LEGACY SHOWS

Since LOST there have been many iconic and epic television shows that critics and fans stressed over.

Breaking Bad was a media darling based upon its premise, its script and its compelling actors.

Currently, the fantasy epic Game of Thrones is on everyone's radar. The coffee room talk is very high on this series as fans are eagerly anticipating the climatic ending.

But it is very hard for a show to keep itself on the rails when fan expectations are so far ahead of the ability of the writers and staff to meet those expectations.

There are the big, deep film franchises like Avengers: End Game which will set in the next few weeks a world wide box office record of more than $3 billion.

But there are iconic series, like Star Trek and Star Wars, who have had their spin-offs, sequels and prequels not being received as highly as the original shows. Some of that is viewer burn-out of the franchise's story. In some cases, the original show fan base has aged out and the material does not hook younger viewers. There are more diversions now for people to spend their entertainment time, such as video games, YouTube broadcasts and Twitch streams.

LOST is still considered a legacy show because it long running series that captured the imagination of both critics and fans to the point of obsession on every detail. Game of Thrones has many similar attributes as fans are trying to figure out who will survive to the End. And the End is the key to the legacy of a series.

For many, LOST's ending was weak to a fail. For others, it was the perfect happy ending for their favorite characters. Many thought the questions had to be answered about the mythology of the show. Others thought the final character development was more important. Insiders have tried to conceal many of the production issues which partially caused major shifts in scripts and settings which may or may not have caused the strange, disjointed final season to come together.

The debate of LOST's End is a continuation of the in-season debates about the motivations of the characters, who was good, who was evil, and what everything meant to mean in the Big Picture. This on-line fan community debates were just as important as the show itself.

The only problem with LOST's legacy is that it is frozen in time. People still remember it, but memories will fade over time. It is not in syndication because it is a series that builds upon each previous episode. It is not like a sit-com that has a self contained 30 minute story line resolution. As such, LOST does not have the continuing traction of Star Trek, which continues to be syndicated and shown on a daily basis across the cable spectrum. In that regard, LOST will never be as popular as Star Trek.  But it may be more important to future screenwriters on the pitfalls of expectations in creating a legacy show.

ANOTHER LOSTY SERIES

Another season, another network, another LOST-like television series.

This fall, according to the preview and Deadline Hollywood article, the NBC show MANIFEST begins "when Montego Air Flight 828 lands after a turbulent but otherwise routine flight, the 191 passengers and its crew learn that while only a few hours passed for them, the rest of the world has considered them missing—and presumed dead—for over five years. As the passengers try to reintegrate themselves into the world, some of them experience strange phenomena, leading them to believe "they may be meant for something greater than they ever thought possible."

It seems like the LOST pitch without the crash landing on the island.

The showrunners have set themselves up for a high standard of mystery and mythology to pull off a reasonable sci-fi explanation of how a jet plane goes missing for 5 years without crashing or passengers aging. 

It is assumed that the show has to whittle down the main cast from 191 passengers in crew to a hand full of focus characters with the "strange" events surrounding their new lives post-flight. What is strange, what is supernatural, and what is there "new greater purpose" in life seems to take bits of the island guardian and castaways fight to "save the world" from something bad to the main land and the ordinary lives of regular people. 

MANIFEST may or may not be worth watching. The TBS satire, Wrecked, was a train wreck from the start. It was a bad parody and extremely unfunny. It failed on all cylinders.

MANIFEST's producers include Hollywood movie veterans so the quality of the filming could be great, but even the best production values cannot save a poor script or plot.

MANIFEST premieres in late September.

 

LOST AS A TERM OF ART

In a recent WIRED article, the writer uses the LOST franchise as a term of art.

The reviewer of HBO series "Westworld" said his problem was not that thw show would not be enjoyable, but that it was that it’s the kind of show that invites obsession. The kind that presents Big Questions—that never get answered. - - -   essentially, that it was going to be the next LOST.

LOST began to get viewers to deep dive into episodes to find clues. Apparently, Westworld was trying to accomplish some of the same tricks of the old ABC series. It started with logos . . . do they mean something else?

In the episode, "The Riddle of the Sphinx,"opened with a montage: James Delos (Peter Mullan) is in a finely appointed modernist apartment. He walks through what appears to be his morning routine: drinking water, smoking a cigarette, getting in a few minutes on a stationary bike. All the while, he’s listening to the Rolling Stones’ “Play with Fire.” If the scene felt familiar, here's why: It's just about exactly how Lost introduced Desmond at the beginning of Season 2. (Yes, Season 2! The same season in which Westworld currently finds itself.) In that montage, Desmond made a smoothie, typed a series of numbers into a computer and pushed “the button,” and got in a few minutes on a stationary bike—all while listening to another 1960s hit: Cass Elliot's "Make Your Own Kind of Music."

The reviewer reminds those that don’t remember,  LOST ended almost exactly eight years ago, on May 23, 2010. And, after six seasons of giving its audience diamonds-in-the-sand clues involving hieroglyphics, philosophy (there’s literally a character named John Locke), flashbacks, flashforwards, smoke monsters, and 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 (aka “The Numbers”), most of those hints led exactly nowhere. The ending was satisfying in its way, but most fans still to this day throw up their hands in frustration when asked what it all meant. (Seriously, if you didn’t watch and want to feel good about all the time you saved not doing so, Google “unanswered Lost questions.” It was a lot of setup without a lot of payoff and was frankly a little annoying. 

The reviewer concludes with "But." 

 That show also changed the way a lot of us watch TV. It taught people to look for clues, to not take everything at face value, and to not always assume that narrative answers would be spoon-fed to them. And in that regard, it was revolutionary.

So LOST has now become a turn-of-art meaning, its own genre in the televisions universe. When a show that does not want viewers to passively "follow" the story as presented, but challenge the events seen in real time to see if they make sense or mask some hidden meaning. As a story telling template, LOST will endure as a quirky, frustrating, roller coaster of tangent plots, red herrings and Machina moments that will drive obsessive viewers crazy. And maybe in an era of instant smart phone gratification and a ten second twitter attention span, TV needs obsessive shows in order to survive.

BEING LOST

LOST means different things to different people.

But what is the word lost?

As an adjective, it means being unable to find one's way; not knowing one's whereabouts; unable to be found; (of a person) very confused or insecure or in great difficulties.

It also could mean something that has been taken away or cannot be recovered like an attempt recapture one's lost youth. Or an opportunity not used advantageously or wasted.

The word also means having perished or been destroyed such as a memorial to the crewmen lost at sea. 

It could also mean a game or contest in which a defeat has been sustained by a player.


However, the origin of the word "lost" comes from  Old English losian  for ‘perish, destroy,’ also ‘become unable to find,’ from los ‘loss.’

The above denotes the various layers to LOST, the TV show.

First, the characters each had a backstory that showed them unable to find their own way through their lives. They were very confused or had great difficulties in their lives finding true happiness.

Second, many of the characters had lost something or someone in their lives that put them on a dark path of regret, anger or hopelessness.

Third, many characters wasted opportunities or friendships that led them down the path of loneliness.

Fourth,  the main characters seemed to be both lost at sea and perished at the hands of the island guardian(s).  Whether they were merely pawns in a game by the island powers is a plot debate point.  But the word, as with the show, was about winners and losers in the struggle of power and conquest (the heart of business and personal relationships such as love).

Lastly, the origin definition may come the closest to telling what LOST was truly about: if you are unable to find (someone), you will perish and be destroyed by life.

 

NOT LOST ON LOST

More than a decade after its debut, LOST still has not been successfully copied into a new series.

It had a large ensemble cast. It has a deep, twisted and confusing story lines. It was filmed mostly on location in Hawaii. It was expensive to produce.

There are critical favorite shows with large casts like the Walking Dead, but part of the show premise is to have enough "red shirts" to keep the killing drama moving forward. A game of zombie brain musical chairs can only last so long. There are newer shows like Westworld which attempt to sprinkle mysteries and fan theories in the first season, then hurry to try to answer all of them in the finale. It seemed rushed and pushed to hold fan interest.

One of LOST's own rewards was that the viewer had to figure out what the writers refused to answer in their stories. For example, why would the U.S. Military or Dharma "give up" the island with infinite power to the Others, the natives? But we learned that there are no "native" people on the island. Everyone was brought to it by the island guardian, Jacob. And was Jacob a god, an alien, or a monster? Like an abandoned child, a viewer had to come to their own terms on why the show forced a "happy ending" for the characters in lieu of solving the deepest mysteries of the island, like why some much time and attention was placed on ancient Egyptian mythology.

In one respect, the characters personalities and back stories were fully developed by the use of the flash back story technique. However, the back stories were created to be "filler" to slow down the original island story which was a very simple premise of the plane crash survivors creating a new Robinson Crusoe (ironically rhymes with Rousseau) community on a dangerous island. But once the producers ran out of back filler, it jumped its own production shark with the "flash forward" idea and then to the fantasy aspects of illogical time travel and an alternative character universe.

If you have a deck of a dozen main characters, a dozen secondary characters and a hand full of evil characters, you can deal many different conflicts with ease. So the producers rolled the dice with the idea that you build up conflict through mysteries then quickly shift gears without resolution to the next mystery or conflict. The treadmill story telling became is own genre.

One of the reasons LOST has not been copied is that viewers today have shorter attention spans. There are more competitive forms of entertainment literally at people's finger tips: social media, YouTube, Netflix, etc. Network television's "must see" nightly viewing is a fossilized media dinosaur. The burn rate for new shows is high because advertisers only want to support hit shows. So complex dramas with large casts are not in favor because it is felt such a show is too much of a burden on the viewer to digest and cling to for more than a season. Just look at Vine, the six-second video site that drew millions of pre-teen followers, recently bit the dust.

And consumption of television has changed. A segment of the population enjoys "binge" viewing shows. LOST is not the type of show that lends itself to binge viewing. During its original run, the week between shows was a welcome time to try to figure out what the hell was going on between the characters. The search for easter eggs, arguments for/against fan theories, and the interaction in chat rooms is what made LOST special. To try to binge view LOST today for a first time viewer would be cruel and most likely turn into a train wreck. Most would bail on the program before Ben arrives on the scene.

It is really hard to write something "new."  Many people are looking to find different shows to break the entertainment rut. With the internet and U.S. cable operators expanding to international shows from Mexico, Korea and Europe, viewers can get something different in the dramas that are based on unknown cultures or unknown foreign folktales. For example, a very popular Korean drama series, The Gentlemen of Wolgyesu Tailor Shop, airs on KBC World in the U.S. It is a light K-drama that has a large cast of characters but it focuses in on the dynamics of seven different relationships and how they interact between traditional and modern Korean values. For American viewers unfamiliar with traditional Korean culture, it is something beyond the traditional American drama formula. To get something different in your entertainment palette, you have to expand your notion of what you should view (and get over the possibility of watching a program while reading English subtitles).

There were times that subtitles would have been beneficial in LOST. There was a marginal attempt to annotate episodes in an attempt to draw in new viewers when the show began to wobble, but it was mostly an annoying attempt to generically back fill answers to unimportant questions. LOST will continue to fade into history because it is not suitable for syndication or reruns. It will probably go down in television history as one of those "one hit wonders" like in the music industry.

X-FILES REVIEW

The X-Files ran on Fox TV for 9 years, ending in May, 2002. It returned to the small screen after a 13 year hiatus through the work of the original creator, Chris Carter, and the original cast.

It started as a cult hit then morphed into a cultural phenomenon. The government conspiracy theories of the show's mythology hit a cord in the public, and spawned other science-fiction series and "alien" speculative shows that congregate today on the History Channel.

So I wanted to believe that the show re-boot could be well made. However, I did not have high expectations because the show leveled out and then faded away with answers to most of the big questions that the show runners had posed early on in the series.

By the end of the series it was revealed that a stealth group of men, The Syndicate, acted as the  liaison between mankind and a group of extraterrestrials that intends to destroy the human species. They were usually represented by "The Smoking Man," a ruthless killer, masterful politician, negotiator and the series' principal antagonist. As the series went along, Mulder and Scully learn about evidence of the alien invasion piece by piece. It is revealed that the extraterrestrials plan on using a sentient virus, known as the "black oil,"  to infect mankind and turn the population of the world into a slave race. The Syndicate—having made a deal to be spared by the aliens—have been working to develop an alien-human hybrid that will be able to withstand the effects of the black oil.

In between that main story arc, FBI agents Mulder and Scully went on paranormal and monster investigations of strange cases. Scully, a physician, was skeptical at first but slowly turned as she started to not being able to explain away conflicting scientific evidence. It was the chemistry between the two main characters that made the original show very good.

But in the re-boot premiere, there was no real chemistry between the main actors. David Duchovny went on monotone rapid fire speeches and Gillian Anderson looked tired and wooden in her performance. The only believable actor was John McHale's protrayal of a conservative conspiracy nut who has made a personal fortune out of poking a stick at government shadows. It is through McHale's character's television show connections that Mulder resurfaces from his apparent Unibomber retirement existence, while Scully is working with surgeons at a hospital who correct rare birth defects in children.

Part of the problem of the premiere was the forced writing to bring a new audience up to speed with the 9 years of past episodes between the main characters. It did not work.

The main reason Mulder and Scully are re-united in a new investigation is to meet a young woman named Sveta, who claims to have fragmented memories of having her fetuses stolen from her during her alleged alien abductions. She hints that Mulder had interviewed her and her family before, but may not have believed her. If she does possess alien DNA, Mulder asks Scully to run a DNA test.

 Later, McHale's character, O'Malley,  takes Mulder to a secret location where human aircraft built from alien technology is being housed by the next generation of the Lone Gunmen, but with much more resources and capital. Mulder is amazed by the alien spacecraft replica that runs on "free" energy and can disappear/teleport. We are led to believe that this is what the bad guys are after.

During her medical examination, Sveta makes several observations which allude to Scully's strained relationship with Mulder, making her uncomfortable. She remarked at one point that it was very difficult for her to contact Mulder, who appears to be living underground in some state of echo paranoia.  There is a throw-a-way line from Sveta that infers that Mulder and Scully had a child. When the test results on Sveta's blood come back, Scully orders it re-examined but we don't know why. Later, Scully herself takes a blood test to check herself.

Because of what O'Malley has shown him, Mulder comes to believe that he and Scully had been misled all along during their original career with the X-Files. Mulder's suspicions are confirmed when he with the old doctor from the Roswell crash site. Mulder tells him that he believes that alien technology was used on people and made to look like aliens had done so. He also outlines a global conspiracy involving hoarding and testing alien technology to prepare for an attack on America. The old man tells him he is close to the truth.

Following these revelations, Mulder begins to doubt his belief that aliens are the primary force behind the global conspiracy against humanity, but is instead a group of violent ultra-fascists armed with alien technology attempting to subvert democracy and assume power over the United States and then the Earth. He rattles off a list of government intrusions into America's private lives, liberty and constitutional rights since 9/11 (all done for "national security") plus the "distraction" of many different wars across the globe.

However, at a meeting Scully lies to Mulder and Sveta about the DNA test results. She states that she found no alien DNA. This puts a major hole in the hole conspiracy evidence chain. It unravels Mulder's entire theory.

Before O'Malley can go public with his claims, there is a counter strike: O'Malley's website is shut down, Sveta goes on TV to tell the world that O'Malley is a liar and a fraud, the replica space ship and scientists are killed by men dressed in military uniforms, and a UFO stops then destroys Sveta's car, seemingly with her inside. Mulder and Scully meet in a dark parking garage and Scully reveals that she has alien DNA, just like the girl O'Malley introduced to them. Mulder states that she is the key to exposing the testing and those responsible.

The episode ends revealing the Smoking Man, cancer having taken his throat,  alive in the present day, stating that the FBI unit, the X-Files,  has been re-opened to apparently re-start an investigation into his sinister group.

It is okay to manipulate and twist the main character into doubting his old past into a new conspiracy direction, but the premiere did it too swiftly and awkwardly to make us truly want to care about what is about to happen. By turning the original premise that aliens were coming to Earth to set the stage for a global invasion and world enslavement on its ear may not sit well to original fans by now claiming that the aliens are not the enemy but a band of human Illuminati taking alien technology to rule the world.

For the first part of the premiere, it was underwhelming. The second part of the premiere needs to bring back the action and clever writing between the main characters or the short series will turn into a very bad relationship counseling session between two old, tired and uninteresting main characters.

CONSPIRACIES OF HELL

LOST has always been a fertile field of conspiracy theorists.

Theories run the gamut from how the show was structured, created, and written with and without trying to decode clues, red herrings and story tangents.

It was one of the things that made LOST interesting and engaging to fans.

But LOST was not alone in creating or reading way, way, way too much into even the tamest of shows.

For example, the simple, iconic comedy series Gilligan's Island. What could be so "hidden in plain sight" about a show about shipwrecked castaways?

Some theorists believe that the setting of Gilligan's Island is not an island, but rather Hell, and that its sinful inhabitants all perished in the crash of the S.S. Minnow. According to this theory, each character on Gilligan’s Island represents one of the Seven Deadly Sins. 

The millionaire Mr. Howell represents Greed, while his work-averse wife represents Sloth. Sexy movie star Ginger stands in for Lust, while innocent farm girl Mary Ann envies Ginger’s beauty and lifestyle. The smart Professor is prideful because he can't admit that he is unable to fix the ship or get them off the island. Skipper, meanwhile, symbolizes two deadly sins: Gluttony and Wrath, because he’s always taking something out on poor Gilligan. Not that you should feel bad for the titular dimwit; these fans believe that Gilligan represents Satan. He's constantly screwing up the group's plans for rescue, and what's more, he's always wearing red. 

That is quite a theory based upon general traits of the characters.

If you add in the mythology that departed souls travel to the underworld by ferry (boat), and that this shipwreck symbolizes the travel through a purgatory, it is easy to see the premise begin to unfold in the mind of a theorist. In fact, this mirrors the early LOST purgatory theories because it was presumed that no one could have survived a high altitude mid-plane break up over the Pacific Ocean.

And with the unassuming Gilligan cast as Satan is quite the plot twist. On LOST, there were numerous characters who could have been Satan: Jacob, the master mind behind the island; MIB who is a dark mass of shape shifting like the serpent in the Garden of Eden; and even Christian who wound up manipulating people's free will. One could create the ultimate premise by saying that Earth itself is Hell - - - we all are born in a purgatory with our "lives" are redemptive steps from a past we know nothing about.

MAD MAN'S REGRETS

Slate.com posted an article referencing a "find" from a writer's discussion panel that may shed light on the problems associated with getting all the loose ends of Mad Men tied up by the finale.

As Slate reports "more often than not, the most satisfying stories are those that end neatly—every plot resolved, each character’s arc completed. In this regard, Mad Men, which aired its final episode on May 17, surely frustrated many of its longtime admirers. Over the course of its seven seasons, the series accumulated more plots and characters than its creators could manage."

Many fans, including casual ones caught up in the season ending hype, found the the show’s meditative, introspective conclusion at bit baffling considering the expectations.

The writers and show runners had a full season to plan and execute their final scripts to cover as many loose ends as they wanted to cover. But many fans left the finale frustrated by its major omissions.  Entertainment Weekly’s Anthony Breznican tweeted a picture of what he described as Mad Men show runner “Matthew Weiner’s ‘Wish List’ of plot points to cover before the finale.” 

If it’s real—and Slate believes it is —the list offers insights into the creative process behind one of television’s most critically acclaimed shows.

Some open or unanswered character plots sting most for Mad Men’s fans. Weiner, too, wondered about the fate of Sal, Sterling Cooper’s art director, who is forced out of the firm after rejecting the advances of one of its most prominent clients in Season 3. For some—especially those who held out hope that the closeted Sal would find new freedom in the post-Stonewall climate of the last episodes—his failure to reappear was a major disappointment. Likewise, the list suggests that Weiner had intended to return to Sal’s tormenter, Lee Garner, Jr., though he never returned after the fourth season. Just as Mad Men denied Sal redemption, it refused to allow its viewers to witness Lee’s comeuppance.

As Slate concluded the wish list calls attention to the ways Mad Men’s closing episodes couldn’t please everyone so fans should be glad that some loose ends weren’t tied up. The theory is that in life, people come and go and get lost or forgotten. If approached with the sentimental question years after someone was gone ("what ever happened to so-and-so?") makes the story a little more real.

But these side stories are still a distraction to the main final question: what really happened to Don Draper? The biggest omission of the finale was Don's alleged return to the Advertising World to create iconic TV spots. But did Don's road trip actually change him? Or was he still conning the people close to him? The long journey of a main character has to come to some meaningful conclusion. The Mad Man finale did not do it.

BAD ENDINGS

BBC.com's Culture section had an interesting article on why so many popular television shows have crappy finales.

It is more probable than not a successful show will have a terrible end. 

 Rolling Stone critic Rob Sheffield, was quoted as saying “Series finales always suck, and everyone knows it, but TV shows still feel obliged to keep attempting them. The idea that a show needs a finale is just one of those daffy ideas America took to heart in the 2000s, like MySpace, the Zune… or the concept of Paula Abdul judging a singing contest. It was a confused time.”

There are a few conflicting concepts at play when a television series ends. First, the creator may have run out of ideas (or the show's quality has run its course). Second, the networks cancel the show prior to aligning all the story lines into one final climatic conclusion. Third, some creators are "too clever" for their own good. They try to make out--of-the-box statement pieces to cement their own TV legacy instead of being true to the show and its characters.

The bigger the show the bigger the expectation for a great ending.

The Mad Men finale was the latest foray into the show ending autopsy. While many die hard fans loved the finale, many critics found it troublesome, confusing and outright sappy bad. Shows with cult-like followings like Mad Men, which only drew 3 million viewers, want to get a big sendoff for their invested time in the series. As a result, creators and writers know that fans will over-analyse the finale on the internet for days and weeks afterwards. 

As the article points out Series finales are inherently difficult to master since long running shows have created hundreds of hours of television, aired over several years, with complex plots, conflicts and character bubbles so to merge all the elements down to one episode, one final scene is problematic.  Viewers expect more from their finales but they rarely get what they’re hoping for: closure.

Despite such confusion, there are some elements that can help finales rise to their inherent challenges, or at least survive them, with a series’ legacy intact.

The M*A*S*H finale, the most-watched broadcast of scripted television in the US ever, attracted 106 million viewers, was a terrible mess. The premise was fine; the hospital unit was being torn out as the war was winding down. But the show's sledgehammer message that "war is bad" through Hawkeye's sudden mental breakdown then his attempt to say goodbye to his colleagues was like a student rushing to the school to find that he had missed his high school graduation. 

As bad as M*A*S*H's send-off was, the Seinfeld finale make nos sense at all.  Seinfeld, the self-proclaimed "show about nothing," was a stunt that did nothing but put a resume item on all the various supporting cast members. The unbelievable premise was the main characters on trial for, essentially, being terrible people – that is, for violating a ‘Good Samaritan Law’ in a small town far from the show’s New York setting. Waves of a less than a minute repeats of minor characters saying how bad the characters were to them was essentially a clip show without any funny bits.  So many viewers despised the Seinfeld finale – perhaps because it made them uncomfortable in having to question why they liked characters who may indeed have been terrible people. Others thought it was a dumb ending that did nothing but diminish the comedy standard it tried to create in the 1990s sit-com arena

The current trend was to leave the audience in the dark, literally.  The Sopranos cut-to-black ending found fans within the writing industry as being a bold and shocking end to an acclaimed series, but fans were outraged by the stunt. Did Tony and his family get whacked? Why did the creators leave the story line open to individual interpretation? Many compared this ending to reading a long book only to find that the last chapter was removed.

LOST had similar critics who thought that the series creators did not fulfill their promises to give the viewers the answers to the main mysteries that cultivated a rabid internet community of theorists. It also sparked backlash that the producers had lied to the fan base in the early seasons that the show was not about purgatory, but the ending seemed to put that in real doubt.


The Mad Men finale also had similiar gripes. But the shows creator did come clean and say that yes, Don Draper's character created the iconic Coke commercial seen as the closing sequence. However, this is intellectually dishonest because a real person actually created that advertisement and his name was not Don Draper. The show runner's post broadcast statements actually make the finale seem even worse since it made Don go back to NY to his old job when his character clearly "killed himself off" by reverting to his old name and leaving behind his old past. But that attempt to create "a happy ending" palatable to the fan base should not be the core for a writer.

 The Mary Tyler Moore Show planned its own end date in 1977, resulting in a finale many would argue sets the standard for all future television endings. It combined these approaches: it gave smart viewers something to think about like Seinfeld or The Sopranos – in a softer, sweeter manner that also provided satisfying closure.  In that show’s finale, the entire staff at the TV news station where Mary has worked for the whole series, WJM, is fired. As they all clean out their desks and move on, we see how office mates often function as families, and were becoming especially important to single, working women like Mary in the ‘70s. Such insights, undercut with the melancholy of a real goodbye, earned the finale every right to some tearjerking.

It’s even possible that inconsistent shows with long runs, like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Battlestar Galactica, were enshrined as "classics" in hindsight simply because of their strong finales. ST:TNG ended with the Captain making an appearance at the senior staff's weekly poker game which signaled the final bond between the characters. It showed that during the series each character had risked something during their space exploration, but in the end they could come together in friendship.

But the greatest TV finale with the most memorable twist was The Bob Newhart Show. Newhart, a dead pan comedian who had a long TV career, was the focal character running  a small New England B&B resort.  He had a quirky cast of characters as he tried to run a vacation inn. But that series finale put in a strong memory most people have of Newhart is of Newhart waking up in bed beside Suzanne Pleshette, who had starred as his wife in his previous series, and realizing he had merely dreamed the entirety of the later show. It was so genius and unexpected that it will survive the test of time.

So it is possible for popular television series to have brilliant finales. It takes writers who are true to their vision, realize what their audience wants, and have the guts to make a truly memorable, non-cliche finish to a long run.

BLINDSPOT

NBC fall schedule includes a Big Mystery show with a dangerous premise.

Blindspot is billed as a vast international plot explodes when a beautiful Jane Doe, completely covered in mysterious, intricate tattoos, is discovered naked in Times Square with no memory of who she is or how she got there. The FBI quickly realize that each mark on her body is a crime to solve, leading them closer to the truth about her identity and the mysteries to be revealed.

Now, one would think that this is a unique and intriguing premise to a television series. A lead actress who does not know about her past must unravel the clues while dangerous people are chasing her. It sounds a little like Orphan Black.

But it really sounds more like East of Eden, a Japanese anime series. In East of Eden, ten missiles strike Japan, but cause no casualties. This apparent terrorist act is referred to as "Careless Monday" and is eventually forgotten by the populace. The series begins three months later when a young student named Saki visits the White House in Washington DC as part of her graduation trip. When she gets into trouble, a mysterious young Japanese man appears completely naked except for a gun and a cell phone, and rescues her. The man has lost his memory, but learns that he has a bunch of fake passports at his apartment; he chooses the Japanese one which names him Akira. While he and Saki return to Japan, they learn that a new missile has hit.

Akira discovers that his phone carries 8.2 billion yen  in digital money, and that he is part of a game, where twelve individuals are given 10 billion yen to "save" Japan in some way.

Whether Blindspot is going to run the course of mystery-terrorism drama to weird amnesia game show is unknown. But here is why a show creator needs to have a detailed, fixed story line to drop a huge mystery as the beginning point to a series: it has to be believable and have answers be the story engine to move the plot to a satisfactory conclusion.

In LOST, the big premise, the mysterious island, was the hook to get viewers into the show, but despite what was promised in Season One, the creators did not have a set story fleshed out to the conclusion. That is why a shotgun approach to adding new mysteries and twists and turns to tangential science fiction issues to fill each weekly hour did not hit a home run the fans expected from LOST.

THANKS

Today in the US is Thanksgiving.

It is time to appreciate the things in one's own life: family, friends, and bounty that surrounds oneself.

It is a time for reflection. It is also a time to soul search, look at oneself and think about change.

Change is hard to do. Change takes an amount of courage but success is never guaranteed in life.

But with change comes new opportunities for life, liberty, happiness.

For even in the stressful, worst times, there is always comfort in true friends, family and loved ones.

At times, people forget about the ones around them. The ones who can cover their back. The ones who are waiting in the wings for your answer. The ones who will make time to be with you. The ones who are soul mates.

If we reflect upon those values and norms, Thanksgiving is a pretty important holiday in our society. It transcends the different American cultures since it is a secular ideal: family is community and community is family. It is remembrance of the hospitality of the native people to the weary foreigners who came ashore to escape the horrible conditions back in their home country. Opportunity and free will is the rock which the early colonists anchored in this land. But one needs to have a vision in order to see the dream of a better future.

Our collective media culture is nearsighted in what many would call the American Dream. It used to mean getting married, having a good job, having a car, a house with a white picket fence, kids and weekends off for family time. It was probably last embodied in the TV series Happy Days.

The American Dream may have been flying so long its colors have faded to gray. But for many people, the opportunity to work in America instead of being caught in escalating war zones throughout the world is enough to risk life and limb, like the early Pilgrims. But it is a different land now, with a waning economy, stagnant wages, violent protests, and increasing tyrannical government red tape, it is hard to imagine a cornucopia of hope for the common man.

But we endure. That is the human spirit.

If one pauses to reflect through the steamy bowls of side dishes and the large golden turkey platter,  it is good to be alive and well. And all the points previously stated above, can be exported to a simple discussion on LOST.

We are still thankful for a show that both inspired and challenged us viewers.
We are still thankful for the show's plot twists and turns that we remember to this very day.

The show embodied many of the themes of Thanksgiving as a desperate band of individuals attempted to forge some relationship, some bonds, some friendships, some answers, and some hope for their own futures.

And I thank those who continue to stop by to read these posts.

WHAT OLD IS NEW AGAIN

Showtime has announced the return of the series of Twin Peaks. It will have a short, 9 episode run in 2016.

In 1990, Twin Peaks was an avant garde TV show. It was a mystery with surreal elements unseen in television dramas. Creator David Lynch used his indie, art film techniques to the small screen. The story was simple: a beloved, high school sweetheart is found murdered along the shores of a lake. This murder is the catalyst for the viewers to slowly peel away the onion skin of a seemingly nice, quaint and peaceful community to the center pit of darkness.

Despite its brief run, Twin Peaks’ immense influence was visible almost immediately. Lynch had proved that viewers would tune in for big-screen quality production in a weekly format, and in the process they ushered in a new age of televised drama. Two years later Fox would debut The X-Files, which relied on a similarly elaborate mythology to sustain its nine-season run.

When ABC’s Lost premiered in 2004—constructed around an ever-unfolding course of otherworldly (and largely forest-based) mysteries—it drew immediate Peaks comparisons. “Twin Peaks was a huge impact on me,” LOST''s co-creator Damon Lindelof told an audience in Manhattan a few days before the series finale in May 2010. One of the lessons he learned? That a show doesn’t have to solve every mystery it sets up.

More importantly, Twin Peaks proved to fans, critics, industry gatekeepers, and film creators alike that television would no longer live in the shadow of film—it could actually be good. Little by little, TV shows were becoming every bit as worthy of close attention and deconstruction as films—a shift that wouldn’t just make for better water-cooler chatter, but would also open up a new venue to which writers and bloggers could devote entire careers. And none of that might have happened, if one daring network hadn’t gambled on this series.

But the real difference between Twin Peaks and LOST is that Twin Peaks did solve the compelling, focal mystery of the show: who killed Laura Palmer. But the show left with the strange taste of supernatural realms (lodges), portals to dead spirits, evil doppelgangers, and twisted versions of the truth since everything was put into surreal conflicting clues and McGuffin dead ends. Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost twisted the normal murder-mystery into a mystery about normalcy in television. The confusion was so ripe that the audience did not care to figure things out; it went along for the bizarre roller coaster ride.

INTROSPECTION

E! Online posted an interview with LOST writer Damon Lindelof. In the article, Lindelof states:

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.

WHAT WE MISS

In much of the 10th anniversary discussions, there have been many posts about what fans truly miss since LOST concluded its television run.

A summary of some of the comments:

1. We miss the characters. In a certain respect, a devoted television show creates characters that become one's surrogate friends and family. We want to get together and see them week after week.

2. We miss the adventure. Every week there was some strange plot twist that would make us squirm or jump off the chair in a WTH? moment. It was a series with a grand scale and good cast. It seemed like it was filmed like a summer movie and not as a staged set production.

3. We miss the community. LOST was one of the first shows in which the Internet brought together fans from all over the world to discuss their TV show in nearly real time. It was the community aspect of the show that many miss the most - - - the debates, the personal theories, and the research of the clues that spread knowledge about literature, music, physics and Egyptology among commentators and bloggers. It also brought together people who in turn became good friends.

4. We miss scheduling time to watch. Perhaps it is just a coincidence, as time goes on and each of us grows older, we have less time to schedule a set appointment to view a show. Today, with streaming services, internet show pages and DVR on demand, fans don't need to have any appointment viewing in order to watch a show. It takes away from the "shared" experience back in the day. No one talks about discussing a show the next day over the "water cooler" at work.

5. We miss the "what if" wonder of the series. As many of the actual characters had transference moments within their own personalities, viewers were captivated and transformed into the fantasy world of the show as close bystanders to all the action. Rarely does a TV show put the viewer in the front seat where the action was.

6. We miss the answers. Yes, there are many viewers who upon reflection have "moved on" without their personal questions being properly answered, but there are still a few who quietly lament the fact that they were disappointed on how the show wrapped up. Even 10 years after, the opportunity is available for the writers and creative team to give us their vision of the unsolved mysteries, but they care not to share or explain. So even in the joy of the series, there is some melancholy.

BREAKING

I did not watch the acclaimed show Breaking Bad. I know of its premise and general plot line: an R&D chemist does breakthrough research, but gets let go. He winds up as a high school chemistry teacher until he is diagnosed with cancer. Fearing that he needs to provide for his family, he takes a local drop out under his wings and starts home brewing meth.

Walt, the main character, is a typical American anti-hero protagonist. When this series was concluding this season, fans knew that there were probably one or two standard endings for the show. And from the reaction in the media, Walt had his own indulgent swan song: he had a good bye moment with his family;  he went out and attacked his enemies in a dark redemptive message to himself that he needed to correct his bearings because he was going to die.

Being bad was the means for the main character to feel alive. He lived a lie but in the end  tells the truth. "I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really... I was alive," he says.

Being Alive was a theme in LOST.   Walt's terminal cancer diagnosis wasn't so much a death sentence as it was a reminder to live. It just turns out that Walter including a dark footprint of  murders,  poisonings and criminal drug dealing. But Walt, like John Locke, wanted to be respected, and to have a  significant position that other people would admire in him.

This series wound up the way most of the show's fans thought it would - - - which means the show runners kept the fans along for the journey to a logical conclusion that everyone could clearly understand.