Getting Lost

The mini-season of Lost has come to an end, with no new episodes until February. I understand a few million viewers found themselves underwhelmed at the beginning of the season. I hope they're still paying attention.

The writers were faced with an unusual dilemma this season. Last year, ABC frustrated viewers with an erratic schedule, leaving the show off the air for weeks at a time, coming back for one new episode and following it with another two-week break. Ratings fell, and a balanced solution was sought. Would the series be better off if it ran straight through starting in January? That would be a long wait for one of the network's flagship shows. As a compromise, they split the series into parts. Six episodes would air in the fall, eighteen would be shown back to back in the second half of the television season.

I hope it's obvious to ABC and the show's producers now that that was the wrong move. Serialized shows work best when they can air week to week without interruption. Considering how many viewers are used to watching the show on DVD, a long wait for a full season is better than splitting it up into any number of parts.

Additionally, airing what amounts to a six episode prologue does nothing to placate the fickle audience who has been demanding answers right now for the past two seasons. Cliff-hangers on three different parts of the island had to be wrapped up. Given the show's grounding in character flashbacks, this took up half of the episodes. Immediately after those were resolved, a mini-season cliff-hanger had to be set in place. This tight outline allowed for little screen time for anyone other than Jack, Kate, and Sawyer, and left several mysteries that should have been addressed in the wake of last season's finale untouched. (Did Charlie tell anyone what happened in the hatch or was he happy living under the assumption that Locke and Eko were dead? How did Locke, Eko, and Desmond escape from the implosion? Has Sayid mentioned the big foot to anyone? What was the response on the beach to the sky turning purple?)

Put in perspective, I think the writers did the best they could with the time they had to tell a story. And while the payoff was limited in scope, it made for a very smart cliff-hanger. Leaving Sawyer with a gun to his head wouldn't exactly have me on the edge of my seat. Leaving Kate and Sawyer with one hour to escape from an island prison and Ben in the hands of a very pissed off Jack? That's something to look forward to.

To compare the show to one of my other favorite mysteries, I don't expect George R.R. Martin to bring the evil in a Song of Ice and Fire novel until all the characters have been reintroduced and we know where they're going. (On the other hand, leaving out half the cast didn't work well in A Feast For Crows, either. SoIF without Tyrion is like Lost without Hurley.) I expect Lost will return to business as usual in February, when we can finally learn what Bernard thinks of the fact that everyone else from the tail section is dead.