That first season, really creatively, we weren't able to do any advance work until the first season ended, because we had a tiger by the tail. And because JJ and I had met so late in the game and put the pilot together so quickly and it was green lit without a script, blah blah blah. This sense that the audience was feeling that we were making it up as we were going along was a very real feeling and I was the one that was like, "Now there is so far to fall."
There certainly was no Twitter or Facebook presence, but you could feel the buzz happening around the show. And it was absolutely and totally terrifying and overwhelming. I was 30 years old and sort of driving this car with a sense of a tremendous amount of honking behind me. It was like, "Why are you all following me?! I don't know whether to go left or right!" So my memories of September 22 and 23 should be, "Oh my god, that was one of the greatest days of my life," and in hindsight, of course it was, but it just didn't feel that way at the time.
I hope it's remembered for the experience that happened in the six days in between the airings of the episodes. As a TV viewer, for so long I had been feeling, with the exception of some of the things that were happening on cable like The Sopranos, that there weren't really any water cooler shows that gave that feeling of, "I can't wait to see what's going to happen next." The last time I had really experienced that feeling on network TV was with the X-Files and then more recently Alias, which I was just as obsessed with as you were.
This is about as close as Lindelof has come to confirming some of the show's critics about the direction of the show. Yes, most fans were aware of the harried back story of the show: that ABC executives pushed for a drama-survival show, and roped in the "hot" TV property master, J.J. Abrams, to do the pilot. And then it as surprise hit with the critics and the viewers, drawing an a large, unexpected audience. Lindelof admits that this took everyone by surprise, and the staff struggled with the show because they could not "do any advance work" during the first season. He was aware of the audience feeling that they were making it up as it goes. But then the show became beholden to technique over substance --- the flash backs, the character back stories, and throwing out mysteries --- to double back and put a cohesive story line back together.
He concludes with the legacy that most viewers adhere to: that when LOST first aired, it was the community of discussion groups that were just (or more) important to the LOST experience than the actual episodes. The legacy of having a roller coaster ride instead of an orderly epic story is still the major sticking point.
