*SPOILER*: Lindelof/Cuse Explain "Our Mutual Friend" Novel
Steven L.
Dickens, Challah and That Mysterious Island
By KATE AURTHUR
On last night's "Lost," which closed the island mystery's second season
on ABC, a crucial plot development hinged on a copy of the Charles
Dickens novel "Our Mutual Friend." (Readers who do not wish to know the
particulars of the finale should stop here.)
In a flashback Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick), the character "Lost" viewers
know as the man who lived down the hatch, tells a prison guard that he
carries around "Our Mutual Friend" because he means for it to be the
last book he reads before dying. Later, on the island, when Desmond
thinks that death is near, he finds a letter inside the book from the
love of his life, Penny. Her letter inspires him to go on an apparent
suicide mission to save the island and, the episode implied, possibly
the world.
During a visit to New York City last week, Damon Lindelof and Carlton
Cuse, the executive producers who run "Lost," said they got the idea of
the deathbed reading of "Our Mutual Friend" from an interview with the
writer John Irving in which he said he was saving it for last. But
besides paying tribute to Mr. Irving, they were eager to refer to
Dickens for their own narrative purposes.
"He was writing chapter by chapter for newspapers," Mr. Cuse said. "We
often think: 'How much did Dickens know when he was writing his stories?
How much of it was planned out, and how much was flying by the seat of
his pants because he had to get another chapter in?' " He paused, then
said with a laugh, "We can respect what he went through."
More remarkable than the size of "Lost's" audience, which averages 15.3
million viewers, is its devotion. The show has inspired endless Internet
chatter and solicits participation by viewers, who play its popular
multiplatorm game, the Lost Experience. When Mr. Cuse and Mr. Lindelof
began the writing process for this year's closing episode, they knew
that a large number of fervent fans were bitterly disappointed in the
Season 1 finale. The big twist in that episode was the kidnapping of
10-year-old Walt (Malcolm David Kelley) by the island's sinister
inhabitants, known as the Others, who lived there before the plane crash
that began the show. The writers had worked hard to keep Walt's
abduction a secret from Internet spoiler sites, nicknaming the scene
"the bagel" so as not to let its contents casually slip. (This year's
shocker was dubbed "the challah.")
That genuinely surprising turn did not end the Season 1 finale however.
Instead, in its final moments, the mystical Locke (Terry O'Quinn) and
the practical Jack (Matthew Fox) stared down into a mysterious hatch
Locke had found earlier in the season and had been trying to open. But
fans were annoyed: what could possibly be down the hatch that would be
worth a four-month wait?
When that finale was broadcast, Mr. Lindelof was in Hawaii about to be
married. "We felt everybody was satisfied and psyched," he said. "It
never occurred to us that the backlash was going to begin."
Mr. Cuse said: "There started to be Internet chatter. We take that
feedback to heart. By the time August rolled around, the spin on it was
everybody's frustrated that we didn't go into the hatch."
The Season 2 premiere tried to remedy that frustration immediately. In
the hatch was Desmond, who had been stranded on the island three years
earlier. There were also plentiful provisions, retro furniture and, most
important, a button that needed to be pushed every 108 minutes to dispel
a powerful electromagnetic charge that could lead to catastrophic
consequences.
When talking about the construction of "Lost," Mr. Lindelof and Mr. Cuse
often refer to the Harry Potter books. They want each season, like each
book in J. K. Rowling's series, to pose questions and answer them while
at the same time maintaining a larger mystery that holds the audience.
"This season's story was about the hatch," Mr. Cuse said. "We were very
conscious of trying to make the end of the season more satisfying than
last year. We wanted to answer a lot of questions."
Last night's episode solved two significant "Lost" puzzles, which turned
out to be related. What would happen when the button wasn't pushed?
(There was a huge explosion, and if Desmond had not activated a backup
system, Mr. Cuse said, "It might have led to, ultimately, sucking
everything on earth into itself.") And what crashed the castaways'
plane? (It was a casualty of the only other instance when the button was
not pushed on time.)
Because they don't know how long the show will run, Mr. Lindelof and Mr.
Cuse have to pace its revelations. "If you answer too many questions,
the audience doesn't have anything to care about on the show anymore,"
Mr. Cuse said. "We had to end the show with a powerful mystery that
suggested what the show was going to be about next year and would leave
the audience curious about where we're going."
Ratings suffered as the season progressed. In response to complaints
from both viewers and the show's creators, next season ABC will run the
show in two uninterrupted segments, without reruns that stop its flow.
But its biggest problem was the return of Fox's "American Idol" in
January at the same time on Wednesday nights. Before then, original
episodes of "Lost" delivered 21.5 million viewers; after, they brought
in 16.5 million (and repeats fared poorly all season).
As for next season, the scene that Mr. Lindelof and Mr. Cuse called "the
challah" offered a preview. In the final minutes of last night's
episode, the action on the island has ended, but in a coda that took
place in unfamiliar settings, Penny, Desmond's wealthy, long-lost
girlfriend, was told, "I think we found it." The implication viewers
were left with was that the explosion on the island finally made it
visible, at least temporarily, to someone desperately looking for it.
Will a rescue effort be a part of Season 3? Mr. Lindelof and Mr. Cuse
would not say but allowed that if this season was about the hatch, next
season will be about the Others, as led by the oblique Henry Gale
(played by Michael Emerson, who will join the regular cast). Mr. Cuse
listed what viewers will learn about the Others by this time next year:
"Who are these people? How many of them are there? What is their
history? What are they trying to accomplish?"
Beyond serving as a teaser, the finale's last minutes were incredibly
important to the larger story, Mr. Lindelof said, particularly since
this was the first time in 49 hours of the show that "Lost" went off the
island in the present, rather than in a flashback. "It's time to
actually blow up several theories of the show," he said. "People who
believe that they're in purgatory or that they're subjects of an
experiment are going to start reassessing those theories based on the
fact that we are literally showing you the outside world."
--
Steven D. Litvintchouk
Email: sdli...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net
Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.
Ryan Robbins
"Steven L." <sdli...@earthlinkNOSPAM.net> wrote in message
news:QGldg.149$UT2...@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> May 25, 2006
> Dickens, Challah and That Mysterious Island
> By KATE AURTHUR
For someone as smart as he claims to be, you seem to be having trouble with
"copyright."