Lost and impatient

I’ve been reading people’s complaints about Lost and feel I must chime in. After all, if there are to be this many detractors, someone has to come to its aid.

Lost has, since immediately after season 1, completely gone off the rails. I don’t mean that in the sense that story or suspense has become too much or purposefully attempted to jump any sharks. What I mean is that people’s obsession with the show has gone from any other show to obsession. People have decided that instead of remembering that it is entertainment to it becoming a very large part of their lives. This, I cannot understand.

I live for stories. I thrive when I hear them, I feel energized when I’m writing them, and Lost is a fantastic example of what great storytelling can become. But they’re just that: stories. They mean only as little or as much as we put into them.

At first, the show was simply a show. The show runners didn’t seem to think of it as anything more than that. That is, until the internet showed them what they were missing. Bloggers began aggregating hypothesis and considering establishing a conference for like minded Lost fans to talk and pontificate. This show became more about questions and thoughts than simply storytelling with questions and answers.

It’s at this moment, I surmise, that the writers and producers realized they could have a goliath on their hands. They jumped at the chance to feed those bloggers, to create a podcast that spawned other podcasts, and helped to create what was called the ‘Lost Experience’, an adjoining product that would provide depth to the Lost universe.

As a money making venture Lost became a powerhouse, but as a story it ebbed and flowed. There was a time during season 3 that the show lost much of it’s fanbase and viewership. Viewers claimed the show, the storyline and not any adjoining material, became watered down, and opted for different programming. Me? I was one of those.

Mostly because I became restless and annoyed with how the story seemed to have taken a back seat to melodrama instead of the complaints that there were “too many questions, not enough answers”. In that exodus, I was with the first camp. But the show improved. I picked up where I left off, watching what I missed commercial-free, and the show became great again. How did it become great? It returned to the structure that producer J.J. Abrams so lauds: the Mystery Box Model.

Abrams believes that there’s something innately delicious in not knowing something and wanting to learn. He plays with our tendency toward discovery and fascination with the unknown and it paid off. Just as the show began with questions, the show continued with questions. However, as mentioned above, there was a large camp of people who loathed the massing questions. They cried out when new questions were unveiled and no answers were provided. Their impatience was understandable, after all, because the mystery box had begun encompassing and bleeding into all media.

Last season the show was able to pump out not only answers to questions but a sustained rise and fall structure that made viewing it like reading a mystery novel. I reveled in the questions, trying to piece things together, and the season finale was one of the most inventive cliffhangers every conceived; something the show is well known for.

I’m a fan of the questions, and sometimes I like to think about them while I watch the show and devise my own answers; knowing full well I’ll probably be wrong. This season, my viewing experience changed. I started watching it for what it was, recognizing that it’s just a television show, albeit a brilliantly choreographed one, and enjoying it simply for that. Mostly, my analytic brain was turned off and I thought about the storytelling that was being presented to me. And it was great. It picked off directly where it left off. Not only do I feel the intensity from the season finale, it’s been ratcheted up.

And now I’m left with the complaints that people have. Those vocal watchers who say “enough is enough” with the questions, and why do Jack, Kate, and Sawyer continue to follow blindly what the Others say based only on trust like the analogues people refuse to draw obvious connections to? To those things I say, calm down. Most of you complain as if your voice are the only ones heard by producers. Sure, there are plenty of you angry but there are just as many, if not more, that love the show and will continue watching because they value it as entertainment, entertainment that they can control. Because they remember that they have the ability to turn the tv off.