New Book Makes Allegations of Racism And A Toxic Workplace BTS of Lost

[Vee]

Yes, lots of worshipful TV journos and fans called them "Darlton". I will def be buying the book next week.

[DramatistDreamer]

Wow, I was so locked in to my program that I missed all the media frenzy and I am not at all sorry about it.

Also , seeing that my spellcheck has decided to spell Cuse as Cause. I am waving the white flag in regards to my constant skirmishes with spellcheck. I’ll just let it ride.

[Khan]

I agree.  I think I watched the first three episodes of "Lost" before I gave up.  What wasn't a retread of "deserted island" tropes was just plain incomprehensible.

Edited May 30, 2023 by Khan

[Vee]

You could tell it was winging it from the jump. I caught onto the formula immediately: Flashbacks, tedious character vignettes, sappy music montages and a lot of viral marketing. Great pitch, bad show. But it snowed everyone, and it was a good concept.

[Khan]

That's almost exactly how I felt about "Desperate Housewives."  You could tell that Marc Cherry had NO idea where to take the show past the first season.

[Vee]

And yet I can understand why both shows saved ABC in that era. The simple pitches are excellent, and much of the casting on both was great.

Lost also knew when to not challenge convention too much for its network - elements of it were 'weird' or had ties to deeper concepts or ideas (like, say, naming all your characters after philosophers lol) but were never too deep themselves, and story or character was always emotional, always pretty or always cute. 

Such is the J.J. Abrams/Bad Robot secret sauce and it has served them well: Hot leads, sad backstories to fill heavy blocks of time, weeping string music montages by the in-house composer, viral marketing and a plot riding along on a hamster wheel.

[marceline]

I'm not sure I can handle reading about Sleepy Hollow. The BTS bigotry was very apparent onscreen. I've never seen a show work so hard to destroy its own popularity. It still enrages me.

As for Lost, like so many others, I was really into it for the first two seasons but there was never any real payoff. I will say that part of what turned me off of Lost was the absolutely toxic shipper wars. When they talked about the Jack/Kate/Sawyer triangle I got PTSD and once they added Juliet, it became a quad that ate the show alive. Many you know I'm a vet of some of the worst of the soap couple wars and even I couldn't stand it. You couldn't discuss anything about the show without people hijacking the conversation to fight over who Kate should be with. It left me with bad feeling towards all the actors involved. 

I really feel for Perrineau. His character became kind of a punch line. He was the guy running all over the island screaming "WALT!!!" That said, I completely understand how Malcolm David Kelly's growth spurt screwed everything up. He shot up like a weed. The takeaway there should be don't cast children in time-jumping sci-fi shows.

[DramatistDreamer]

The overuse of music in series dramas are a particular pet peeve of mine. It was popular on Grey’s Anatomy and it got on my nerves then too. It is often used as a cheat code to gin up emotions when the writing is lacking, imo.

As I read this, I completely heard Perrineau’s voice saying it lol.

[Faulkner]

Ugh. The worst. I love a good needle drop, but a lot of shows and especially Grey’s abused it. And every song is some lilting, faux-Bon Iver indie ballad or an anesthetized, slowed-down cover version.

I think Shonda managed it a bit better on Scandal (they licensed more originals at least, like old soul classics like Patti Labelle’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and Donny Hathaway’s “A Song For You” or the episode where they used all Janet Jackson songs), but even there it was overdone. They really leaned into it when the show was way past its prime. 

[Khan]

I agree.

I think a big problem with the "high concept era" of network television - which, I'm sad to say, is still with us - is that most of the high concepts that have been greenlit by the networks and streamers were and are not sustainable as ongoing series. 

Can you produce a series about a group of castaways?  Sure, you can.  "Gilligan's Island" proves you can.  "Gilligan," however, wasn't centered around a mystery or set of mysteries that demanded both a definite end date and payoffs along the way.  It was simply about a group of disparate people learning to survive (and survive each other) and hoping in the meantime that they will be rescued.  If "Lost" had stuck to that notion and canned all the other stuff - the extended flashbacks and flashforwards, the convoluted mythologies and conspiracy plots...the polar bear - then I think it could have been a much more satisfying show.  A different show, perhaps; maybe one that would have had more self-contained episodes and less serialized ones; but also one that wouldn't have left virtually everyone watching feeling like they had wasted their time.

Similarly, I think Marc Cherry's notion of using a whodunit on "Desperate Housewives" as a lens through which to examine how all housewives' daily lives are ones marked, in one way or another, by desperation was a fine one.  Unless you're able and willing to keep that mystery going for the life of the series, however, then what's the point?  What's your intention once the mystery is inevitably solved?  Because, once it IS solved, I guarantee that a big chunk of your audience will move on, especially when your resolution to the mystery proves to be a cop-out.  (We, as the viewers at home, spent an entire season wondering who killed Mary Alice Young, only to learn that she had killed herself.  Gee, thanks, Mr. Cherry, lol.)

Unfortunately, the same thing happened to Taraji P. Henson at "Person of Interest."  CBS had a hard time accepting her popularity on the show, so they had her killed off.  Initially, whenever she was asked about her reasons for her departure, Henson gave the standard line of, "I wanted to concentrate on other things (like movies)."  Later, however, she admitted that racism and bigotry were at play.

I agree.

KNOTS LANDING was SO good at using music to enhance their scenes and move characters forward.  In fact, music was almost a key cast member itself, lol.

Another show that knew how to use music effectively was, believe it or not, DAYS in the '80's.  They took the template that "Miami Vice" had created, with extended sequences that played like music videos, and added raw emotions underneath them, so that you didn't just watch people running around while drawing weapons on each other.  To this day, I still say that the worst thing ever to have happened at DAYS was the day they no longer had the budget for music.  Without it, the show has been so lifeless.

[Faulkner]

It's great to see that the trend of anthology series and limited series has given creators the freedom to explore unique concepts without the pressure to keep adding complex mythologies to their stories season after season. A show like Revenge might have worked better as a one-off or anthology series, rather than being dragged out with convoluted storylines. These days, there’s this added demand to constantly keep viewers on their toes with shocking twists. A lot of that is social media and a need to keep people engaged and immersed in the world of the series but also the influence of the big sci-fi/fantasy tentpoles that has pervaded our culture.

[DramatistDreamer]

OMG, yes lol. I was over it.

With Twitter circling the drain and the much overhyped BlueSky already showing signs of descending into a nazi wasteland, maybe the need to pander to social media will stop. One could only hope.

[Khan]

I agree.  Each new season of "Revenge" could have featured a whole new cast - or, the same cast, but playing new roles - with the theme of someone seeking retribution for past wrongs running throughout.

I also agree with you, @Faulkner, about the increased demands for shocking twists to keep social media users engaged with these shows.  I think the practice is unnecessary.  Why do you NEED to keep shocking and surprising viewers?  Why not just work on building characters who are fascinating and then let the stories spin from them?  If you keep relying on shocks and surprises to keep people tuning in, pretty soon, that's all you've got.  (See "Revenge," lol.)

[I Am A Swede]

At least you lasted longer than I did. I quit after the first episode and from what I've read about the show I'm glad I did.

[Vee]

I think anthologies are fine for certain things, but I also think they've become a bit of a crutch lately for creatives who don't understand how to long-term plot. Some anthologies have become a catch-all for 'pile crazy twist upon crazy twist for 8-13 episodes and then GTFO'.

I'm thinking specifically of Ryan Murphy, of course, who couldn't long-term plot a serialized drama on his best day and used to regularly blow up any quality on nip/tuck when he'd come back to the show and upend the entire show out of boredom. People said 'oh, he's found his niche' when he began doing American Horror Story anthology tales instead. Then they discovered he can't even plot a single finite storyline coherently for 8-13 episodes without that same boredom and laziness. Now he's got an episodic AHS spinoff, with one-off stories per week a la Twilight Zone. The beat goes on.