Lost: the meandering summary

[mariness]

My fiction doesn't have to make sense. Sure, I get a certain satisfaction from a fictional world where everything is explained, where everything ends neatly and completely, where the magic has rules. The writing project on a severe backburner is one of those places: I have a world where magic will do what I want it to do, for a reason.

But I also love stories where things remain unexplained, mysterious, magical, where things don't make sense. I've even written more than a few pieces like that: Playing With Spades was mostly about the way things don't always make sense, as is to a lesser extent Transport and some of Wooden Apologies. (At least, I think so…I've actually never really figured out what Wooden Apologies is about, which is what happens when you transcribe a dream rather than write a story.) And I have others forthcoming.

But, here's the kicker:

The story needs to have a reason for being unreasonable.

Which brings us, of course, to Lost.

I actually believe the writers when they say that they always knew what the end – in terms of the very last couple of scenes – would be.

(I am considerably more dubious that they always knew, planned, or were even aware of the footage played with the credits. That, without trying to get too spoilery at this point, smacked of outside intervention, and by outside intervention, I mean, Disney's plan to create a Lost attraction at one of its parks, reportedly Hollywood Studios in an attempt to balance the "feel" of the park, most probably between Indy and Star Tours.*)

It's not just the way the end and the beginning mirrored each other, right down to the sneaker, but that ending actually helps explain one of the most intriguing and mysterious parts of Lost: the original flashback storytelling method. Those flashbacks – specifically Locke's – were much of what dragged me into the show. But, if you'll recall, right from the first season, something was….strange about them. And by strange, I mean, the characters had far, far too many shared past experiences and connections. It reached the point of absurdity; it left everyone wondering what it meant, and it created a storytelling problem that was only and unsuccessfully resolved by an absolutely ridiculous backstory "explanation"** thrown in this season in an attempt to resolve matters.

The problem, of course, was that although they knew the beginning, and the end, they had no idea of the middle, and, worse, had no idea how long that middle would be.

I have some current experience with this: with one of the novels I'm working on, I have the beginning (which an astute editor pointed out was not the short story I was hoping it would be, but a setup once things were twinked a bit, which they have been) and I have the end. What I don't have is the middle, and worse, I don't have a good sense of how long the middle needs to be or should be to give the end an emotionally satisfying punch. And when you don't have this sense, you have a huge problem: you don't quite know how much needs to be thrown in, or not thrown in.

And that's bad enough when it's your only problem. I don't, for instance, have to worry about deadlines, budget concerns, casting issues, a sudden growth spurt in one of my actors, and a network with a parent company hoping to sell more merchandise and create a theme park attraction. (Suddenly, this novel seems considerably more manageable.) And even with that, I'm struggling. (In fact I'm writing this now after struggling with a scene.)

Imagine, for moment, being a Lost writer. Your bizarre show, which has a very specific ending that you do not want to change, has suddenly and inexplicably become a hit. Your employers demand additional episodes, but don't tell you how many they want, since both they and you know just how fickle a television audience and advertisers can be. But in the meantime, you have to start putting in stuff. A lot of stuff, because you may, after all, have to continue this for awhile, and in any case, you may need something to help explain the inexplicable at least a little bit before your fans riot, so you throw in more stuff, and more stuff, and more strange stuff to keep people wondering, and by the time you do get your deadline and realize that you will not be able to explain, it's too late.

And at the same time, you're faced with a limitation: you're already stuck with the end. Which means that none of these elements that you've thrown into the second through fifth seasons can be allowed to change your final planned moments.

That's bad.

Not entirely bad – this putting in stuff led to a good if ultimately completely irrelevant fourth season and a great if ultimately fairly irrelevant fifth season, with some of the show's greatest and most exciting moments; gave us the fourth season's "The Constant," which was one outstanding television episode; and introduced some of the show's greatest or most beloved characters.

But bad, in part because you told one of your lead actors, Matthew Fox, the ending, which in turn colored his performance. (Seriously. Consider all of your issues with the actor and his character. Now, consider all of that with the final scenes in mind, keeping in mind that Matthew Fox, unlike everyone else, knew exactly what was coming. Explains so much, doesn't it?***)

And bad, because this meant, of course, that the show didn't become unreasonable for a narrative, story or thematic reason. It became unreasonable because it was ordered to get longer. Which gave us unpurposeful unreasonableness,

(Before I get spoilery, my suggestion for people who have not seen the show, and were wondering about it, watch the first season, and then, try to ignore that cliffhanger at the end and move straight on to the sixth season. You can then head back to see the other seasons, focusing on the excellent fourth and fifth seasons. I suggest this largely because, unfortunately, without understanding where the show is going, the second and third seasons can make for very frustrating viewing – it's not surprising that this is where the show lost most of its viewers – but, with that said, the fourth and fifth seasons don't make a lot of sense without the second, third and sixth seasons. Confused? You won't be after next week's…whoops, wrong show!)

***AND NOW SPOILERS***

***YES, SPOILERS***

***HERE WE GO***

My guess is, had the show not been a hit, we would have seen the flashbacks revealed as the same sort of preparing-for-death that the sideways universe that the main island story was. Take a look at the first season, and realize just how dreamlike and unreal portions were: the polar bears, the hanging Charlie, skeletons and bees appearing from nowhere, a hatch that you feel you have to open but can't explain why, the person you thought you knew suddenly revealed as a stranger, the constantly having to run round and round in a jungle, the numbers….it all was moving forward to an ending where nothing, but nothing was to be quite real, where everyone would end up dead, where the island and their false flashbacks were part of this dying process. It explains the odd connections in the flashbacks; the inexplicable happenings on the island. It didn't have to make sense.

But this led to a major second season problem. Not only did the writers have to fill out an unknown number of episodes – which in turn meant an unknown number of mysteries, with no certainty when they could be revealed, but, and this was key: they had opened the hatch. To something with, granted, its own dream like elements – an underground place where windows weren't windows, an inexplicable quarantine, a senseless task that you know you have to do although you have no idea why – and the writing dilemma that you can't, but can't, give away the ending. Hint at it, perhaps – with that third season teaser that Oceanic Flight 815 had been found with all aboard dead – but no more than that.

The best way to keep people from guessing the truth? Make the island more real – to the point where, eventually, you tweak your ending slightly so that the island is real, but the sideways narratives are not (I remain convinced that the flashbacks would have been revealed as the flashbacks of the dying). Throw in a complicated backstory plot between the Others and Dharma Initiative – still relying on your "well, it will all turn out to be unreal anyway so it doesn't need to make sense" knowledge of your ending.

Eventually, this led to the Jacob versus Smoke Monster showdown, in itself a problem since while the show wanted to create a good guy/bad guy dynamic, its "good guy" was a person who the show had portrayed for years as the leader of the frequently horrific Others, responsible for deliberately terrifying the Losties, locking them in cages, kidnapping them and so on, not to mention mass murdering the Dharma Initiative and bringing Juliet to the island under very questionable pretences, however good the book club. After this, any attempt to win viewers over to Jacob's side were going to be problematic at best; the show's decision to handle this by trying to make the Smoke Monster into the all time villain was not completely unjustified, but when you are trying to turn something that, again, started as something deliberately meant to be inexplicable to something explicable with clear motivations ("I want off this island!") you are going to run into problems, as the show did.

(Because as much as I was cheering on the Smoke Monster, he had been presented as a serial killer, and Jacob was not much better. He's the good guy, the show tried to say. He's stopping the Smoke Monster. Except, well, he wasn't really – the Smoke Monster had been merrily killing and terrorizing people throughout the entire show, but sometimes choosing not to kill people. As much as I loved the Richard centric episode – the best of the 6th season, I thought – the entire Jacob/Man in Black storyline was ultimately unconvincing and unsatisfying.)

So, to answer people's questions: we didn't get answers to many of our questions because they were originally (in the first season, at least) not expected to be answered, or to be important; they were meant to stress the unreality of what seemed to be so real. And once they started that, they couldn't stop – because those bizarre mysteries became part of the whole show.

But for those doubting if the writers had intended this ending all along: oh, yes, absolutely. Because when you have this sort of ending in mind, it allows you to be lazy, to put things in that don't have to be explained because, well, that's the point isn't it, that it's all inexplicable. And that works for the things designed to be inexplicable, and considerably less well for the stuff thrown in the middle.
So, to sum up, yes, I completely believe that the writers had their final scenes firmly in mind. In fact, although I did like the last episode, quite probably too firmly in mind for the good of the entire show. And the stuff in the middle? Dharma, time travelling, Egyptian statues, Kate's horse? Yeah. That stuff was made up as the show went, and now, it shows.

Other notes:

1. It really does crack me up that the show needed an entire season to convince Jack that he was really, really dead. Admittedly, the guy had, in theory (if we don't assume that he died in the original plane crash) survived two plane crashes, time travelling, a thermonuclear bomb, and various gunshot wounds, so I can see him thinking, you know, no way has a mere gut wound and dealing with CGI lights done me in.

2. I am now rethinking my original response to Sawyer and Kate, based partly on reading an interview with Josh Holloway. Here's what I now think happened:

We have three possibilities: either everyone died in the original plane crash and this is all just Jack trying to come to terms with his pathetic life, in which case, this speculation doesn't matter; everyone died in the atomic bomb because setting that off was a very dumb move, as I said originally, in which case, the church scene is still kinda weird; or, three, everything on the island timeline happened, and the sideways universe was a combined group/Hurley response to island life. In which case –

I think that Frank, Miles, Richard, Kate, Sawyer and Claire did make it off the island, and were probably extremely ticked off to find out that Hurley could have sent them off in a considerably more comfortable manner had they all just stuck around for a little bit longer, but I digress. Anyway, Kate initially stayed with Claire, caring for Aaron, and then, yes, hooked up with Sawyer again, after they'd both had time to mourn Jack and Juliet. (Given that in island time Jack had just died, and Juliet had only been dead a few days, this spared us all the trauma of watching Kate and Sawyer hook up again That Soon.) And, once dead, in the purgatory universe they spent time reconnecting with Juliet and Jack. I'm basing this on various things: Kate's line to Jack about how much she'd missed him, which suggested that it had been years since she'd seen him; the small scene early in the episode between Kate and Sawyer, suggesting things weren't over there, and the fact that, well, Kate left with Sawyer. She could have stayed with Jack – it would have been in character, honestly, and after all, Ben and Hurley did – but instead, she chose to leave with Sawyer.

I have no idea why I care about this, but that is the ending In My Head.

Plus, of course, that final scene in the church is Jack's scene: he sees things as he needs to see them – Juliet not mad at him about the whole bomb and happy with Sawyer. But, Kate left with Claire and Sawyer. I suppose it's remotely possible that she ended up with Claire. But I'm thinking Sawyer.

3. Also, I think it's possible that Juliet and Jack ended up together in sideways Purgatory because Jack felt JUSTIFIABLY GUILTY about DROPPING A THERMONUCLEAR DEVICE ON HER and felt that he had to make it up to her at least slightly by giving her some time with the kid she never had and being a nice friendly ex.

* I have been highly amused by the contrast in reactions from non-Disney addicts, who immediately tried to delve into the Great Meaning of the Credits, and the Disney addicts and cast members, who all said, ah, so that's how they'll set up the attraction. Which is not to say we are right.)

** I'm referring to the Man in Black versus Jacob storyline.

*** This also explains part of the problem with Kate, and more specifically the actress, and why we were all right to note that she had considerably more chemistry with Sawyer: her scenes with Jack were all with an actor who knew ultimately that none of this mattered because he was dead. The fact that this was later retconned to have the island be real, and another purgatory created, doesn't change that.