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Rainflower wrote : So does this mean we can yell at you two whenever there is something we don`t like?

Sure...but bitch too much and we'll bring back Nikki and Paolo.

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Sure ...but bitch too much and we'll bring back Nikki and Paolo.

Good one ralf.

Interesting commentary by Roush at tvguide.com:

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Question: This is a question that is probably three years too early, but with the recent announcement of Lost wrapping in 2010, the thought occurred to me that the series finale could very well be the biggest series finale of all time. This show will have been building up for that one episode for six years. Even if the ratings slip, anyone who watched even a season or two will want to tune in for the big reveal. That isn't something you get with a finale like Friends where there was no real unknown in the finale (yeah, Ross was going to get with Rachel for good, what a surprise). I haven't even followed Lost (I saw the pilot and a few episodes of Season 1, but it wasn't my kind of show), but I'm actually curious to see how it turns out. It doesn't really matter much in the grand scheme of things, but do you think this could be a record setter considering the circumstances?— Mark Matt Roush: You're confusing a cult hit with a cultural phenomenon. It's impossible to know how profoundly the TV and ratings landscape will change in the next three years, but it's safer to predict that Lost will continue to experience some viewer erosion, season to season, although it's also possible that this recent announcement may restore some faith among former fans who left the show in frustration. If the show manages to maintain its quality to the end, I would bet that the Lost finale would be among the higher-rated events of that season, and certainly of that 2010 May sweeps period. But of all time? I doubt it. The audience is only going to get more fragmented. And who knows what kind of delivery systems we'll be using to get our fix of our favorite shows by then? Even the biggest network hits aren't what they used to be. And nowadays Lost doesn't even qualify for that top tier.

Excellent Article from ABCNews posted at DarkUfo on the Future of Lost:

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After three years and countless viewer questions, the executive producers of "Lost" are promising fans what they want most from the May 23 season finale: answers. "We sort of see each season as a book, and we're going to be concluding this book of 'Lost,'" co-executive producer Carlton Cuse said during a break from editing the third season's final episode. "The finale promises a showdown between our guys and the Others, and we really deliver on that." Not only does the May 23 episode wrap up the third season of "Lost," it also marks a turning point in the show's history. Earlier this month, ABC announced the Emmy and Golden-Globe award winning drama would conclude in 2010. Knowing exactly how much time they have left -- 48 episodes, to be exact -- Cuse and co-executive producer/co-creator Damon Lindelof said they can plot out twists and turns even the most seasoned viewers won't expect. That means more suspense for those at home -- and more fun for Cuse and Lindelof in the studio. "It's utterly liberating for us. It allows us to sort of take our remaining mythology and plan it out with great specificity over the remaining 48 episodes," Cuse said. Providing Answers, Preserving Mystery Though fans may be more than halfway through the tale of a group of plane crash survivors stranded on a tropical island, some of the story's most basic elements are still in the shadows. For starters, no one knows where they are: heaven, hell, a black hole or somewhere else altogether. Well, no one except perhaps for Cuse and Lindelof, who refuse to divulge any details. Fans shouldn't expect the producers to one day reveal the island's coordinates (imagine the tour groups that would flood the place by the boat-load) but they can anticipate a conclusion to the epic. "I think the audience can expect that we can finish our story," Cuse said. "One of the big ongoing questions on 'Lost' is whether magic is really an element there, or is there a reasonable explanation for all these things. I think when you get to the end of the journey, that will be answered," Lindelof added. How do Cuse and Lindelof balance providing answers with preserving mystery? In their time working together on "Lost," they have yet to find a formula. There's no ratio; there's no abacus. "It's like a pendulum swinging back and forth. We sit down every morning and we really hash over that question. There is no perfect temperature to the porridge," Cuse said. "I think that basically the rule is that if Damon and I think something is cool, then it kind of works its way into the show and we just try to use our own gut as the litmus test." "We are the arbiters of what stays and what goes and what course the show takes," Lindelof added. "But then the show itself sort of has a life of its own. A lot of what Carlton and I try to do is listen to what the show is telling us. The exciting part is when suddenly you realize, 'Hey wait a second, we had this plan but now the show is rejecting it like an organ that doesn't fit.'" An Online Alter-Ego Sometimes, shifts in the über "Lost" story come from fans themselves. So, all those fans blogging or posting any number of questions on the Web: the producers are listening. "We started hearing last year that people were wondering why Hurley was so fat," Cuse said. "So we started discovering a hidden stash of ranch salad dressing in the jungle. We will take on certain questions that percolate to the surface if we really feel like we're ignoring something." With so much of "Lost" subject to interpretation, fans of the show live on the Internet, throwing out theory after theory about the island, what it means and how it will all end. While shows like "American Idol" and "Dancing With the Stars" make for water cooler fodder, "Lost" is the stuff of serious debate. Beyond the ratings, beyond the awards, the show has burrowed into the cultural fabric of the country, creating a fan base arguably more ravenous and wrapped up than any ever before. Cuse believes the show's Internet alter-ego is crucial to its on-screen success. "I think that Lost would never succeed in the pre-Internet era. It's the fact that the show is complicated and intentionally ambiguous; it allows the fans to become involved in its analysis," he said. "In the old school, traditional three or four network media model, this show is too complicated and too hard to keep up with. It wouldn't work." The much-talked about season one cliffhanger invited the audience to theorize away, Lindelof said. "When Carlton and I made the choice in the end of season one to end with Locke and Jack looking down into the hatch as opposed to going down there, we opened the door to a tremendous amount of criticism in terms of, 'That's frustrating, why didn't we go in?' But the reality is that the show has always been about, 'What do you think is down there?' We're going to give you six months now to figure that out and we're going to try to think of something nobody has imagined," he said. "There is no Johnny the explainer on the show. There is no great floating head. I feel like that really activates people's imaginations in a positive way." 'Lost's' Legacy Twenty-five years from now, it's not hard to imagine die-hard fans rubbing dirt on their faces and donning scraggly beards for "Lost" conventions. But Cuse questions whether the legacy of the show will be about the story or the impact the show has had on the way people watch and interact with TV. "We've accomplished some things with the show that has changed the process and the perception of what a drama show can be," he said. "Whether they'll still be embracing the story, that's kind of more for other people to decide." Cuse and Lindelof will be embracing the story for three more years. Writing, producing, living, breathing "Lost" day in and day out, the two can't help but think of the show's characters as flesh and blood. Which three would they want with them if they were on a deserted island? "I definitely would want Locke," Lindelof said. "I probably want Kate, just because she's nice to look at, at the very least. And probably Hurley because you've got to keep it light." "I would definitely take Kate, Sawyer, and probably Jack -- just you know, the hero character," Cuse said. In the end, how well fans remember the story after the island and its inhabitants fade into TV history may depend on how it finishes. While the May 23 season finale will provide answers, it will also keep fans salivating for the series finale in 2010. So where will it all end? Cuse laughed. Lindelof provided some insight, if a bit broad. "Somewhere just outside the Crab Nebula is where it will all end, geographically," he said.

Nice article.

Very interesting article. Lots of good points.

I was particularly intrigued by their acknowledgement of how the online discussion of the show has been taken into consideration with their writing.

So, TPTB, if I post everywhere that Charlie shouldn't die and Sawyer should be the last one standing in the series finale with nothing but a thong on, will ya indulge?

I like your request Pen, but really - it's the series finale. Screw the thong!  

Nice article

LMAO @ screw the thong. Of course I agree whole heartedly

Bumping this for that article I mentioned in the Lounge.

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"Lost" won't end "Sopranos"-style By Paul J. Gough NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Three days after the controversial finale of "The Sopranos," the two creators of "Lost" on Wednesday promised that their hit ABC drama would not conclude in similarly murky fashion. "We will not be ending with a blackout," said Carlton Cuse, referring to the black screen that delivered an unresolved ending to HBO's mob drama. He and Damon Lindelof told electronic-media professionals at the annual Promax/BDA conference that they fleshed out a plan for the for the last three seasons of "Lost" during a recent writers' "minicamp." "Lost" will end in spring 2010 after 48 hourlong episodes, 16 per season. Lindelof said "Lost" has to move from asking more questions to answering the questions posed during the series' run. "Obviously, we can't wait to the 48th hour to say, 'Here are all the mysteries of the show,'" Lindelof said. But Cuse also noted the reality of the sometimes vociferous and heavily engaged viewership of the show, which uses the Web to advance theories and post explanations and even freeze-frames to parse further meaning. "I'm not sure there is any ending that will satisfy everyone," Cuse said. "Our hope is that the ending will be ... the logical conclusion of the story." Cuse said the first season was about the Oceanic Flight 815 survivors landing on the island and realizing they weren't going to get rescued. The second season was about the hatch, and the third season was about the Others. "Next season, well, we'll talk about that later," Cuse said. While "Lost" viewers will have to wait till next year to see the next TV episodes, Cuse and Lindelof said in the fall there will be a series of "Lost" mobisodes featuring the entire cast and rolling out first on Verizon Wireless and then probably appearing on ABC.com. They said they're keenly aware of the eight-month gap between last month's finale and the return of "Lost" at the beginning of next year. "How do you keep the show alive in the minds of the audience in that time?" Cuse asked. They're also planning to go back to San Diego's Comic-Con International, where the show was launched in 2004, to address May's Season 3 finale and what they had in mind. Cuse said the mobisodes, about 90 seconds each, will give hardcore "Lost" viewers more information that they probably weren't going to get through the show itself. What it won't be, they said, was a mini version of "Lost." "It needs to be interesting enough and well produced enough that people feel they're getting enough bang for their buck, even if it's free, the bang for their time," Lindelof said. Lindelof said the negotiations for the talent took a long time, but they wanted to make sure that all of them were involved in the mobisodes. "Nobody wanted to see two people sitting on a beach that we've never heard of talking and saying, 'Hey, did you hear what Jack and Kate did today?' You want to see Jack and Kate. It's taken us three years to get those deals in place," Lindelof said. Cuse said there are 37 ancillary parts to the "Lost" brand from T-shirts to mobile phone applications to a planned video game. It led to a discussion of several missteps, including the tie-in novel "Bad Twin" that Cuse said didn't meet their bar and the introduction of two previously unseen survivors, Nikki and Paulo. The characters came out of "Lost" viewers' questions about why the show focused only on the same 12 characters and not the "socks," the unnamed survivors who provide the background around the camp. Cuse said "socks" comes from the term "sock puppets," which the writers call the extras. "We're like, 'Trust us, you don't care about those guys,'" Lindelof joked. They said they realized almost immediately that adding Nikki and Paulo was a mistake, even before the viewer outcry. Many of the scenes they shot would get cut on the editing room floor, not because of the actors but because they were concerned about how they fit into the story. Lindelof said that it was a lesson for the writers to stay true to the show's vision even if the viewers don't seem to like it. "We buried them alive," Cuse said of Nikki and Paulo. "OK, you guys don't like Nikki and Paulo, there."

LOL TPTB buried Nikki and Paulo alive for us!

This article is also being discussed in the Post-Finale News thread - but mainly about the mobisodes.

I'll delete it then.

NM, no need to delete it I guess.  But sorry for bumping this guys.  I didn't see the post-finale thread until after.  

--Last edited by oceanic_lisa on 2007-06-14 11:05:11 --

Well, as usual, I missed the original posting, so I thank you Lisa

Lisa if you apologize one more time I'll smack you

/threadjack

YAY For burying Paolo and nikki alive

WOW

I guess Nikki & Paolo are REALLY dead then... they won't be sneaking back in

COOL!!!

Carmen

Thank God! I have this terrifying image of them crawling out of their graves. Jeesh, someone hold me! I'm scared!