Agreed, I think a large part of the hatred is simply that it became such a cultural phenomenon that certain people--who would simply never like a show like this--tried to watch it, hated it, and felt upset or misled LOL. Fair enough. ( I do remember gloating a bit when on one forum a bunch of Heroes fans praised season 1 of Heroes like this--"Unlike Lost, this is a show that gives us ANSWERS to all its questions, bla bla" Of course pretty much by season 2 they were regretting their words)

Correct.

Woah, to Faux-Locke is the Smoke Monster?! The Smoke Monster beating the crap out of the men with guns was pretty cool. So what do we call the LAX scenes? It's not a flashfoward or flashback - I read someone calling a flash-sideways.

LOVED LOVED LOVED the background music when the plane landed at LAX. Michael Giacchino rocks!

Cool Video alert

Oceanic 815 - Side by Side:

LOVED LOVED LOVED the background music when the plane landed at LAX. Michael Giacchino rocks!

The show would surely be a lot less emotionally rich, without his music.

<p>

<span style="font-size:19.5pt;"><font face="Verdana">Former ABC Exec Lloyd Braun, the Voice of 'Previously, on Lost,' Says, 'I Know What the Smoke Monster Was ...</font></span>

<span style="font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma">By Christopher Rosen</font></b></span>

<span style="font-size:10.5pt;"><font face="Georgia">With Lost's time-twisting plots, it seems only appropriate that the disembodied voice that has introduced each episode's opening recap with the words, "Previously, on Lost ... " should belong to a figure from the show's past. It's that of Lloyd Braun, the former ABC chairman who helped hatch the idea for the series but was fired just prior to its debut. (He's currently the co-owner of BermanBraun, the production company behind Mercy and Accidentally on Purpose.) On the eve of Lost's final season premiere, we checked in with Braun about his aborted history with the show, what he knows about the finale, and how Howard Stern revealed his secret voice-over identity.

You've said that when you read the outline for Lost, you told a friend that it was the next ER. Do you still feel that way?

It was the eleventh hour and we weren't happy with the original script that had been [commissioned for the concept], so I brought in J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof and they wrote a detailed outline — because we had to make a decision on whether to make the show or not based on this outline. By the time we had a script it would have been too late to greenlight it. So they wrote a 22-page outline — which I literally keep in my office because we often show drama writers this outline. I think it's the best outline, to date, I've ever read. We use it as a model.

The show clearly evolved from that 22-page outline. But did you see Lost going to the place it's at right now?

No, certainly not to the place it's at now. Every show, once the show is up and running, finds its own course. However, before we greenlit Lost, J.J. and Damon had to walk us through where they saw the first season going. And, in fact, right at the pilot stage, they had the hatch at the end of season one; they had the Others; they had the tail of the plane being on another part of the Island; and they had, at that point at least, a theory on what was wrong with the island. Whether that in fact is still what's wrong with the Island or not, we'll have to wait and see.

As it happened, you left ABC before Lost even aired, and it went on to become a phenomenon. Do you feel vindicated at all by the success, or is it bittersweet because you weren't there to revel in it?

It would be disingenuous of me to say that, certainly during that first season, there weren't a lot of bittersweet moments. But, like anything else, you sort of work through that over the years. Plus, J.J., Damon, and [executive producer] Bryan Burk were unbelievably gracious during that period of time. I will never forget the day the show premiered — remember, ABC hadn't had a big drama hit in about ten years, and this show was a very controversial show when we were developing it — and when the show premiered and got that first number [the pilot drew in over 18 million viewers], I remember more or less being in a state of shock only because I could not believe it actually had happened. That night — I've actually never told this story — the doorbell rang at like, 8 o'clock, and it was a messenger with a package. I take the package, I open it up, and there's this beautiful silver frame with a picture of Oceanic flight 815. And written on it are notes from J.J., Damon, and Bryan. And I still keep that on my desk to this day. It is my most cherished possession. And that lead to my voice being on the show.

Yeah, how did that come about?

Maybe a month or two after I had left ABC, J.J. called me up and said that he wanted to use my voice on the show every single week, to open the show and say, "Previously, on Lost." It was important to him and Damon that I was somehow forever a part of the show. My initial reaction was not to do it. But I talked about it with my wife and she said, "You know what? This show is so important to you, it's so much a part of you" — and this is before it even launched. So she talks me into doing it, and I call J.J. up and go, "Okay, I'll do it, but no one is to ever know that I did it." And he agrees. So we meet in a conference room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. They bring a sound guy and I did a slew of versions of it. And no one knew for years. And somehow — I forgot how it leaked out — I think Howard Stern ended up finding out. I'm very close to Howard, I used to represent him, but I didn't tell Howard. But somehow, someone did. No secret in Hollywood can stay secret forever. It's amazing this stayed secret for two or three years. I think they lowered my voice just a little bit to disguise it a little bit more.

You mentioned that during the development process, Abrams and Lindelof had a theory about what was wrong with the island. Based on that, do you think you know how Lost is going to end?

Any theories I have, I would only keep to myself.

Okay. One last thing: Do you know what the smoke monster is?

If I did I wouldn't tell you. [Laughs.] I know what it was, but again, I can't tell you what it is now.</font></span>

<span style="font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma">http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/02/lloyd_braun_interview_lost_voi.html</font></b></span></p>

Edited February 5, 201015 yr by Sylph

<p>

<span style=font-size:19.5pt;"><font face="Verdana">Creators of 'Lost' Say the GPS Unit Is Plugged In</font></span>

<span style="font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma">By Edward Wyatt</font></b></span>

<span style="font-size:10.5pt; line-height:18px"><font face="Georgia">LOS ANGELES

FROM the time that Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 crashed on a mysterious island in the 2004 premiere of "Lost" on ABC, almost everything that appeared to be true about the fate of the survivors has become if not actually false, then at least vastly more complicated that it originally seemed.

The island itself, for example, which at first seemed to be disconcertingly deserted, soon proved itself to be even more disconcertingly inhabited. While those inhabitants (known as the "others") are liars, kidnappers and murderers, ultimately their crimes are revealed to serve a larger, protective purpose. And though it appears that for survivors of the crash the ultimate goal is to leave the island, many who do leave find themselves inexorably pulled back.

For the men pulling the levers behind the "Lost" curtain, finding ways to wrap up both the fate of the story's characters and the mysteries of the island for the program's final 16 episodes, which begins Tuesday, is a multifold challenge.

"Normally the thing that you have to execute is coming up with fulfilling endings and resolve the fate of your characters," said Damon Lindelof, an executive producer who, with Carlton Cuse, oversees the series and is writing the key episodes for the coming season. "But we also have the added weight of how are we going to resolve this mythology.

"The show is so predicated on questions. So now we're in answer mode, and have been for quite some time."

And while the creators of "Lost" have assured viewers for much of the last five years that yes, they know the answers to those questions, they acknowledge that they do not yet know exactly how the series will come to a close. The final episodes have not yet been written, much less filmed.

"We came up with the final image of the show a long time ago, back when we were first plotting out the mythology in the first season," Mr. Cuse said. But he added: "We still have six hours of the show to make. That is sort of the equivalent of three feature films. We have to do all the writing for those in about eight or nine weeks, and we have to finish shooting them between now and the middle of April."

The creators are willing to make a few promises, which they outlined this month in an interview and in discussions with reporters at a meeting of the Television Critics Association. Viewers will not have to wait until the last moments of the series finale to get many of their answers, they say. Beginning with the season premiere, revelations about some of the most fundamental mysteries will come fast and furious.

Some of the "Lost" actors, in fact, implied that viewers hoping to quench their thirst for answers in the season premiere might find themselves drinking from a fire hose.

"It felt like a finale," said Josh Holloway, who plays Sawyer, the brooding loner who seems to think best with his shirt off. "That scale. Wow."

But providing answers does not necessarily means that resolutions will be simple. Emilie de Ravin, whose character, Claire, was pregnant when the plane crashed, gave birth on the island and all but disappeared into a spiritual netherworld in Season 4, admitted that she was initially a bit confused.

"I think I had to read it about three times before it actually made sense," said Ms. de Ravin, whose character plays a bigger role this year. She was confused, she added, but "in a great way."

"Not helping," said Mr. Lindelof, who said of his biggest nightmare, deadpan: "Get ready to scratch your heads, America."

The creators say their hope is that this final season might feel like a first, in that a viewer does not need to have watched the 95 previous episodes in order to enjoy the final chapter.

"There's an inherent process when you're ending something to sort of be thinking about the beginning," Mr. Lindelof said. "One of the things that I think we are trying to do — all of us, the actors and the writers as well, in the sixth season — is to show the audience the before," as well as the after.

Therefore episodes in the final season will continue to provide plenty of back story. That way viewers "have some sense of, 'Oh, this is what he used to be and who they are now,' " Mr. Lindelof added. "So you really get a sense of how far that person's come."

And, both the creators and ABC hope, viewers who have never seen the show might find it more inviting.

"Lost" remains, by almost any measure, one of ABC's biggest hits. But its viewership has fallen by about 30 percent from the first season, when an average of 15.5 million viewers tuned in each week, to the fifth, which drew about 11 million a week, according to Nielsen. Last season's finale drew about 10 million viewers, compared with 14 million to 20 million in the earlier seasons.

And it is perhaps the most loyal viewers — who, having immersed themselves in every detail of every show, might therefore be hoping that every puzzle will be solved — who stand to be the most disappointed, according to the creators.

"Obviously not every question's going to be answered," Mr. Cuse said. "We felt if we tried to just answer questions, it would be very pedantic. Apart from that, we also really embrace this notion that there's a fundamental sort of sense of mystery that we all have in our lives, and certainly that is a huge part of the lives of these characters."

"To sort of demystify that by trying to literally explain everything down to the last little sort of midi-chlorian of it all would be a mistake in our view," he added. (In "Star Wars," midi-chlorians were life forms existing inside all living things; that the "Lost" creators might explain the real-world implications of their fantasy world by referring to another fantasy world is perhaps part of the reason that the series has lost viewers.)

But Mr. Cuse remains optimistic: "I think there would be, hopefully, a kind of healthy cocktail of answers, mystery, good character resolutions and some surprises."

As with the Harry Potter series, another fantasy that the creators often cite as inspiration, the end is likely to have more to do with character resolution than with the solving of mysteries like what exactly the island is. Does Kate, the sexy fugitive, for example, end up with Sawyer or Jack, the reluctant leader of the band of survivors? Is John Locke dead or alive? Will Hurley ever lose weight?

If the creators are not saying, they do promise one other thing. While the ending of the series will almost certainly provoke some debate, it will not be of the type created by, say, the black screen that ended "The Sopranos" or the "It was all a dream" or "It all took place in someone's imagination" endings of "Newhart" or "St. Elsewhere." And like David Chase, the "Sopranos" creator, they do not plan to answer questions after the finale.

"We feel like over the course of the entire season we're going to be answering questions and explaining things," Mr. Cuse said. "We're really going to focus on making sure the resolution of these characters comes to a place that we as writers feel satisfying. And that's kind of the best approach we can take to make the show end well."</font></span>

<span style="font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma">http://www.nytimes.c...t.html?ref=arts</font></b></span></p>

Edited February 5, 201015 yr by Sylph

<p>

<span style=font-size:19.5pt;"><font face="Verdana">Take a Step Sideways: The Newest Lost Theories</font></span>

<span style=font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma">By

Michael Alan Connelly</font></b></span>

<span style="font-size:10.5pt;"><font face="Georgia">After watching Tuesday's Lost premiere, this much we can say for certain: The bomb did and didn't work, and Locke is Smokey, dead, and missing a suitcase full of knives. Now that they've had two days to think about it, what can the Internet's brainiest Lost theorists tell us about the show's final season? • The two timelines the show now features are going to be reconciled at some point this season, but how? The best bet is a special individual. But will it be Desmond, for whom "the rules don't apply"; Juliet, whose final words before death seemed to suggest she knew something Sawyer didn't; or Aaron, who may not even exist in the reboot timeline for all we know, but whose alluded-to importance in prior seasons seems to foreshadow him playing a pivotal role now? [Incident]

• Using Juliet's experience as a starting point, one recapper posits that characters in one timeline may share a "co-conscience" with their counterparts in the alternate timeline, meaning they could possibly warn themselves about things. Bonus theory: The island's whispers, the subject of much attention in the first two seasons, are the sounds of Others moving through underground tunnels that lead to the temple! [TV Squad]

• Expert recapper Vozzek69 has way too many insights to list here, but there's two we're hung up on. First up, pointing out that we're only shown the cut on Jack's neck in the mirror, Voz suggests that maybe it's not real and exists only in the mirror as some sort of foreshadowing. Second, on the issue of the Man in Black wanting to go "home," Voz uses the word that makes many a Lost fan cringe, purgatory, and wonders if Jacob and his foe are fallen angels of a sort. [DarkUFO]

• Similarly, this analysis of possibilities regarding the Man in Black asserts that he could be the devil, an angel, an alien, or just someone from an alternate universe. [BuddyTV]

• Usually we skip the time-suck of reading theories posted online by viewers who haven't dedicated themselves to maintaining a Lost blog, but we really like this one (even if it's not entirely novel) about the reboot timeline just being one iteration of a continuously repeating series of events that has led to these characters getting on Oceanic 815. And if it's an iteration that has already happened, perhaps that timeline is a "flashback" of sorts. [LOST Theories]

• Not having seen any concrete evidence to the contrary, there's no reason to assume that the flight in the reboot timeline is taking place in 2004. In fact, what if the the alternate realities are happening at the exact same time? [Long Live Locke]

• Is it possible that Jughead was detonated in conjunction with some movement of the island in time and space? If so, maybe it created a pattern of sorts, which would help to explain why there are alternate realities: one in which the bomb worked, and one in which it didn't. [EYE M SICK]

• There's not any evidence to back it up, but at least one person thinks Charles Widmore will return to the island, but instead of ruling the Others he'll be replacing the Man in Black. [Magic Lamp]

• This writer concludes that Shannon's absence only means that Maggie Grace asked for too much money to return to the show. More importantly, he wonders if the legend of Atlantis holds any clues for the story of the sunken island. [TV Guide]

• Desmond, who was obviously not on the original Oceanic 815 flight, might be appearing in the reboot as an agent of course correction. Or maybe as a disciple of Eloise Hawking? [Filmfodder]

• Questioning why, circa 1988, Smokey was living in the outer walls of a safe place for Jacob's people, this writer guesses that the Man in Black was once Jacob's unwilling servant, and that finding a "loophole" had as much to do with preventing people from coming to the island as ending his job as security system for the Temple. [Zap2it]

• Not much has been made of the premiere's title ("LA X") title, but this guy, pointing out important episodes from past seasons like "The Variable," thinks that X stands for the unknown variable in an equation, much like the characters themselves seem to be unknowns right now. [DocArzt's LOST Blog]

• Two writers debate, among many other things, the effect Jughead had. One thinks it spawned an alternate reality; the other thinks it created a wormhole, with Jack's looking in the mirror serving as a reference to Donnie Darko. [Celebritology/Washington Post]

• With everyone looking to the future and wondering how the series will end, this recapper wonders if Jack and Locke are somehow going to become the next Jacob and Smokey. [Watcher/Chicago Tribune]

• Doc Jensen says he's not offering any grand theories in this final season, but his smaller speculations still get our minds going. Here he suggests that Jughead is likely not what sunk the island in the reboot timeline. So what did? Consider that pesky Radzinsky drilling into the pocket of electromagnetic energy and causing a cataclysm (uninterrupted by the bomb's detonation) that caused the island's plunge beneath the sea. [EW]</font></span>

<span style="font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma"></font></b></span></p>

Edited February 5, 201015 yr by Sylph

@CarltonCuse

Writing with DL and Liz Sarnoff for the last four days until the midnight hour and beyond but ep 14 is now done. 3 more eps to go. Crazy.

<span style="font-size:10.5pt;"><font face="Georgia">While J.J. Abrams may be far removed from the day-to-day operations of LOST, of this he is sure. Setting an end date was the best thing to happen to the show since the arrival of one Benjamin Linus.

"Damon [Lindelof] and Carlton [Cuse] basically insisted on it," said Abrams of the then unheard of end date that the talented twosome affectionately referred to as 'Darlton' negotiated with the top brass at ABC. "Knowing that the show is going to end on its own terms means there will be a sense of inevitability, not a sense of a series reacting to a marketplace or viewership. I'm thrilled about is seeing billboards touting 'The Final Season'."

So to are 10 to 15 millions fans, who have anxiously been counting down the return of the most addictive show on television since May's finale that ended with a quite literal bang. And just what does Abrams think the fan reaction will be to the final season?

"Mind-bending, amazing, intricate, and unexpected," are just a few of the superlatives the visionary showrunner threw out. "When we started the show, we didn't know where we were going exactly. And to see where we are and what they [Damon and Carlton] have created is insanely gratifying and something nobody could have predicted at the beginning. To see what Damon and Carlton have done is amazing and consistent with their unbelievable track record."

Strong words from the man who knows a thing or two about amazing television (See: FELICITY, ALIAS and FRINGE). Unfortunately, outside of promising that, "I believe it will be a satisfying ending," praise for team 'Darlton' is about all Abrams would spill at the recent Television Critics Association Press Tour. Well, that and that he wouldn't be adverse to see his other network show, FRINGE, emulate LOST's six year plan.

"I think it would be wonderful and I don't think you can go wrong when you know exactly where the story is going to go," said Abrams. "If FRINGE is lucky enough to continue going, I do think that at a certain point it would be a really smart thing to start to say, 'OK, let's figure out what the actual date is so we sort of know how far we should push things'."</font></span>

http://www.dvrplayground.com/blog/entry/20221/J.J.-Abrams-Talks-LOST-and-FRINGE-End-Dates/

Edited February 6, 201015 yr by Sylph

Started rewatching/watching from the beginning

And they have Harry Potter as an inspiration?

And they have Harry Potter as an inspiration?

Just the the saga has an certain ending thing, luckily. Harry Potter is the worst piece of bull served to children and others.

Harry Potter is the worst piece of bull served to children and others.

I'm surprised you don't see its brilliance.

I'm surprised you don't see its brilliance.

Can 35 Million Book Buyers Be Wrong? Yes.

Imagination = one thing, quality = another. Not that Rowling was too imaginative either.

Pratchett takes swipe at Rowling

Rowling is full of bull.

Edited February 6, 201015 yr by Sylph

Why would this Pratchett guy's opinion interest me?

As for Rowling, I love her. She is quite spiritual and a very, very smart lady, when it comes to people. Her characters jumped off the page and she was very imaginitive.

Why would this Pratchett guy's opinion interest me?

As for Rowling, I love her. She is quite spiritual and a very, very smart lady, when it comes to people. Her characters jumped off the page and she was very imaginitive.

They shouldn't. The fact that she says I'm not writing fantasy should. How can someone say such a stupid thing? And Pratchett is very famous.

But let's not off-topic. She wasn't imaginative.

They shouldn't. The fact that she says I'm not writing fantasy should. How can someone say such a stupid thing? And Pratchett is very famous.

But let's not off-topic. She wasn't imaginative.

I wouldn't comment on that quote without reading it in context; I have no way of knowing what she said or how she meant it. If I had said something like that, I would have meant that, in my head, it's so real, it's so tangible, that it's not fantasy. But that's just me. Anyway. You're right. This is a LOST thread. But she was imaginitive. Completely undeniable.