Take your seats, class: We're picking up the second class in week 4 of EW University, as Doc Jensen continues to explore the cultural influences Read the full post.
Jul 22
2009
05:00 AM ET
'Lost': The cult of 'cult TV' (part 2)
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What about The Champions, the Brit TV series from 1968 about the agents who were healed after their plane crashed in Tibet and were granted powers to fight against Nemesis?
People don’t like “making it up along the way” because they want to believe (X-Files anyone?) that they’re immersed in a real world that isn’t subject to changes on the fly. They want every piece of the puzzle – every line of dialog, every expression on a characters face – to be working toward the whole package, toward the conclusion. Maybe that’s just me. But it makes it easier to go back and rewatch if you think that there was a plan in place from the beginning. Then when you’re rewinding the scene where Ben tells Locke that he was coming for him when he got got caught in Rousseau’s net for the 10th time, you don’t feel like you’re on a fools errand, even if you’re admitting you have no life.
Shows with heavy mythology should definitely have a master plan. Alias is an example of failed JJ abrams shows. If your whole mystery turns around “what’s this Island?” and you’re using words like “everything happens for a reason” as an audience I expect that the writers prove that. I don’t take Lost as a serious character drama as in my opinion Lost writers have used their characters harshly and clumsily. Not for a second they made me believe that they had a “master plan” for characters. It’s all trial and error. Lost is a certainly a different show but it’s not a fine example for the genre. What I definitely didn’t like is the fact that the writers paid credit to what internet fans said too much.
An announced end-date, subject to change of course!
You know, when you’ve spent many hours enjoying a show about a group of plane crash survivors on a mysterious island, and the resources are running out, and there’s a monster that may or may not be EATING your fellow survivors, and the feeling of inescapable doom is closer and closer every week…and suddenly you’re in a hatch pushing a button, and listening to characters spontaneously changing their opinions just to create some new conflict, and there’s a bunker full of food and showers, and tons of other people suddenly running around (Tailies and Others and DHARMA, oh my), you know, I think it’s natural to feel jerked around a little bit. The transition in tone from Season 1 to Season 2 was not smooth, and Seasons 2 and 3 smacked of network meddling, what with all the reruns and hiatuses and recap shows (to say nothing of the ramping up of a love triangle that didn’t really interest me). All I’m saying is that there were reasons to lose confidence in the quality of the show other than an obsessive fan need for a flawless mythology. I’m glad I stuck it out through all that, though, because the past two and a half seasons have been really great, and I have high hopes for the home stretch. All they have to do is steer clear of the deus ex machina of a new character or scientific/mystical concept, and I think it’ll be fine.
If we are talking recent cult shows, how about Firefly? Half a season, one film, and thousands of Browncoats still going strong.