Lost: Observation as Participation as Artistry

The Onion AV Club has just posted an interview with Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the first TV showrunners to be bigger celebrities than their actors. I saw these guys speak at ComicCon, where they had a huge theater space all to themselves and people cheered their every tiny tease and inside joke like they were late-night TV show hosts.

The way people react to these guys reminds me of something Ralph Fiennes says in the almost-forgotten 1995 film "Quiz Show" - he's playing Charles Van Doren, longtime quiz show winner on "Twenty-One" who ended up disgraced because of cheating, and he's talking about how strange and wonderful it is to see young people excited about a guy who's using his big old brain - to see people go crazy over smarts. Lindelof and Cuse are like Van Dorens who never cheated, and their rock-star existence is proof that being feverishly intelligent can be the most fun in the world.

Anyways, their interviews are always fascinating and never reveal anything about "Lost" (the exception being the revelation that Michael was going to be a fulltime cast member on the show this year, though even that was a dodge since he only appeared halfway through the season.) Something Lindelof says in the interview is particular genius: "The way you're watching the show now is incredibly unique... three or four years from now, people who are experiencing the show for the first time will basically only have to wait a day or an hour or minute before they decide to slide in the next DVD." The way we watch "Lost" right now is a genuine "experience," and no close study of the show - of its motifs (which are many), of its steadily evolving visual style, of how its run coincided with the first radical shift in viewing habits since VCRs - will ever quite be able to capture that. It's not just that it's exciting. The way we watch "Lost" - the way we devour its clues, the way an entire community has sprouted up to "figure it all out" - has, at times, radically altered the show itself.

Take Nikki and Paolo. Lindelof and Cuse admit that they mainly invented the characters as a way to answer fan questions about what, exactly, the rest of the castaways are doing while our main characters follow their main plot. In turn, when practically everyone despised Nikki and Paolo right from the start, they killed them off immediately. These characters were generated and murdered at the whim of fans. There's been situations like this in the past. You could compare it to the fan-voted death of Jason Todd (the second Robin), or the return of Hal Jordan as Green Lantern after years of fan appeal. Hell, you could even recall Shakespeare writing a play for Falstaff at the beckoning of Queen Elizabeth; people liked "The Merry Wives of Windsor" even less than Nikki and Paolo. But the speed of fan response, and the creator's response to the fan response, certainly makes this a new benchmark for television.

In a sense, though, I think it's a bit disingenuous of Lindelof/Cuse to foist the whole Nikki & Paolo misadventure entirely on the fans. Everything about the presentation of Nikki & Paolo felt amateurish. Nikki's first appearance, in the closing minutes of Locke's flashback episode at the start of the third season, is absurdly non sequitur - how could she not be distracting, wearing Daisy Dukes, even more ridiculously attractive than glam-girl Shannon? And how could he not be distracting, the ridiculously hot-accented metrosexual from "Love, Actually?" And how could fans not hate them, when, the first time they actually did something, they were literally just tagging along with characters we DID care about (Eko, Locke, and Sayid), and the extent of their dialogue was exchanges like this:

"Why is Eko so sad?"

"His brother is inside the plane."

"Lost" is usually such a fleet-footed show when it comes to introductions - we first met Ben, Desmond, Juliet, and the returned Michael when they were all right in the middle of something big. They all had mystery, right off the bat. With Nikki & Paolo, it was like the camera briefly panned left from the main cast, saw a couple of blank people with blank stares, and then zoomed in for a close-up. Their flashback episode plays with this utter stupidity - they come across many of the island's mysteries before anyone else, but have no interest in them - and then they die. In the process, the Great Dream of Meeting The Other Castaways was over.

This is really too bad. I think the creators took the wrong lesson from the whole misadventure - to them, it meant that they should never bother with the other castaways ever again. This does have the benefit of keeping the focus on the main cast, but it also means that we've lost all sense of survivors of Flight 815 as a concrete mass of people. Instead, whenever there are any big crowd events, we get close-ups on the main cast and an abstract bunch of people in the background. Back in season 1, Hurley could confuse Scott and Steve, and if a random-looking Tom-Cruise cousin like Ethan could turn out to be an Other, then couldn't anybody? Now, there's no real way of knowing how many people went with Locke and how many people stayed with Jack, because the number was almost purposefully vague right from the start.

Imagine, for a second, that Nikki & Paolo had never happened - that, rather than Meeting the Other Castaways by plugging them awkwardly into the main cast with nothing to do, everything was just a little bit different. Maybe midway through season 3 - maybe right after Jack's awful episode, about the kooky Asian tattoo artist - there was an episode which started, as so many episodes of "Lost" do, with an eye opening. Except that there's no sonic boom on the soundtrack, no eerie music. The eye opens slowly, woozily, and then closes again. The sound of waves and a bit of wind, and voices. We pull back and see someone we've never seen before - except that we're not really sure, because the face that we're looking at is so bland that we could have seen it a billion times and still not remember it. The actor is someone we vaguely remember from small guest starring roles in other TV shows - might be Zeljko Ivanek (the multi-accented wonder from "24" and "Damages"), or Nicole Burdette (Tony's sister from "The Sopranos" who wasn't Janice). Because this is "Lost," let's assume it's a non-white actor, and because making the character an everyman seems obvious, let's make it a woman: Luciana Carro (who played Kat on "Battlestar Galactica"), cute enough to get past central casting but normal-looking enough that she'd work well in this kind of role.

She gets up. She steps outside her tent. She's on castaway beach, where she's been for over two months now. She walks over to the breakfast nook. Pours herself some Dharma cereal. Sayid walks up. Nods at her. She nods back. They hear Aaron crying. Not crying. Shrieking. We can see Claire and Charlie trying to calm the baby down. Charlie is being ineffectual, Claire is telling him not to worry. Our girl (let's call her Amanda) rolls her eyes. Sayid does too. Amanda smiles a little.

Amanda walks away down the beach, sits down, and starts digging in. The camera sets down right in front of her while she eats. Someone else - equally normal looking, let's say a bit more recognizable, a middle-aged woman, an actress who hasn't had work in awhile - Rene Russo, maybe, or (even better), Debra Winger - sits down next to her. Also has cereal. They eat in silence for awhile. You can still hear the baby shrieking from here. Debra-Rene, completely deadpan (let's call her Norma), mouth full of cereal, says "If I have to hear that god damn baby cry one more second, I'm going to move."

Amanda says, "You can't move. If you move, I have to move. And I can't move, I'm in love."

Norma: "Oh, who is it this week? Let me guess, he's wearing a tank top, he's got short trim military hair, and he's got the same tattoos every tourist gets when they get too drunk and walk into a tattoo parlor in Bangkok."

Amanda: "I like Jack's tattoos. And no, I'm not in love with Jack. That cute Indian guy winked at me today. You know, the quiet one?"

Norma: "I thought he was Iranian. You just like guys who show off their biceps."

They go back and forth like this. A few more people come over - all people we've never seen before. They have a loose back and forth. Maybe this isn't as interesting as a normal episode, but isn't this kind of introduction more subtle than Nikki & Paolo? They're not asking to be brought up to speed on things we already know. They've just been trying to live as normal a life as possible, and now they're bored. They're like every fan of the show in the middle of season 3.

Someone proposes that they go on vacation - without telling Jack, who, it's clear, everyone thinks is a bit of a stuffed shirt. A few people are nervous - they've heard all these rumors about what's in the jungle. It's like that scene from an old Simpsons - "I've heard a witch lives there! I've heard a Frankenstein lives there!" But these people have been on this island for a long time, and they're excited about finally doing something, and they don't really worry about the danger anymore. (Remember back at the start of season 1, when people would run into the monster practically every time they ran into the jungle? Now think about the end of season 3, when Jack had no qualms about leading EVERYONE into the jungle.) It comes out that everyone has a different idea about what, exactly, the monster is.

They agree to talk to somebody in the know about just what, exactly, is in the jungle before they go in there. Our girls go and have a chit chat with Locke. Amanda is a bit intimidated by Locke, and acts nervous. Norma, a high school teacher, just asks him bluntly - "What's out there in the woods?"

Locke says, "No one really knows."

Norma, quick as a shot: "You're in there all the time. Have you seen it?"

Locke smiles his bullshit smile: "I've seen it, but I couldn't quite tell you what it looks like."

Norma: "What's it look like when you see it?"

Locke: "Sometimes it's light. Sometimes it's... smoke."

Norma: "Smoke."

Locke: "Take my advice: don't go into the jungle."

Norma: "Or the smoke will get us."

Locke: "Of course, I can't stop you."

Norma and Amanda both nod their heads. Locke stares at them. They stare back at Locke. Cut to them walking back down the camp. They're very quiet. They look at each other.

Norma, quiet, speaking out the side of her mouth: "Is he gone?"

Amanda turns around and looks: "Yeah."

They break down laughing. Cut to a few minutes later - they lead their little crew of 5 or 6 into the jungle.

You could argue that this kind of treatment would be too much for the show - that it would upset the flow, it would be too talky or too in-jokey - but I think it would've been much more palatable, and certainly more interesting, to treat the new characters more in the Dr. Arzt mode, where they're a bit confused and even bemused by the main cast, then in the Nikki & Paolo, "Hey look, it's our friend Poochie!!" mold.

The rest of the episode (this could all be before the first commercial break) could go in any number of directions - they could go back to one of the old places we haven't seen in awhile (the Caves, Henry Gale's balloon, the station where the Tailies made camp for so long); or, even better, they could find something new. Perhaps they could even have a mini-reenactment of the Henry Gale subplot, when they manage to capture a mysterious person. Except that here, the whole thing is played for absurd comic effect. "He could be from the tail section!" "No, they all died!" "They SAID they all died!" "Maybe he's an Other!" "What's an Other?" "Maybe HE'S the Monster!" "Well, he DOES have some Dharma brand cigarettes."

You could take this episode in ANY direction, and the lesson is the same as the Nikki & Paolo fiasco - the other people haven't been doing much of anything, actually, fans! - except that, by the end, it turns that idea on its side, because whereas Nikki & Paolo never actually wanted to do anything, these humble new people, like Dr. Arzt, badly want to do something.

That was an incredibly long tangent which nevertheless proves, I think, just how radically different it is to watch the show while it's on, as opposed to years later. Something else from the AV Club pops into memory - a quotation by Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiorastami: "I make one film as a filmmaker, but the audience, based on that film, makes 100 movies in my mind." This is an abstraction when it comes to movies, but while a TV show is on, it's as concrete as subjective thought process can be - we're all in the process of finishing "Lost," and we have been for four years now. The above imaginary episode could have only happened in season 3, when the show was still wide open. It's unimaginable now, because after Nikki & Paolo, suddenly "Lost" had an end date - it became a story with a genuine ending on its way, whereas before it was a story without any real ending. You could imagine it going on for a thousand years. Now, you know it's only going to last another two.