To a casual fan of ABC's "Lost," the first few episodes of the sixth and final season might have felt a little bit slow in comparison with 2003's explosion-filled, casualty-loaded, what-is-that-polar-bear-doing-on-an-island pilot. Sure, there were some action-driven sequences with impressive special effects, including a scene where a John Locke-smoke monster hybrid crushed a few nameless characters but not a single person was sucked into a jet propeller. Clearly the show has lost some of the spectacle it once had.
Luckily for the series, this is probably a non-issue, since I'm pretty confident that there is no such thing as a casual "Lost" fan anymore. How could there be?
Over the past two seasons in particular, the plot has become a complicated mess of mythology-driven sci-fi, making the show inane and difficult to follow in the eyes of anyone who has missed more than a few episodes. Further, the show has increasingly relied on revelations about island mysteries to produce excitement, rather than the plane crashes and explosions of earlier seasons. While this poses no problem for the super-fans (among whom I count myself), it alienates casual fans who can no longer rely on pyrotechnics to provide the payoff.
This shift towards favoring mythology over action has been slow and methodical by necessity. By only asking audiences to take one small baby-step of faith at a time instead of quantum leaps executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have built viewers' trust so that seemingly far-fetched storylines are somehow believable. In the most recent episode, for example, Hurley's conversations with the ghost of a recently murdered semi-deity named Jacob don't raise an eyebrow.
ABC's marketing strategy for the final season of "Lost" has proven that the network understands the show's lack of accessibility for the uninitiated. Perhaps trying to compensate, ABC has made every episode of the first five seasons available for free on Hulu.com through Dec. 31, 2010 (unless, of course, the rumors that the site will begin charging for content one day come true), in addition to offering free hour-long recaps of each season. The Feb. 2 premiere was even preceded by a clip-show meant to jog viewers' memories of the end of season five.
Apparently this approach worked in a rare feat for a serialized show like "Lost," the season six premiere saw a significant increase in viewership over last season's average, drawing over 12 million fans. Those who tuned in witnessed the fall-out of the time-traveling castaways' decision to detonate a nuclear weapon a tactic which, they had hoped, would destroy the island during the 1970s, thus ensuring they would not crash there in 2003. In typical "Lost" style, the resolution was essentially a non-answer in the form of dual realities one where the bomb resets history and one where it fails.
To sustain two realities at once, the series has replaced its traditional flashbacks and jumps forward with a technique that the creators have dubbed the "flash-sideways." Now, episodes jump from the island reality to the sideways reality, exploring how each characters' life might have been different had the island ceased to exist in 1970.
So far, the plot device has had mixed success. In some cases, it is interesting to see the characters we know so well leading lives that are, in some cases, remarkably different. Lead character Jack, for example, has a teenage son in the alternate world who did not exist in his island incarnation. Another upside of the flash-sideways technique is the dramatic irony it provides, which is most enjoyable when we see castaways unknowingly interacting in the alternate world in quotidian ways, as when Hurley offers Locke a job.
That said, what was so intriguing about the flashbacks was that they always felt like clues to some greater puzzle that the audience had to figure out. At least up to this point, the sideways flashes don't appear to have much at stake in them. In comparison to the action on the island, these scenes fall flat. I hope that there is some master plan to integrate the two narratives and with the type of "Oh-no-they-didn't" pay-off "Lost" specializes in.
This isn't to say that, thus far, these haven't been good episodes with interesting moments they have. Old staples have worked well: the unnamed blonde boy who appeared up in the third episode of the season was the best use of the creepy child archetype since crash survivor Walt whispered backwards warnings to the other castaways back in season two.
But with a dwindling number of episodes left before the series ends on May 23, "Lost" doesn't have time for episodes that are merely good and interesting. As much as the series loves to bide its time to build tension, I feel that the time has come for the show to pick up the pace.
To this point, "Lost" has raised more questions than it could possibly hope to answer before the curtain falls. I'm fine with Lindelof and Cuse leaving some unanswered. What I would like, though, is for my jaw to drop a little lower every episode so that, when the finale does come, it only takes a baby step for it to hit the floor.
