We Have to Go Back!
I'm not saying it's the greatest show. I'm saying it's the greatest experience I ever had with a show.
HOW ARE YOU FEELING?
Lost?
Found?
Dead?
Dreaming?
Diabolical?
Creative?
I’M GRATEFUL FOR
Stories that grab my attention
Positive memories from high school (sometimes harder to come by)
McDonald’s breakfast
The best stories blow our minds and expand our imagination.
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the TV show Lost premiering on ABC. 20 years! I’M SO OLD!
Some of you never watched and that’s fine. You still have to read this. It’s mandatory. I talked to your mayor.
I’m not here to spoil anything, just in case this convinces you to give the show a shot. I don’t know what it would be like to go back and watch for the first time now. So much has changed since then and a lot of it is thanks to Lost. We probably wouldn’t have Stranger Things without it. You’re welcome, or whatever.
I just want to talk about what this show meant to me. Lost was one of the most important TV watching experiences in my life. Before LOST I didn’t know I could have an important experience with TV. Before LOST it was mostly Boy Meets World and whatever my parents put on during dinner. I had shows I watched but I was never really that invested.
Don’t make your mind up until the third episode. That was Jacob’s advice as our nerdy high school friend group settled into his living room. He had been hyping the show up all week. Now, with the season one DVDs in hand, we were ready to see for ourselves. But wait until episode three. I had no idea what that meant.
Up until that point, I had only heard about LOST from my parents. They were on board since the pilot. There’s a new show about a plane crash we’re going to watch tonight. Didn’t think much of it. Sounded ok. When I checked in later that night, what they said didn’t make complete sense. It’s good. We’ll keep watching it. There’s something weird going on. They hint that there might be a monster on the island. What? Could that be what Jacob meant was waiting for us at the end of episode three?
That might be my favorite way someone can pitch a show to me: give me a vague warning that something super weird is coming. One time a friend told me I had to watch season one of The OA on Netflix because the last 7 minutes of the finale were so wild and he kept watching it over and over to make sense of it and I needed to watch it so he had someone to talk to. Done. Deal. Sold. Yes and amen. I think I finished the season by the end of the week, and he was so right.
Tell me something outrageous happens. Tell me the show will break my brain or crap my pants or set everything I know about storytelling on fire. Tell me there’s a scene that makes a very bold choice and will be the test if the show is for me or not.
Episode three of LOST ends with an image that is absolutely unexpected. No explanation. No warning. It’s the moment the show is saying Oh you thought you knew what kind of story we were telling, but guess what? This is a whole lot bigger than you imagined. And you’re in for a lot more surprises.
Weren’t they just dead the whole time? No. Shut up. That’s not what happened. Or at least that’s a gross oversimplification that I’d gladly yell at you about for a hew hours if you’d like to schedule a Zoom call.
The summer my family got season 2 on DVD I didn’t leave my room until it was over. Every day I’d sit in front of my TV with a notepad, furiously taking notes. Like I was cramming for an exam or solving a murder. Names, questions, drawings, clues, hidden details in the background. Maps! That episode in season 2 where Locke finds a that map! I couldn’t stop thinking about that maaaaap!
It felt like every episode was setting my imagination on fire.
My friend Mike and I had put off taking a mandatory high school PE credit as long as we could. My Jr year we signed up together so we’d have someone to talk to. Well, I was the one who needed that. Mike would have done just fine on his own. He ended up being one of the most athletic guys in our class. Everyone loved him and wanted him on their team. I was the opposite. If a butterfly landed on me wrong, I needed to go see the nurse. I was allergic to grass, trees, the sun, and exerting any sort of effort. I didn’t want to play. I just wanted to walk around and talk about LOST. And it turns out Mike did too! Most days we’d wander the edges of a flag football game swapping theories about electromagnetism until everyone yelled at Mike long enough to force him into a couple plays before walking back over to me.
Until I watched LOST, it felt like tv shows were mostly flat and disposable. Sure, some shows had ongoing storylines, but it was just enough to bring you back for a new season. Before summer break, a character gets in an accident, proposes, or announces they’re joining a cult. To be continued… Now you’ve got a reason to come back in the fall. But LOST took it all so much further. I didn’t know I could have this kind of a relationship with a TV Show.
It felt like finally watching something in 3D. Or 4D. It felt like there were more D’s than I was used to. It felt bigger and more layered, with a world that existed beyond the hour you spent with the characters each week. There were clues to the bigger world. And you would actually be rewarded for paying attention to them!
What if everything is on purpose?
I think all my favorite art and entertainment find their own ways of doing this. It’s what I love about Disney World or Meow Wolf. It’s what I can’t shut up about with The OA. It’s what I appreciate in Lemony Snicket’s writing.
Lost was the first show to make me realize how great that feels.
My curiosity about the mysteries in the show turned into a curiosity about how the show was made. Where did it come from? What do they start with? How do you plan it all out? How does the plan change? Because obviously it had to change. A lot. Like, what do you do if the actor who plays the character you’ve been setting up all year to be a Very Big Deal asks to be written out because he hates living in Hawaii? What if a child actor’s puberty starts throwing off continuity? What if there’s a writer’s strike?
I watched any behind the scenes special feature I could find. I listened to the weekly podcast hosted by Damon Lindeloff and Carlton Cuse, the head writers and producers at the heart of the show. I started paying attention to how stories were told and information was communicated to the audience.
I didn’t know you could make something like this.
I didn’t know you could give the audience a reason to look deeper into everything happening on screen.
After every new episode, I’d spend hours on a fan message board where people were already uploading screenshots from what we just watched. What book were they reading? Why did he have a bandage on his hand? If you go shot by shot on the scene in the cabin, you see there IS a figure in the chair for a second!
In college I got really good at pitching the show to people. My DVDs made their way around the dorm.
“What’s the last thing that happened?” That was my way of finding out where people were in the show and what we could talk about. I loved seeing people after the third episode.
And then it came time for the series finale. My friend Mel won two free VIP seats at the largest LOST finale watch party in America and took me as her guest. We had seats right in the middle. Our other friends were tucked away in the back corner. We’d check in during commercial breaks.
A lot of people hate the finale and act like it ruined the whole show. By that point I was so bought in nothing could phase me. It could have been an hour of the cast and crew flipping off the camera and I would have been like Yeah. Perfect. That’s how it needed to end. By that point I didn’t care. It was such an incredible ride along the way, it didn’t matter how it ended. I knew they weren’t going to answer all the questions. Who cares! I loved asking all those questions. I loved the way each one expanded my imagination a little more than the last. I loved trying to picture the whole wide world that existed off screen.
And I also loved everything on screen. I loved the characters and the story. It’s a show asking if people can change and start over. It’s about what we’re running from and what’s inescapable. It’s about normal people rising to meet extraordinary circumstances. It’s about how every villain has a back story that changes your perception. And it’s NOT ABOUT PEOPLE WERE DEAD THE WHOLE TIME.
I miss the the patience it took to watch a show week to week.
I miss the conversations that only came in the waiting.
I miss getting so invested in a show because I genuinely felt personally invested and not because of some cultural obligation or because I’ve got nothing better to do.
I hope everyone can find at least one story/piece of art/piece of entertainment that does something similar for them.
And you know what? The ending is good. That’s right. I said it. And you can take that to the Shut Up Bank and make a withdrawal for one Shut Up.
Comedy Show in Dallas on October 19
I’ve spent a lot of this week sending out invites to my show next month.
We’re a little over a month away. Get tickets now.
Love you like a neighbor,
Taylor Johnson