So, I'm rewatching Lost with my wife (who *gasp* has never seen it before!), and at the time of this writing, I'm in the throes of Season Two's midsection. I've revisited my favorite episodes from time to time before, but this is the first time I've made the effort to go back and watch the show again in its entirety. And now that I've left the first season behind for the second time, I've realized that the first year of Lost was an anomaly in the show. Like, it's really different from Season Two. Yeah, yeah, duh. Lost evolved in such a way that every season was a way different experience than the previous one. I know. But now that I'm rewatching everything, it strikes me that the shift between the first and second seasons is special. In terms of how it affects the show in the long-run, it's pretty seismic, and I almost feel that Lost in its first season is a fundamentally different show than it is in the other five. It's not, of course, but there's I reason why I'm tempted to make such judgements. Two reasons, actually: episode structure and viewing hook.
Before I explain, a quick declaration of allegiances. First, I think Lost is one of the great achievements of scripted television. Its mixture of science fiction, humanism, and existential mystery is not without precedent on TV—see also The X-Files, The Twilight Zone, and, especially, The Prisoner—but its particular treatment of community and faith within these genre trappings is something we probably won't see again any time soon, certainly not on network television. And yeah, I really like the way Lost ended. It moved me and brought us more closure than I think most fans will admit*. That being said, I recognize that Lost is a flawed show, sometimes deeply so, and those flaws extend to the series finale (really, if your show isn't called Freaks and Geeks, it ain't perfect). Second, I would readily rank Lost's first season among the greatest seasons of television ever, so some of my commentary might be tainted by what I see as the dip in quality, however slight, between "Exodus" and "Man of Science, Man of Faith."
Really, though, I don't think the difference between Seasons One and Two has much to do with difference in quality. Later seasons also diverge in quality, but I don't sense the same shift. It does, however, have everything to do with why a lot of people didn't like the series finale. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
So yeah. Episode structure. What's the first thing people say about Lost when they aren't defending or raging against the resolution of the Island's mysteries? What I hear most often is how compelling the show's cliffhangers are. People don't always say that in so many words, but it's in the subtext of a surprising number of reactions to Lost. "It's addictive" is a common sentiment, as well as "I watched [insert large number] episodes back-to-back" and "I just had to know what would happen next." There are many reasons why people feel compelled to binge-watch a TV series, but without a doubt, the use of episode-ending cliffhangers is one of the most effective. It's also something that the writers at Lost excelled at. Before beginning my rewatch of the series, I would have even gone so far as to call cliffhangers a Lost trademark, right up there with flashbacks. But upon reviewing the show, I noticed something interesting: Season One doesn't have that many cliffhangers.
Sure, all the ones you remember are there: Claire's kidnapping, Boone's injury, and most iconically, Rousseau's transmission that "the others are dead" in the pilot. But... that's pretty much it. In fact, by my count, only about one third of the season's twenty-five episodes end on an honest-to-goodness cliffhanger**. Given that "cliffhanger" is a somewhat subjective term, that ratio is a little debatable, but even the most liberal definition will only get you around ten or eleven episodes. Far more common is for Season-One episodes to end in moments of introspection or character development. Locke watches his wheelchair burn in "Walkabout." Sawyer can't burn his letter in "Confidence Man." Walt and Michael bond over the raft in "Born to Run." For the most part, Season One follows this structure: an event on the Island causes a character to experience some sort of existential crisis stemming from his/her pre-Island life, the action to resolve the Island event escalates while flashbacks explain the character's crisis, and the episode ends with the character transcending/coming to terms with the crisis. Cut to "L O S T" title card. Roll credits.
The beginning of Season Two throws this structure out the window. For one, Season Two loves cliffhangers, and I realize now that it's really with this season that the episode-capping cliffhanger become a Lost staple. Just look at that opening trio of episodes, which announces with panache that Season Two is different. The first two episodes end with definite cliffhangers (Desmond holds Locke at gunpoint, Michael and Sawyer find Jin fleeing the "others"), and the third ends with, if not a cliffhanger, a moment of such tension (Locke's manning of the hatch computer) that it could hardly be called introspective. No longer do episodes end with character montages, soft music, and melancholy. Instead, they end with adrenaline and some new Island mystery. Just to be clear: melancholy, montages, and the rest have not disappeared from Lost in Season Two or any of the seasons that follow. We continue to get plenty of character development throughout the show's run, and I'd argue that it's the most consistent aspect of the show. However, starting with the second season, these elements fit much differently into Lost's episode-by-episode structure, much less often serving as episode cappers or even climaxes than they do in Season One.
There's that old bit of advice about public speaking: end with what you want the audience to remember. Well, I'd argue that advice works for storytelling, too, and particularly for television, which gets the unique opportunity to "end" every week. That's just how we humans process information; we dwell most on what occurred most recently. When a speech or movie or book or TV episode ends with a particular word, phrase, or image, it says to the audience, "This—yes, this—is what we're here to tell you about. This is the most important piece of what you just experienced." In short, how something ends reveals its focus. The issue is compounded on TV, where endings aren't just endings but persuasive devices to maintain an audience. A TV shows wants viewers to come back next week or next season, and it tells them so in the final minutes of an episode. The last scene of a TV episode not only brings the episode to a close but says to the audience, "If you come back, you'll get more of this." An episode's ending makes a promise to its audience. Sometimes it's something like "You'll get to find out who shot J.R. Ewing" and other times it's merely "You'll get to see Cliff Huxtable be funny," but a promise is made nonetheless. This promise is the viewing hook.
So what does Lost want its audience to remember from week to week? What is its focus? What promises does it make to its audiences from episode to episode? Well, that depends on whether you're watching Season One or Seasons Two-through-Six.
The majority of the time, first-season episodes end with shots of characters bonding, finding things out about themselves, or just hanging out. Heck, there are even pop-music montages, courtesy of Hurley's Walkman. This tells the audience that these people are what is most important. More than any other season of Lost, Season One is focused on character. In the first year, the characters are what this show is about—not just how the characters move the plot along from one Island mystery to another but who these characters are and the demons that afflict and motivate them. When each episode ends, we see the centrality of these characters to the show, and just as importantly, the show promises us that returning to the show will give us a deeper connection with the characters.
Now, that promise, that importance of character, definitely exists in the other five seasons of Lost, and we even get the occasional episode that ends with a Season One-esque montage or character moment. But the show becomes much less explicit about that character centrality. By having the majority of episodes end with cliffhangers (and especially cliffhangers revolving around the show's mythology and unresolved mysteries), the Lost writers change the conversation with its audience. Structurally, plot becomes the most important aspect of the show, and the viewing hook shifts from bonding with the characters to feeling intrigue. Instead of character connections, the show begins to promise excitement and Island mysteries (and implied solutions to those mysteries). While the characters always reside at the heart of Lost (and are what keep it great throughout its run), the post-Season One episode structure of mystery-based cliffhangers elevate numbers, infertility, black smoke, and electro-magnetism to a point where they appear to be the most important element of the show rather than how these mysteries affect the characters. They become the viewing hook and therefore the reason why viewers continue to watch the show. And all that starts in Season Two.
Is it any wonder, then, that a sizable portion of the Lost audience is upset that the show ended in a way that emphasized the character connections and downplayed the ongoing mysteries? The show's structure had, for all intents and purposes, lied to them about what to expect from the show. Beginning with Season Two, the show promises the audience one thing and eventually gives them another. This is not a fatal error (the show does, I think, answer many more of its mysteries than people give it credit for, anyway), especially since it devotes its whole first season to establishing the rules that it eventually sticks to. But it is a problem that the show temporarily changes the rules along the way. Five years is a long time to misstate one's purpose.
And that's about all I've got for now. Looks like it's another long post, folks. Don't let all that that length go to waste. Tell me what you think! Do you love Lost? Hate it? Have you lost your love for it? Again, I've only rewatched halfway through Season Two; those of you who have rewatched the series in its entirety, am I remembering wrong about the trajectory of future seasons? Inquiring minds want to know.
Until next time.
*I will (and have) argued that point ad nauseum.
**"Cliffhanger" should not be mistaken for tension, of which Season One has plenty. An underlying tension, brought to the surface only occasionally by jarring, episode-ending events, is what makes Lost's first season addicting even without the heavy use of cliffhangers.
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