New book looks back on things we lost since LOST premiered 20 years ago

[thomdunn]

Originally published at: New book looks back on things we lost since LOST premiered 20 years ago - Boing Boing

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[Brainspore]

@thomdunn

My main beef with the whole “10-hour movie” mindset of today’s prestige TV is that it generally doesn’t allow the writers much room to make episodes into discrete units of entertainment, with their own arc, beats, and moments to make audiences sit up and pay closer attention.

I agree with this part. The pre-streaming-on-demand model meant that you could enjoy a single episode of a show like Star Trek: the Next Generation or a “monster of the week” episode of The X-Files without feeling obligated to see every other episode of the series just to understand what was going on.

The main problem with Lost in particular, like all those non-“monster-of-the-week” episodes of The X-Files, is that the creators built the central narrative arc around a mystery that they didn’t have any more of a clue about than the audience did.

[smulder]

… can we just wait another 10 or 20 years first before we have to be nostalgic about “Lost”

[Mindysan33]

This is weird, as I just started a rewatch of Lost this week…

[smulder]

@Brainspore

the creators built the central narrative arc around a mystery that they didn’t have any more of a clue about than the audience did

I think “The X-Files” was breaking its own continuity on purpose, telling a kind of anti-story full of unreliable narrators, where making viewers feel confused and paranoid was the whole point — it was a horror show, after all

I don’t think “Lost” was really doing the same thing — I think “Lost” was just written badly

[Kilkrazy]

I’ve never seen Lost. I can’t remember what channel it was on in the UK. I was a huge X Files fan, though.

As a writer myself, I feel like modern US TV scripting has introduced an unwritten set of rules which have become somewhat prescriptive, like the multi-episode story arc. I like TV programmes where there’s a complete story in a 1 to 2 hour episode.

[ficuswhisperer]

@thomdunn

they were never going to get the satisfaction that they hoped for by the end

Or they were so busy complaining about their favorite plot threads weren’t resolved that they didn’t realize that at the end pretty much every mystery was explained. For better or for worse the explanation for some of those things boiled down to “the island was a magic place”. Perhaps not a satisfying explanation, but one all the same.

It was still a damn great show with a great cast, and I’m glad it existed.

[n8_zilla]

I’ve actually stopped watching shows that rely too much on cliff-hangers. I find that sort of thing to be lazy and manipulative writing, and there’s plenty of other things I could be doing with my time.