Eight is enough to fill our lives with love

Here's a nice little look at Lost ratings/Lost filming issues, courtesy of one of my Gannett brethren.

New season of 'Lost' is beginning of the adventure's end
By Bill Keveney, USA TODAY
Will eight be enough?
Viewers will have to decide whether Lost is half-empty or half-full when the ABC adventure-drama returns for its fourth season Thursday (9 ET/PT). Because of the Hollywood writers' strike, only eight of 16 planned episodes have been produced.

Cast members say that ABC's decision to provide some Lost rather than none is smart and that they are pleased with a quickened pace and more answers to Lost's mysteries.

"We're all going to be disappointed that there are only eight instead of 16, but the eight episodes are amazing, and I think fans will be very satisfied," says Yunjin Kim, who plays Sun, the pregnant wife of Jin (Daniel Dae Kim). "I feel like this season all the episodes are self-contained. The speed of the story is faster. Each episode contains a question and an answer, finally. So there's a lot of satisfaction."

That approach may be the result of the unusual decision to set an end date for a hit series, with 48 episodes over three seasons. Knowing when the story concludes (which may be reflected in the title of the one-hour season-opener, "The Beginning of the End") has helped writers map out a faster, more focused pace, says Matthew Fox, who plays Jack Shephard, the reluctant leader of the survivors of the crash of Oceanic Flight 815.

"Lost is a story with a beginning and an end. Knowing he's got 48, (co-creator Damon Lindelof) can make each installment move the narrative forward to that conclusion with momentum," Fox says.

Based on Lost's previous production schedule, five or six more episodes likely could be produced by the end of May if the writers' strike is settled by mid-February.

Lost ended last May with a jolt, opening the door to the castaways' possible rescue while adding a twist, a first flash-forward after three seasons of signature character flashbacks.

•The island update: Hurley (Hugo Reyes) saved three survivor colleagues from the Others, a mysterious island group at odds with the Oceanic passengers. Jack contacted an offshore freighter, and he and other stranded island dwellers were waiting for its crew to rescue them. And, just before drowning, another colleague, Charlie (Dominic Monaghan), passed on the message that the boat people weren't who the islanders thought.

That leads to a big season-opening question, one that will divide the islanders as four strangers arrive: Are they coming to hurt or to help?

•The future revelation: In a surprise directional change praised by cast and TV critics, Lost's May finale looked ahead to find that Jack and Kate (Evangeline Lilly), and possibly some others from the island, made it back to civilization.

The episode ended with a bearded, substance-abusing Jack raising more questions by imploring Kate: "We were not supposed to leave. … We have to go back, Kate."

Other questions hover: Who will leave the island, and who will stay? What will become of the pregnant Sun on an island where expectant mothers die? How will the romantic possibilities play out? Of course, Lost's big questions — what and where is the island, and why are these people there? — remain. (ABC will repeat the two-hour finale Wednesday at 9 ET/PT and air a series recap Thursday at 8.)

After averaging 15.9 million and 15.4 million viewers in its first two years, Lost fell to 13.8 million last season. (Lost is the top show in time-shifted viewing, ABC says.)

A complex, serialized show such as Lost loses some of its audience via attrition, but many viewers and critics blamed a six-episode fall 2006 arc they say had too much of the Others, not enough of the first-year regulars and too little in the way of action and answers.

A longer episode allotment in the spring received a much better critical response, and the season finale (13.9 million viewers) gave Lost its largest audience in more than three months. That led to the decision to run its 16 episodes consecutively this season.

But if this season also ends up divided, cast members say, the eight episodes will stand up better because they have lots of action and all the regulars are featured. (Lost's writers would not discuss the season because of the strike; ABC execs declined to be interviewed.)

Elizabeth Mitchell, who plays Juliet, one of the Others, likens the literature-referencing series to a novel. "I'm reading this book, Orley Farm. The first 150 pages are all setup. You're like, 'Where are the people I care about?' Then, all of a sudden, the book takes off. I feel that's what happened in Season 3. The writers laid their groundwork. And it hits the ground running" this season.

Lost could benefit from the strike, too, since there is less scripted competition. With time slots available because other shows have only reruns, it was moved from Wednesday, American Idol's regular night, to Thursday, and from 10 ET/PT to 9, an hour with more viewers.

In addition to new characters from the freighter, Michael (Harold Perrineau), who left the island with son Walt earlier, will return. Some on the island, most recently Locke (Terry O'Quinn) in the season finale, have seen a vision of Walt (Malcolm David Kelley).

Michael Emerson, who plays the spooky Others leader Ben, says that this season not only keeps up last season's momentum, but that the flash-forward opens great creative opportunities. "None of us knew what was going on until we saw the broadcast. I thought 'Hallelujah! This is going to make this show.' "

The future perspective is "how they're going to spin it out to be suspenseful and dramatic. Who has gotten off the island and at what price?" he says. "Now, there are these bittersweet notes of regret and missed opportunity that will come into play. To the extent the island was some crucible in which people could hope for redemption, maybe not everyone was redeemed, at least not happily."

Dude

Here's an interview with Hurley from BuddyTV.com. Here's the encapsulation - nothing all that interesting, he knows nothing. But here it is anyway.

How is season 4 going so far for you?

It's going really well. The scripts are really exciting. It's very much reminiscent of the excitement of going through the scripts we got in season 1, where it was really crazy directions and like "What's going on?" Season 4 is going to be very important for people to adjust their Tivos or record the show after Lost. A lot of closing teasers are really WTF moments, and it's going to be pretty cool.


So the cliffhanger is a big focus this season?

Every season they do like to end the show with a good little something, but there have been some great final pages in scripts we've been reading.


Hurley, in the season 3 finale, finally got to show his warrior side. Are we going to see some more of that in season 4?

Gradually I think we've seen, from season 1 all the way to the van moment, Hurley slowly kind of take responsibility, slowly start to be a leader and step up, and kind of take a more leadership role. He's assuming a little more, for sure.


Has the new shooting schedule increased demand or opened up any extra opportunities for you as an actor?

Well, I don't know yet. It's opened up the break between the end of season 4 and the beginning of the next season. I know there's still talk of the impending writers' strike situation, which might turn days off into snow days, where they keep adding it to the end of the year if we can't shoot it. Who knows.


Let's talk about the numbers. Hurley's numbers, is that an issue that's resolved for Hurley? Are we ever going to see anything about that again?

I don't know. The numbers became a monster for awhile, and then they kind of faded away a bit lately. Not much has been numbers oriented recently that I can think of.


With the new people arriving on the island, does that move the threat away from the monster and the issues that were a threat to the survivors on the island to the new people? Or is that just something new to the mix?

I think it's just something new to the mix. Sure the monster's always there, but we've been living with that there for awhile, so you might give a little more weight to the slightly more unknown I guess. But the monster is definitely still on our minds for sure.


You're probably restricted on what you can say.

Yeah, I don't have that much information. I've had scenes with two of the newcomers, and my run-ins with them have been pretty ambiguous still.


So I know in earlier seasons there's been this lore about the Lost set that when the new actors come in it's very welcoming. Now that you guys are three seasons in and have built a more hardened core, is it still that kind of an open experience?

I think so. I think it's fun when new people come and join us, because it's just new dynamics and new chemistries to form with people. It kind of keeps an actor on his toes. I guess that's something you have to ask them more than us, but I always try to make an effort to bring people along and tell them where the good places are around Hawaii to hit up. Especially cause they're all living out of their hotels at the start usually.


On that note, now that the show has got an end point, I know you guys kind of started lives here. How did the prospect of production coming to an end affect you guys personally?

I'd been house hunting, but never finding anything, so now I'm definitely looking at going back to California to be closer to the business and my family and stuff. That reality I'm dealing with. I've been in the same place for three seasons so far, so I have amassed stuff that now has to either get sold off or sent back. I'm actually gonna start maybe a public storage near my sister's house, so I can send her boxes to kind of stash for me. I don't want to have to move everything at the last minute.

So why don't you kill me

This really has nothing at all to do with Lost itself. But the two great tastes of Lost and Weird Al Yankovic make this a must see.
http://www.compfused.com/directlink/5020/

You are everybody

ABC has this really nice synopsis of the first three seasons of Lost that clocks in at eight minutes and change. It doesn't hit everything, but it serves as a nice refresher for those of us who might've forgotten a point here and there.
http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/index?pn=index

Anticipation

It's been a long time. How've you been? You look good - did you lose weight?
Enough small talk, girlfren', it's time for Lost Talk.
With a two-hour season premiere on the 31st, and the hype beginning to build, I thought it time to start up the engines.

First things first, ABC has some nice stuff posted online (thanks Wendy and Nicole), including an interesting video clip from a boyfriend of a stewardess on the Oceanic flight, leading to some interesting questions, like what is this Maxwell group he references?
Also, two trailer clips for the upcoming episode are posted, both with tantalizing clues:
http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/index?pn=index
The ads, if to be believed, make us think that in this episode, some Losties will be "rescued," but I use quote marks around it to indicate that things go quite awry and that some people don't leave the island and the rescuers are actually nefarious and bad. Eeeeenteresting.
Entertainment Weekly has a somewhat interesting interview with Matthew ("Jack") Fox about the show. Here's one thing he had to say:
"Jack gets people off that island, [and] suddenly he and the other people are very well-known — it becomes this massive story because everybody thought that every person on this plane was lost.... Who are they? What is everybody else doing? Jack's mission was to get all of them off. It's the overriding force behind him. So, the fact that he ends up getting off and doesn't get that accomplished — I'm very curious to find out how that all goes down. And part of that is going to be part of the reason why he wanted to jump off the bridge in the future."