Your Voice: Why ‘Lost’ is the Greatest Story Ever Told
Submitted by B-Locke47
First of all, I’d like to thank The TailSection writers and all the fans who turn out here on a daily basis to tediously mull over the details of our favorite mystery island and it’s varied inhabitants. I feel honored to throw my contribution into the mix.
It seems like it’s been so long since we first met our motley crew of plane crash survivors. Years go by and we all still wonder that which was so eloquently encapsulated early on in season one by our good friend Charlie: "Guys, where are we?" Where are we indeed. Mysterious Others, radical healing powers, prophetic dreams of destiny, military-like bunkers, a pirate ship in the middle of the jungle, magnetic anomalies, killer fetuses, strange hippie experiments, dead people coming back for short visits, a freaking mind reading smoke monster, freighter folk with unknown intentions, time traveling consciousness, ghost busting. . .how could anyone not like this!? The island continues to unravel its mysteries only to leave us with more questions than answers, and yet we come back week after week, year after year to get our fix, to ponder what comes next, and to theorize on what it’s all about.
Some people don’t understand the idea behind Lost. They hear people’s talk of "not knowing what’s going on" and turn away to watch their American Idol or whatever people watch when they’re not cool enough to watch Lost. I see Lost as much like a mystery novel, your Sherlock Holmes and whatnot. Sure, you don’t know the big picture, but that’s the fun of it. You get little clues along the way that you pick up and put in your pocket like little tidbits of knowledge — sort of like puzzle pieces that, when put together, add up to the greatest story ever told: the story of the island. But no matter what we make of the clues the writers leave behind for us, we’re constantly surprised by the next leg of the plot. It’s like we’re the 815ers and the writers are Ben, always ten steps ahead of us looking back and laughing at our naivety because they know what it’s all about and they have us right where they want us. In the end, I pity the writers because they don’t have the pleasure of seeing it all slowly unfold from the first mystery to the last epiphany. They know how it all ends, and thus they have the ultimate spoiler swimming around in their craniums (I bet LostFan108 would love to get his greasy mitts on that one).
As you may have already noticed, I’m not at all one of those people who thinks the writers make it up as they go along, nor have I ever been. I see this idea as ridiculous, and think it’s the theory of casual watchers who don’t pick up on the many subplot details that are obviously planned out years ahead of time. But, to each their own.
As I’m sure most of you already know, there are many themes snaking their way through Lost’s main plot. I can sum them up in a quote from Dr. Emmett L. Brown: it’s all about "where we’ve been, where we’re going, the pitfalls and the possibilities, the perils and the promise, perhaps even an answer to that universal question. . .why."
The joy of it all is that Lost can be enjoyed on several different levels by both casual viewers and hardcore fans, each of which get a lot of information to soak in every week, whether they understand it or not. The casual fan can enjoy the basic storyline of the general mystery of the island and its inhabitants, whereas the hardcore fan can take in so much more. Almost an unlimited amount of theorizing can be done about Lost when you just dive into the mythology of it all.
I’ve been parusing the net on Lost sites for years now, and as I’m sure a lot of you have noticed there are some CA-RAZY Lost fans out there. But what’s wrong with that, really? We all have our own theories as to how it’s all gonna go down, and some are more out there than others. Everything from "it’s all Hurley’s dream" to "they’re in purgatory". Though us true Lost fans know that both of those particular theories are a load of BS, I still see people posting those ideas in comments sections. It’s funny to see how quickly some avid "Lostie" commenter will snap at the sight of the words "dream" or "purgatory." I’ve had to do some "cleaning house" myself in a few comments sections, clearing up all the misconceptions of the up-and-coming Losties who are still new to the game. We need to learn to be patient with those who are still getting everything worked out. I think we hardcore fans tend to hold a high opinion of ourselves as compared to the new guys, and we can’t help but correct people on anything and everything. I think that’s just a sign of love for the show, and not wanting the writers to be insulted by taking the story in the wrong direction. But really, it’s Lost, and I would assume the writers love when we become LOST in the story.
Whatever direction Lost chooses to take, the true fans will stick by it through thick and thin — through "The Constant" and "Exposé", through the "Others" and the "Tailies." The beauty of it all is, like any other long running show, it has so much room for error. We can deal with an Ana Lucia every now and again, and even a Nikki or Paulo, and just chock it up to a simple lapse in judgment and move on. Writing a show like Lost requires some trial and error, and considering how much excellent storytelling we receive for free week after week, I think we can all handle an error here and there. All in all, Lost is the greatest story ever told because that’s what we see it as. That’s what we believe it to be, and us true fans will continue to preach its greatness to pseudo-fans and Lost-haters the world over.
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"Your Voice" is a new TTS series in which Tail Section fans submit their articles, theories or reviews to be published on The Tail Section for all their fellow fans to read. Have you spent far too much time pondering the origins of the DHARMA Initiative? Have you alienated your co-workers by rambling about Daniel Faraday’s wacky time anomaly experiment? If so, we want to hear from you. Send your own Lost theories, reviews, or general thoughts to Editor(at)TheTailSection.com. Please keep all submissions between 300 and 1,000 words. We will read through all submissions and contact you if we publish your entry. You will also receive byline credit on our site.
AMEN to that
Especially Paragraph 7
Great article Don - enjoyed it very much
Jacob
Comment by Jacob_lost — March 24, 2008 @ 1:46 pm
I didn’t write the article, Jacob-lost, so I can’t take the credit. It was submitted by one of our readers, B-Locke47.
Comment by Don — March 24, 2008 @ 1:50 pm
I really liked this article, it said alot of the things I think of whenever I read all the negative posts that people put up, but I still can’t help but feel that it was what slightly hypocritical. I’ll get straight to the point. The reason for this was due to the part where where the author spoke about the characters of Nikki, Paulo and Ana-Lucia as being mistakes or lapses in judgment. However, a paragraph earlier, he or she stated how, as fans, we need to be patient, and as loyal, hardcore fans, show patience with those who don’t consider the show as their own form of religion. The one thing that annoys me the most when I read posts and articles on this website, is people who seem to be forgetting the simple fact that LOST has yet come to it’s conclusion. Right now, what seems to be happening way too often, is an over abundance of people judging the book by it’s cover, or in this case, the cover and first three-and-a-half chapters. Need I remind you that there are still two-and-a-half chapters left to be told, and the fact that certain elements of the story have yet to be completely revealed, is all the more reason for a large degree of patience to prevail. I find it wrong to claim that the addition of certain characters along the way were or are potentially bad decisions on behalf of the writers because who’s to say that these characters aren’t going to play an integral role in the overall conclusion of the story. Remember, when a character on LOST dies, it’s never the last we see of them, and maybe Ana-Lucia’s involvement in the lives of the other survivors will be more important than we have so far been led to believe. I’m not going to speculate on how this might be the case… it’s a thought, but that’s what we need. Less people passing judgment, and more people fashioning crazy ideas. Who knows? Yours might be the right one. And if you don’t agree with it, try to avoid sounding sounding superior when you choose to refute it. Constructive criticism people, not pompous know-all attitude. If in May 2010, the writers haven’t completely resolved every element of the story… then we’ll let ‘em have it. Until then, let’s just enjoy what they throw our way knowing that even though we’re not getting the full picture right now, that we’re only two short years away until we do. Patience is a virtue…. The payoff is coming.
Comment by Dan — March 24, 2008 @ 8:41 pm
I totally agree with you Dan, sorry if I sounded a little rough on the writers and all that. But you’re so right about how anything that might seem a little out of place or whatever could be a very integral part of the overall storyline (much as a lot of us have been expecting out of Libby). I personally had a big guff with Anna Lucia so I felt the need to mention her by name, I guess I’m just not one for the strong unreasonable type, but I’ve seen a lot of people mention Anna Lucia as one of their favorites and that’s very cool. We all like our own parts of the Lost story and that’s what makes it so great, there’s just so much to appreciate. Like, Dan, there has to be someone on Lost that you really wish would just get totally “smoke monstered” all over the jungle floor, right?
But about the whole “seeing the big picture” thing: I couldn’t agree with you more. I was telling everyone I know that eventually Michael was going to make a comeback and all of that crap he put everyone through was going to be worth it in the end because he would play a big part in (hopefully good) things to come. Then last week BOOM there it was.
Comment by B_Locke47 — March 24, 2008 @ 11:55 pm
Hmmm…So you think it’s ridiculous and a mere casual fan or even detractor’s position to state that the writer’s are making it up as they go along…but you also allow that the writers are blessed with a whole lot of room to learn about their story via trial and error. I’m a “big enough” fan (if size matters, I’m so sorry to leave the question of my relative size a mystery) who thinks the story works better as an open-ended sci-fi/fantasy soap opera than it will as a story with a well defined “pay off” at the end.
Comment by locke_look_alike — March 25, 2008 @ 12:42 am
Hmmm…So you think it’s ridiculous and a mere casual fan or even detractor’s position to state that the writer’s are making it up as they go along…but you also allow that the writers are blessed with a whole lot of room to learn about their story via trial and error. I’m a “big enough” fan (if size matters, I’m so sorry to leave the question of my relative size a mystery) who thinks the story works better as an open-ended sci-fi/fantasy soap opera than it will as a story with a well defined “pay off” at the end.
Comment by locke_look_alike — March 25, 2008 @ 12:51 am
As far as whether they make it up as they go along, maybe that’s not the case in terms of the main, broad, longterm storyline. But it’s definitely the case in the shorter term. They didn’t even know whether they’d ever get Harold P. to come back to play Michael when he left… What if his new show had been a success? There are many examples of this… like the fact that they originally planned for Jack to die in season 1. If it turns out that Jack’s character is now indispensible… I think you get my point. And Ben’s character was not originally planned to be nearly as important as it is now. I remember watching the commentary about the hatch on the Season 1 or 2 DVD, and the way they described the discovery of the hatch as they first conceived it made it very clear to me that they had no clear idea of what was going to be inside it once it was eventually opened…. I think the producers now know what the island is, and a few more big questions, but that’s about it. (Although they’ve admitted that they didnt know even these answers from the very beginning). But how they get to the conclusion where those big questions are answered … they’re making that up as they go along.
Comment by BobW — March 25, 2008 @ 7:48 am
“As you may have already noticed, I’m not at all one of those people who thinks the writers make it up as they go along, nor have I ever been. I see this idea as ridiculous, and think it’s the theory of casual watchers who don’t pick up on the many subplot details that are obviously planned out years ahead of time.”
I’m assuming you are a casual watcher as well then? I can’t see you grouping yourself as a Lost addict if you haven’t taken the time to read and interviews with the writers or watch DVD bonus features, all of which have the writers talking about how they lucked into certain things while writing. Sorry to break your heart, but they aren’t as genius as you suspect. Michael Emerson was only supposed to be on a few episodes on season 2 as Ben Linus, but the writers liked the actor
so much they decided to write his character into what is becoming the center character of the saga! And that is just one example. How about Michael Dawson? They wanted him back in season 3, he couldn’t do it because of his other acting obligations. What if his pilot had been picked up and he couldn’t come back in season 4, 5 or 6? That would destroy 3 seasons of episodes they would have pre-written according to you. Also, the writers have admitted that there are connections viewers have made that they had not even thought about or intended. The viewers who throw out hundreds of different theories and speculations are a driving force in this shows success. I don’t know of any other show where viewers can come in and speculate about scenarios like on LOST.
Comment by blutoschmooto — March 25, 2008 @ 8:14 am
It’s impossible to plan out every little detail for the show, but there are alot of large details that they’ve planned out from the beginning, so while the show isn’t completely written already, the writers certainly aren’t flying by the seat of their pants. They have more of a plan than most other showrunners on television do. Adam and Eve’s skeletons? They put them in season 1 for a reason, folks, and eventually it will pay off. The writers have repeatedly likened the show to a road trip. They know the major destinations and all the spots they want to see along the way, but the exact route they’re going to take they only decide on a season by season basis. I’m just fine with that. Especially when they keep paying off these things they bring up years earlier, making the story that much more intricate, like the cable on the beach, for example.
Comment by Super Mario — March 25, 2008 @ 10:19 am
BobW and blutoschmooto: You make some good points but i think you are being a little too specific. You see, they may not have known that Harold P could come back to be Ben’s man on the boat, but that doesn’t mean that Ben didn’t always have a man on the boat. They may not have known that Michael Emerson was going to LEAD the Others, but that doesn’t mean that we weren’t going to meet a leader before the big reveal at the end of season 2. Jack may be indispensable now, but his original Pilot death was called ill-advised by ABC after the first draft of the script and that is why. Basically the creative team killed “A Jack”, not This Jack. Another example of this is that you’ve probably heard that Charlie was originally a middle aged has-been rocker, not a never-was drug addict rocker. But this doesn’t mean that the writers never planned for Charlie’s essence to redeem himself and then die so the Lostaways could be saved. We saw a polar bear and a tattooed shark, and 2 seasons later saw the Hydra. We saw a glass eye, and a season later saw Mikhail. We saw Adam and Eve in season 1; wanna bet they don’t play a role down the line? Now did the writers know the Red Sox were gonna win the Series 2 months after the series debuted? No. Did they know that Libby was gonna give Desmond a boat? Probs not. But WHO CARES. All of the big stuff, the important stuff, lends itself to being planned FAR in advance. This article is 100% right.
Comment by Rich — March 25, 2008 @ 3:13 pm
woooops my bad =]
GREAT article B-Locke47
SOrry bout that
Comment by Jacob_lost — March 25, 2008 @ 3:52 pm
Big stuff may be roughed out in advance but that is far different from having the creative process controlled sufficiently to claim that the resulting story was “planned.” (A rough analogy — The framers of the US constitution thought out some pretty big stuff…did they “plan” the 2008 nomination run of Obama, Clinton and Gravel?) Now that the writers have committed to wrapping things up, the story will of course seem tighter and tighter but the arc will follow a new logic that will have its own demands, will force some of the old mysteries to compromise in order to link up in ways that were not intended, and it will have to leave other mysteries unresolved since they were never meant to be more than ephemeral “twilight zone” type devices.
Comment by locke_look_alike — March 26, 2008 @ 12:05 am
Rich — have you ever watched a soap opera for a few months or years? These stories have their fixed features and characters get spun around in stories that spin around endlessly, sometimes with major story lines gradually unfolding over many many episodes and indeed episodically over the course of the production like a refrain. Once the story is resolved, folks look back, rightly, and say it was well orchestrated — but there is no pretension that the franchise is coming to a well orchestrated conclusion. As a story Lost is the type that could have gone on for decades, ala As The World Turns. Some folks would have liked it that way. Whether there would have been enough folks who liked it for ABC to feel swayed to keep it in production indefinitely will never be known, and I wonder if some of the grumbling about Lost isn’t born of a sense that the story is being forced to act like something it wasn’t conceived to be.
Comment by locke_look_alike — March 26, 2008 @ 12:28 am
I should have used my words more carefully apparently, my view on the issue is nearly identical to BobW and Super Mario. In my opinion the overall story has been planned from the beginning along with smaller arcs that are laid out seasons beforehand. But there are many many things that I definitely agree have been brought in to make the story more rich. Such as was earlier mentioned by someone that Ben was just supposed to be in just a few episodes, which I’m really glad they took a different direction with that, but there was always going to be a leader of the Others. They just decided that since Michael Emerson did such a good job as the Ben character that they would just turn his character into the leader himself. On the spot decisions like that don’t necessarily take the overall story in a different direction, it just makes the story that much better. It just steers the parts between the beginning and the end of the story of Lost to sort of cater to what people will like. I love that they will sometimes change a thing here and there to make things better. Such as the fact that the character of Hurley didn’t even exist in the original story and they met Jorge during casting for Sawyer and decided “this guy HAS to be in the story somewhere”, so they just wrote him in.
I totally admit my knowing that they change things sometimes to make the short-term story better, the writers have admitted it indirectly on many occasions. Most recently they said that they had a unique new opportunity because of the writers strike to see what peoples reactions were to the first part of the season before they even started filming the second half so they could go off of that. Like any good writers they morph the immediate story to turn it into what most would hope it to be. But I believe it was mentioned in either the Season 1 or 2 DVD extras that before the pilot was even finished the creators knew exactly where the overall story was going.
Comment by B_Locke47 — March 26, 2008 @ 12:59 am
Regarding the change in the script from Ben originally being just one of the others to the leader of the others, what do we do with the statement Ben made while he was prisoner in the Swan, about how he worked for “a wonderful man”, but that this man was “not a forgiving man”.
After that script was written, I guess they decided that Ben was going to be that man… so when you watch all six seasons when all is said and done, I guess they can just chalk that up to the possibility that Ben was just BSing… or maybe he was talking about Jacob?
Comment by BobW — March 26, 2008 @ 6:44 am
After thinking about things last night, I figured the truth of the matter is probably far more mundane — how many seasons was Lost originally picked up for? I get the sense that the success of the thing probably took all parties by surprise, that they had not planned on wrting much more than the first season, and that beyond that the complexity of what they had started off doing eventually took on a life of its own: the interweaving of stories became too dense and the fan scrutiny and theorizing too blazing to allow for an open-ended project. I get a chucle out of the “road trip” analogy…thinking back on the road trips I’ve taken, how much has ongoing compromise determined the final experiences? Even if there were a few major points agreed to at the outset: Cars break down, things get lost or stolen, interesting opportunities totally re-write the agenda, etc. It’s not unusual that when it’s all said and done the major points have become minor points in comparison.
Comment by locke_look_alike — March 27, 2008 @ 12:52 am
Now that is deep my friend, I thank you for presenting to us your debating chops in this ongoing discussion.
Comment by B_Locke47 — March 27, 2008 @ 1:11 am
No sweat, palsy…I wish you better success with (or would that be less disagreement with) your theories in the next show you glom onto.
Comment by locke_look_alike — March 28, 2008 @ 11:50 pm
This is the one and only show I’ve ever “glom”ed onto, and this article was not about theories it was about why Lost is the greatest story ever told as the title clearly states. No need to be a dick.
Comment by B_Locke47 — March 29, 2008 @ 2:13 am
For starters, great article! It’s always refreshing to hear that people are on the same page as you are…
After reading the comments left by some readers, I would like to state that I too believe that the major ideas throughout the seasons were previously planned out down to the ending we have yet to enjoy. How else can you possibly explain the episodes in the beginning seasons preparing us with big hints about things we’ve only just discovered in this season? There is no way the writers are just pulling this out of thin air. As previously stated, small details and stories have been thrown in along the way, simply to better our viewing experience, but the big picture has always been there in my opinion.
And as for locke_look_alike… are you really so bored with your life that you feel the need to verbally attack a fellow Lost fan? This article was from their viewpoint, and you are entitled to your own opinion, but there is really no need to be mean about it.
Keep those articles coming B_Locke47.
Comment by Ashley — March 29, 2008 @ 5:56 am
Love the show, love this site. It is great to hear other’s perspectives on the many inticacies of LOST.
The title of this article is perfect : LOST, The Greatest Story Ever Told.
With that said, could we ever hope for a book, or series of books, detailing the story from beginning to end? ( “detailing” is the key word there, with lots to be exposed, explained….)
Perhaps from the writers? After the finale, or prior, as in a series of books, with the final installment on or after the broadcast finale?
(Hope , hope!!)
Comment by Jim in Cali — March 30, 2008 @ 11:25 am