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Finally people are starting to agree with me - the Lost promos are doing more harm than good. TV Squad writes:

Whoever creates the promos for Lost needs to start coordinating things with the show’s writers, or at least start watching the show. The last few Lost previews have made so many empty promises that I am considering hitting the Mute button on my remote when the ads come on. It should not be possible to over-dramatize the events on a show about plane crash survivors on a bizarre island, but ABC has achieved that feat.

broadcastingcable.com are of the same opinion:

It’s no secret that fans of ABC’s Lost have grown increasingly impatient with the show’s creators for ladling mystery upon mystery while tossing them mere scraps of revelation. Now Losties are blaming ABC’s promotions department for stoking those frustrations.

The writers of the above article managed to get a response from from ABC:

In an e-mail statement, ABC Entertainment’s marketing chiefs Mike Benson and Marla Provencio maintained that the “show delivered the answers to the three questions that were posed in the promo, which we believe are questions on our viewers minds.

“We have the utmost respect for Lost viewers,” they added. “Our intention is never to alienate, only to entice.”

My personal opinion is, and has always been, that the promos should be produced by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse since they are the ones who know the story and know how to not over-hype or spoil episodes.

Telling all your friends to come check out your new video game is guaranteed to gather a bunch of them in your living room, but when it turns out that you didn’t get a new game but just told them so to be popular, you will not only look like a fool but you might also lose your friends.

The same thing could happen to Lost if ABC’s promo department doesn’t stop over-hyping the show.

With the return of Lost, a lot of TV critics and columnists are writing articles about the show. Some like Lost, some don’t. What surprises me the most about these critics is that - 1. they still want more answers and - 2. the authors write like if they were the global representative of all Lost fans.

Unanswered questions

To address the first part about Lost needing to answer more questions and mysteries, any fan of the show knows that questions are being answered and the producers have promised to answer even more questions.

Writing that Lost needs to answer more questions has become the standard formula for getting your article published in the papers, but honestly, if you want to earn not only your paycheck but also some respect from those of us who actually watch the show, maybe it’s a good idea to actually know what you are writing about.

My name is Legion

To address the second issue with critics assuming that they speak for all of us when they write things like “Lost fans have gotten tired of the show”, they seem to be forgetting that Lost is still one of the most popular shows on television. When you have more viewers than the population of several European countries (and let’s not forget, Lost is very popular in the entire world, not just in the states) I don’t really think it’s justified to complain about a lack of viewer interest.

The fact is that Lost is very popular, but I don’t think anyone really thought that Lost would be THE cool show forever. At the moment Heroes gets all the free champagne and VIP-passes, but like with anything else, fame doesn’t last forever. Next year another show will be new and amazing but Heroes, like Lost, will still be a great show.

When viewers understood that Lost was more than your everyday beach drama, those who didn’t like the Sci-Fi stopped watching and ratings fell.

With the complexity of Lost, it’s natural that the storyline can’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Sure, it is a character drama, but it’s a character drama revolving around a very complex Sci-Fi story with mysterious scientists and smoke monsters. I love Lost, but if some of my friends don’t like the show, I don’t mind. I don’t enjoy everything they like and that’s just fine.

I think Victor Balta of HeraldNet sums it up quite well:

The challenge for “Lost” is to maintain the balance between character stories and mythology that has worked so well for the first two seasons. It’s difficult because “Lost” is not a niche science-fiction show, nor is it a prime-time soap that is all about backstabbing and love triangles.

It’s both, and when it gets too heavy on mythology, the character-loving folks get angry; and when it gets too heavy on the characters’ stories, the sci-fi crowd gets angry.

Neither side should worry too much. When it’s all done, assuming the show isn’t pushed any longer than the producers would like, “Lost” will have a place among history’s best and most influential TV shows.

Now we all just have to give it the time and opportunity to get there.

Are the critics wrong or are they right? What do you think?

There is a very interesting article about the production of Lost at starbulletin.com. In the article we find out how Lost prouction designer Zack Grobler and Lost locations manager Jim Triplett work:

The crew’s call time is usually 6 a.m. Grobler said he’ll often work until 9 or 10 p.m. “I’ve been known not to go home,” he said.

Grobler has up to 50 people working for him, including art directors, film architects, set designers, painters, sculptors, carpenters, prop and set dressers, translators and researchers. If Sun and Jin have a scene in Korea, Triplett finds the place to shoot it, and Grobler makes it look genuine. What do the signs on streets and taxicabs and hotels say? How do they look? What about vehicle registration? Magazines a character would read? Architecture? Grobler designs and builds everything from scratch, and “we want to make sure we don’t get those wrong,” he said. “Sometimes we find perfect locations that have everything ready, but often it’s a just a shell.”

When an office building or private home must be dramatically altered, Grobler and his team take meticulous photos of the original arrangement. Then they remove everything, paint, put up signs, furnish in a way that’s appropriate to the era and characters, and shoot the scenes. Just as rapidly, the crew will undo the alterations, repaint the walls and replace the furniture and decorations. Grobler has even constructed a hospital in an empty office building for a day, which was easier than moving the crew to an actual hospital. All of this happens in two to three days.

The article offers an interesting insight into the massive amount of work that goes into the creation of a Lost episode. Highly recommended!

Read the entire article at starbulletin.com

According to New York Daily News, Lost is so important to the viewers that more people store it on their TiVo or other digital video recorders than any other prime-time series.

More than 1.5 million people record the ABC series for later viewing on their TiVos or other digital recording devices each week, a practice known since the heyday of the VCR as time-shifting. In the new statistics, that figure is counted along with the number of people watching live in Nielsen’s survey.

Closely following Lost is the other Touchstone hit - “Gray’s Anatomy” and Lost’s unofficial buddy-series “Heroes” on NBC.

I’m certainly not surprised. Many fans find it easier and more enjoyable to watch series like Lost and Heroes on their own schedule, and with the amount of complexity and mysteries, I know that many Lost fans watch the episodes two or three times; either just for fun or to analyze the events and look for clues.

I usually watch Lost twice. First when it airs, and then once more the next day; first of all because I enjoy the show, but also to be inspired and reminded of the important events in the episode so I’ll stay on top of the discussions and come up with interesting things to write about.

How do you watch Lost?

According to the World Entertainment News Network, it is becoming increasingly difficult to shoot new Lost episodes. One might expect that the problem would lie in expanding production budgets or bad weather, but according to “a production source”, the problem is that fans are trying to invade the set to get close to the ever so popular lost actors.

“Things were a lot easier filming the first series when the cast were still largely unknown. But now some of them have a very enthusiastic fan base who will stop at nothing to get close to their idols.

We may be on an isolated island but there have been several incidents where fans have stormed the set.

It’s cost about half a million in lost filming time and additional security.”

Once again, I hope and believe that none of our readers would do something like that. Actors are regular people, they are not the characters you get to know and love on TV.

via DarkUFO

The Honolulu Advertiser reports that Lost stars Yunjin Kim and Naveen Andrews will meet fans at the Honolulu Marathon Expo at the Hawaiian Convention Center on December 8 and 9.

Yunjin Kim is one of three celebrities who will meet fans in two-hour sessions at the Honolulu Marathon Expo at the Hawaiian Convention Center. She will be there to sign autographs Dec. 8 from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Kelly Hu will meet fans Dec. 9 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., and “Lost” star Naveen Andrews will be on hand from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., also on Dec. 9.

Besides appearing at the Convention Center, Yunjin Kim will join Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann at a news conference today regarding the Honolulu Marathon.

There is a pretty good article over at styleweek.com about the new shows that are inspired by Lost.

Since ABC would never let its critical and commercial darling air anywhere else, rival networks have tried to find their own “Lost” this fall, with mixed results. CBS’s “Jericho” has gone all-out to clone “Lost,” a little too transparently. The “Lost” island has been re-created in the titular town of Jericho, Kan., possibly the only place left in America after a nuclear attack. NBC’s “Heroes,” for its part, borrows the “Lost”-style large ensemble cast and ongoing mysteries, with several disparate characters developing superhuman powers and slowly discovering how they can save the world.

The big difference is that while “Heroes” has successfully re-conjured that “Lost” magic in an original way, the poorly thought-out imitation “Jericho” smells like desperation — like the unpopular girl at school who suddenly shows up one Monday morning (or in this case Wednesday evening) dressed exactly like the popular girl.

It’s fun that Lost is “the popular girl”, but what makes Lost stand out, is that it is the popular girl at the same time as it is the smartest person in school.

I watched the first few episodes of Jericho, but I quickly lost interest. Heroes on the other hand, is very entertaining and at the end of each episode I always want more, so I’ll keep watching.

While Heroes is great, Lost is still playing in its own league. The characters really feel like real persons with real problems and even though the island, the mysterious Others and the smoke monster are part of Lost, the show is very believable and truly feels like something that could be happening on the other side of the screen.

Jeff Jensen at Entertainment Weekly has finally published an article on his experience of the meeting between Lost execs JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse and one of Lost’s biggest fans - horror writer Stephen King!

If you know Lost well, then surely you know that the producers of the show are huge fans of Stephen King. And if you read the author’s monthly column in EW, you know our resident It man is a huge fan is a huge fan of Lost, too. In light of this mutual admiration, we thought it was about time these guys got together and talked — with us listening, of course.

Officially, their 90-minute conversation took place on Aug. 11 at Stephen King’s office in Bangor, Maine. I had the privilege of hanging out with this fab foursome — King, plus Lost producers JJ Abrams, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof. I say ”hang out” because even though I was technically there to moderate, no moderation was necessary. King took charge from the start, serving the role of interlocutor with ease. The producers were candid and had questions of their own.

Read the article at Entertainment Weekly

Update: The Tailsection has published Stephen King’s answer to the question “How would you end Lost?” from the upcoming Entertainment Weekly issue:

I would take the main guy, Jack – the first shot of the whole series is his eye-ball close up, right? What that always said to me was that from now on, everything I see, Jack’s the eye of the beholder. So I would do something at the end where I flashback to the airport when they were getting on the plane, and I would have him taken away by people who wanted information out of him.

I would have them hook him up to a machine or something, or feed him drugs, and reveal the whole series had been Jack’s hallucination, built out of fragments of his real life – people from his past, people in the airport, his father, of course, and the numbers. The whole thing would be a lot of shuck and jive. I’d make it work somehow. It would creak, but I’d make it work.

I have to say, I’m not too impressed by King’s idea of how Lost should end. The theory that everything is just one of the characters’ hallucination has been out there since season one. Overall fan reaction to that idea has been very negative.

Besides, the end of the NBC series St. Elsewhere revealed that everything had occurred in the mind of an autistic boy, so the concept has already been seen on television.

The Lost team toyed with the idea in the episode “Dave” where Hurley’s imagined friend Dave tried to convince Hurley that the island and everything that happens in Lost is happening in Hurley’s head. Libby then explained to Hurley that he wasn’t imagining.

In my opinion, the episode “Dave” toyed with the idea, but also made it clear that Lost is not a creation of one of the characters’ imagination.

According to Digital Spy, Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof recently talked about what we can expect when Lost Season 3 returns in February:

Minor spoilers

Speaking to TV Guide, Lindelof revealed: “There are two bombs being dropped, one of which is a character bomb, and that will happen within the first three episodes after the break. And the other is a more significant story bomb, a game-changer, as it were, and that will happen shortly after.”

The theme hinted at in the season two cliffhanger will also return to “dominate” for the rest of the season. “We broke perspective off the island for the first time — at least that’s what we’re leading everybody to believe — and, certainly, that ball is in motion and rolling down the hill at a very fast rate,” added Lindelof. “It takes a couple of episodes to get up to speed, but the fact that the island may have been seen is pretty much the entire story arc of the second half of the year.”

I’m happy to hear that the rest of Season 3 will focus on the result of what happened in the Season 2 finale. I really enjoy the Desmond & Penelope love story, and the scene where the two men at the listening station called Penelope and said that they had “found it” (the island) was great.

I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the story from the Season 2 finale not being part of the first episodes of Season 3, so this should be great news to pretty much everyone!

Besides the information above, according to the source Damon also said that before the end of Season 3 we will find out why Locke was in the wheelchair, how Jack got his tattoos and what really happened when the hatch imploded.

Lost’s latest addition, Rodrigo Santoro who plays the never before seen fuselage survivor Paulo, is a star in his native Brazil but may be quite unknown to most Lost fans.

To learn a bit more about the man they call “the Brazilian Tom Cruise” check out the article about Rodrigo in USAToday.

It has been just three days since Brazilian film superstar Rodrigo Santoro arrived in Hawaii from Rio de Janeiro to begin work as new castaway Paulo on ABC’s Lost (9 p.m. ET/PT). The day before, he visited the Lost production office for a wardrobe fitting and met Kiele Sanchez, the woman cast as his love interest, Nikki. He describes her as “sweet,” but adds that “her character is going to surprise a lot of people.”

What is most surprising about these two cast additions is how little they have appeared on-screen.

Santoro and Sanchez made their debut two weeks ago as never-before-seen crash survivors.

Read the article at USAToday