Lost: Plot Twists Movies Can Only Dream Of

Ostensibly, we're in the era of scripted television. All that skanky reality TV aside, scripted television is pretty gnarly right now. Examples of well-written epic television (both recently cancelled and thriving) abound; Mad Men, True Blood, Lost, Glee, Pushing Daisies, How I Met Your Mother, Gilmore Girls are just a few (coincidentally, those that I watch).

Movies seem to have an opposite level of commitment to plot. The more popular a movie is, the more likely it is to be a predictable snooze-fest. Why is this? Wouldn't both be driven by character development and a healthy sense of plot?

My case study for this is Lost. The sci-fi Gilligan's Island is ending in May and I have been Hulu-ing my way through the past 100+ episodes. I'm to the end of the fourth season and have been wowed by the almost acrobatic way Lost's plot balances itself. And yes, I'm going to talk about major plot points now (SPOILERS, for those of you managing a Lost-free existence).

Season One: Like naive tourists in a rough part of town, the castaways of season one only venture into the light when things are safe. The first season functions much like a classy thriller; we see just enough to keep us satiated.

Season Two: The Hatch-ariffic second season plays as a theological debate. The castaways have to hit a button or presumably die, but that's hardly the most best part. The back and forths--between Locke and Jack, between Ben and everybody else--that are played in all grays make many episodes feel like philosophical debates. Additionally, Michelle Rodriguez's Ana Lucia spends a lot of time ass-kicking. Season two plays like a action movie with substance. It moves off of the character-driven base of season one.

Season Three: Camp comes into play when Ben Linus and the suburbanite Others kidnap Jack, Sawyer and Kate. Crucially, this season was not well-recieved. Certain plots felt too much like re-hash--Kate oscillated between Jack and Sawyer for one too many times.

Season Four: Thanks to the Writer's Strike, Lost was a tight plot machine in the fourth season. Flashforwards brought intrigue to current events on the island; on the island there were fresh new characters--Daniel Faraday, be my physics teacher!--and the real promise of escape.

Personally, I dug season three's camp factor, but I know from slight research that it was tremendously unpopular. Things tightened back up when the show's creators worked out a deal as to exactly how long the show would run. This, I believe, is key. Having a finite number of shows, Lost's creators were no longer making a television show and were now making a 100+ hour long film. Given that they are imminently capable, the order of the day comes to orchestrating their opus.

Television writers are getting smarter. They're building shows in segments to satisfy viewers at an incremental level.

The question is, why are films dragging on? I suspect greed. Execs and studio heads want to jam everything into every film to ensure their maximum audiences. Audiences lose in the bargain.



Watch this nifty video. Some folks made a theme song for Lost and won at Comi-con. (Overall, you can see the multitude of plots.)
*Confession: I watch a lot of reality television. But the classy Bravo/Project Runway type. No Flavor of Love (since season one).