Lost is turning 20. So it must have been 20 years ago that a good friend came to me at school and said: “Have you seen that show where everyone crashes on an island?” If I had known back then how many hours I would spend in forums to be the first to crack the smoke monster puzzle, I would have thanked him. The emerging online networking and the dictatorship of television programming have unrepeatable product of its time created.
The island drama arose under incomprehensible circumstances and with incomparable creative power, overshadowed by immense wrong decisions and poor treatment of employees. Let us take you on a journey into the highs and lows of one of the most influential TV series ever.
The Disney miracle of 2004: It is unbelievable that Lost even saw the light of day
It all started with a man named Lloyd Braun. He was the midwife for new series ideas at the Disney channel ABC. He decided which of the thousands of concepts each year could actually become series, and Lost was even his own. Braun wanted Cast Away to have even more survival drama, as can be read in reports at EW and the comprehensive Lost wiki Lostpedia.
Since ABC’s numbers left a lot to be desired at the time and he had a premonition that he would soon have to leave, Lloyd Braun was all the more interested in Lost. And indeed, he said goodbye to his time at ABC with the series, which had grossed over 14 million US dollars up to that point. most expensive pilots in TV historywhich blackened the eye bags of the station bosses.
But the real miracle lies in another number: At the beginning, the twelve loomed over Lost like the sword of Damocles. in just twelve weeks The two-part pilot was to be produced because the broadcaster wanted to start the series in the same year. A ridiculously small fraction of the time that such a project normally takes.
Within a few days, JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof, who had been brought in at short notice, had to rework the script. Up until then, Lost was a down-to-earth survival drama without any mystery elements. A location had to be found and then a broken plane had to be shipped from the US West Coast to a beach in Hawaii. Actors had to be found for the entire ensemble cast – and all the big stars were taken or had already landed other pilots. Oh yes, and the filming had to take place. If you want to know more about the incredible early days, I recommend the first Lost episode of the podcast What Weng Wrong.
Despite all the adversities that piled up during these twelve weeks, the two-part pilot of Lost was released on 22 September 2004 saw the light of day and was an incredible success. 18 million people wanted to see the mysterious survival drama. It is a miracle that Lloyd Braun’s venture not only worked, but also exceeded all expectations.
Lost became one of the most watched and probably the most discussed series in TV historywhich continued ABC’s media-effective mystery tradition after Twin Peaks. Braun was fired before Lost was even finished filming – but his voice can be heard in almost every episode of the original “Previously on Lost” listen.
The homemade disaster: The level of improvisation could not be maintained forever
Lost was a child of improvisation from the start. Everything about it was created on the spot. This led to an immense discrepancy between what the series promised and what it delivered. It is now common knowledge that showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse simply carried on as they were, building up their mysteries more and more without having worked out the expected payoff at the end.
From this Ambivalence from revolutionary storytelling (more about it at CBR ) and disappointment There are many contemporary witnesses today. For example, an entry at WGA West that considers Lost to be one of the best-written series of all time, and a listing in Rolling Stone among the worst TV decisions of all time – regarding the complicated finale (which we explain to you here in 7 sentences).
However, the improvisation affected not only the scripts, but also the Culture in the Writers’ Room and the terribly sobering treatment of some of the stars and their characters. Lindelof and Cuse took over Lost as showrunners after the pilot, as JJ Abrams preferred to shoot Mission Impossible III. While they left their mark on television, they failed as human beings.
Late revelations about Lost overshadow what the series created
Despite all the TV history, Lost should be seen as a warning of how things should not go. Only last year, Maureen Ryan’s book Burn It Down: Power, Complicity and a Call For Change in Hollywood * was published, which has a very devastating report on racism and misogyny on the set of Lost Excerpts from it were made available online at Vanity Fair.
Ryan interviewed, among others, actor Harold Perrineau (Michael in Lost) and screenwriters Monica Owusu-Breen and Melinda Hsu Taylor. On the one hand, the racist thinking started in the writers’ room, where the story is conceived. Horrible comments and stereotypical thinking about pretty much all characters of color were tolerated and even supported by the showrunners.
This ultimately resulted in the fact that, despite the diverse ensemble cast, the main storylines and most of the screen time went exclusively to the white characters Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Locke. This development over the course of the series is all the more sad when you consider that the improvised casting took place without any specific idea of the gender and ethnicity of the characters. With Harold Perrineau (Michael), Naveen Andrews (Sayid), Daniel Dae Kim (Jin), Yunjin Kim (Sun) and Jorge García (Hurley), numerous fantastic actors were cast who but in their stories often reduced to their origins or their appearance become.
When Harold Perrineau approached the two showrunners during filming for season 2 that his character was serving black stereotypes such as the absent father and that he would have liked a more balanced storyline, he was written out of the series in season 3.
Lindelof himself has his fundamental failure has now admitted – which in no way makes up for his behavior and the bad experience of many Lost employees. Even supposed geniuses behind the biggest series successes bear responsibility for a safe workplace, as podcast hosts Chris Winterbauer and Lizzie Bassett summarize in their fantastically researched episode What went wrong: Lost (2).
What is left of Lost in the 20 years? Hardened fronts, whether the ending is good; astonishment at the origin story; disillusionment at the failure of the showrunners. One thing is certain: It is still worth talking about Lost today – the positive as well as the frightening sides from which we can still learn.