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Do IT this week: Layering
Blogger gets preview of new fourth season and he says it's a beaut
By Verne Gay
Newsday
Published on Monday, Jan 28, 2008
The call should have come in the dead of night, with the wind blowing and branches clawing at the windows.
You wanna see it, asked the voice (thickly, perhaps) on the other end of the line.
But let Jon Lachonis — a k a DocArtz — tell his story:
''It was cold,'' blogged the Waterville, Maine, writer for entertainment Web site UnderGround Online (http://www.ugo.com). ''I was bored. No date for Lost Season 4 had yet been set, the writers strike was picking up steam with the first signs that it may impact the length of our midseason stay on 'The Island.'
''For the first time in three years, thinking about Lost was a laborious and painful experience.
''Then I got 'the call.' ''
In the sprawling Lost landscape, DocArtz has had a unique role as tour guide. Part online critic, booster and Lost scholar, he's helped lead fellow Losties through this landscape via UGO as well as his own Web site (http://docartz.com), http://thetailsection.com and other Lost destinations.
DocArtz is certainly not the only one out there blogging Lost — there are probably several million, in fact — but no one else got the scoop he did on that figurative dark and stormy night last month: an offer-you-can't-refuse to look at the first four episodes of the new season. It was a privilege denied everyone else on the planet, including TV critics.
Lachonis got his screening, and afterward wrote of the fourth season, which begins Thursday at 9 p.m. on ABC: ''A full tank, pedal to the metal, turbocharged story tearing down a corridor of mythology without segmentation, without red herrings, without capricious delays designed to slow down the momentum. Lost is on a mission here, and its objective is to blow your mind in a way that is distinctly Lost.''
After the review ran, the online community went nuts. ''I. Can't. Freakin'. Wait.'' wrote one fan in a characteristic post.
DocArtz isn't alone in stoking interest for the new season of Lost. A carefully placed interview with star Matthew Fox in Entertainment Weekly helped, too. ''(We're) going to get into questions that the audience is just dying to start finding out about,'' he promised. Like ''what is the island, where is this island, when is this island.''
Once lionized, then (almost as quickly) dismissed, Lost is hot once again — and stuff like this isn't the only reason why.
Virtually alone among the other major strike-crippled hits of network television, Lost is returning with a batch of new shows that will air — without breaks or repeats — through early March.
But last May's two-hour finale (''Though the Looking Glass'') also catapulted the show into an entire new realm as well: the future. Characters do get off the island, though despite the best efforts of various spoilers to dig them up, answers remain (as always) alluring and elusive.
Meanwhile, Lost co-producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cruse have said the end-game is now officially afoot — or (to paraphrase Churchill) May's stunning blockbuster was the end of the beginning. Both producers — or ''Darlton,'' to smitten fans — have carefully planned a 48-episode arc that will wrap the ABC classic by 2010.
''Certainly my criticism and the frequent criticism (of others) was that the show did not appear to have a plan (and) that this was becoming the kind of Byzantine thing you did in fifth grade with unicorns,'' said Sarah Bunting, editor in chief of http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com, which moderates many Lost forums every day.
''But season three answered enough questions and moved the thing forward enough and teased enough plots that people are excited about season four.''
But amid anticipation is anxiety. For Darlton and ABC, the idea was to air 16 fresh episodes each year for the next three years — each part of a nice, taut, intricately assembled arc that completes their tale three years from now.
When the writers' strike began in early November, only a handful were completed, and with eight shows in the can so far, Lost's entire 2008 season could be over by early March.
That nice, taut, intricately assembled arc? Looking more and more like that mysterious column of jungle smoke.
This improbably condensed fourth season has set fandom into overdrive. Reason: No one knows how Darlton will now complete the show by 2010, or even whether they'll be able to. There are (literally) hundreds of ends that need tying — so many that 48 episodes almost seems like a blink of an eye.
ABC isn't talking about whether Darlton will get all the episodes they need to wrap one of the great stem-winding stories in TV history.
Darlton's not talking either; they were burned badly last spring when online spoilers flashed the news that the third-season finale would incorporate flash-forwards, revealing that Jack (Fox) and Kate (Evangeline Lilly) actually get off the island.
Thus, into the void has stepped speculation. Fan sites are buzzing with arcana like: Who is in the coffin seen at the end of last season, and who else got off the island, or why does Jack want to return, and how will Michael (Harold Perrineau) return to the show?
But they're also buzzing with this: How the heck will Darlton wrap their masterpiece now?
''The last three seasons are supposed to hurdle us toward the ending, so this is a big problem for them,'' said Nikki Stafford, writer of The Unofficial Guide: Finding Lost.
That's a problem for both Lost and fans, she says, because Darlton and ABC ''really wanted to build on that (fan) base and that's why they came up with the idea of (16-episode) seasons, so people could watch the entire season at once, and then viewers would get two more seasons.
''A lot of viewers turned and ran (after the second season) and didn't come back, so the worry in fandom now is what if people don't come back after these eight (air)?'' she said.
The speculation is that if viewership doesn't build, ABC will have less motivation to complete the final 40. Then, Darlton may be forced to cram TV's most complex series into far fewer episodes.
Lachonis agrees that ''there's some disorientation from fans about what to expect . . . now that they have a limited number of episodes.''
But he also says he's had no second thoughts about his appraisal. (He says someone close to the production gave him his big exclusive.)
''Season four is an entirely new plateau for the show,'' he said. ''Any show that gets to a fourth season you'd expect to start running out of gas, but they're really invigorated by it. It really feels like they mean to tell this story now.
''The M.O. for the show has always been to give people a little bit and then stall,'' he added. ''That mechanism is completely gone.''
Get the full article here.
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