Lower Decks

Well, it’s not as if we weren’t warned in advance. Since the third season, we’ve known that ‘Lost’ was coming to an end with its sixth season. From the introduction of flashforwards onward, it’s been one breathless sprint to this moment. The fourth and fifth seasons were abbreviated runs that were broadcast during the winter and springs of 2008 and 2009, and now that the same point has been reached in 2010, you know that it’s time to begin saying goodbye…

In some ways, it really has been a lifetime (or two) ago for me, since the fall of 2004, when ‘Lost’ first aired on ABC. The name J.J. Abrams meant only one thing to me then, ‘Alias,’ even though I knew there was an audience that associated it with ‘Felicity’ (still haven’t seen any of that show, by the way, nor any of the movies he’d worked on, not even ‘Armageddon’!). In 2010, he’s not an active player in ‘Lost’ anymore, and hasn’t for years, but it’s undeniable that without Abrams, ‘Lost’ as we know it would never have happened. Thanks to Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, among others, the series has traveled an odyssey, from the beach to the hatch to the Dharma Initiative in 1977 (and possibly back again).

I have come to love a number of TV series over the course of my nearly 30 years, but none to the same levels as the Star Trek franchise and ‘Lost.’ I’ve never followed anything quite so closely, become so familiar with all the names of the creators (I use that blanket term freely, because I think it covers nicely all the production elements to an appropriate degree), and it certainly doesn’t hurt that I read on a regular basis magazines dedicated to Star Trek and ‘Lost.’ The latter has benefited both from a culture that has supported such ventures for a number of popular shows, but aside from a few issues of a ‘Heroes’ magazine, I’ve never thought another series could really support such an idea (no offense, ‘Alias’ or Stargate or ‘Supernatural,’ to name a few examples) without a considerable history like Star Wars or Doctor Who. ‘Lost’ has represented such a large endeavor from the very beginning that it seemed necessary to follow the systematic documentation not only of its actors’ experiences but of the developments from season to season. I’m still hoping it reaches at least forty-two issues (only about a dozen to go).

But I’m not here to talk about the magazine. I wouldn’t be reading that if the show it covers hadn’t become so instantly iconic. Even before Locke’s “Walkabout,” he was a standout in the pilot, which hit a number of stylistic notes that distinguished it immediately from all the imitators that were sure to follow, right from the first shot. Who doesn’t expect in the final season to finally revisit just why Jack (and his eye!) were the opening shot, and the circumstances surrounding his separation from the rest of the wreckage? Who isn’t still abuzz with speculation? Remember when everyone had a theory about how the survivors had ended up on that island, what it was really about? I think a lot of fans started to desert during the second season because most of those theories were proven impossible from the very first moment the Dharma Initiative was introduced. ‘Lost’ became rooted firmly in the real world at the same time it headed toward a destiny where time travel would become a regular element. The series continually expanded, and challenged its audience every chance it got.

But strangely, I’ve never quite understood why it seems so impenetrable to outsiders. From the first episode, as I’ve suggested, ‘Lost’ made it clear that it wasn’t just a show about plane crash survivors (remember when NBC tried a ‘Robinson Crusoe’ update as a crude way to cash in, comparatively late in the game, on the phenomenon?), from Charlie Pace’s ominous “Guys, where are we?” in the original promos to the first time Jack Shephard’s dad showed up postmortem on the island, wearing a suit and tennis shoes. Aside from all the mysteries, it’s always been about the characters, and the flashbacks, which rarely seemed to get the respect they continually commanded, becoming so important, so integral, that they were eventually converted to flashforwards, and sometimes took up entire episodes, and delivered the most important moments (the latest being the introduction of Jacob’s mysterious rival). In fact, what I missed most last season was the regular element of a flashback or flashforward. That’s what I most want to see in this final season! Who doesn’t want one involving the Black Rock, or Richard Alpert?

‘Lost,’ as originally conceived, would have killed off Jack in the pilot, and while Kate Austen has certainly many times over demonstrated her own dramatic possibilities, that’s the first instant where, if there was an original plan that revealed just what the ultimate fate of the series would be, it’s a good thing that the creators kept working on it, why it’s not a bad thing that they kept thinking about it. Honestly, who would rather have Jack dead than still a driving element of the series, who’s the reason we’re all wondering right now if the sixth season will begin with Oceanic Flight 815 arriving in LA or back on the island? I don’t know how appreciation for the second season hasn’t increased over time, or fans aren’t similarly finally acknowledging how perfect and appropriate it was for the third season to begin as it did, not the least bit since Juliet has finally joined the ranks of the deceased.

I can think of no other TV show that has so organically told an ongoing story, one that hasn’t for a moment shied away from developments that’ve killed off on a routine basis regular characters and led to new situations, never as a means to reinvent the series but to find out where everything leads. It might seem easy or convenient, how the really major players have stuck around (they’ve always been the best ones to follow anyway) and everything revolves so tightly around the central mystery of the island, how the sense of what that means continually shifts, but it makes for a more satisfying story that way, the focus remains the same.

Critical appreciation of ‘Lost’ didn’t really last past the first season. All the important voices swung back to cable programming, where innovation usually means swear words, violence, and sex, unusual settings or scenarios. I’d still wager that in fifty years, ‘Lost’ will mean more than ‘The Sopranos’ or ‘Mad Men.’ Who will even remember those? Who will be able to forget ‘Lost’? If TV can produce a literary classic, if TV can be taught in a classroom, ‘Lost’ will be considered in such light. It achieved that status in its first season, and has only increased its value since.

Just one season left, then, a few more months until ‘Lost’ is as much history as the Dharma Initiative. A lot of the fans today might be here because ‘Lost’ embraced the Internet as an incentive, offbeat and creative campaigns having been what introduced many of the key elements of the series, and maybe it was allowed to call its own shots because of those fans. (Imagine if ABC had refused the outline that brought us to this point? In some ways, the fans would have revolted long ago, worse than they did during the third season. The abbreviated seasons that followed might have looked more like that season than the sprints that actually resulted. What would that have done? ‘Heroes,’ anyone?) I would suggest that no matter what happened, how the series was allowed to play out, most of what has actually happened would have happened anyway (“Whatever happened, happened.”), that how the series ends this year will have always been how it ended, possibly even if Jack had actually been killed off in the pilot (as unbelievable as that seems now, since in many ways, if there’s a single starring character, that would be Jack).

Lower Decks (and Section 31 before it), used to be known as much for its main content as its Observation Lounge message board. When ‘Lost’ first began, this was certainly still true, and while ‘Lost’ was tailor-made for that kind of conversation, it came around at exactly the point where the Internet started to drift away from conversations and toward reactions. Now, you might say “reactions” is exactly what the Internet community was always about, but recent innovations have made that much more obvious. Lower Decks doesn’t have a Facebook page or a Twitter account (which is basically heresy in this day and age). The last time the Observation Lounge participated in a popular trend, it was group instant messaging. Message boards today are a relic of the past, and that’s fairly evident in the activity the Lounge sees today. ‘Lost’ was born for a place like Lower Decks, but it also demanded at the wrong moment a level of commitment that was suddenly no longer possible. That helps explain why ‘Lost’ lost so much momentum so early, and why the show itself had to win back support, rather than the other way around. The Internet doesn’t save cult shows. But in its best moments, it can help mark them.

This is the final year of ‘Lost,’ which makes HYGOTS an appropriate place to talk about it, because very soon, no matter its merits, it will soon join the ranks of the topics regularly featured in the column, the things I love so much that can easily slip from everyday conversation, if not from memory than certainly ready appreciation. I’ll be revisiting ‘Lost’ through July, talking about the individual seasons and finally, in the culmination of a project I first undertook watching the first season on DVD, a spotlight on the content and legacy of the flashbacks/flashforwards.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve still got preparations to make for a goodbye to an old friend.