How time changes things. Lost, the 2005 Emmy winner for outstanding dramatic series, has been lost in time this season. And casual followers have been Lost along the way -- literally and figuratively.
Literally: The average weekly audience has flirted with the nine-million mark in recent weeks, as Lost reaches its two-hour season finale Wednesday. Last year at this time, that figure was closer to 12 million.
And figuratively: Casual viewers who tune in one week and skip the next have become hopelessly lost in a story that has vaulted back and forth in time like something William S. Burroughs penned in a fever dream. (The April 29 episode alone featured no fewer than four switches in time, from the late '70s to the mid '90s, then to 2004, then back to 1977, and finally ahead to 2008.)
And here's the funny part. Lost's true fans, who've pored over every small detail and obsessed over every major story twist since the series' inception in 2004, don't seem to mind. The message boards and online chat forums are as active as ever, as Lost draws down the curtain on its fifth season with a two-part, two-hour episode called "The Incident."
ABC's official episode synopsis is deliberately oblique. "Jack's decision to put a plan in action in order to set things right on the island is met with strong resistance by those close to him, and Locke assigns Ben a difficult task."
A cynic might suggest that Ben's task is to explain Lost's fifth season to viewers more inclined to watch undemanding forensic procedurals like, say, Criminal Minds or Bones, two shows that air in Lost's time period on other channels. And then there's American Idol's results show -- a whole different program, aimed at an entirely different audience.
Lost's fans understand that the show's makers have adopted a cheerful, almost wilful disregard for pandering to the demands of a mass TV audience afflicted with a short attention span.
This season, more than most, Lost has been the kind of TV drama that rewards the obsessive nitpicker with an eye for detail -- the kind of consumer who chooses DVDs over network TV. As writer-producer Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have shown in their weekly audio podcasts -- available for download free of charge from Apple Canada's iTunes store -- not a single moment goes by in Lost without some hidden meaning or calculated effect. Lost is the ultimate DVD Easter egg, a serial thriller that respects its loyal audience, while ignoring everyone else.
Next season will be Lost's last: It will end in May 2010. Given the state of the economy, rising production costs and the new trend toward prime-time singing competitions, weight-loss contests and, starting in September, a five-night-a-week prime-time talk show hosted by Jay Leno, Lost may well be one of the last complex, expensive, intellectually challenging serialized dramas to play on broadcast TV.
Baffling or brilliant? The real answer is, probably both.
Lost's fifth-season finale airs Wednesday, May 13, on A channel and ABC at 9 ET/PT. Note its expanded, two-hour running time.
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