Entertainment Weekly (2007)

‘Lost’ and Found

The cast and creative forces behind ABC’s revolutionary drama spill secrets, answer critics, and mull over how and when they would like to seal the hatch for good

No more mysteries. No more clues. No more questions wrapped inside questions with secret compartments for extra questions. What you need from ABC’s castaways-in-paradise cryptodrama Lost are answers, and we’re going to give you one — right here, right now. The exact wording is being formulated by star Matthew Fox as he sits in the shade of a twisted tree, pulling tufts of grass from the Hawaiian soil. The answer is simple and definitive, and his brown eyes flicker with defiance as it passes through his lips: ”No.”

Don’t worry: Elaboration is forthcoming. We’re nestled in the lush foothills of Oahu’s north shore, where Lost is shooting the 13th episode of its controversial third season. If you recall the opener in October, you’ll recognize this idyllic village setting, with its cookie-cutter cabins and garden gazebo, as hostile territory. ”Welcome to Othersville,” says Michael Emerson, a.k.a. Ben, the creepy-cunning leader of Mystery Island’s devious denizens, the Others. ”Everything’s relaxed. The stakes are low. And naturally, all of this is a big setup for…something.” The spoiler cops won’t allow us to reveal that something, let alone expand upon such intriguing sights as Others-recruited fertility doc Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) pushing Ben in a wheelchair, or Jack (Fox) cheerfully lobbing a football to his sworn enemy Mr. Friendly (M.C. Gainey). ”Everyone should be wondering what the hell is going on,” explains Fox during a break. ”Has Jack been converted by the Others? Drugged? Is he pretending? All sorts of scenarios could be happening here.” (At that moment, Evangeline Lilly — a.k.a. Kate — buzzes by and interjects: ”Don’t believe a word he says. He’s a liar!”)

Intriguing possibilities followed by maddening murkiness — that sentiment seems to sum up Lost lately. As the show ends its three-month hiatus with 16 consecutive episodes (designed to eliminate momentum-killing repeats) in a new 10 p.m. time slot on Wednesdays (to shield it from that Nielsen polar bear called American Idol), Lost finds itself at a crossroads: its heady pop-phenom days in the rearview, and life as just a really good show looming ahead. The problem? A nagging sense that ”really good” isn’t good enough. Sucks to be a piece of highly profitable game-changing genius, doesn’t it?

Coming off season 2’s explosive finale, season 3’s initial batch of six episodes fell short of lofty expectations and triggered concerns that Lost’s mojo was as ephemeral as its infamous smoke monster. There’s too much emphasis on the Others! Where are old faves like Sayid and Hurley? Mr. Eko’s death was lame! I hate the new castaways Nikki and Paulo! Locke’s sweat lodge was too…sweaty! While the demand for satisfying resolutions to dangling plot questions intensified and suspicions of written-out-of-their-rears hucksterism multiplied, the audience began to dwindle (down 19 percent from the same period in fall 2005). Lost’s geek buzz teleported over to NBC’s Heroes, and the drama drew fewer viewers in its last two fall episodes than — oh, the unsexy horror! — Mandy Patinkin’s Criminal Minds on CBS. Suddenly, the show everyone loved to theorize about had become the show everyone loved to bitch about.

Yet cast and crew see another side to the story: The critics are wrong. Those who pine for episodes filled with beloved characters and familiar situations can’t appreciate the true ambition of Lost, which is to tell a deep, sprawling, intricate saga; one that is slowly, if sometimes tangentially, building toward an ultimate end. Mistakes have been made (Mr. Eko’s sudden demise, a lackluster fall cliff-hanger), concede executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, but they also believe that their allegedly dubious creative choices are about to be vindicated. Hopefully. ”I feel like we’re playing a chess game,” analogizes Lindelof, ”and in the first six moves, we’ve lost our queen and two bishops, and the audience is saying ‘They are the worst chess players in the world!’ What they don’t realize is that we’re nine moves away from checkmating you. If we lose, we lose. But that’s the play, and we’re standing by it.”

Nobody is more proud — and more defensive — about Lost than Fox. The fall from amazing grace? That’s just the headline-hungry media tearing down what the cast and crew built up. The ratings decline? Those were simply hype-intrigued looky-loos who’ve decided Lost isn’t for them and gravitated toward less complicated fare. ”Good riddance,” says Fox. Besides, as the actor rightly points out, the show still ranks No. 5 ”in the category that makes this world go around” — the 18-to-49 demographic. And what of the devotees who yearn for those innocent invisible-peanut-butter-flavored beach days? ”The people who rag on it that way aren’t strong enough fans, really,” he says. ”Those people are copping out.”

So…Lost hasn’t lost it? ”No.”

It’s an answer. Simple. Definitive. Defiant. The question is, Do you buy it?

To be clear, the creators of Lost don’t have their heads buried in the sand. They hear the grumbling. They recognize that Lost’s future is dependent upon making viewers happy. And guess what? Lindelof even considers some of their complaints to be ”legitimate…but that doesn’t make them any easier to hear.”

So what happened? The producers believe the primary cause of discontent stems from the way they made use of season 3’s weird if well-intentioned scheduling. Their plan was to utilize the fall ”miniseason” to set up an array of story lines and tell one complete arc: Ben’s scheme to manipulate Jack into operating on his tumor-choked spine. But with too much plot to deploy, the scribes opted to craft narrowly focused episodes that left no room for other characters, much less the show’s myriad of ongoing subplots. Lost’s pilots concede that season 3 should have emulated 24’s model of consecutive installments. Next year, it likely will, says ABC Entertainment president Steve McPherson: ”The show is best when [episodes air] in big chunks, if not all together.”

There are other regrets, too, none bigger than the clumsy killing of Mr. Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). The producers wish they could have sicced Smokey on the warlord-turned-holy man later in the season, but the death was moved up to accommodate the actor’s wish to exit the show. Not that anyone sounds terribly bothered by the accelerated execution. ”I don’t miss him at all,” says Terry O’Quinn, whose Locke matched wits and sticks with Eko. ”They cast people so perfectly that you confuse the actors and the characters. You feel an affinity for the ones you’re supposed to, and friction with the ones you’re supposed to. That was a very friction-filled relationship.” (Akinnuoye-Agbaje declined to comment.)

However you viewed those half-dozen hours, the producers hope that you’ll look at the big picture, three-quarters of which has yet to be unveiled. And they believe that you won’t be disappointed by the masterstrokes yet to come. ”If the viewers don’t like season 3 as a whole,” says Cuse, ”then I’ll be upset.”

What to expect in coming weeks? Plenty. There’s flashback action for Claire, Hurley, and Sayid, the secret of Jack’s made-in-Thailand tats (somehow connected to guest star Bai Ling), and the long-awaited tale of how Locke wound up in a wheelchair. (”I was afraid it’d be anticlimactic,” says O’Quinn. ”It’s not. It’s pretty stunning. You’re gonna go, ‘Man, no wonder this guy wants to stay here!”’) Also, the castaways discover that the Others possess a submarine. Want mythology? You got it. The kidnapped kids and stewardess Cindy (Kimberley Joseph) make an appearance in episode 9 (Feb. 21). The Others’ connection to that utopian weird-science project, the Dharma Initiative, is slated to be revealed in episode 11 (March 7), which also features a visit to a new hatch (dubbed the Flame). And throughout, expect to see the repercussions of Ben’s spinal surgery. ”There is a period of not being at full power, and in any hierarchical organization, that is a period of danger,” says Emerson. ”That leaves a vacuum at the top, and other people may try to swoop in and occupy it.”

Meanwhile, back on the beach (Remember that place? Kinda sandy?), the Oceanic 815-ers will finally be dealing with the aftereffects of Desmond turning the fail-safe key, which imploded the hatch and lit the sky purple. In episode 8 (Feb. 14), the lovelorn Scottish soldier — new and improved with precognitive abilities! — informs a central character that he or she will die; he is also the subject of a flashback device employed ”in a way we never have before and never will again,” hints Lindelof. ”It’ll either blow people’s minds or chase them away for good.” (That sound you just heard? ABC execs chuckling nervously.)

Viewers were certainly interested in chasing away Nikki (Kiele Sanchez) and Paulo (Rodrigo Santoro), those heretofore unseen comely castaways whose wedged-in entrance would’ve been more stilted only if they’d been wearing winter parkas. While even Lindelof acknowledges that they are ”universally despised” by fans, that’s going to change, he vows: ”We had a plan when we introduced them, and we didn’t get to fully execute that plan. But when the plan is executed, Nikki and Paulo will be iconic characters on the show.”

Speaking of icons, the love triangle of Kate, Sawyer, and Jack morphs into something of a quadrangle as Juliet cozies up closer to Jack. ”I don’t think she knew he’d be the right person to help her [escape] until she started talking with him, and then, yes, I firmly believe her intention was to get him on her side,” says Mitchell. ”But I think she also likes him. That’s unexpected for her.” Their nebulous relationship may not sit well with Kate, who for now has made her bed with Sawyer. ”I don’t think that book is closed at all,” says Lilly. ”Kate has a real journey to go on with Jack, in that they’ve never addressed the underlying current of attraction and love between them…. It has to be addressed.”

And yet, the talents behind the show concede that none of this may prove satisfying to those who pine for what Lilly calls ”the golden year” of season 1. Lost is an evolving entity that is growing toward a final payoff, they say, and it must be allowed to switch focus (see: the Tailies, the Others) or plant slow-cooking subplots (see: Penelope, the four-toed statue) that serve the larger saga. Moreover, this is a mystery — which means the Big Answers (What is the island? What is the monster?) come much later. Get used to this, folks: ”None of the big questions are going to be answered until the end of the series,” says Cuse, adding that according to the master plan, the Lost story has just passed its midpoint. ”How could we tell you those answers without deflating the central mystery of the show?”

Therein lies the inherent conflict surrounding this drama as it segues away from the romance of its beginnings. Call it Paradox Lost: The very thing that titillates fans and has them furiously creating conspiracy-theory websites also frustrates the bejesus out of them. Perhaps execution is everything. When Lost captures the imagination (and it surely can, as evidenced by Feb. 7’s top-shelf return outing, ”Not in Portland”), there’s no better mythology-rich pop culture puzzle. When the show doesn’t — or, at least, when it decides to get all poignant and stuff with those Jin/Sun or Bernard/Rose episodes — the whole thing starts to teeter-totter like an ill-conceived game of Jenga. Occasional misfires are acceptable to hardcore fans, but they no doubt feel suspicious to those for whom the flameouts of Twin Peaks and The X-Files still burn. Which leads us to a critical question: Are the producers just screwing with us until the grand finale, stretching out story lines like taffy because they’re out of ideas?

To paraphrase Mr. Fox: No. Or at least, not yet. They very much fear the day that they’ll have to start filling time until they can unleash the finale they’ve already been plotting. That’s why Lindelof and Cuse have begun talking to ABC about settling on an end date for Lost, before the show runs the risk of degenerating into irrelevance and/or self-parody. (Lindelof has publicly stated that episode 100 would be the ideal stopping point.) ”We know all the big moves we have left,” explains Cuse. ”The reason we’re having these discussions now is that we don’t want to stall. By defining an end point, it gives the audience the confidence to know that this is going someplace.” In theory, ABC’s McPherson agrees with the producers’ logic: ”It’s important not to let things just peter out and end because they’ve lost traction.” That said, he remains cryptic about the finer details of Operation Kill Cash Cow: ”At this point, it’s just notions that everyone is kicking around.”

Those conversations could prove tricky. ABC may have come up with the concept for Lost, but it was co-creator J.J. Abrams, Lindelof, and Cuse who managed to make something artistically and financially remarkable out of it. And with their deals set to expire after season 3, Lindelof and Cuse have more than a modicum of leverage. Negotiations with the producing pair are said to be friendly, although with other Lost writers recently renewing their contracts, a contingency plan may be in the works. Asked if he’s prepared to continue Lost without the duo, McPherson says, ”We’ll keep them as long as we possibly can. We’re going to lock Damon and Carlton in the basement.” (Okay, but isn’t that what the hatches are for?)

Among the cast members, there is actually considerable support for the idea of losing their jobs sooner rather than later. Establishing a farewell date ”is really necessary for our enthusiasm as actors,” says Lilly. ”The idea that the show could go on ad nauseam is very crippling as an actor, because then you start to degrade the idea of the material in your mind.” She adds that if ABC agrees to wrap the show at a creatively optimal (if financially premature) time, it sends a message that ”Lost didn’t just set out as a precedent-setting television show, it’s going to finish as one.”

And that’s essentially what Lindelof and Cuse want: a happy ending to their trippy, trying, triumphant fairy tale. For Cuse, it looks like this: ”We get to end the show on its own terms. Whether other people like what we’ve got planned is TBD, but we think our ending is cool, and that’s always been our criterion.” Adds Lindelof: ”Then we want a big parade, like when John Glenn comes back from space in The Right Stuff.” You deliver on your promises, guys, and we’ll take care of the confetti later.