The Time Of The Season
Here’s a potentially controversial opinion: Lost only really got good when they stopped making 24 episodes a season, and knew they were heading towards a set end-point. Here’s a connected, but less-controversial opinion: Lost‘s low point was the episode about Jack’s tattoos. When you’re telling a story that has a set ending, an answer to the core mystery you’re trying to get to, there’s only so much story before you get there, and Lost demonstrated that more than any other show. How many flashbacks did we see that added nothing to the overall story? Or, for that matter, how many characters did the series introduce who had no real purpose beyond eating up time (Ana Lucia and Mr. Eko, I’m looking at you)? Lost demonstrated that there is such a thing as taking too long to get to the point, and it’s called “a full season of network television.”
(Of course, it’s not only network television that has this problem; getting back to Battlestar Galactica, there was a surprising amount of filler in that run, and Syfy’s seasons are generally shorter than ABC’s.)
(More on Techland: See all of Techland’s LOST coverage)
The Problem With The Real World
Or, to put it another way: Whatever happened to Mr. Eko? Lost‘s producers have almost delighted in being cavalier with their actors, killing characters off when you least expect it (Julieeeeeeettttttt! Sorry, Elizabeth Mitchell, but V isn’t nearly the same), or benching poor Emile de Ravin for an entire season in order to allow her to get mentally prepared for wearing an insane wig for the final season while cuddling a squirrel baby, but Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje’s decision to leave the series after one season felt like some kind of karmic payback, forcing them to lose one of their strongest characters and, presumably, rework whatever plot was already laid out at the time. These things happen, though; Richard went missing for much of the show’s third season, because he was off working on CBS’ Cane, and that network didn’t want to share him, to use another example. How successfully can you write a story when you’re unsure if you’ll be able to keep the same characters in it all the way through?
(Sure, there’s always the possibility to recast, but people still talk about the two Darrens in Bewitched; can you imagine the outcry if there were two Desmonds in Lost? Besides the alternate-universe ones, of course.)