The guide emphatically promised:
THE BIG QUESTION- IS IT SELF-CONTAINED OR SERIALIZED?
Self-contained.
Seriously.
We promise.
Yes - the mysteries surrounding the island may serve an ongoing (and easy to follow) mythology - but every episode has a beginning, middle and end. More importantly, the beginning of the next episode presents an entirely new dilemma to be resolved that requires NO knowledge of the episode(s) that preceded it (except for the rare two-parter).
Yes - character arcs (romances, alliances, grudges) carry over the scope of a season, but the plots will not. Viewers will be able to drop in at any time and be able to follow exactly what's going on in a story context.
This is not lip service- we are absolutely committed to this conceit. LOST can and will be just as accessible on a weekly basis as a traditionally "procedural" drama.
The first issue is whether LOST was going to be a series of long, interrelated episodes or whether each episode would be self contained. For example, in a crime story drama, you will have the same characters show up week to week, but they solve one crime or mystery within each weekly program. There is no holdover - - - where the viewers would need to have seen last week's episode to know what was going on in the current week. This is important to network executives because traditionally "serial" programs tend to lose viewers quickly because it becomes too much work to follow a long narrative.
The network was sold on self-contained adventure episodes. The creators promised that each episode would be self-contained - - - requiring NO knowledge of the episodes that preceded it.
Nothing was farther from the Truth than that broken promise.
Viewers could not just drop in on a random episode to determine what was going on between the characters. Individual story lines were carried forward through multiple episodes and seasons, cut up by the over use of back stories and new characters. To this day, fans will continue to debate what actually happened on the series. There was no clear beginning, middle or an end to any episode, let alone any season. (For example, Season 5's cliffhanger with Juliet and the bomb. Did it go off? Did it re-set? Did it create the sideways world? Why didn't she die if the bomb went off? Is dead really dead?)
What changed to torpedo this promised episode expectation? Perhaps, the writers got caught up with the stylized editing of the show - - - throwing bits and pieces of characters back grounds then trying to mirror those personal issues in future episodes (like trying to hide Easter eggs in an overgrown back yard). Perhaps, the show runners wanted to do the opposite as a way of trying to "hold" the audience over from week to week. The addictive substance they threw on the screen was more mysteries and questions from new clues at the beginning of each new episode. Some could say that the writers turned into clue-pimps trying to prime the pump of on-line blogs, reviewers and posters. The clues then turned into tangents, red herrings and outright continuity errors and lies. The answers were the last thing TPTB wanted viewers to know. Keeping fans in the dark became the real conceit of the show.
The one thing that LOST failed to do more often than not was actually resolve an issue. For example, what did we see in all the episodes prior to the End which would guarantee that Kate would go back to Jack?
All the truly Big Questions still remain unresolved. What was the island? Who was Jacob? What was his real role? Were the survivors dead on arrival? Why is there no past, present or future in the sideways world? How was the sideways even created and by whom? What were the moral lessons of LOST? Why were criminals and sinners never punished? Was the drama all dreamed up inside a character's head?
All the story line plots were supposed to have a clear and definite end after each episode. That did not happen. The only thing that the writers envisioned that would overlap season to season would be the character's personalities (their romances, grudges, struggles and alliances) as applied to new weekly dilemmas.
It could be the instant critical acclaim and success took TPTB by surprise. However, they indicated to the network that they had dozens of stories already in mind when the guide was written. The immediate success must have changed the conceit to contempt - - - someone was now the smartest man or men in the room so all rules or constraints did not apply anymore. A hit series needed to be cleverer and more mysterious than any other show on television. And when that page was turned, the writer's guide promises were clearly lost.
