Lost: Tonight’s The Night

By Tracy Phillips
As Seen On TV
Comcast.net

Most “Lost” fans were hooked the moment the plane blew apart in the stunning pilot, but the intrigue really set in with Charlie’s infamous line in Season 1: “Guys…where are we?”

As the story goes gunning toward the series finale next May, the Losties are now asking, “When are we?”

What was the tale of the survivors of Oceanic flight 815 has now become deeply anchored in science fiction, and for better or for worse, there’s no stopping now.

The show has previously flirted with altered consciousness, déjà vu and time travel, but Season 5 brings the full monty.

I’ve seen the first three episodes and all I can say is “Lost” is about to get even more complicated, if that’s possible. But don’t be alarmed. You’ve got to respect the effort and ambition that goes into this creative genius of a show, and trust in its superior storytelling.

After a torturous eight-month wait, new episodes are here, and so are some tidbits on this season’s adventure:

–This year the audience will learn a “greater sense of the island’s history.”

–Physicist Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies), mysterious Charles Widmore, and ageless Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell) all become pivotal players this season.

–You’ll definitely see Jin this season–he’s a series regular. (Don’t mistake this with Jin being alive, however.)

–You won’t see much of Claire this season, she’s not a series regular. (But producers say she’ll re-emerge in Season 6.)

–As an apology to fans for neglecting Sawyer last year, Josh Holloway is heavily featured this season–and so is his bare chest. (me = smiling)

–The person that Ben works for…is “probably Ben,” say “Lost” producers.

–Desmond honors an old friend in a way that will make you want to cry.

–Jumping through time can be bad for your health. Just a warning.

–The two factions continue to co-exist on-and-off the island, as we anxiously await for them to converge. The Oceanic 6 are back home dodging bad guys (with Jack trying to collect everyone to bring them baaaaack!), while the island gang is caught in a cataclysmic time warp.

For the thought process behind the bigger picture, here are the highlights from a press conference with “Lost” producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse at last week’s TCA press tour.

On time travel:
Lindelof: “The show’s been a time-travel show for the last four years. We’re just making it more apparent in the storytelling now. Hopefully as Season 5 unfolds, you will realize that time travel has been in the DNA of the show for quite some time.”

On avoiding the pitfalls of time-travel storylines:
Cuse: “Well, we’re on pharmaceuticals right now.”

Lindelof: “We feel we’ve done a pretty good job so far…[the episodes] are all the better for utilizing this island-skipping, time-travel element. We didn’t want Season 5, the penultimate year of the show, just to be a stall.”

On taking risks:
Lindelof: “We’ve become fairly masochistic in our writing…We sit around and go, ‘Is it fraught with peril? Yes? Let’s do it.’”

On the beginning of the end:
Lindelof: “We got to a point in Season 3 where we knew [the show] was treading into an area of complete and utter suckiness…. At that point we all had a decision to make which was, are we going to have an end date or is the show going to be cancelled in like a year? Because it simply couldn’t go on the way that it was.”

On the significance of Ajira Airlines:
It’s so important (or not important?), one could deduce, that the bosses refused questions on it entirely.

On obsessing over “Lost”:
Cuse: “People tried to theorize about the show–this is what “Lost” is. And we always sort of said two things that, I think, become more apparent the more you watch. One is it doesn’t reduce down to one simple thesis statement. And No. 2, you don’t really know enough to be able to effectively theorize about where it’s going to conclude.”

On the true mystery of “Lost”:
Lindelof: Nestor Carbonell, who plays the luscious-lashed Richard Alpert, “does not wear any mascara, no eyeliner, nothing. He is completely 100 percent sans makeup.”

Cuse: The true mystery of “Lost”: “Is Nestor wearing makeup?”

The two-hour season premiere of “Lost” airs Wednesday on ABC, beginning with a one-hour catch-up episode at 8 p.m./ET.

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