Previously on Lost…

Don’t panic. This happens every year.

I’ll get into it in detail below, but after last week’s slam-bang premiere, which kicked off the season in style and simultaneously left our minds stirred, shaken and blown – we were bound to get that patented Lost letdown where the writers stop for a spell to get everyone’s bearings straight. It’s akin to setting the chess board – they need a little bit of exposition to get the characters pointed in the right direction – especially considering this is the final lead-up to the end game.

Before I do the usual rundown, I did want to lead with something that’s been on my mind. As we all know, this is it. The End. Now that we know “What Kate Does” we have 15 episodes left to discover that what she does pales in significance to almost everyone else drawn to this island. And through the past 5 years, there have been a number of individuals drawn there – each with their own questions about why they’ve been called and what the island really means to them – and to us.

The thing is, with 15 episodes left, it would be foolhardy for the showrunners to attempt to answer every last question that has been posed. Seriously, who gives a rat’s butt as to why the Hurley Bird from Season 1 seemingly called out our porcine pal’s name. They could have had Toucan Sam chasing after Charlie’s Lucky Charms and I would have gone with it.

The point is – there is beauty in mystery. Half the fun of shows like Lost is the journey. The destination almost never meets everyone’s expectations and when you get a show like Lost that revels in its labyrinthine mystery and machinations, the true fans get to go off on flights of fancy where we imagine denouements more wild and crazy than any writer could dream. Often times, our thoughts are fun to bring to life and spring on our fellow Lostralians, but they’re largely unfilmable. In the end it’s just good old-fashioned watercooler chat – just another common fiber to tie our species together.

Therefore it’s encouraging to read some comments that Damon Lindelof made recently. Lindelof has been part of the show since Day 1 – hatching the idea with JJ Abrams. JJ has long since departed these shores for his Hollywood career and while he continues to oversee things from an Executive Producer capacity, the show is nurtured by the guiding hands of Lindelof, Carleton Cuse and their expert staff of writers – including comic book genius, Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man). Anyway, Lindelof was largely in disclaimer mode when he made his statements but I think it’s the right tact and really makes a lot of sense that I hope Lost fans subscribe to. “The important questions that need answering are those that are important to the characters.”

That’s Storytelling 101. If Hurley has long forgotten why a bird called his name or if Kate could care less that she came across the Black Stallion on the island, then we should just go with it. There are some core mysteries that the islanders do care about and I assume the nature of Jacob, the Man in Black and the numbers are still bee-bopping in their brain pans. As for why Libby was in the nuthouse with Hurley – who freakin’ cares?

Which leads me to my next point. One of the entertainment blogs that I follow is Drew McWeeny’s Motion-Captured over at HitFix.com. Drew used to write as Moriarty for Ain’t It Cool News and he has a nice breezy style and a legion of industry contacts – specifically in the genre realms. Anyway, Drew mainly sticks to movies but he is a Lost obsessive and in the days before the Season 6 premiere he offered up some intel gleaned from Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot, the screenwriters of the Pirates of the Caribbean series. “They talked about the theory of “distant mountains” when you’re building a series, the idea that you should always leave yourself more room in your world than you explore. It leaves room for the viewer to insert themselves into the world, giving them things they can “solve” for themselves. As long as the creators of “Lost” don’t give you every single little detail set in concrete, there’s still room for interpretation and conversation, and that’s just plain smart storytelling.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. When this series closes, I hope to have enough questions UNANSWERED to allow my mind to wander years from now, as I look back nostalgically on one of the better entertainments to cross my eyes in many a moon. In the mean time, let’s get Lost.

I’ll tell ya’ “What Kate Does“. She sucks the air out of every episode that targets our self-centered queen con for its narrative drive. It’s the same every season. We get a slam-bang series premiere and then the second episode slams on the breaks for a little soul-searching time with Miss Piss and Vinegar. Remember, this is the same character who once got a couple guys plugged with bullets just so she could liberate a toy plane from a bank deposit box. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I’ve never cottoned to Miss Austen’s tales of woe and in Season 6, she has done nothing to woo me yet. I don’t blame the actress either. This falls purely on the writers who may know how to spin a great yarn but have failed numerous times to make Kate compelling.