Is the show in danger of getting 'Lost' in its own narrative in Season 6?
As much fun as the meta discussion has been this week, I'm going to turn attention back to "Lost" itself today. Or rather, I'm going to turn attention to the writer's room, a place in which the fate of the show currently resides. A "Lost" nation turns its lonely eyes to you, writers.
I'm turning my attention to a comment the other day that caught my eye from reader sambob, and I'm going to quote it at length since it gets at the heart of 1) what's been bubbling under the surface all week here on the site, and 2) provides an interesting premise that I feel warrants discussion.
While stating that Michael Emerson's work might have superceded his admittedly excellent work in Season 5, sambob describes the entirety of Season 5 in a way that I've seen quite a few others do as well since the finale aired. Here's his take:
"As for Season 5 as a whole, I think in a couple of years when the show can be viewed a completed project, I think Season 5 will be remembered as nothing more than a means to an end. They had to do it to bridge the gap from getting off the island, getting back on and setting up the chess pieces for what we're about to see in Season 6 ... a season I'm ridiculously excited about and can't imagine being disappointed in, no matter what they do. I've trusted Darlton from Day 1 and I put my faith in their vision. It is THEIR vision, after all."There's obviously merit in looking back in order to reevaluate and re-appreciate the show. Hell, I spent all of last off-season doing exactly that. Not only can we already see how well the show pulled off the notLocke trick right before our eyes, but there were certainly seeds sown in Season 5 (as well as all four previous seasons) that will spring forth into a freakin' flower of full-on awesome come next season.
But I'm not sure we need take as gospel that the season, as constituted, was a necessary measure. Or, at the very least, we need to think about why exactly it might have been necessary. sambob has a point that the show needed to do a lot of heavy lifting, but what I'm not sure is overtly realized when defending Season 5 in this manner is that the heavy lifting was predicated on the insane corner into which the writers painted themselves. It's an important point to make, especially when making blanket statements like, "In Darlton We Trust."
It's fine to put "faith," as sambob does, into Darlton's vision. I'm just suggesting we need not make such faith blind. You could look at Season 5 as the best possible solution to an enormous narrative problem. In that case, you respect the way the writers avoided most of the normal clichés and contradictions that come with time travel stories; but you also wonder why they didn't think far enough ahead to avoid these problems in the first place. Or, you could look at Season 5, as I do, as a fairly intentional and, to be honest, fairly arrogant way to succeed where so many other sci-fi writers had failed. (I'm looking at you, "Heroes." Silly, stupid "Heroes" and your butterfly effects that somehow only affect one couple in the entire freakin' universe.)
Now, I use the word "arrogant," but it's a good guy of arrogance. It's the arrogance that dares one to go above and beyond, perform great acts, and do something special. "Lost" is FULL of such arrogance, and it's the show it is because of it. This show attempts things no other show does, and pulls them off on such a consistent basis that at times it's easy to forget just how amazing of a feat it truly is. However, it's one thing to pull off something like the misdirection in "Through the Looking Glass" (an arrogant, bravura writing feat that stands alone in terms of shock and awe) and an internally coherent time-travel saga that recontextualizes everything both we and the characters understand about the events that have unfolded.
And it's not a bad thing to admit they didn't always succeed. I'm saying that in full appreciation of how much they got right last year. But they got enough wrong that it demonstrated to me that they had bitten off slightly more than they could chew. Blame the writers' strike in Season 4 for dislodging their tightly laid out structure; blame the seemingly impenetrable nature of time-travel stories, or just blame it on the unfortunate fact that the writers are brilliant but human. They mess up. They do it far less than just about any other writing group on TV. But they do occasionally mess up. And I think they'd agree.
And if the Seasons 3+4 endings put them into the corner, not unlike Baby, then the doozy of Season 5 has them facing the corner, not unlike The Blair Witch's victims. If you thought time travel was hard to explain in a shortened season, try explaining how Jughead might have undone everything while not alarming/confusing/angering the audience as the show moves towards its finish line. Wrapping up the show when you're threatening to unravel everything that's come before makes for a weary Ryan. Just because it could work doesn't mean it will work.
Just look at how...many...things happened in "The Incident." You barely had room to breathe. A season that was paced to the point of a Pinter play at times suddenly was chock full 'o events that had to happen to get to the climatic explosion that the writers clearly were aiming for from as early as the episode "Jughead," itself, if not far sooner. Rather than ramp up the tension over its explosion over a number of episodes, the show pushed Faraday aside for over a month only to have him return on the sub as a deus ex dorkina to reintroduce the almost-forgotten weapon.
As such, the last three episodes of the season were a lot like the night before you leave on a big trip: you had all these great plans to get everything done in an orderly fashion, and now you're running around wondering where the hair dryer is and figuring out how you can fit all your stuff into this suddenly cramped suitcase. And folks: the "Lost" narrative suitcase is FULL. No chance of getting that into the overhead bin where it could eventually brain a U.S. marshal. If you can honestly say you're not worried about how they are going to actually finish this show in the time allotted, well, tell me what you're drinking. I want a case delivered to my house.
On a scale of 1-10, how confident are YOU in being satisfied with Season 6?
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Nice post Ryan!
9
While I'm not sure how they're going to do it, when even they say "trust us," I'm going to trust them. I was going to trust them anyway. This makes it even more dangerous if they can't pull it off, because my ridiculously high expectations need to be met.
Darlton constantly said that they had to get through this season to get back to character-driven stuff in S6. That's why an alt-Lost frightens me, because if you can't do character-driven stuff in a time travel year, it should be downright impossible to do it in an alternate universe.
I trust Darlton to deliver the goods when it comes to the likes of Locke, Ben, Jacob, MIB, Richard, Eloise, Widmore, and the major mythological figures. But I lost all faith in the Oceanic 6 and company with their slow off-island start in S5, and all the stupid things they did in The Incident.
So we should really be asking if the show can redeem the Jack-and-company side of the plot in S6, because if they can't, the show is doomed, since they control the show- not the people that really matter. They could fix it by reducing them to the B-plots, as they should have been in The Incident, but that obviously won't happen.
I guess I'm somewhere in between Ryan and sambob in how worried I am.
I've seen the analogy before that season 5 was the series equivalent of the episode that comes before the finale each season - lots of people running around and attempting to be in the right place at the right time. That seems to make sense to me. Also, I think that they're in a different kind of corner this time around - while Through the Looking Glass and the next few episodes set things up so that they had to roll out within pretty narrow parameters, I think the way things stand now they're pretty wide open. The way things stand now, the show could go in an almost infinite number of directions since the end of season five ended with people making lots of rash decisions and knowing what zero of the consequences would be. So I'm not too worried about the writers getting stuck in a corner.
All that said, there's still a LOT of ways for them to mess things up. And that's definitely a possibility. But until I find a reason to think otherwise, I'm going to keep thinking that they know what they're doing. Keeps me more emotionally healthy, and all that.
Oban 14 and Balvenie 12. They calm the nerves.
I don't think it was the time travel that was the problem. That all made sense in S5. What didn't make sense to me was how the Ajira flight got to the island (it's almost like the Lamppost station was a con and it was Jacob's magic that brought everyone back) and why Jack made the decisions he did.
The question I have for S6 is how much explaining will there be of what happened in the original timeline (what is Smokey, Richard Alpert's story) vs. new material. That's the balance that they have to find...
Well, I did it again, didn't I?
For most of your column, I didn't know what your gripe was, but when I read this paragraph, it was loud and clear:
"You barely had room to breathe. A season that was paced to the point of a Pinter play at times suddenly was chock full 'o events that had to happen to get to the climatic explosion that the writers clearly were aiming for from as early as the episode "Jughead," itself, if not far sooner. Rather than ramp up the tension over its explosion over a number of episodes, the show pushed Faraday aside for over a month only to have him return on the sub as a deus ex dorkina to reintroduce the almost-forgotten weapon."
After that, I got your point and I agree 100 percent. I totally agree that the season was absolutely always going to end with Jughead and Juliet at the bottom of that pit and the whiteout. Now ... how they spent a few of those episodes between "Namaste" and "The Variable" were questionable choices, I agree, but I still believe they got to their preplanned end point.
It was almost like they said, "OK, Season 4 ended exactly where we wanted it to, with the Oceanic 6 getting off the island, and then Locke in the box. Season 5 has to end with the whiteout. Now, we've got 17 hours to tell our originally planned Dharma/Jacob story, plus we have to somehow fit in the stuff we had to sacrifice because of the writers' strike. Well, let's just throw it together now and they'll forgive us after they see our unaltered, original-recipe Season 6."
So, yeah, I do think an episode like "Some Like It Hoth" was one of the lost episodes of Season 4 that was crammed into Season 5 because of the strike; it was the only way to tell Miles' backstory after they lost that chance where it originally had been planned.
Basically, when I say I have faith, I'm not saying I blindly love everything that's happened or everything Darlton does. I mean that I believe the overall main story thread that they originally mapped out will happen. Whether I like it or not remains to be seen, but I feel their vision will be completed. Some people will be mighty pissed that every little question isn't answered, but everything they want to tell us or show us is what we'll get.
I just don't think Season 5 can be properly or even fairly judged until the show is over. It's the only season to have that stigma hanging over its head, too.
8 out of 10
I'm mostly confident in Darlton's ability to pull it off. I know that they know exactly where they are headed. I just don't want any new mystery this late in the game.
The show has reached the red-zone, and it's 1st down & 10 at the 20 yard-line. All they need to do know is get it to the end zone without fumbling. I have faith they can do it, as long as they call the right plays.
I didn't answer the question, so I'll add this:
I watch the show on Wednesday. I read your column(s) afterward. I watch it again on Saturday, then I don't think about it again until the next episode airs. I don't read spoilers or message boards, so I don't form any sort of wish list or expectations. I learned that the hard way with the last two seasons of "Buffy" and the Star Wars prequels -- totally spoiled for both and since I read message boards back then, I'd see the shows through other people's eyes before I saw them myself. Ruined it for me and I swore I'd never do it again.
I want to experience THEIR vision, not what I myself want to see happen. It's why I still don't hate Jack or Kate like a lot of people do, or subscribe to that "Jate" or "Skate" crap. I'll let them tell their story and decide if I liked it afterward. For five seasons, it's been 'so far, so good.' I can't see that changing as long as they follow the plan they themselves drew up.
Therefore, as long as Darlton and Co. sticks to their guns, I'd say it's a 9 or 9.5 chance that I'll be happy.
off topic, but the pop up ads that take over this website are becoming very annoying. No I don't want to watch commercials for other shows! I don't watch other shows!! I only watch Lost!! :)