As the 2010 World Cup in South Africa is about to close, you might come to realize that association “soccer” football is closer to the world of television writing than you realize. You don’t have to be a fan, or even care about football to appreciate a few valuable lessons that can be applied to TV writers.
Let’s start off with the most obvious.

Be in shape to play the game
For the same reason you don’t see overweight people running around the field, you won’t see a professional TV writer who is ignorant of act breaks, A/B/C stories, character arcs, script formatting and grammar.
Learn, write, and learn again.
You don’t need to be a master at everything, but at least be aware of the rules before playing.

You don’t have to be big to become big
I’m a firm believer that, even if you’re an unknown, at the end of the day everyone has their shot.
Take a cue from underdogs like Uruguay, Ghana and, yes, the U.S., whose teams managed to defeat and even outlast most of the favorites. Finalist Spain was even beaten in the group stage by Switzerland!
It’s not because people don’t see you right now as important that you won’t be in the near future. You can aim high.
Trust yourself and your writing.

Be ready
Upsets and surprises can happen anytime, whether on the field or in real life. Hollywood is an unpredictable place (except for the weekly superhero movie), so when opportunity comes knocking, you better have your awesome specs ready. In football, the offense must be at all times prepared to receive the ball, and score. Do the same.

Don’t be cocky
You’ve heard the adage, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Well even if you’re halfway there, you still need to make the next step. Translation: even if the writing job you’re given isn’t what you’ve dreamed of, think twice before saying no. You can be sure someone else is ready to tackle you and take that job in your place, and you might regret it. If you drop the ball, you will lose it.

Passion is key
Being a soccer player in America is kind of like being a television writer. It’s a full-time gig, you’re underpaid compared to other writers/athletes at the same level, and no one outside your profession takes you seriously.
So why do you really want to become a TV writer?
Ironically, the U.S. team went far because of their gusto. You could feel from their game that they were playing because they loved the sport, they loved their teammates, and they loved to give a hundred percent of themselves for it all.
On the other hand, spoiled Italian and French players were “playing” as if it was a burden. The passion was gone.
Please, don’t be that guy.
Find a way to remind yourself daily of why you want to be a TV writer.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
If this World Cup showed us anything, it is that favorites may not be as amazing as previously thought. Brazil, Italy, Argentina, Portugal, England, how many of them ended up disappointing their fans – and the people who bet on them.
Instead of going all-in by supporting your one script, you need to have a wide variety of specs ready to show. You might have a favorite, and that’s okay, but don’t let it deter you from writing other spec scripts from other genres and formats.
You came here to write, prove it.

It’s a team sport before all
Perhaps the greatest comparison between television and football is that both are based on team play. Everyone is working together to attain a common goal (literally). You will be surrounded by teammates, so play ball (figuratively). Pass it around, trust your comrades, and respect the process. No matter how great, rarely can a single player save the whole team. Case in point this year with Messi and Ronaldo.
If you put faith in other people, the ball will come back around (in a good way).
With that said…

Take the shot
Don’t expect that everyone will constantly be holding your hand (or foot for that matter). If you’re lucky, you might be guided along the way by kind writer souls (aka mentors), but when everything is in alignment, you need to score. There can be so many passes between the players before someone needs to step up. Sometimes, it is good to take the initiative.

Know that people will blame the coach
There will come a time where you will be an exec, and perhaps even a show-runner.
The sad truth is that, like in football, the main guy who gets blamed for all the problems is the coach (you). Yes, we just said it was a team sport, but still. Whether with the audience (“that episode was sh*t!”), with the VP (“that episode was expensive!”), or with your players (“fire him or I quit!”), when something goes wrong, you will be at fault.
Nine times out of ten, you will need to accept this and move on. The one time you might pull a Fabio Capello, and get your contract renewed, even if all has failed.

The game is sometimes unfair
Like with Suarez’s handball which prevented Ghana from moving on, you might be surprised at some of the tactics used by some to move ahead, as well as the shows being made compared to those that aren’t. This is no reason to be bitter at other people’s success. Embrace this opportunity to prove once more your originality.

Never lose hope
Even if you think you’re outplayed and you may get eliminated, never despair. The best example this tournament is undoubtedly Landon Donovan’s last-minute goal. This example actually can be extrapolated to the entire performance of the U.S. team. Indeed, in every game they seemed to be both outmatched and losing (1–0 for England, 2–0 for Slovenia, 1–0 for Ghana), but every time, the team was able to overcome their apparent inferiority and actually transform a downside into an upside. The team was reacting instead of suffering.
When you are down, get out of this vicious circle and realize that you can get back up.
This brings me to my next point.

If at first you don’t succeed, try again
We’ve had our fair share of incredible matches with the German team, but the semi-final where Spain defeated them was for most non-aficionados a bore. Why? Not a lot of goals means no action, right?
The truth is that during the whole 90 minutes of play, both teams were probing each other’s defense, trying to find holes, and exploiting them to score.
It might not have been spectacular for outside viewers, but it is very effective.
In the TV world, this can be compared to ideas being pitched.
You might not be able to get them through the first few times, but the more you try, the greater your chances are at having a few of them heard, and perhaps getting made. It takes some work, and a lot of patience, but with such fierce competition on the other side, you can’t expect to score on your first try.

Believe in yourself.
Write the future.
Score.

Possible Related posts:

1. Focus on Writing for Genre Television
2. Ten Spec Writing Rules (and why you should care)

Today is TV Calling’s two-year anniversary.
It has been a long time coming, and I must say I’m proud of all the great content, and of all the visitors who have passed through our doors.

There has been a more recent lack of posting (and tweeting), for which I must now come clean.
Truth be told, I could write pages of (actual) reasons of why this happened, ranging from two hard-drive failures to being “too busy” (with a Star Trek marathon).
For the most part though, I just didn’t feel it.
I did not have much to add to the ongoing “conversation” so, instead of blabbering around, posting empty meaningless content, I decided to take a step back.
Nothing is better than irrelevant, right?

This short break incidentally allowed me to take care of more pressing matters.
In the past month, I have begun to finally break a pilot I had been holding off.
More importantly though, I was able to plan more thoroughly my move to L.A.
I started this blog two years ago in part to tell you guys about my own experience and steps toward becoming a (future) television writer. I did talk about my various visits to the West Coast and how I successfully obtained my Green Card (yay!).
But being both geographically and temporally so far away from this life-change (let’s call a spade a spade), I admit I did not have much to tell about what went on–until recently.
This is obviously why the blog has been diverging at times from its original purpose to center on a more analytical aspect of television (though with great articles).

Maybe this post seems either like bragging or a list of personal accomplishments, and maybe I wrote it for cathartic reasons, but I wanted to let you know how important this blog and your support have been to me.

And now, we are about to arrive to our final destination.
In a month, I will be moving to Los Angeles.
Square one.

This jump into the unknown is both thrilling and, dare I admit it, scary.
Perhaps this site, this log of my daily struggles, will ease the transition. (Bonus points for actual advice in the posts.)
I will continue to sporadically update the blog, bringing it back to its roots.

I hope you will continue to follow me on this journey.
Here’s to you fellow reader, and to another two years of TV Calling!

Possible Related posts:

1. One Year of (various) Posts
2. One Year of Featured Posts

Once upon a time, author Stephen King issued a challenge to the Lost writers:

Minus the continuing presence of David Duchovny, X-Files blundered off into a swamp of black oil, and in that swamp it died. If J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, and their band of co-conspirators allow something similar to happen with Lost, I’m going to be even more pissed, because this show is better. Memo to Abrams and staff writers: Your responsibilities include knowing when to write The End.

Flash-forward to five years later: the 100-minute long Lost series finale, abstemiously entitled The End, airs on ABC.

Before I go into my in-depth look at Season Six and the series finale, let me get something out of the way:
Saying that people didn’t like The End because “there were no answers” and “it’s about the characters, stupid” is hypocritical.
If you flashback to a couple of years ago, I am betting Montand’s left arm that you were interested in knowing ‘what the hell is that black smoke’ more than ‘what the hell do Jack’s tattoos mean.’
In season Three, you were interested in knowing Juliet’s and Ben’s backstories not only because they were intriguing characters, but because they seemed at the time to hold key pieces of the Island puzzle.
And people tuned in en masse to the Season Two premiere not to see Jack’s divorce, but to discover what was in the hatch.
Don’t tell me otherwise, because that is either a blatant lie or misguided faith.
The only exception to this rule is the first half of Season One, which indeed delved more into the characters than the (not-yet-fleshed-out) mythology.
Lost drew a cult following because of its mysteries and original storytelling, not because the 815ers were the greatest characters on television at the time. If you disagree with this statement, then you’ve never watched, let’s say, Six Feet Under (2001–2005), The Wire (2002–2008), The Sopranos (1999–2007), or Battlestar Galactica (2003–2009), and the list goes on.
Like Lordy said in his own review, the fact that Lost did not answer any of its main mysteries is completely irrelevant to most people’s quarrels with the series finale.
Why? Newsflash: Darlton had 120 other episodes to answer questions.

So, no, my problem with Season Six does not reside in the lack of answers, it’s more in line with gross character neglect and unjustified fan manipulation.
The “character-only” approach of Lost is first untrue, but more importantly distorted. This point of view was only shaped last year when Lindelof and Cuse began to realize that they couldn’t satisfy fans with answers and needed to go back to a cleaner slate.


Cue the flash-sideways.
As they themselves admitted, the writers wanted to bring to the final season some symmetry in regards to Season One. Though admirable, the effort was pointless and quite frankly disappointing.
First, the idea here was to bring a new sense of mystery and discovery to the characters we had come to know throughout the years. Since doing a flashback on Jack’s ankle-tattoo seemed ridiculous at this point, they chose to do an altverse and switch things up a bit.
The only problem here, and it’s a big one, is that these are not our characters. They haven’t lived through the crash, they haven’t lived through the Island, they haven’t lived through six seasons of tumultuous events. Ergo, we do not care about them.

Of course, this whole ordeal was made irrelevant by the final revelation that, not only did none of it matter, but nothing was actually real. This was quite literally the metaphysical equivalent of ‘it was all a dream.’ Perhaps it wasn’t Vincent that dreamed Jack’s son, David, but this doesn’t mean I didn’t waste an hour watching his pre-adolescent angst towards his father.

There’s also the lack of any character development. Even if you were to assume that the flash-sideways actually happened and mattered, the finale rendered them nonexistent.
Paradoxically, this even impacted ‘our’ characters. For me, the whole emotional effect of Juliet and Sawyer’s reunion was nullified by the fact that, mere seconds ago, she was very content with being in a family with Jack and David. When she ‘remembered’, it was as if an instant brainwash had occurred. Now that Juliet was exchanging fluids with Sawyer, I was left to wonder if she recalled having a son and being with another man, or if her ‘old personality’ had crushed this new life.
Bringing back Julie Bowen as the mother would have actually made things better. And before you comment on her unavailability, allow me to remind you that Modern Family was actually shooting an episode in Hawaii at the same time! Talk about a wasted opportunity…

There is also all that happened on the Island.
The episode felt more to me like a season finale than a true series finale. There was no real farewell to the Island, contrary to what was alluded to since the season premiere (a cataclysmic event involving either a nuke or the volcano). The dramatic reveal of the Island being underwater now makes no sense at all.
As for the characters in peril, I’ll here quote Charlie Jane Anders’ great review of the finale:

Probably the greatest weapon in Lost’s arsenal was always its ability to make you care, desperately, feverishly about what happened to these people.
And in the end, I just didn’t care if that rock went in that hole or not. By extension, I had stopped caring whether the island sank. I had stopped caring about the fate of the Man In Black, long before he got kicked out of the episode prematurely. I didn’t care about any of it.

I do still have chills watching Through the Looking Glass or There’s No Place Like Home, but similarly to Anders, I have stopped caring about Jack & Coe for some time now.


Now about that ending.
What I found interesting about the ending of Lost was that it was thematically related to the series. It echoed two main components of the show as a whole: the fact that everyone was connected and the Island was the most important part of their lives — with one difference.
Whatever the timeline, Lost had always shown events directly (flashforwards) or indirectly (flashbacks) linked to the Island. Even when the Oceanic Six were on the main land, Lost lingered on how the crash and the on-Island events had impacted their lives. Sayid was working for Ben, Jack was suicidal because he wanted to ‘go back’, Kate was raising Aaron, Hurley had to lie about the crash, and so on.

For the first time, the flashes this season were neither about what preceded the crash, nor what followed it. The flashsideways were never narratively connected to the Island. This may be why some were let down by the ending. Basically, we were led to believe all along that, like the flashbacks and the flashforwards, the flashsideways would prove to be important to the understanding of on-Island events.
They weren’t. And, as we’ve seen, most of them were made irrelevant.

Beyond that, the end was also more abstract than some people appear to say. Though you do get some sort of a spiritual conclusion to the characters, you certainly do not get closure of what we might call their “corporeal selves.” You don’t know for instance Sawyer’s ultimate fate.
However, I accept that since, as pointed out above, what will happen in their lives onwards won’t have much to do with the Island.

One thing I don’t really get is the whole “moving on/letting go” part. Beyond the obvious meta comment, I don’t really understand what they have to “move on” from/to.
As far as I can see, virtually every single one of the Lostaways is finally happy, and has moved beyond his/her issues to a new realm of bliss.
Let’s take a look: Ben is a father figure to Alex, Jack is in love and has a son that cares about him, Sawyer stars in a ‘buddy cop’ drama with Miles, Hurley is lucky, Sun and Jin are finally free and about to have a baby, Locke is with Helen and can walk.
If one were to argue that the flashsideways had a point, it was to show that the characters had “moved on” from their (literally) otherworldly problems. Yet, now they need to abandon this wonderful world.
Would this message of “letting go” be present in the episode if it were not the series finale? I’d say no.


During the first four years, Lost was about rescue.
That was Jack’s purpose: to get his fellow castaways off the Island.
It was never about “moving on”, it was never about “letting go”, it was about “getting the hell off this damn rock” as Sawyer would say.
Season One ended with the raft launching, season Two ended with Penny discovering the Island, season Three ended with Jack communicating with a potential rescue team, and season Four ended with the actual rescue of the Oceanic Six.
Mission accomplished.

Personally, the show concluded with season Four. There’s No Place Like Home, the 2008 finale, does offer what I believe to be a great conclusion to the series.
Sure, some questions would have been left open-ended (how did Locke end up in that coffin?), but no more than the amount of mysteries further multiplied by the last two seasons.
Seasons Five and Six brought in unnecessary drama and one-sided debates. Indeed, once Jack is converted by Locke, there is no scientific counterpoint. Plus, since both MiB and Jacob appear in the flesh, no one is here to doubt their existence.
It also tried to solve major philosophical questions (Fate vs. Free-Will, Science vs. Faith) that, despite being part of the show from the very beginning, certainly did not need to have a clear-cut answer (you can guess which one).

Even though The End thematically resonates to the show as a whole, it certainly is not a true conclusion to the series’ ongoing purpose, only its last season. Ultimately, it ended with a tribute to its own completion. Whether this will shape the way Lost is viewed for generations to come remains to be seen.

Possible Related posts:

1. Lost Finale Thoughts: Artificiality at its best (and worst)
2. A letter from a Lost writer

One word can describe the Lost series finale: Artificiality.
Don’t get me wrong, it was not easy to be Darlton while writing the series finale of, arguably, the most-talked about TV series since the creation of the Internet. But summarizing that the show would be satisfying only for “believers”, a.k.a. viewers that wouldn’t obsess over mythological answers given in the finale, is ultimately a very cynical way of saying “if you don’t like that your version of the show living in your head is not the story we want to tell, that’s YOUR problem”.

I’d like to point out that however, it wouldn’t be fair stomping on the series finale for the lack of answers or mythology galore. It is a point that has been stressed by Darlton ever since the beginning of Season 6, that it would be all about the characters. I accept it as such, and will focus my criticism for what it is: essentially a character-driven series finale.

With its final twist, “Lost” has once again pulled the rug from under the feet of its devoted fans, except maybe those who were paralyzed by the emotion of characters they followed during six years leaving their screens forever. What Darlton didn’t realize is that there’s nothing wrong with being a little predictable, even more so during your endgame.
In fact, this is the second time viewers are proven completely wrong. After Season 4, everything pointed to a war between Benjamin Linus and Charles Widmore for control of the Island as the endgame of the show. It was rooted in characters, and the mythological knowledge of both those men would prove fertile territory for a decent endgame, as far as answers were concerned. There’s little doubt sacrifices would be made, Monsters would be used, alliances would be forged. Not unlike what we’ve seen in season 6. Except that both were made irrelevant by the introduction of Jacob and what we now know as the Man In Black, divine incarnations of the protector of the Island, and the Evil who’s trying to escape and be unleashed upon the World — or so we’re led to believe.

This was the endgame of “Lost”, and I’m ready to accept it. However, the big mystery of the season was the nature of the “flash-sideways”, where it appeared that all the survivors and characters live in a world where the Island sunk many years ago. They also remember little by little the events of their life on the Island, and they’re all led to meet each other. The emotional impact of the final scene left some viewers wrecked, and it would have been powerful…

…had it not been the Purgatory created by them after they died to come to grips with their issues, in a perpetual happy ending.

The “alternative timeline” was, to me, the more satisfying resolution, that would have implied they all died on the Island and were “projected” in Flight 815 by Jacob, who would give them back their free will, and a better set of choices for some characters. So, seeing all the cast fading into the white light to Heaven while Jack closed his eyes on the Island, with Vincent next to him, felt corny instead of powerful.

Yes, I actually laughed at the reveal made by the ultimate deus ex machina: Christian Shepard. Having this kind of sentimentality kicking off was just a cheap way of ignoring the fact that it could have gone another way. Having all these characters, almost, uniting at the Driveshaft concert, would have been as satisfying and emotional as what we got instead. Having them “projected” as a reward for preventing MIB from being unleashed upon the world was great, it also made them all heroes in the most noble sense. It reminds us of another HBO show I won’t name for those who don’t know how it ends, but that dealt with them better. Revealing that half of the final season was actually the characters evolving in a Disneyworld afterlife timeline, where everything would turn out “fine” in the end, far from the hassles of Craphole Island, was really more artificial, and also the worst way to end the show right behind “it was all a dream”. It’s also kind of sacrilegious to think that Darlton devoted a season showing characters in a Purgatory where they got what they were looking for, after debunking the Purgatory theories for the Island during the ENTIRE run. But it would have been predictable, and therefore the showrunners would feel like hacks just following the direction the fans thought they would go into.

Another amazing fact, not to be overlooked, is that we witnessed the Island losing its “specialness” during the finale. It actually should have relieved Ben and Hurley to know that they now have a desert island all to themselves, with no dangerous electromagnetism, Others, or angry deities to take care of. Really, having some characters escaping Craphole Island in the plane that was there all along without the potentiality of finding themselves in an electromagnetic cloud of danger was….convenient. This is also why Jack smiles while seeing a plane passing by: never will other people live what the survivors lived again. Pretty definitive ending for a show that’s supposed to be like “Star Trek” for ABC Studios.

You could feel that Darlton didn’t know when or how to make the characters die. In a way, I expected everyone to be dead, since they would be alive on “the other side” (which turned out to be just that). Maybe it was that two disappointing seasons made it feel easier to let go, for me at least. But faking the Jack death in the cave of Light so that he could die where he woke up, and thus obtain the iconic shot to close the series with, was laughable at best, ridiculous at worst.
Seeing the Jack/Locke scenes in the last few episodes also made me realize how much making Locke die in the season 4 finale was wrong, especially since that was to make way for the Man In Black, who turned out to be the least interesting baddie/foe on the show. (Unite the three baddies of the show in “What They Died For”, see who steals the spotlight.) There should have been a way to keep this iconic character as is for the remainder of the series, since the long con of MIB as John Locke for the latter part of Season 5 wasn’t very convincing to me. (It did provide humorous moments with Ben Linus, former most intriguing character on the show who is dumbfounded by the resurrected Locke, that gets him to do whatever he wants.) But if you replaced John Locke by Titus Welliver in those episodes, I don’t think the shock and mystery would have been that different.

This post is getting long, so I’ll get to my point. There’s nothing wrong, for a show that has been very unpredictable for the last six years, to be predictable with its finale. Giving a sense of alternate reality as opposed to an alternate afterlife would have worked. And I strongly feel that the sense of “letting go”, “moving on” with their issues, didn’t have to be translated through death. Especially since this alternate world gives them the keys to move on to every character, with largely better circumstances. So, stopping the sideways at the Driveshaft concert as opposed to the church would have felt satisfying to me. Same with everybody dying on the Island, at the same time, so that MIB dies with them and can’t escape. This is the time where the “version of the ending living in my head” makes more sense, and is more satisfying, since it basically boils down to the same thing. Since these characters’ most important moments are on the Island, projecting their bodies would have given them the unique opportunity to live a life with their loved ones outside of the Island, without all the trauma and death. That would have been as powerful an ending. But, like I said, that ending would have been predictable. I guess Darlton couldn’t accept to get away with that.

About the Author

Based in Southwest France, Lordy is a local reporter in all areas of France (really, look it up). As a hobby though, he has a keen and often deconstructing look on the entertainment business, even as a simple fan. — You can follow him on @lordofnoyze

Possible Related posts:

1. Lost Finale Thoughts: From The End to the beginning
2. A letter from a Lost writer

Many, and I mean many, mysteries have been left unsolved on Lost.
Even worse, there has been over the years a lot of double-talk from the series’ showrunners, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.
Let’s take a look at six seasons of misguided attempts at trying to convince the fans that, don’t worry, answers are coming.


Time Travel
Starting strong.
As you probably know, Season Five was a big long paradox-season filled with time-travel.
Such heavy fantasy-fiction (no other words can describe the show now) was not always present on Lost.
I’ll let Damon Lindelof comment on that:

We’re still trying to be … firmly ensconced in the world of science fact. I don’t think we’ve shown anything on the show yet … that has no rational explanation in the real world that we all function within. We certainly hint at psychic phenomena, happenstance and … things being in a place where they probably shouldn’t be. But nothing is flat-out impossible. There are no spaceships. There isn’t any time travel.

But about four years later, we have:

[Time travel] has been in the DNA of the show since the very beginning.

I guess it was well-hidden from everyone.

Adam & Eve
Another big piece of Lost is undoubtebly the two skeletons Jack found in the fourth episode of the series (later dubbed ‘Adam & Eve’). It was used as proof by Darlton that they knew all along where they were going towards.
As Lindelof puts it:

There were certain things we knew from the very beginning. Independent of ever knowing when the end was going to be, we knew what it was going to be, and we wanted to start setting it up as early as season 1, or else people would think that we were making it up as we were going along. So the skeletons are the living — or, I guess, slowly decomposing — proof of that. When all is said and done, people are going to point to the skeletons and say, ”That is proof that from the very beginning, they always knew that they were going to do this.”

It is stated in the same Season One episode that the clothes are about 50 years old.
What is sad about this is that, as revealed in the (almost) second-to-last episode of the series, Adam & Eve are actually the Man in Black and her adoptive Mother. And they died about two thousand years ago.
Woops.

Ben
The last couple of seasons have made totally irrelevant the central rivalry between Ben and Widmore, the latter appearing to be the main villain of the story.
Yet about 19 episodes before the end of the series, we were introduced to a brand new character, the Man in Black who is now basically the real “big bad”.
Not only that, but Ben was revealed to be both a pawn of Jacob (and the Man in Black), but more importantly had ultimately no knowledge at all of anything that’s happening on the Island, or why.
Despite this, here’s what Carlton Cuse had to say on the subject in 2007:

Ben is such a formative character, he is the biggest bad guy we know on the show. To get to know him is a signal that we’ve become an answer-mode kind of show.

Libby
The Season Two episode Dave ended with a huge shocker: Libby was in the same mental institute as Hurley prior to the plane crash. This reveal was actually so big, that it was the only flashback on the show to conclude an episode (and therefore be a cliffhanger). Rightfully so, a lot of people wanted to know how would that fit in the overall storyline, especially since a few episodes later, in the season two finale, Libby poped up again as a sane woman that gave to Desmond a boat (that would later bring him to the Island).
Was she part of the DHARMA Initiative? Did she know Desmond would crash on the Island?
During the third season, there was no sign of Libby, so Carlton Cuse commented:

Given everything else we have to tell, that’s going to be a mystery that’s going to have to get answered in year 4.

Damon Lindelof even added:

The question the audience wants answered is, How did she get from A to B — from Desmond to the mental institution? We know the answer to that question, but the only way to tell that story is through another character’s flashback, and that character would have to be another character on the show who is not among the beach dwellers.

A year later, in a Season Four interview, Carlton continued:

She’ll be in enough of the show for us to fill in the missing pieces of her story. We could not be more pleased. Cynthia is a smart and engaging actor, and Damon [Lindelof] and I have some very cool parts of her story left to tell.

We’re now at the end of the journey, we have seen a couple of times Libby on the show: for about five seconds in Season Four when Michael “saw” her on a boat (don’t ask), and one time this season during a Hurley flashsideway. Both times her appearance was pointless, so basically we’ve never had any conclusion to her numerous mysterious presence in other people’s flashbacks.
Here’s what Cuse had to say on the subject last year:

We feel like that story’s told, it’s done. We’ve told as much about Libby as we want to tell.

They’ve sometimes blamed her story as a casualty of the writers’ strike, but once again, Cynthia Watros appeared for a few seconds in a Season Four episode (barely post-strike), and even in a Season Six episode (way post-strike). I’m simply not believing they couldn’t resolve her mystery.

The End-date
And finally, as we’ve discussed already the other day, the announcement of an end-date was a game-changer in television storytelling. Darlton used that opportunity to show that they knew where they were going, likening this announcement with that of J.K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter book.
As Lindelof said:

One thing I think we have to get out there is this: You won’t have to wait until 2010 to get all the answers you really care about. Some of these answers are going to be coming a lot sooner than you think. The reality is, we’re not going to make you wait until the last episode to give you everything.

The problem with that is, as we’ve just seen, there hasn’t been many major mysteries solved on the show (if any).
Also, the only real answers we’ve gotten were apparently through last week’s episode, Across the Sea, which was, as Damon puts it, a “a big mythological download.“
It’s not like they had three entire seasons to plan out their mythological reveals. Oh, wait.
I also don’t have to tell you that Across the Sea was, as pointed out above, the third-to-last episode of Lost.
So, no, I guess we didn’t have to wait until the very last episode of the series for answers, just the one before it to provide us with more questions.

Obviously, we can’t really list all the contradictory quotes from the last six years, there are just too many.
If you’re dumbfounded as to why this post was written, here are three reasons.
First, kids, don’t be cocky or it will bite you where you don’t want to. Second, I wanted to show that that fans shouldn’t hang on every word of their television deity.
And, most importantly, third, the Lost mythology does not hold up.
We’ll discuss why in an upcoming post, but if you disagree, you should read in the meantime last year’s post entitled ‘Why mythological shows are often idolized’.

Like Damon said:

At a certain point, a television show is no longer your show. […] The show no longer belongs to the people who are writing it and performing it and directing it. It belongs to the fans just as much.

Possible Related posts:

1. How Lost revolutionized storytelling
2. Five ways Lost could continue

Though the mothership ends its run next Sunday, the Lost franchise however seems to have endless possibilities.
And Disney is not too keen on letting this cash-cow die.
As Carlton Cuse puts it:

The Walt Disney Co. owns Lost. It’s a franchise that’s conservatively worth billions of dollars. It’s hard to imagine Lost will rest on the shelves and nothing will ever be made with Lost.

Here are five possible ways the ABC show could survive…


I) Spin-off show

Either the best or worst idea, depending on who you ask.
Admit it, you’ve always dreamed of a Ben & Locke spin-off.
Truth be told, that won’t really happen since Terry O’Quinn is apparently shopping around a bible for a “TNT-type show” that would pair him once more with Michael Emerson as “suburban hit men juggling family issues.”

The apparent futile nature of a Lost spin-off hasn’t stopped pretty much everyone from joking about it though.

On the other hand, what some have dubbed Lost: The Next Generation is apparently not that big of a stretch.
Mike Benson, executive VP of marketing at ABC declared a few months ago:

We’ve been talking about this for a couple of years now. We want to keep it alive but make sure we maintain the integrity of the franchise. We’re not about milking this thing for all that it is right now; it’s important to see this live for years to come. What ‘Lost’ becomes after it ends its run is up in the air. It really depends on who comes in to interpret it next. We do believe ‘Lost’ can be a ‘Star Trek’ for us.

So what would a spin-off be about? At this point, it’s really just guess-work and can be virtually anything from some DHARMA-related storyline to Egyptians, Romans, and, let’s say, magical lights inside a cave.
The mythology of the show basically spans the entire history of mankind and has created a near-endless array of characters to chose from.

II) Alternate Reality Game

Already three of them have been made over the course of the series, and the first one was explicitly done to explain the numbers (what many consider to be a major mystery of the show).
Yes, The Lost Experience did serve a purpose. And best of all, it’s canon.
It is not totally unconceivable to think that further down the line, another ARG will be made both to entertain the fans and expand on one of the plot threads and layers of Lost (like DHARMA or something else).

The only question left would be the reason behind ABC’s willingness to do another ARG. The only answer possible is: to promote something.
Still today, ARGs are mainly made not for their narratives but for their mass and viral appeal, and a new Lost ARG would only be made if Disney had something to gain from it.

III) Tie-in novels & comics

This one is a given.
There has already been three novels published (excluding Bad Twin) and a Lost Encyclopedia is coming out soon.
Past mythological shows have also a history of continuing their stories through the comic art-form.
Would it be that much of a shocker if you’d suddenly find a book entitled Henry Gale’s Mysterious Adventures or a comic around the construction of the Four Toed Statue?
It’s the cheapest of all the options here, and an official book that is both canon and full of mythological answers would be a best-seller before it even came out.

IV) Theme park attraction

Though at first it might seem preposterous, it is actually one of the most anticipated and, yes, most plausible idea on this list.
You just know Disney will do a ride for one of it its amusement parks.
Think about it. How does ‘Lost Island’ sound to you?
Epic, that’s what.

There’s even a petition calling for the following locations to be built inside one of the theme parks:
– The Frozen Donkey Wheel behind the Orchid Station testing chamber.
– The Swan station
– The Hatch ride
– A submarine ride to Palu Ferry.
– Dharmaville Barracks.
– Ruins
– Jacob’s Cabin
– The Egyptian Statue and Jacob’s Lair

A Harry Potter theme park about to open in a few weeks, so a Lost one can be done.
What about a ‘Roller-Smoke-Monster’ or an ‘Oceanic Six Rescue Ride’?

V) Movie

I’m just kidding on that one.
I’ll let Damon Lindelof answer for me:

It’s funny, you know, we hear like 24 is going to do a movie and you always have to think like, I don’t know how they or when they do that. The reality of it is we’re shooting the show for ten months out of the year and the other two months we are spending, cumulatively recharging our batteries but also beginning to generate stories for the following season and you can’t shoot a feature film in two months even if we went right into it. So as long as the show is on the air as a TV show, logistically there could be no movie. And more importantly, it’s somewhat exploitative to kind of say to the audience who watches the show, “Hey, now you’ve got to go and pay eleven bucks and go into the theater in order to stay caught up with the show.” It’s not like 24 where we could do a self-contained movie. The movie would really have to answer definitive questions, move the plot forward, you know and we just don’t know how to do that or whether or not it needs to be done.

Yup, he did just say they don’t know how to “answer definitive questions” and “move the plot forward.” Guess there’s no movie to be made then.

Lost is indeed a franchise, perhaps dissimilar to Star Trek, but it does hold the potential for many other stories to be told. Whether it will be a disservice to the main series remains to be seen. It is highly unlikely though that either Carlton Cuse or Damon Lindelof will participate in any potential continuation of the franchise.
That’s what they’ve said anyway.

Possible Related posts:

1. How Lost revolutionized storytelling
2. Online saving

Before telegraphed flashsideways and magical caves, there was a time when Lost told its complex and often surprising story through other means. The mythological show brought to television seldom used attributes to entertain and mystify its audience.
Here’s how the groundbreaking series revolutionized television storytelling.


The first thing to notice about Lost is undoubtedly its unusual use of flashbacks.
At the time (and dare I say still to this day), it was a groundbreaking way to tell a story.
No, I’m not talking about the flashback itself, rather its use in network primetime.
Could viewers keep up with two simultaneous narratives involving the same characters at different times of their lives?
Since its first inception, flashbacks have not only become the staple of the show, but also populated the television landscape.

So much actually, that fans quickly grew tired of what appeared to only be a gimmick.
I guess now we can peak behind the curtain and reveal that, yes, it was at first an opportunity for the writers to stall.
Don’t take my word for it, here’s what Damon Lindelof had to say on the subject:

We knew early on that the flashbacks were going to have to be a prominent aspect of the series but we didn’t use flashbacks in the pilot other than to tell the story of the crash. We knew as we were shooting the pilot though that the only way to do the series would be to use the art of the stall. In any given season of 24 there’s not that much happening, but they give the illusion of constant suspense. On Lost if every episode were about discovering the mysteries of the island than we would be sunk, because there’s an inevitability to that where if the characters decided ‘we’re going to explore this island and figure out what this place is’ whereas if it’s ‘we’re going to figure out how to live with each other and figure out what this island is’ and we’re going to learn about the characters before the crash so that they’re emotionally compelling, that was the only way we saw to do the show.

The bottom line of it all is that, beyond its apparent uselessness, flashbacks on Lost (save for, let’s say, Fire+Water and Stranger in a Strange Land) were compelling both narratively and emotionally. You can’t say that about Damages’ flashforwards (more on that in a minute).
One of my personal favorites is the final flashback of Walkabout where it is revealed Locke was in a wheelchair.
The tour de force of Lost was to intertwine two narratives and therein create a seamless emotional journey that could resonate both in the past (off-Island), and in the present (on-Island). Those “flashes” were actually useful to the show.
As revealed by Lindelof, this back-and-forth between present and past was partly based on the storytelling method of the Watchmen graphic novel as well as Slaughterhouse-Five.


And since we’re on the subject, if you’re going to talk about one, then you’ll need to talk about the other.
I am of course referring to flashforwards (or prolepses).
Remember the time when you had never heard the term “flashforward”?
Me neither.
And yet, before the twist ending occurred during the Season Three finale (Through the Looking Glass), only a few people knew that the technique existed, let alone its usage.
You could say the series finale of Six Feet Under, The O.C., or even Star Trek: The Next Generation used flashforwards to offer viewers glimpses into the future of the show’s characters, but those were just that: glimpses. Like with flashbacks, Lost juxtaposed its timelines in such a unique way that you couldn’t look at prolepses as ‘just that’.

Flashforwards in Lost gave weight to something that was rarely used, or at least not for their sake, but just to give hints of the future. It was the ABC show that truly revealed the potential of such a storytelling technique. The series had showed again that audiences could follow simultaneously two very different timelines. Not since La Jetée have we had such a complex array of timelines, combining both analepses and prolepses. One could argue the writers are trying to catch the lightning in the bottle once more with this season’s flashsideways technique. But all they’re actually creating is a fake sense of nostalgia.

This true revolution gave way to a few series that probably would not have been green-lit had it not been for Lost.
Damages certainly succeeded in using flashforwards with its first season, but could have gone without it with its following seasons. They were as well only used as glimpses into the season finale, not true parallel storytelling. In addition, we can talk a bit about the now-canned FlashForward (based on the 1999 book of the same name) that proved a show could not sustain on mythology alone.

Ultimately, Carlton Cuse describes his show as “a giant mosaic”:

At various points in the journey you’re going to be standing in various spots and you can define them as past, present, or future. We like fractured storytelling, and the way we’re going you’ll be looking at various aspects of our characters’ lives in the story we are telling. We want to explore that from various perspectives.

Another revolution in the network landscape is the scope of the show.
And I’m not just talking about the size of the Four-Toed Statue.
From its cast and sets, to the score and cinematic visuals, Lost was pretty much unprecedented as a network drama. The show is de facto massively expensive (large crew and Hawaii shoot), but it also premiered during a time where networks were slowly moving away from scripted dramas into the realm of cheaply-produced reality shows. Whatever you might say about the mythology of the show, you can’t deny that the series had a lot of layers.

Comparing the show to video-game storytelling, Carlton Cuse went on to say:

We also felt that since Lost was violating a lot of rules of traditional television storytelling, including having a large and sprawling cast and having very complex storytelling, we felt that videogames were one model that showed that if audiences get invested, they love complexity. In fact, the more complexity the better, and the challenge of that complexity was an asset as opposed to a liability. Those are the games that people actually respect, you know?

As for the characters, even though an ensemble cast is far from being new, Lost distinguished itself from others thanks to the innovative “centric” aspect.
And regarding the mythology, well it seems to span literally thousands of years, though we’ll have a lot of things to say about that in the coming days.

Television storytelling was also revolutionized in another surprising way when, after a few months of back-and-forth talk between ABC and the Lost execs, an end-date for the series was announced on May 7th, 2007. Clearly, this move was done as a gesture towards the fan that both answers and the end were in sight. It was also an unprecedented move in network history that is unlikely to happen again, though it shaped in many ways other mythological series. Finally, the announcement led to three shorter seasons (around 15 episodes each), and, as we can see from the current renewals, such “cable seasons” are now becoming more and more in vogue.


Last but far from being least, we can now talk about the final two fundamental changes Lost brought to television storytelling: Crossmedia & Transmedia.
Simply put, crossmedia is distribution of one “story world” across multiple platforms, and transmedia is the usage of said platforms to tell the story.

Think of it this way: the ‘Lost world’ has many stories told through various mediums, the main one being the mothership (the television show on ABC). The rest of the (less important) side-stories can be told through, for instance, a series of books. This is crossmedia.
The show explored Information technologies as a way to distribute its stories. Case in point in December 2007 when Lost: Missing Pieces was launched on the Internet and mobile phones. The thirteen short videos (about three minutes each) were actually mini-flashbacks comprised of mostly deleted scenes. It wasn’t the first foray into mini-episodes (see 24 and Battlestar Galactica), but it certainly was the most effective of its time.

You also have transmedia, which is basically a more engulfing version of crossmedia. The most obvious example is what is called “Alternate Reality Game” (ARG), or, as Wikipedia describes it, “an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants’ ideas or actions.“
One of the best ARG was The Lost Experience in 2007. I won’t go here into the dirty deets of what made TLE so great (Ivan Askwith deconstructed the ARG pretty thoroughly in his paper), though I have to congratulate one of the masterminds behind it, Javier Grillo-Marxuach.
Though their later attempts were much less successful (Find 815, the Dharma Initiative Recruiting Project), what you had with TLE and other Lost crossmedia was a unified viewing experience that allowed the audience to decide on which level it wants to be involved with the series.
You could be an über-fan and follow The Lost Experience, or just a casual viewer and simply watch the series on TV.


At the end of the day, Lost may be most remembered for complex mysteries or lack of answers, but its most overlooked aspect will certainly be the one that will have the greatest impact on television: groundbreaking and timeless storytelling.

Possible Related posts:

1. Lost Finale Thoughts: From The End to the beginning
2. Lost Finale Thoughts: Artificiality at its best (and worst)

It’s that time of the season again. Many shows are on the verge of being cancelled by the big Five networks, and several cable channels, and hopes are dimming for a few of them. So, let me get this out of the way: yes, ratings are a key factor, along with DVR showings, etc. It depends also on the level of the development season, and the will of the networks to balance scripted and unscripted shows, or to launch new scripted blocks. That’s what’s expected for ABC and NBC, at the very least, since they renewed the totality of their 2-hour comedy blocks, save for ABC’s “Hank”, but still ordered a dozen comedy pilots for next season.

All of that is obvious, and has been repeated in many stories all over the specialized sites. But lately, due to the financial crisis, both studios and networks have been creative in trying to find ways to bring shows back. So, stop trying to aggregate for “Save Show” campaigns or sending gifts to executives, and…

(That one takes us back, doesn’t it?)

International sales?
A very interesting story has emerged from the “New York Times” last week. It came on the heels of Sony negotiating with premium channel DirecTV to bring a fourth season of “Damages” to air. Sure, “Damages” garners critical acclaim and Emmys for Glenn Close, but this season the ratings have been disappointing to the FX brass.

This quote in particular is interesting:

The formula for making the cable drama business pay is changing, but, as Zack Van Amburg, president of programming and production for Sony Pictures Television, said, so is the world.
“International is critical for these shows,” he said. “Five years ago broadcast shows were more valuable. They were thought of as better-produced and of higher quality. Now cable shows have gone out and performed well.”
Sony’s “Damages” attracts about 1.4 million viewers an episode, barely survival ratings on FX (though Mr. Landgraf jokingly said it does very well “among viewers with I.Q.’s over 140”). But Sony has sold the show to international outlets for a total of about $2 million an episode.

So, the international sales, especially for a drama coming with a “prestige” stamp like “Damages”, have been instrumental in getting the talks going to finance more seasons. (However, it looks like that wasn’t enough, since Sony doesn’t want a substantial license fee reduction, so it might be dead after the Season 3 finale, according to Variety.)
Shows drawing an international audience can be saved from the bubble, like “Alias” in its time, or “Heroes” now. That’s the prime reason a final season, though short, can be ordered by NBC, since otherwise the show has nothing going for it.

Other networks?
Granted, that’s a rare case of networks jumping in, and usually it doesn’t take place until after the bubble show has been cancelled in the upfronts. (There are exceptions of course, “Friday Night Lights” on DirecTV being one.) But, lately, it has not been unusual: “Medium” jumped from NBC (poor marketing, consistently great ratings) to CBS (Friday Night Slot of Death, but great promotion); “Scrubs” ended its run on ABC after 7 seasons, including one aborted, on NBC. But “SAVE OUR SHOW” aficionados, don’t jump to conclusions that quick or try to play Armchair Executive too soon. That will happen if the parties willing to order more seasons have a personal stake in the show: “Medium” is produced by CBS Paramount TV (keyword: CBS. Sister arm of production), so Les Moonves had interest in promoting a new season. Plus, Glenn Gordon Caron already produced the late, great “Now and Again” for CBS back in 2000. Same case with “Scrubs”: not only is it produced by ABC Studios, but Steve McPherson himself developed the show, back when he was the head of Touchstone Television.

DVD sales?
This one is less realistic. Sales of a cancelled show on DVD, if significant, might help the network reconsider more seasons. Sadly, this has only happened for two animated shows: “Futurama” and “Family Guy”, both produced by 20th Century Fox. As far as I’m aware, selling 2 million copies of, say, “The Forgotten” season 1 won’t make Steve McPherson reconsider bringing Christian Slater back on the air. (Especially since Slater has already jumped ship on another pilot. And no, no one really wants to see new episodes of “The Forgotten”.)

A producer mogul with beaucoup clout?
The times where you could get a TV show made based on the sake of your name are now long gone. On network TV, that is. After all, David Milch got “John From Cincinnatti” ordered without HBO executives blinking once. But a few of those moguls subsist: that’s how John Wells, Executive Producer Extraordinaire, responsible for “China Beach” and especially “ER”, took the filmed episodes of season 2 of “Southland” to TNT. The first season, aired right after the end of “ER”, in the slot of Thursdays at 10, was already a sign of goodwill from NBC execs, who gave the keys to a late-season run to an eager Wells, that wanted to keep the real estate and momentum. But fall came, Leno at 10 too, so “Southland” was supposed to air on Fridays (gasp) at 9 pm (ugh). The rest is history: NBC chickened out, Wells got pissed and terminated his contract. But the 6 unaired episodes of “Southland”, broadcast after reruns of season 1, didn’t attract many eyeballs. So, specialists wonder if TNT made the right move by believing in the show. And among the bubble shows, save for “Cold Case” and “The Forgotten” produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, none of them are produced by a bigtime producer.

Many shows won’t get a second chance to come back next month. Some won’t even see the light of day on DVD, such as aforementioned “Cold Case”, held up ever since its premiere for music license rights. So, at the end of the day, it depends on the will of the studio and the network to find avenues to bring the show back and recoup the money well beyond the ad revenue.

About the Author

Based in Southwest France, Lordy is a local reporter in all areas of France (really, look it up). As a hobby though, he has a keen and often deconstructing look on the entertainment business, even as a simple fan. — You can follow him on @lordofnoyze

Possible Related posts:

1. Bursting the Bubble
2. TV Fall ’08: The Complete Review — What is up with the networks

I came across an article by New York Times’ David Pogue about the polarizing aspect of the iPad.
He writes:

The haters tend to be techies; the fans tend to be regular people.
Therefore, no single write-up can serve both readerships adequately. There’s but one solution: Write separate reviews for these two audiences.
Read the first one if you’re a techie. (How do you know? Take this simple test. Do you use BitTorrent? Do you run Linux? Do you have more e-mail addresses than pants? You’re a techie.)
Read the second review if you’re anyone else.

Besides the fact that this article is stuck in a 1999 cliché of what a “techie” is, my problem with this is Pogue gives a false sense of objectivity (showing both sides of the coin).
The thing is, not only is the so-called “anti” review comprised of just a basic spec list, but the whole article is overwhelmingly biased towards the iPad.
The “pro” review (three times the size of its counterpart), praises the same aspects of the tablet that, well, everyone else seems to praise (regardless of if they’re actually good/relevant/comparable, or not).

As I was reading through the review, it became clear that the author was enamored with the device – and so was the rest of the press corps.
Save for those few “techie” websites, every news outlet raves about the iPad, totally disregarding its many flaws.
Everyone is saying how “revolutionary” is is. And both Newsweek and Time have made iPad their covers.

The problem is that they’re buying their own hype.

Apple declares the product “magical”, and then on the other end the press emphasizes it to the point where you don’t know if some massive brainwash has occurred.

It’s as if people are more than happy to jump on the Apple bandwagon instead of taking a step back, and provide reasonable critical thinking.

The press is duping the public in thinking that a severely limited $500 tablet is better than a versatile $300 computer.
We all know people love to touch their stuff, but come on.
You can’t throw away all your other devices (laptop, home-computer, phone), and just use the iPad (that kinda looks like a clunky iPhoto Frame).

Apple knows their niche and exploited it to the max.

Wall Street Journal’s Walter Mossberg says:

After spending hours and hours with it, I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop.

If I understand this right, a tablet with a 4:3 screen and the same processor as my phone will replace my computer that has ten times the specs and power.
I’m sorry but intuitiveness is not the only thing that should make or break a technological device. Especially one that is positioning itself as a laptop-killer.

Going back to the New York Times article:

The iPad’s killer app, though, is killer apps. Apple says that 150,000 existing iPhone apps run on the iPad.

How are phone apps working on a fake laptop supposed to be a “killer app”?
For that matter, how is a laptop having apps anything new?
Ever heard of something called “software”? You know that your netbook can run programs too, right?
And they’re not limited by the iTunes store.
I can understand why having exclusive apps for the iPhone that no other phone can do might be interesting, but if your laptop-killer can’t even run laptop-level apps (Photoshop?) , you’ve got a problem.

And no, it can’t handle Adobe Flash.
What’s the reasoning? Steve Jobs says it’s “buggy.”
Nice personal vendetta.
Again, I can understand why the iPod Touch might not be able to handle Flash, especially seeing that web-surfing is not its primary component.
On the other hand, the iPad is marketed as a device made for web-surfing. And yet it can’t fully access it.
Steve Jobs called the iPad “the best web experience you’ve ever had,” though why shell out $500+ to only access a tenth of web content?

There’s also no multitasking, or more specifically app concurrency.
This is not hyped to be a one-app device, and yet you cannot run two apps at the same time (despite the size and speed).

Regarding its e-book capabilities, and the fact that the iPad is not an e-Reader, we’ve already covered that part in full detail.
Though I do get annoyed when the iPad’s e-reading function is praised for details like:

When you turn a page, the animated page edge actually follows your finger’s position and speed as it curls, just like a paper page.

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that an animation of a page turning was more important than the actual book page.
When you read a book, do you spend much time looking at how cool the page turning is, or more time reading the actual thing?

This ode to the iPad has even reached television, with Modern Family dedicating this week an episode to the device.
I don’t know what is scarier: the fact that an entire storyline was crafted around the iPad, or that Apple didn’t have to pay for it.

Time Magazine’s review does have an interesting point towards its very end:

The iPad shifts the emphasis from creating content to merely absorbing and manipulating it. It mutes you, turns you back into a passive consumer of other people’s masterpieces. In that sense, it’s a step backward.

The iPad is a media consumption device, but it’s too damn limited.

Which brings me to Final Draft.
You’ve probably heard by now that the company is developing an app for the iPad.
The Final Draft app will primarily be designed to make small edits here and there, but I get the feeling that, even with a great screenwriting app, the iPad isn’t comfy enough for script edits.
Typing pages of text on a virtual keyboard? You must be joking. You can’t even write on your lap.
Except for short e-mails or messages, not much will be able to be done it feels like.
I’m still waiting to see how this one plays out though.

I think Engadget’s Ross Miller nailed it when he described the iPad as:

A jack of some trades, a master of none.

The press felt bummed out they didn’t call the iPod or the iPhone as the game-changer they were, so this time around they’re all too keen to declare the iPad as the greatest gadget that ever was.
I’m not saying the iPad will bomb (it probably won’t), I’m just expecting a little more neutrality from a medium that is supposed to be unbiased and shouldn’t get “all tingly inside” when reporting about a flawed device.

And as for why ABC and CBS putting their TV shows on the iPad for free is a dangerous thing, that’s a story for another time.

Possible Related posts:

1. Why the hell do you have an iPhone?
2. Mad Men: Demystifying the overhyped

With 24 being canceled and Lost ending its run next May, this season will mark the last year of so-called Appointment Television.

Everything is now available at our finger tips, and denying it is simply delusional.
It’s a given that people are currently watching television in a very different way than how they were used to for the past last 50–60 years.
Pure made-for-TV content is virtually gone. Networks are constantly thinking of new ways to use new media to promote a show on the air.

Appointment TV itself has gone through some changes throughout the years.
At its core, it can best be described as a can’t-miss show you have to see every broadcast week.
The reason you “can’t-miss” it is exactly what has evolved.

Appointment TV has been in existence since the early days of television at a time where only a handful networks existed. Everyone around the country would tune in to watch one of the few shows on the air, week after week.
When a finale aired, it was an event like no other that a majority of Americans would follow. M*A*S*H*’s series finale achieved a 77% share with 50.15 million households. Three years prior, the Dallas reveal of who shot J.R. attracted 41.5 million households for a 76% share.
To compare, this year’s Super Bowl, the most-watched television program in television history, “only” achieved a 68% share.

But don’t think this viewer problem is anything new.
Over twenty years ago, in 1988, LAT’s Peggy Zeigler wrote in an article entitled “Where have all the viewers gone?”:

And everyone has to figure out how to make network television back into a hits business. The buzzword is appointment television, industry shorthand for the kind of “can’t miss” shows that people make sure they’re home to watch — or they tape. Appointment television translates to hit shows: “Cosby” was appointment TV, so was “Moonlighting” and “L.A. Law.” Appointment television brings more viewers to the set; “The Cosby Show” single-handedly boosted Thursday night HUT levels when it debuted in 1984.

By the mid-1990s, NBC’s “Must See TV” brand was starting to die down, and so was widespread Appointment TV. Due to an increasing number of channels, everyone had their own little personal “Appointment TV Show,” but few were nationally-recognized as such.

A crazy storytelling form became at that point a bit more common: serialized narratives.
Though heavily-serialized shows wouldn’t catch on for another ten years, “softer” mythological ones would in the meantime not only become critical hits, but also cultural ones. Series, such as The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, succeeded in keeping an episode format while creating arcs over a full season.
Appointment TV was at that point apparently dead, replaced by Cult Television.

Then something happened: the Internet.
People could share thoughts and discuss mythological components, dissect a show, relay tons of behind-the-scenes information. But it needed content.
No new series had appeared to fill the void since the end of The X-Files.

24 premiered in 2001 and was an instant hit. Many reasons were given, a major one is linked to its serialized format.
It wasn’t only made to enhance “the watercooler factor,” but more importantly allowed the show to introduce a brand new concept: addictive television.
At the other end of the box, people had started to proactively change their schedules to fit a given show into their lives.
You wouldn’t necessarily want to do a Hill Street Blues marathon, but we’ve all heard countless stories of people watching several seasons of 24 back-to-back in one sitting.
After that shift occurred, virtually no episodic Appointment TV remained. Friends’ finale became an actual Television Event (thanks to the show’s influence on pop-culture), but the show never actually reached on a regular basis the levels of 80s sitcoms.

In 2004, Desperate Housewives brought back soap-opera to primetime with much success.
The same year, Lost smashed the mythological show rulebook and paved the way for new forms of television-related transmedia storytelling. Its complex mysteries also brought viewers, who tuned in week after week, wanting answers, or at the very least more clues. For its six seasons, countless time has been spent talking about the series and its content.

The void was filled, and the ultimate form of Appointment Television was born. If only with a decade to live.
Slowly but surely, the tool that helped it resurface was causing its very downfall.
The shows had become so serialized that you couldn’t miss an episode, and needed to use technology to catch up on them. From there, it wasn’t much of a stretch for “can’t miss shows” to become DVRed and streamed instead of live-watched.
Ironically, Appointment TV had become a “must-see,” but not necessarily on television’s schedule.
What works best on television are episodic shows, and what works best outside television are serialized ones.

Meanwhile, Event TV (sports competitions, award shows, etc.) was emphasized as such thanks to Twitter, and other live-communities.
It now has grown into something new: Social Television.

Lost’s series finale in May will be Event Television. Everyone around the country might not watch it, but they will surely talk about it. By that time however, Appointment Television will be gone forever.
Whatever the case may be, massive weekly viewings of a show are a thing of the past.
Welcome to the world of crossmedia.

Possible Related posts:

1. NBC sans Silverman (TCA edition)
2. Why Heroes should not set an end date