Season 4 has a starting date

Remember that Season 4 trailer? Course you do. You've analyzed it, dissected it, and unlike me, came to the conclusion that it featured a polar bear skull, not that of a cycloptic being that once ruled the Island through a combination of fear, intimidation, and Riverdancing skills. I will say kudos to all of you who looked at that frame of the trailer and thought, "Now, that's a polar bear skull if ever I did see one!" Yours truly spent his college years studying pre-17th century British literature. My only exposure to bears is the time Antigonus left pursued by one in "The Winter's Tale."

That all being said: you'll be able to see that footage and a whole lot more starting January 31st, the date announced this week by ABC as the night Season 4 of Lost will premiere in all its skulled glory. This is a mixed blessing, as far as I am concerned: while I'm ecstatic to the point of Riverdancing myself that I'll be able to see new episodes of my favorite show in 6 weeks time, I'm also concerned that the abandoning of the 16-week, uninterrupted season will disrupt the narrative flow that the producers have laid out.

The potential exists for this to be another version of the 6-week experiment that ABC tried with Season 3, and we all know how that turned out. The producers weren't happy, the fans weren't happy, and much goodwill was lost all around. The producers of Lost have gone on record as being against this eight-episode idea, which essentially means ABC weighed the creative vision of the show versus their bottom line and realized that new episodes of Lost in a new timeslot (Thursdays, 9 pm). Lost fought the profits, and the profits won.

Now, is ABC evil for doing this? I definitely wouldn't go that far. They are a business, and in the business of making money, and as such I understand their reasoning. I don't necessarily like it, as one who wants to see a 4-month story unfold at the pace desired by the writers I've come to trust over the years, but I also don't want to live in some utopian world where the laws of market economics don't exist. The tension between art and commerce exists in many forms of media, and this is another example. Competing against reruns, ABC will earn boffo ratings, and potentially boffo advertising bucks, off of running these eight episodes in a post-strike television landscape.

But here's the twist: given the hubbub surrounding the 6-episode arc debacle in Season 3, is this move actually economically beneficial to ABC in the long run? If you look at the dwindling numbers of the (still quite large) audience that watched Lost, you can attribute the drop-off primarily to two things:

1. The surfeit of reruns during Season 2, which frustrated viewers to the point that they simply stopped tuning in
2. The slow, unresolved nature of the first six episodes of Season 3, followed by a four-month hiatus

Take all that, and then read these quotes from Damon Lindelof in an interview with E!Online:

It looks like Lost will air eight episodes and then go dark. Does it sadden you that you're not able to deliver those 16 in a row that were promised to the fans?
...We learned last year that the show moves at a certain pace, and you can't build up critical momentum in the first six episodes.

So, [Episode 8 is] a cliffhanger?
Yes. And that's the thing, we really planned out the three seasons of 16, 16 and 16...so the idea of having to come back and maybe do a 24-episode season, and that would be season five is just...I can't look the fans in the eye and tell them that we're executing the original plan anymore.

There are two things to glean from this. The first is that the show's essentially taken one big idea per season and built narrative momentum from that. So that's what Damon means by "a certain pace." You can look at each season and say, "This season was about THIS." Season 1's about the Lostaways realizing this Island isn't what it seems; Season 2 is about the Hatch/introducing the Dharma Initiative, Season 3 is about the Others, and Season 4 will be about the freighter (or polar bear skulls, perhaps).

That's why the second quote involved Damon unwilling to split up the seasons into an 8- and 24-episode run. For the writers of Lost, the show's seasons are driven by themes, not calendars. The Season 4 story lasts 16 episodes, period. Splitting it up and attaching half of it to another television cycle violates the story of the show. Season 4 is designed to end on a cliffhanger that will take a year to resolve. Imagine how less impactful the end of "Through the Looking Glass" would be if there were another episode the following week!

I have a lot more thoughts on this matter, so many that I will have to continue them over the next week of the show. As such, I'm putting a temporary squash on the ongoing essays about time in the Lost universe and my "Top Ten Episodes" list for the time being, as the trailer for Season 4 and the show's starting date taking precedent in the meantime. Hope you don't get too sad about that.

In any case, I want to hear what you think: are you happy about new Lost sooner rather than later? Would you rather wait for all 16 episodes of Season 4 to be completed? Is ABC doing right by the fans, or wrong by them?

Ryan also posts every 108 minutes over at Boob Tube Dude.