The Tail Section

Doc’s Lost Interview Reflections

Lost News — March 8, 2007 at 3:35 pm by DavidHume

A few of you were dismayed that I did not attempt to get answers to the mysteries of the show from Damon and Carlton.  I don’t want to spark a debate about the rightness or wrongness of that point of view but what I will say is this:  the best possible experience you can have receiving those answers is seeing them unfold on the show with absolutely no warning that they are coming.  Period.  I know this for a fact, because I have lived on all sides of the fan experience.  Let me go way back to explain.

It might surprise you guys to know that I was not a LOST fan from the beginning.  In fact,  I disregarded it as some Castaway/Survivor knock-off;  a typical network cookie-cutter creation.  So I resisted the water cooler overtures to join the in-crowd, and instead maintained my ‘closed-circuit’ viewing habits of purchased movies and classic series box sets.   To be precise,  I was as anti-network television as anyone could be, I’d been burned by hype once too often.  Then somebody said the magic words "Twilight Zone".   Regardless of the hype, you do not compare something to "Twilight Zone" without it getting a complimentary viewing followed by a diatribe on the declination of story telling.  So I acquired the first couple of episodes, sat down to watch them, and the rest is history.

What made this experience great for me is that I had sheltered myself from the very beginning.  I had very little knowledge about the show.  Something about a monster.  That was about it.  At this point, LOST was at episode 15.  I acquired enough episodes to get caught up and was completely transfixed for two days.  I came to LOST with my own Tabula Rasa, no pondering the pace of the plot, no concerns over whether any interviewer had challenged the writers with specific questions, no theories, no spoilers, it was just me and the show.  

As time went by, and I settled into the week-to-week patterns of watching the show,  I maintained my insulation from the media.  I didn’t want to know what was going to happen.  I was addicted to the surprise.  There were things I was dying to know, but terrified to ask.  The first time someone mentioned spoilers at work and blew the next episodes high-mark, I lost it.  Then, season one ended  and I discovered an entirely new culture of TV viewers.  People who were plugged into the internet iv, getting information on a constant drip.  They surfed, they scanned, they googled.  They read any interview, article, theory in the mainstream.  They argued with each other like noble warriors defending fragile little continents of thought.

It only got worse as the second season came around and the mythology began to thicken and flow from eclectic sources.  The chase was on, and at this time I’d become addicted not to getting the information, but providing it.  And then,  I discovered yet another culture of being altogether, the ones who have the imperative of the first,  the absolute need in their existence to be the one with the answer, to beat the pack, to be regarded as the "guru".  And so I played that game, and if you’re here now you probably know I did it well for quite some time.

Despite understanding how this works, psychologically, I still covet that first state of being the most.  The one who approaches every episode of LOST with an uninformed sense of wonder.  Not the slightest clue WHAT will happen, but the certainty that something WILL.  I miss being that person because, frankly, that guy was a better fan than any of the other factions that have evolved in this crazy ‘fan’ community.  Allowing the desire to know the story to erode your reason to the point where you think that having the information ‘given’ to you is as satisfying as having it revealed
as it was intended, in the flowing narrative of the story, on the show.

So, in the end, I don’t apologize for not pushing Damon and Carlton for "answers".  If anything, I apologize for feeding the community that has somehow lost touch with the simple concepts of how to enjoy a television show.  The prerequisite is, you have to want the show to tell the story.  If you want to hear it in bits of interviews, spoilers, and disgruntled actors rants in foreign publications (!), you are missing the point.

Now, don’t worry.  This doesn’t mark a huge paradigm shift in what TheTailsection is going to be.  In fact,  I have a couple of contributors coming on board that I am extremely excited about who are going to contribute to returning TheTailsection to being what it was at its peak, a site for current news and thoughtful (hopefully) commentary on what is transpiring in the shows past, present, and future.  It’s an exciting time for sure.  But I worry about those of you who are angry that the opportunity to interview Damon and Carlton did not yield "answers".   In fact, it did explain many things that were important to a number of people.  The fact that it did not further your understanding of LOST’s mysteries is a win, as far as I’m concerned.  Let’s allow these men to tell their story the way they want to tell it,  not by throwing nuggets of information to petulant ‘fans’, but by continuing to do what they been doing since he very beginning.

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