcile taking a vacation day from blogging about pop culture's past to watch a television show from its present. But I won't do that here. Know only that a show with mysterious flashbacks and time travel will always prevail over the toil that is nostalgia blogging. See you tomorrow. Maybe. (While you anxiously await the premiere, check out this family portrait of Ben Linus and his father, Roger, over at the Secret Fun Blog and this December 2009 account of anticipation or Lost's final season by The Nerdy Girl.). And, hey, I already blogged twice today!

See my predictions for the opening episode here, posted last week.

One Week Until the Lost Premiere

Above: "LOST: Flight 815 Crash in Real Time," by YouTube user pyram1dhead

As of today, it is but one week until the premiere of the sixth and final season of the television show, "Lost." It is both an exciting and bittersweet occasion; though the new season brings new episodes and answers to long lingering questions, it is also the last season. There is no more.

- Spoilers and Predictions Found Below -

Last season was splendid due to its commitment to explore the issue of time travel and how interlopers from the future prove the concept of fate by only being capable of bringing about that which has already occurred. Some of the characters, however, unconvinced that what happened has already happened and cannot be changed, detonated a hydrogen bomb on the island in the late 1970s, where they found themselves after a number of anomalies stranded them there. If the program is to remain consistent in its theory of time travel, then the resulting explosion would change nothing about the future: the castaways would still find themselves on the Island in 2004 after having survived the crash of Oceanic Flight 815. All efforts of the characters to change that fate from the past would inevitably fail, as they were destined to crash on the Island, face the Others, find themselves transported to the past, attempt to change the future, but only bring about the future that brought them to the past in the first place to bring about that same future.

Circular, eh?

But as a narrative strategy, that may not be very satisfying. It would not be very pleasing to the audience to learn in the first several minutes of the premiere that all of their favorite characters were obliterated in the explosion but failed to change the future. So, I predict one of two possible outcomes which will be revealed in the first episode of the sixth season. One, viewers will learn that despite what we saw there was no explosion at all. Certainly, the last image we saw was the character of Juliet Burke frantically hitting the bomb and then a flash of white light. But that is not necessarily confirmation of an explosion; it may have just been a fade to white.. Two, and probably more likely, we will learn that the characters were successful in both detonating the device and changing the future. In so doing, their 2004 will be radically transformed: instead of crashing on the island in September of 2004 as we know they did, their plane will not crash and they will travel from Sydney, Australia to Los Angeles, California without incident, thereby erasing the events of the first five seasons. The characters, who came to know each other well over the past five seasons, will exit their plane at LAX never having met. But what then? Perhaps the Island will draw them back together in the unexplained mysterious ways that it does so many other things. I'm curious to learn how the cliffhanger will be resolved. And I will, in a week.

The YouTube video above, by the way, is a splendidly fun experiment by the enterprising user, pyram1dhead, who created a 24-style real time mash-up of all of the views and vantage points of the crash of Flight 815 from various episodes throughout the past five seasons.