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Posts tagged as “Lost”

Focus on Writing for Genre Television

On Friday evening was a round-table at Meltdown Comics featuring some of the greatest minds behind the best genre TV series currently on the air.
The panel was hosted by Sax Carr & Tim Powers and entitled ‘Writing for Genre Television.’
It was comprised of the following awesome people:
– Amy Berg
– Josh Friedman
– Bob Goodman
– Javier Grillo-Marxuach
– Deric A. Hughes
– Ashley Miller
– Benjamin Rabb
– Laura Valdivia

Since there wasn’t much to do on a Friday afternoon, I decided to come to Meltdown Comics way earlier.
Turns out, that was pretty pointless, though I did buy a couple of comics and graphic novels.
Anyhow, once it was finally time to sit down into the Meltdown Gallery, it quickly became clear that we were going to wait some more as Josh Friedman hadn’t yet arrived.
Fortunately for everyone already present (and especially Javier’s appetite), a deliciously disgusting food truck was present on the scene of the crime.

And once everyone was ready, it was time to shine.
The panel was very fun and informative with a lot of awesome writing advice.
Probably (one of) the greatest and most memorable was undoubtedly Ashley Miller’s three rules every writer should abide to:
1) Write every day.
2) If you can’t write, read.
3) Finish things.

Javier had his own version of these same rules:
1) Write every day.
2) If you can’t write, read.
3) If you can’t read or write, then you’re illiterate.

A few writing debates were raised throughout the night.
The first was about the (non)inclusion of inside jokes into a genre show.
Josh Friedman apparently got mad one day after one of the writers snuck the name of a fan inside a script.
Why?
Constructing a believable genre world takes a lot of time and credibility, which can be instantly ruined by a mere ‘wink’ to the audience. This is tantamount to breaching the fourth wall.
It’s however a totally different thing if the in-jokes are part of the world itself and pop-culture talk is relevant to the characters (the example given was that of two characters talking about red shirts on Warehouse 13).

You are also doing something very wrong if you are stating the obvious in your dialogue.
If someone says either “Listen. Everybody knows that…” or “Now let me get this straight…”, rethink your entire scene. Josh also said the same about someone reading a case-file (therefore listing a person’s background to the audience).

Then came the delicate subject of killing off (regular) characters.
Sax Carr kind of wrongfully used Doyle’s death in Angel as an example of a gutsy move to kill a main cast member so early on in a series. Though that was quickly proven to be a bad choice as Doyle was in reality killed for practical (read: on-set) reasons, not creative ones. The point is that certain decisions made by writers are not always made solely for the sake of the story. They can also be done because of contractual or even personal obligations.
Another on-screen death discussed was Derek Reese being (randomly) killed by a Terminator (in The Sarah Connor Chronicles). In my mind, this still represents one of the greatest and balsiest deaths on a TV series.
If you’ll recall the episode in question, Brian Austin Green’s character was swiftly killed in action by a Terminator. No dramatic music, no smash cut to black, no heroic sacrifice. Just one minute he’s there, and the next he’s gone.
And we move on.
This is exactly why this death is so memorable. As explained by Josh himself, Derek was a soldier, and not all soldier die in the glory of battle. Derek knew he was going to die at some point and he accepted that.
If anything, his death made the world even more real.
Unsurprisingly, this gutsy decision had to be battled for by the writing staff (which even before that had a debate about it amongst themselves, raging for weeks).
The writers on the panel did tend to agree though that now act breaks and cliffhangers are not really about ‘life or death’ situations, rather about personal character stakes (see Breaking Bad).

This doesn’t bring me to the next topic, but I’ll talk about it anyways: anciliary online materials during the hiatus of a show, such as ARGs or webisodes. Is it becoming an obligation?
There again, the consensus seemed to be that it was a two-way street. The networks want it, and the writers love it. It’s just a question of finding the right balance between the two needs.
It is also difficult to make the ‘extra-curricular’ content canon. Case in point with The Lost Experience. Javier talked about his experience crafting, arguably, the best TV ARG made and how, even though the story explained the true meaning of Lost‘s numbers, fans just wouldn’t accept this as an answer.

The panel continued with a question about the zombie (sub)genre and if there is anything left to tell in it.
The bottom line of the discussion that followed was this: Regardless of the genre you want to work on, your story needs to be about something. You can’t say “my story is about vampires,” but maybe it’s more a coming-of-age story? (akin to Jessica in True Blood) It is also not because you’re introducing X or Y into the pot that you’re “elevating” the genre, that’s just ridiculous.
If the allegory works then go for it, but you shouldn’t start a project just to use a creature.

Last but not least, there was also some talk about…exposition.
I know, it’s a pain for us all.
Exposition can sometimes be delivered successfully by actors, but everyone agrees that it is best not to write an expository scene or dialogue. Rather, do both exposition and character at the same time. Every scene in your script should hold more than one piece of information.
On the same line of thought, Javier added that every scene and every story can potentially be brought back to the same basic rhythm of three (beginning, middle, end). He used as an example an early scene in Saving Private Ryan that used the same principle as a joke (set-up, development, pay-off) but wasn’t necessarily one to begin with.
If a scene isn’t working, maybe that’s one of the reasons.

So there you have it.
I’m sure there’s a lot I didn’t put down here, so once a video of the event is online, I’ll be sure to edit it in.
Until then, happy writing.

Lost Finale Thoughts: From The End to the beginning

Lost Finale Thoughts: From The End to the beginning

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.

Lost Finale Thoughts: Artificiality at its best (and worst)

Lost Finale Thoughts: Artificiality at its best (and worst)

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.