Spoiler Fixed

Lost's Michael Emerson: "I Don't See Any End in Sight" - TVGuide.com

2010-01-20T06:56:00.000-08:00

By Natalie Abrams

So much for getting our questions answered anytime soon. Lost's final season begins Feb. 2, but Michael Emerson says the cast is seven episodes away from filming the finale, and a resolution still feels far away. Emerson also discussed whether Ben will seek redemption, the extent of his character's evil, and ****.

TVGuide.com: How do you feel about heading into the end of the series?
Michael Emerson: I feel great curiosity, because from what I've shot up to this point, I don't see any end in sight. The storyline is continuing to expand instead of contract. It's grown more fragmented, rather than becoming more unified. The threads aren't joining up, they're flying away. It will be dazzling to see. Certain big mysteries on this show are being answered. Every episode, something huge is falling into place, but it's still a mystery.

TVGuide.com: Would you like to see Ben get redemption at the end of Lost?
Emerson: I don't know. I used to have more of a craving for an ending than I do now. Sometimes I think characters are maybe best left alone. I don't know why I thought redemption was going to be satisfying. Maybe what's satisfying is that some things never change. I think there will be all kinds of endings for all kinds of characters on our show, but maybe Ben just walks away to do whatever it is he's already been doing for his whole life.

TVGuide.com: No one knows what Ben's ultimate goal is. Does he want to take over the island, maybe the world? Is everything he does personal?
Emerson: It seems like it's the island, the possession and control of the island, but what does that mean exactly? We still don't know what the island can be used for. Is it a tool? Is it a device? What does the device do? It must do something pretty big for people to be fighting over it so passionately. If that ends up being answered, that will be one of the big answers.

TVGuide.com: Do you think Ben feels bad for killing Jacob, or is that just another step in the right direction to reach his ultimate goal?
Emerson: I think Ben has some kinds of remorse. He's quick to put them aside. It's almost like Ben understands that these deaths don't count the way other people think they count. There's some gaming going on. I don't know if that will be revealed either.

TVGuide.com: We saw last season that Sayid actually caused Ben to become the evil man he is today when he shot little Ben. Do you think he would still be evil if Sayid hadn't shot him?
Emerson: One of the things we're dealing with is whether causality is a one-way dynamic. Do some things lead to other things? Can the course of events or characters be changed by going back and fiddling with them? That raises the question of what are we really looking at when people are moving around in time and space on Lost? Is it time travel or are we being treated to some storytelling or narrative device that we don't yet understand?

TVGuide.com: Did you know that was how Ben became evil as you've been playing him? That he may have had part of the smoke monster in him?
Emerson: No, I still don't know what a bunch of that stuff means. I was surprised. I thought it was a neat thing when they had young Ben be shot by Sayid. I thought that it helped to moderate our view of him or justify some of his behavior.

TVGuide.com: There's still so much to learn about the Others. Will that be explored?
Emerson: Some of it will be. It's not like they're a total mystery now. We know what the Others are. They're these people that arrived there for different reasons at different times and they fell under the sway of various powerful and ambitious men who wanted to rule the island. I don't know if the Others are clued in to why they're there or what the powers are.

TVGuide.com: Is there any chance of seeing Annie again?
TVGuide.com: I had this discussion with Terry O'Quinn the other day. I said some of these plot lines are just going to go away unanswered, like the little carved figure that Ben keeps with him as a grownup. We haven't touched on that in two seasons now and I just fear that who Annie was, I don't think we're ever going to know. I think that's going to be one of the loose ends.

TVGuide.com: Everyone has been mum's the word about the final season of Lost, but executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse did reveal that ****.
Emerson: It may not be as big a gift or spoiler from the producers as you might think.

TVGuide.com: ****
Emerson: ****

TVGuide.com: Do you think fans will be satisfied with the final season of Lost?
Emerson: Some will, some won't, I'm sure. That was bound to be, no matter what the ending is. There will be argument about it ... I have high hopes for it being one of those things where you go, "Oh my God, yeah!" or "Oh, it's been that all along. I never knew what I was looking at until now." I hope it's a thing that sends us back to Season 1 and makes us start looking at it all over again with new eyes.

Three Things We Know About Lost's Last Season - TV Guide

2009-10-16T06:12:00.000-07:00

By Natalie Abrams

Spoiler alert: Lost will be mysterious to the end.

Recent Emmy winner Michael emerson — just one the Losties who talked to us recently about the show's sixth and final season — promises it will resolve some but not all of fans' questions.

"I don't know if they'll be fully satisfied or not," Emerson says. "I don't know if we want to be fully satisfied. I think it's always best to go away wanting a little more."

You can forgive Emerson for being as enigmatic as his character, Ben Linus. But in interviews with TVGuide.com, his castmates (including Jorge Garcia, Daniel Dae Kim and Terry O'Quinn) did clarify three things that have nagged us since the fifth-season finale in May:

1. Yes, the bomb exploded. "Basically a bomb went off at the end of the last one and all bets are off," Garcia said. Adds Kim: "At the end of last season there was a big explosion." Of course, neither of them guaranteed that the bomb was Jughead, but we'll just assume it was to keep our heads from spinning.

2. We haven't seen the last of Juliet. ****

3. ****

Of course, the world of Lost is full of few constants and many variables. But whatever the writers have planned is worthy of the show's past secrets and reveals, O'Quinn promises: "When I read the first script, it's the first time in the whole series that I said, 'Wow, that's amazing,'" he said.

Lost Season 6 Poster

2009-10-16T06:03:00.000-07:00

Here is a close-up of the full poster (notice the hieroglyphics in the words):

The Left Side:

(left - right: Daniel, Boone, Miles, Michael, Ana Lucia, Charlotte, Shannon, Desmond, Eko, Kate, Jack, Sawyer, backwards Locke)

The Right Side:

(left - right: Ben, Sayid, Libby, Sun, Jin, Claire, Hurley, Juliet, Charlie, Frank, Richard, Bernard, Rose)

Lost: Who's Gonna Die? - TV Guide

2009-04-08T08:56:00.000-07:00

By Mickey O'Connor

Note from Melissa: This article is pure speculation on who might die this season, based on a rumor that someone's going to. Anything based on actual spoilers rather than conjecture has been removed.

**** Putting aside for a second the fact that dying on Lost doesn't exactly mean a trip to the unemployment office, let's examine a few likely suspects, and then tell us who you think is going to take that long island dirt nap.

BEN
FOR HIM Last we saw him, little Ben was on death's door after getting plugged by Sayid. Sure, Richard Alpert said he could save him, but can he really? Plus, ****.
AGAINST HIM In revealing the backstory of Ben's fractured childhood — and his fate at the hands of the Hostiles — the character has become infinitely more sympathetic. In addition, Lost appears to be headed toward a showdown between Ben and Widmore, and it's still too early for that confrontation to take place.
NARRATIVE PUNCH Lost without Ben would certainly be duller. Good guy or bad, he has double-crossed nearly everyone in the cast.

CLAIRE
FOR HER There is a well-developed conspiracy theory that claims that Claire actually died in that explosion in her house in New Otherton. Supporters point to her last communication with Miles (aka Señor Ghostbuster), her abandonment of Aaron and her cozying up to Christian, her dead dad, inside Jacob's cabin.
AGAINST HER There is no indication that Emilie de Ravin has been on set at all this season. Plus: *****
NARRATIVE PUNCH There are still a few unanswered questions in Claire's backstory, but most revolve around the significance of Aaron. In short, we might like her more as a ghost.

DESMOND
FOR HIM Desmond would do anything to protect Penny and their son, Charlie — including die to save them.
AGAINST HIM Daniel Faraday has hinted at Desmond's importance in the show's evolving time-travel conceit, in that the rules don't appear to apply to him. Now that the gang is stuck in 1977, he may be their only hope of rescue.
NARRATIVE PUNCH Desmond is a popular character, especially with the lay-deez. (Holla!) They would riot if he was killed.

HURLEY
FOR HIM Truthfully, there is no indication that it would be him.
AGAINST HIM Hurley is the Oceanic 6's truth-teller; he keeps everyone honest. Hurley seems to be the most accessible character through which to tell the story of "the numbers," an annoying plot point that has yet to be adequately explained.
NARRATIVE PUNCH Dude, it would totally suck.

JULIET
FOR HER ****
AGAINST HER ****
NARRATIVE PUNCH Long-suffering Juliet seems to have finally found peace with Sawyer among the Dharma Initiative. Killing her now would be especially harsh — and dramatically potent.

KATE
FOR HER There were rumblings earlier in the season that ****, which sent Lost fans into a tizzy that Kate might be exiting.
AGAINST HER The rumor was quickly silenced. ("Not even remotely true," a source told TVGuide.com.)
NARRATIVE PUNCH Needless to say, losing Kate before the end of the series would be truly shocking.

PENNY
FOR HER After Widmore killed Ben's "daughter," Alex, Ben pledged revenge. Last we saw Ben, he had an errand to run at what appeared to be a marina. He then boarded Ajira Flight 316 bloodied and bruised.
AGAINST HER Penny and Desmond's globetrotting (indeed, time-trotting) romance has become the heart of the show. It would be downright cruel to break up this happily reunited couple after their long, torturous separation.
NARRATIVE PUNCH Sucker. To the kidneys. And the heart. Sniff.

SAWYER
FOR HIM As Jim LaFleur, Sawyer holds a prominent position within the Dharma Initiative. But as James Ford, survivor of Oceanic 815, he has other goals. As his two interests start to diverge, it's possible that Sawyer's double-agent routine will be discovered.
AGAINST HIM The Kate-Jack-Juliet-Sawyer love rectangle is an endless source of discussion for the fans. They'd never remove one of the variables, would they?
NARRATIVE PUNCH Killing Sawyer just as he redeemed himself would be bittersweet — and characteristic of Lost.

SAYID
FOR HIM After shooting little Ben, Sayid is Dharma Public Enemy No. 1.
AGAINST HIM His recent declaration — "You were right; I am a killer" — seems to indicate the beginning of a redemption story arc.
NARRATIVE PUNCH Hard to say. We love Naveen Andrews, but how much more do we need to know about Sayid?

SUN
FOR HER She's hanging out with Christian lately, and he tends to show up, Grim Reaper-like, just before people meet their maker (see: Locke, Michael, Claire?).
AGAINST HER Similar to Des and Penny, Sun and Jin's flawed romance sneaked up on us. Sun has already believed Jin dead; isn't that enough?
NARRATIVE PUNCH Killing her off before (or even after) she finds Jin would make for some terrific drama.

'Lost': The Die Is Casteneda - Doc Jensen, EW

2009-04-01T05:57:00.000-07:00

By Jeff Jensen

"****"
Is Young Ben dead? If he dies, how might Lost history be altered? If there are alterations, would they be substantial or not as significant as our hyperactive imaginations may think? Tonight's episode, ''****,'' offers the promise of answers. *****

While we wait for clarity, allow me to share this crazy, twisted thought that just entered my head: What if Young Ben neither lives nor dies in this episode but instead...falls into a coma? What if the rest of season 5 proceeds with the tension of knowing (and worrying) that should Ben die, history-negating paradox may occur? What if in the very last scene of the season, time-traveling Desmond, full of vengeance toward Ben for killing Penelope and Young Charlie, sneaks into Young Ben's hospital room, pulls the plug on Young Ben's life-support machine, and causes time to implode?

Sawyer: I thought you said this wouldn't happen!?
Faraday: I was wrong!
Desmond: See you in another life, bruthas!

What if the final season of Lost will tell the story of the all-new, all-different, Ben-free history of the castaways, which will include a moment where Jack and Sayid find ''one of them'' in Rousseau's nets, and when they go and investigate, they will find a guy that they don't recognize, a guy who will call himself ''Henry Gale,'' a guy who was always meant to be on the Island and rule the Others instead of Ben, a guy we know as...John Locke?

Like I said: crazy and twisted. Lost would never really do that. Right? But I do like my Coma Boy Ben conjecture, so I'm placing $10 with Milo, my local Lost bookie, on its accuracy.

"****": ON THE SET
As it happens, I visited the Oahu set of Lost back in January while they were shooting "****.'' Somehow, I escaped the experience without anyone letting anything slip about the Sayid-shooting-Young Ben thing or its outcome. But I did learn that *****

During my day on the Lost lot, I saw many things that were still mysteries to me, as at that point I had only seen the season premiere. Jughead sat on the grass, covered by a tarp. A Hydra Station outrigger was parked on a trailer. Inside a soundstage, I sat inside the fuselage of Ajira 316 to scribble some notes and lurked in the doorway of the Dharma security station in order to watch cast and crew film a scene on another set right next door. I saw Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Miles ponder time travel conundrums, and witnessed a spoiler-sensitive moment involving ****, the significance of which only now makes total sense to me.

Matthew Fox was in a good mood. The day before, his favorite NFL team, the Philadelphia Eagles, had beaten the New York Giants in the NFC Divisional Playoffs, earning them the right to...lose to the Arizona Cardinals the following week. (Glad I didn't visit then.) ''I feel very fortunate to be able to play someone like Jack Shephard,'' Fox told me. ''When we were shooting the pilot, I remember talking with Damon [Lost executive producer Damon Lindelof] about how we didn't want to make Jack the guy who was the 'knight in shining armor' or 'the classic hero.' It seemed like an antiquated, unrealistic version of heroism. We were really trying to look at a new way at looking at heroes.''

Fox describes Jack's journey on Lost like this: ''We set him up to be a hero in the eyes of people on the island — they needed that — but he really wasn't that, or he felt like he couldn't be that. And so we broke him down to where he was desperately trying to hold onto the idea that he can control his reality, that logic and reason and science are the real dictators of the world, not fate and magic. He then felt like his only way out was to take his own life. Failing that, he then moved to a place where he was finally forced to consider that he was probably wrong, that probably Locke was right, and probably the only way he can find any redemption or any salvation in this universe is to go back to the very place that he tried to leave and get back to whatever fated destiny that place has for him. Playing that has been a pretty extraordinary opportunity. A f---ing challenge the whole way through, but it's been really cool experience.''

I asked Fox to describe the state of Jack as we currently find him at this point of the season, and his answer speaks to the quiet, patient, humbled hero that has returned to the Island. ''Coming back to the Island, he gains strength just by being in its proximity,'' he explained. ''I've always believed part of what was destroying him was his actual lack of physical proximity to the Island. He is fated to do something on the Island, but in fighting to get away from that, the Island was destroying him from afar. Now, he's wide-eyed and alert and watching for his destiny. He doesn't have any idea how he's going to know it, or when he's going to know it. But when the moment comes, he will realize he's in the path of his own destiny. And when he's clicked into it, he can start taking action without over-dictating, without trying to control his reality, to just do what it is he's meant to do.''

Wow. How very Carlos Castaneda. Carlos Castaneda, you say? Yes: Carlos Castaneda, I say! My epic, consciousness-expanding explanation is to come, right after...

ALLIES, MUD SHADOWS, AND ACTS OF WAR
Exploring the mind-blowing collision of Lost and Carlos Castaneda

Pop quiz! Carlos Castaneda is:
A. A one-man codex that unlocks the secrets to Lost
B. The greatest literary red herring Lost has ever dropped into its clue-strewn matrix
C. A writer whose work is relevant to Lost in ways too subtle and sophisticated for Doc Jensen to recognize or appreciate

Chances are the answer is C (Milo's odds: 2-1), but this week, I am going to insist the answer is A...which in turn will also serve as compelling testimony for the subversive genius of option B.

Carlos Castaneda was introduced into Lost last week through Young Ben Linus, who served Sayid a paperback copy of the author's 1971 allegedly nonfiction work A Separate Reality with his chicken salad sandwich. ''I've read it twice,'' said the 12-year-old future psycho with the Harry Potter face. (Other books Ben has read twice in his lifetime: Philip K. Dick's novel Valis, thematically similar to A Separate Reality in many ways.) Wanna bet the Dharma Initiative's resident post-hippie mystic, Oldham, got Ben hooked on Castaneda? (Milo's odds: 5-2.) After all, A Separate Reality — the sequel to The Teachings of Don Juan — purports to be an account of Castaneda's continued tutelage under a Mexican shaman named Don Juan. It focuses on the practice of ''seeing,'' or the ability to look through the illusion of consensual reality and perceive and experience the spiritual infrastructure of the world and all living things...with the help of psychotropic drugs like peyote.

Castaneda's larger body of thought — revealed over the course of 11 increasingly weird books — argues that there is more to life than just a busy-busy struggle to survive, and that individuals have access to greater awareness, knowledge, and power than they allow themselves. People should strive to become ''warrior-travelers,'' and their heroic quest is to constantly unlearn and relearn ''the idea of ourselves'' and our conception of reality. Nobody on Lost embodies this better than John Locke, whose awkward ''Man of Faith'' evolution resembles Castaneda's trial-and-error vision of growth. Sayid's arc in ''He's Our You'' was a classic allegory for Castaneda conversion: A soul, trapped and stuck, defined by the personal baggage of his past and dehumanizing ''consensus reality'' of his society, who finds liberation by modulating the idea of himself — again courtesy of some really, really strong controlled substances.

Trippy stuff. But I could see how it might appeal to an alienated and abused young man like Young Ben Linus, full of yearning to transcend his mundane and miserable adolescence, gain mastery over circumstance, and transform his life into an exciting adventure. The Young Ben that we saw in ''He's Our You'' burned with adolescent rebellion and a very specific anger toward the dehumanizing, despairing lie of his wannabe utopian commune. In retrospect, turning one of Dharma's VW buses — a symbol of hippie-era idealism — into a Molotov cocktail on wheels struck me as a pretty clever act of protest.

Before we dig even deeper into Castaneda and excavate the ideas that will blow your mind with their Lost resonance, let's step back and consider Castaneda in the context of Big Ideas that Lost has thrown at us this season. Through Daniel Faraday, we got a strong dose of quantum physics. ''316'' gave us Christianity (and a wink at Christianity's heretical bad twin, Gnosticism) and an allusion to New Age mysticism. (See: the ''lines of energy'' map in the Lamp-Post, linking the Island to other hotspots of electromagnetic energy around the globe.) ''Namaste'' reminded us that the Dharma Initiative wrapped itself in Buddhism, Hinduism and Egyptian mythology. Now, we have Castaneda and his proto-Matrix philosophy, imported from Toltec mythology. The Western counter-culture of the early '70s was deeply interested in each of these bodies of thought. The New Age movement that emerged out of this era aspired to synthesize many of these strains of spirituality — along with some mystical interpretations of quantum physics — into a veritable Lost-esque super-string theory. Books like The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, The Dancing Wu Li Masters and many others (including Castaneda's entire oeuvre) brought this ambitious project into the mainstream. It was an endeavor deeply indebted to the Theosophists of the late 1800s. (Theosophy was a bid to blend ancient mythology, religious concepts, and new scientific thinking of the time, such as the newfangled electromagnetism of Lost-linked eggheads James Clerk Maxwell and Michael Faraday.) Theosophists dreamed of building ''a universal brotherhood of humanity'' and wanted to ''investigate the unexplained laws of nature and latent powers in man.''

FUN FACT! Lost has cited a number of writers who were deeply influenced by Theosophy, including Aldous Huxley (The Island), L. Frank Baum (The Wizard of Oz), and most recently, James Joyce (Ulysses).

Whew. Right? Bottom line: 1. Clearly, the so-called Me Decades in which Lost is currently parked was a boom time for alternative religion and new delivery systems of old-time spirituality; and 2. The aforementioned Big Ideas share one Very Big Idea in common, a serious interest in what happens to us after we kick the bucket.

Which brings us back to Castaneda. According to the writer, the warrior-traveler seeking life-changing, mind-expanding enlightenment is sometimes aided — and sometimes menaced — in his or her quest by otherworldly or ''inorganic'' beings. Often times, they take forms chosen by the subconscious. Indeed, sometimes they are nothing but projections of our subconscious, but we don't recognize them as such. These entities stick to their own turf, but can quite easily pass through the ''band of energy'' that separates our respective dimensions to interact with human beings. Would-be warrior-travelers need to confront, engage, and master these entities in order to gain knowledge. Once mastered, these hostile entities are known by a new name: ''the Allies.'' These ''Allies'' don't mind too much being mastered by their human friends. Indeed, they often forge partnerships with them and are willing to submit to their leadership. APPLICATION TO LOST: The Hostiles/the Others = ''the Allies.'' Ben's visions of his mother in the jungle = Ally as ''subconscious projection.'' Sonic Fence = ''Band of Energy.'' (Remember what Richard told Horace? ''Your fence can't keep us out.'' An ''Ally'' can say the same thing.) The Others' leadership structure = the Ally/warrior-traveler partnership.

According to Castaneda, there is one particularly monstrous inorganic entity that can rarely, if ever, be tamed: a creature known as a ''mud shadow'' or ''flyer.'' Castaneda writes: ''The flyers are an essential part of the universe...and they must be taken as what they really are — awesome, monstrous. They are the means by which the universe tests us.'' APPLICATION TO LOST: Hellllo, Smokey.

Finally, there is this. And I love this part. Castaneda believed that the final stage — the ''definitive journey'' — of a warrior-traveler's life was to prepare himself for more adventures and greater work in the afterlife, or what he called ''the active side of eternity.'' This preparation required shoring up a very firm, very fixed sense of identity that can survive the brutal segue into What Lies Beyond and can thrive there. In order to accomplish this task, warrior-travelers have to do one thing before they die: produce their own super-duper, back-story-revealing flashback episode of Lost.

''I suggest that you gather a collection of the memorable events of your life.... Every warrior, as a matter of duty, collects an album that reveals the warrior's personality, an album that attests to the circumstances of his life. Above all, it is like an album of pictures made out of memories, the recollection of memorable events; memorable because they have a special significance in one's life. Put in it the complete account of various events that have had profound significance for you. Not every event has a profound significance for you. There are a few, however, that I would consider likely to have changed things for you, to have illuminated your path.... Such an album is an exercise in discipline and impartiality. Consider this album to be an act of war. As such, it has all the meaning in the world.''

The active side of infinity. That's a pretty cool way of thinking about the Island. A collection of memorable events...an album that reveals the warrior's personality.... That's a pretty on-the-nose characterization of five seasons' worth of soul-baring, history-revealing, character-defining flashback storytelling. It also harkens back very specifically to the season 3 episode ''Greatest Hits,'' in which a death-bound Charlie, preparing for his own ''definitive journey,'' compiled a conceptual album of ''memorable events'' of ''profound significance'' that summarized his life — or, as Castaneda might argue, effectively defined the idea of Charlie that would progress into infinity.

Consider this album to be an act of war. And suddenly my Lost-soaked mind whooshes to what Charles Widmore told John Locke during his Jeremy Bentham digression. ''[T]here's a war coming, John. And if you're not back on the Island when that happens, the wrong side is going to win.''

Honestly, I'm not sure what Charlie Widmore's War is really going to be all about. You know me: I'm all for some cosmic clash between good and evil, à la The Stand, The Chronicles of Narnia, Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Matrix, and all the other fantasy pop classics that Lost uses as touchstones. And yet, I now wonder if Chuck was speaking of a more figurative kind of ''war.'' The boot camps that Ben, Widmore, and/or the Island have put the castaways through this season have been psychological and spiritual in nature. We've seen Jack morph from ''Man of Science'' to ''Man Willing To Be Open To Out-There Possibilities.'' We've seen Sawyer transition from selfish rogue to responsible leader. We've seen Sayid modulate his inner killer. We've seen Locke's destiny-starved sucker gain some wisdom. Everyone is changing their core idea; everyone is ''moving their island,'' if you will. (''I-land''?) And if we were to take this Castaneda all the way, you just have to wonder if the reason all these shifts are now happening is because these characters' ''definitive journey'' is at hand, a perilous passage as terrifying as war.

Put the final touches on those memory albums, castaways, because I think you're all about to die.

And then, I think they're all going to become born again, courtesy of time travel/time loop/Island resurrection magic. Who will awaken changed and improved by his or her past life? Who will awaken lost all over again? And which side in the great Widmore/Ben conflict benefits from changed souls — and which side doesn't? Season 6 will tell us...unless, of course, the preceding 1,700 words are just totally, wrong-headedly irrelevant. In which case, see Answer ''B.''

Now and Ben: Has a Blast in the Past Changed Lost's Future? - TV Guide

2009-04-01T05:30:00.000-07:00

By Matt Mitovich

Lost's Michael Emerson had warned TVGuide.com readers that moments would come along this season where you leap off the sofa and shout, "They can't do that! Can they...?" One such shocker expelled from Sayid's gun and landed in a young Benjamin Linus' chest at the end of last week's episode. Sterling Beaumon, 13, shared with us a look at how that blast in the past may change Ben's future. Or not.

TVGuide.com: I know you've done episodes of ER, Heroes and Bones. But was Lost your first death scene?
Sterling Beaumon: No, actually. I was on Crossing Jordan and I had to lie on a coroner's table for almost the whole episode. And on ER, I died in the end, with a tumor in my brain....

TVGuide.com: Of course, my question presumes that Young Ben died from Sayid's gunshot. Might that not be the case?
Beaumon: You'll have to watch and find out. ****

TVGuide.com: Regardless of whether young Ben dies or not, will there be repercussions for what Sayid did?
Beaumon: It will be talked about quite often. That scene may have the greatest significance of any on this show.

TVGuide.com: I read in a previous interview that when you first appeared on Lost (during Season 3), you were warned not to mimic Michael Emerson, because Ben wasn't that Ben yet. Is it safe to say he now is?
Beaumon: Not quite yet....

TVGuide.com: Something more would have to happen to put him on that path?
Beaumon: Yes. And that Ben.... Well, if you go back in the season to when they first met up with [Amy], they tell Daniel, "We can't interfere, because we can't change time," and Daniel says, "It doesn't matter now, because we're stuck here." ****

TVGuide.com: OK. I was going to say, Who better to carry out the massacre in a few years than a presumed-dead, angry Ben, but....
Beaumon: ****

TVGuide.com: How many kids did you beat out for this role?
Beaumon: There were, like, four pages of sign-ins for the first audition.

TVGuide.com: Did you wear a version of Ben's tell-tale glasses for the audition?
Beaumon: No, because we did not even know who the character was. He was called "Young Andrew," and it wasn't even a scene from the "Man Behind the Curtain" episode.

TVGuide.com: Do your eyes look like Michael Emerson's just naturally?
Beaumon: That was one of the requirements. The kid had to have blue eyes and brown hair.

TVGuide.com: Before we go, you said you had a few things you wanted to clear up....
Beaumon: Yes, I was just reading the message boards — I know, I'm so bad — and there are some things I want to address. For example, Ben arrived on the island in 1974, when he was 12 years old. Now it's three years later, so he's like 14 or 15. When Sayid refers to "12-year-old Ben" [in the episode "He's Our You"], he just didn't know. They will later say how old I really am. Also, some people are thinking that Ben killed his dad in the van fire that he set; he didn't. Older Ben killed his dad in, like, 1995. Those are just a few things I'm seeing out there.

TVGuide.com: All noted. So, what's next for you after Lost?
Beaumon: I have an animated feature coming out, Astro Boy, with Nicolas Cage, Freddie Highmore and Madeline Carroll, the girl who plays [Ben's childhood friend] Annie. Everyone is like, "The Island, it wants you two to work together!" [Laughs]

Will Lost's Juliet Find Herself Betrayed by Sawyer? - TV Guide

2009-03-18T05:44:00.001-07:00

By Matt Mitovich

When last we tuned into ABC's Lost, (at least some) fans were pleasantly surprised to see Juliet and Sawyer find a groovy kind of love there in the 1970s. But can their romance stand the test of "time" — especially now that Kate is back in the mix? Elizabeth Mitchell shared a look at the twists ahead.

TVGuide.com: We're sneaking this Q&A in just before the producers lower a "cone of silence" onto the cast members, at least until you have filmed the season finale. Pretty crazy, huh?
Elizabeth Mitchell: Yeah, pretty much! Once again, it's one of those highly secret, highly crazy, "You think it's one thing but it's another thing" kind of endings. There are still about six pages missing [from the finale script] that only the people involved in it have.

TVGuide.com: I'm worried now, that you don't have those six pages.
Mitchell: [Laughs] I didn't have the six pages last time, or the time before that. I was like, "Tell me, tell me! No, don't tell me."

TVGuide.com: It seems like these next nine episodes will be a lot to digest.
Mitchell: They will. "LaFleur" was one of those little "eyes of the storm." You've been storming, you've been storming, you get to the middle and you're like, "Oh, it's not so bad. It's kind of nice here! I'll wait around here and take a deep breath." And then you start right in. It should be pretty exciting.

TVGuide.com: What went through your mind as you learned of the Juliet-Sawyer love story?
Mitchell: There's my initial feelings, my middle feelings, and then my feelings now. At first, Josh [Holloway] and I were like, "Nuh-uh! That's never going to work!"

TVGuide.com: But surely you had an inkling they'd go that way, after the storylines got split.
Mitchell: I think I even said, "I don't think that sounds like a very good idea at all." But then as the season went along, I realized there were these little asides and glances... Both Josh and I were like, "We don't know about this." But luckily — and I mean this very, very sincerely — it became something I'm very happy with. Josh turned to me the other day and said, "Hey, that's pretty good huh?" I said, "Yeah, it kinda works!"

TVGuide.com: But even if you did see this hook-up coming, one could never have predicted the weight given to it via time-travel.
Mitchell: Josh and I were sitting in a canoe, doing a scene, and I said, "You know, they're not going to have us have mad, passionate love up against a tree. They're probably going to, like, have us already have been married for three years." He was like, "No, they're not going to do that. That's just ridiculous." So when he got the ["LaFleur"] script, he was like, "That's creepy!"

TVGuide.com: Do you feel cheated or honored to get clean-shaven Sawyer?
Mitchell: Oh, very honored - but I kinda get both, because we're always flashing [through time]. He's kind of ridiculously good-looking regardless of what he does, so I try not to concentrate on that too much.

TVGuide.com: Has it been in the back of Juliet's head that Kate could return to the island someday?
Mitchell: Yeah, I do think it's been there. But I also think that at some point in time, because three years is so long, she actually came to believe that maybe this might work. Maybe that came to her just in the last two months before [Kate, Jack et al] showed up, but for the first time in her life there was a grain of hope. So I think that it's very sad for her.

TVGuide.com: Does any insecurity register on Juliet when she first learns Kate is back?
Mitchell: I think so. Juliet is torn in a lot of different directions. She's torn that Kate is there, I think she's torn over how Sawyer is going to respond to it.... It's very telling that he doesn't saying anything at first about Kate being there. Juliet's just busy reading him, but of course there must be massive worry about [Kate's return].

TVGuide.com: Juliet, in turn, must have her own reaction to seeing Jack again.
Mitchell: *** It will be very interesting to see how people feel about their moments together.

TVGuide.com: What are Juliet's priorities now?
Mitchell: Juliet has a couple of priorities, one of which of course is being in love, and that's figuring quite heavily in the writers' minds. And there's always the thing of, "How do I get my life back? How do I keep my sister and her child safe?" They are in this eye of the storm, this little hiatus, and that's new for her. Good lord, she's working in the motor pool, so she's not even trying to save lives! For the first time in her life, she's quite peaceful and living. ****

TVGuide.com: When I spoke to Reiko Aylesworth (Amy), she seemed to hint that ****
Mitchell: ****

TVGuide.com: And 11-year-old Ben is lurking around somewhere...
Mitchell: Of course he's there. He has to be. So it will be very interesting to see how that goes.

TVGuide.com: Speaking Latin must have been one of the hardest things you've had to do for the show.
Mitchell: But you know what, I liked it. Part of me is kind of a brainiac so I thought it'd be cool if I spoke Latin anyway. There's that joy where you're talking to someone and all of a sudden you break off [into an unexpected language]. So yeah, it was difficult, but I thought it was pretty awesome!

Young 'Ben' gives up a few spoilers for Lost - Sci Fi Wire

2009-03-17T10:41:00.000-07:00

Sterling Beaumon—the 13-year-old actor who played young Ben Linus in the third-season Lost episode "The Man Behind the Curtain"— will kick off a multi-episode arc on the ABC sci-fi series starting with ****

SCI FI Wire recently spoke with Beaumon about his Lost experience and his latest episodes. Following are edited excerpts of the exclusive conversation. Lost airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

Go back a step. How did they first hire you?
Beaumon: I actually look hardly anything like Michael Emerson [who plays the adult version of Ben], besides the eyes. I guess I do; a lot of people say I do. But what really got it for me was I could cry. I could cry on cue. And in the first episode I did I had to cry in every scene.

When you did that first episode, did they tell you the role might be recurring?
Beaumon: They don't tell anyone anything, but everyone said, "Your character is so big, and your first episode is so big, they have to bring you back." Little did I know that after two years they'd bring me back.

We know that Lost has that crazy veil of secrecy over it, but give us a hint as to what you'll be up to in your episodes.
Beaumon: ****

Do you get a lot of people coming up to you, asking what's going to happen?
Beaumon: Yeah. It's kind of nice, and it's kind of hard. It's nice because the secrecy gets people to watch, because they want to know what's going to happen. And, in a way, it's hard, because you want to tell people what you do, but now I have to wait months to tell people how fun it was to do this or do that [in an episode], or to show people pictures from the set.

Did you go back and watch any of Michael Emerson's performances as Ben in order to help you play a natural extension of the character?
Beaumon: After I did my first episode [a couple of years ago], we became hooked on Lost, and I watched every single episode. A ctually, ["Namaste" director] Jack Bender told me, "***" I didn't know what he meant, because I hadn't gotten the next script. ****

What are the chances you'll be back again after these episodes?
Beaumon: Everyone says, "Oh, gosh, you've got to come back again." What I'm hoping is that Annie, supposedly Ben's childhood friend, comes back [in a subsequent episode]. The girl who plays Annie [Madeline Carroll] is actually a close friend of mine.

Lost Preview: Still-Tall, Non-Ghost Walt Returns! - TV Guide

2009-02-25T11:00:00.000-08:00

By Matt Mitovich

Lost fans really haven't spent much time with Walt in recent seasons, save for a hand-wave from an apartment window and a haunting visit to Locke's would-be grave. But this Wednesday, Michael's son will get a bit more screen time as "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" details Locke's odyssey from donkey wheel to casket. Malcolm David Kelley — who as Walt was one of Lost's original cast members — shared a glimpse at his character's latest appearance.

TVGuide.com: I have to tell you, a reader emailed me saying she was skeptical about your Lost future because of that Tyson chicken commercial you're in.
Kelley: Oh yeah, my manager told me about that! A lot of people are bugging out about that commercial — "What are you doing?!"

TVGuide.com: But sure enough, Walt returns this week. In what capacity?
Kelley: Let's see.... I don't want to give anything away... but there's a situation where he knows something is going on, but nobody told him. It's that sort of thing.

TVGuide.com: What, does he get wind that Jack, Kate and the others are returning to the island?
Kelley: I'm just going to be talking to somebody, and.... ****

TVGuide.com: Now that the show is time-jumping around, do you get to play closer to your real age of 16? No more waving from windows or skewed camera angles?
Kelley: I do, and that's a very cool thing. I don't have to play this young boy anymore. I don't have to change my voice or have them dub in someone else's voice. There were a lot of things we had to do to try to make me sound younger.

TVGuide.com: When you first started the show, did you worry, "If I start to sprout, I'm going to lose my job"?
Kelley: I really didn't expect me to grow that fast! It was just over a year period that I started sprouting up and my voice got deeper. I wasn't really thinking about it. I didn't know how long the show was going to go, but then they started saying "2010"....

TVGuide.com: Does Walt know that his father is dead?
Kelley: [Pauses] **** I'm not sure.

TVGuide.com: There's talk that Walt actually was on the flight back to the island in spirit, because Hurley took some of his comic books with him.
Kelley: [Laughs] That'd be pretty cool. But I hope I get to go back to the island myself at some point.

TVGuide.com: But maybe since Walt has his telekinesis-like powers, somebody doesn't want him back on the island. He could prove too useful to ... someone.

Kelley: Right, that's true. So maybe they're doing a smart thing!

Lost's Lance Reddick: Be Prepared for His Return - TV Guide

2009-02-25T10:56:00.000-08:00

By Mickey O'Connor

The Feb. 18 episode of Lost left viewers with a whopper of a burning question: How did Kate, Sayid and Hurley end up on that Ajira Airways flight when they seemed so opposed to doing so? Did the mysterious Matthew Abaddon (Lance Reddick) have anything to do with it? TVGuide.com talked to Reddick about what exactly we'll learn about Abaddon next as he plays a significant role in "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" (Wednesday, 9 pm/ET, ABC). In the meantime, Reddick offers up some juicy insight:

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT MATTHEW ABADDON?
Thus far, Abaddon has helped assemble the team that came to the island from the freighter. He visited Hurley in the booby hatch to ask about the rest of the Oceanic 815 passengers. And he convinced a wheelchair-assisted Locke to go on a "walkabout" through the Australian Outback.

WHAT DOES HIS NAME MEAN?
Although Matthew means "a gift from God" in Hebrew, the Bible assigns Abaddon many not-so-cheery meanings, including "a place of destruction" and "the realm of the dead." The word is also described as a creature that resembles a centaur with long hair, locusts' wings and the tail of a scorpion. All in all, scholars have roughly interpreted all this to mean that he's the king of hell, the anti-Christ, the big guy: Satan.

SO HE'S A BAD GUY THEN?
When asked this very question, Reddick chooses his words carefully: "He believes he's on the side of the good guys." This answer is, of course, fitting for a show that also features Benjamin Linus, Charles Widmore, the Others and "the freighter folk," none of whom conform easily to good guy-bad guy characterizations.

EXACTLY HOW MUCH DOES HE KNOW ABOUT HIS CHARACTER?
While Reddick says he has been given key pieces of context on Abaddon's backstory, which he declines to share, he says he prefers to "play to the mystery." Well, it has certainly worked.

WHO DOES HE WORK FOR?
*****

WHO WILL HE HAVE SCENES WITH?
*****

HOW DOES HE APPEAR AGAIN?
"Just as every single moment that Abaddon has shown up has been a surprise, how he shows up and how the character develops throughout the episode... just be prepared to be very surprised," Reddick says.

We're prepared! We're prepared!

Lost's Michael Emerson: "We May Already Know Annie" - TV Guide

2009-02-18T06:54:00.000-08:00

By Gina DiNunno

It's virtually impossible to tell whether Lost's Ben Linus is a good guy or a bad guy. As much as we keep churning out the theories, TVGuide.com turned to Michael Emerson himself for his thoughts on Ben's upcoming storylines. How much of Ben's past will we see during the time jumps? Will we ever meet Annie? Have we already?

TVGuide.com: Has Ben's revenge mission against Charles Widmore been trumped by the getting the Oceanic 6 to return to the island?
Michael Emerson: I think Ben has not forgotten what Charles Widmore has done to him, and I think he's going to try to take care of that business at the same time as he's taking care of the larger mission.

TVGuide.com: With all this time jumping happening on the island, will we see young Ben again?
Emerson: **** now that we are sort of ping-ponging around in the time-space continuum, all those backstories are re-emerging in more important ways. And the characters are, to some extent, going to be recontextualized. I know Ben is. You're going to learn things about him that either mitigate or intensify some of the judgments you've made about him.

TVGuide.com: It's pretty hard to tell if he's good or bad on any given day.
Emerson: I think they mean you to be right there and not know. You may leave the series at the final conclusion still not knowing if he's good or bad.

TVGuide.com: Did Ben's little girlfriend Annie die in The Purge?
Emerson: We don't know. That's still up in the air, but I'm guessing that's one of the most burning questions of the backstory that I'm sure will be dealt with. We have so much bouncing around in time and space to do this season it will make you dizzy. It's also going to provide some thrills and chills. [Laughs]

TVGuide.com: So you think Annie will pop back into the picture?
Emerson: Yeah, I think so. In fact, I may go so far as to say we may already know Annie. Have you considered that? I'm not speaking from knowledge of a script because that's not a thing that has been written, but stranger things have happened on the show. Everyone is more connected then they ever thought, and it's often by blood.

TVGuide: Maybe Ben has unknown relatives on the island as well?
Emerson: That's a good one. Or it could be a deal where maybe some people never escaped a time or place. Or maybe some people are no longer in control of the when of their lives. Our writers are smart sci-fi guys and they're going to push the envelope.

TVGuide.com: How about revisiting that crush Ben had on Juliet?
Emerson: I think it must be explained, or its end must be explained — the end of those feelings. You might want to put that in the file labeled "Stuff Ben Doesn't Have Time to Think About But May Be Able to Further Down the Line." I suppose it's possible, though, that the writers have made us understand that Juliet made her feelings too clear to Ben and the world, and he's moved on.

TVGuide.com: How often have your scenes crossed with Fionnula Flanagan's Eloise Hawking?
Emerson: ***** One of the tributes to the genius of our writers is they will introduce a character like Eloise Hawking in a one-off kind of deal and we all think, "Oh, that was an interesting side journey that we could have gone on and didn't." But the writers haven't forgotten about it. They've brought it back around so it dovetails neatly with what's going on.

TVGuide.com: Can you give us any idea on when or how we'll next see Jacob?
Emerson: Jacob seems to have fallen away from our consciousness. The show is so much more wrapped up in intermediary leader figures. There seems to be a whole raft of people Ben must answer to, but they're not as high up as Jacob. Jacob seems to have receded into the mist again — sort of mysterious and godlike. He continues to be much talked about, and ultimately is the force behind the island. **** So to be in charge of such a thing — what does that mean? These are questions I ask myself.

TVGuide.com: Do you ever find yourself just reeling after reading a script?
Emerson: I have read a couple of scenes in the middle part of the season where I've dropped the script while reading it, or I stood up and said, "Oh my God, they can't do that, can they?" And they can. They can do whatever they want. There are a couple of things that will just make your hair stand on end. People across the country are going to jump up off their sofas and scream, "No! No way!" I just love it. [Laughs]

Lost Preview: Will Jin Reunite with Sun? - TV Guide

2009-02-11T06:06:00.000-08:00

By Matt Mitovich

ABC's Lost (Wednesdays at 9 pm/ET) tied up at least one loose thread when a young Danielle Rousseau and her team fished a water-logged, dehydrated and yet very much alive Jin out of the ocean last week. Will Jin now reunite with Sawyer and the other still-stranded castaways? Will Sun learn her husband is alive before she's gone too far? And just how good is Jin's English these days? Daniel Dae Kim shares a look at the "excellent adventure" to come.

TVGuide.com: That was a very cool reintroduction you got.
Daniel Dae Kim: Yeah! I was happy with the way they did that, for sure.

TVGuide.com: What is going through Jin's mind at this moment?
Kim: [Laughs] Probably water. Water. Food. I don't think he really cares about anything else. He's probably so dehydrated and dazed that he doesn't have much awareness of what's going on.

TVGuide.com: And without Faraday around to explain to him the time-jumping thing...
Kim: I think he's still confused as to how this could be. But you'll see that he goes through his own little "excellent adventure." [Laughs] Like Bill and Ted.

TVGuide.com: I guess that after the freighter explosion, he swam within the radius of the temporal whatnot?
Kim: Yeah. Somehow, wherever he landed after the explosion was within the radius of this... phenomenon.

TVGuide.com: Does Jin know enough English at this point to get some answers from his rescuers?
Kim: That is a very interesting question. Watching Jin's journey with English over the next few episodes will be very interesting.

TVGuide.com: Even though he's now back on the island, it could be a while before he crosses paths with his friends.
Kim: Absolutely. ****

TVGuide.com: The producers of course played your status very close to the vest. Was it hard going along with that ruse?
Kim: Actually, it wasn't. They assured me from the beginning that it didn't mean anything more than exactly what it was: a ruse. I just kept my head down, did my work and let them worry about that stuff.

TVGuide.com: I understand ABC will now "magically" re-insert you back into the Season 5 cast shot?
Kim: That's what I'm being told will happen! That's all composited anyway, but I was at that photo shoot. They have singles of me I assume they'll composite back into [the cast photo].

TVGuide.com: Do you think Jin would approve of the mission of vengeance Sun is currently on in the States?
Kim: I think that Jin, in his transition to who he is now, would probably make less of a judgment on Sun for anything.

TVGuide.com: Maybe she'll learn that he's alive before she goes too far?
Kim: I'm curious to find that out myself. I'd like to see how much of her new personality is because of what she believes happened to Jin, or is it part of a larger growth for her?

TVGuide.com: Is it safe to say they will be reunited by the Season 5 finale?
Kim: You know what? I am not sure. We just got the script for [Episode] 13 out of 17. But I think it's inevitable that they're reunited at some point.

TVGuide.com: What else can you tease about Jin's upcoming storyline?
Kim: I can say this: He finally has some scenes with characters that he, in five years, has never really interacted with.

TVGuide.com: Are you still on board to star in The King & I in London this June?
Kim: Absolutely! I'm working on my singing and the text. I'm excited to do it.

TVGuide.com: I have to laugh at how the instant that news got out last summer, people started "killing Jin off."
Kim: [Laughs] It probably went a long way to aid with the ruse!

Lost: Digging Inside Season 5 - EW

2009-02-06T10:08:00.000-08:00

by Jeff Jensen

Across the street from a neatly tended cemetery on the island of Oahu, there is a gated lot where the past, present, and future of Lost all come together. The Others' submarine, Henry Gale's hot-air balloon, Locke's outrigger — all beached on the grass like so many Black Rock shipwrecks. And inside a large soundstage, hidden away from prying eyes, Lost's iconic castaways are huddled on a top secret set, ****. The action being shot for the year's 12th episode is almost spoilerifically indescribable, *****

No, Lost definitely isn't playing it safe, even though it has every reason to do just that. Coming off a critically acclaimed, Emmy-nominated fourth season and entering its next-to-last year, ABC's brilliantly odd, infectiously frustrating crypto-drama (airing Wednesdays at 9 p.m.) could have attempted to keep its no-longer-huge-but-still-fervently-fanatic base sated and stable until 2010's Gimme all my answers NOW! series-capping season. Nope. Didn't even try. Instead, Lost has opted to start season 5 by baring its potentially alienating geek soul and challenging its audience even more with gonzo storytelling. Thought the show was confusing before? Try this on for size: Time travel. Quantum physics. Hydrogen bombs. And a Da Vinci Code-meets-Foucault's Pendulum-meets-Weekend at Bernie's conspiracy to save (or destroy) the world, the linchpin of which involves U-Hauling the corpse of John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) back to the Island. When the gloriously strange saga of Lost finally concludes next year, season 5 is likely to be remembered as the one when the series came out of the closet and declared itself. But here's hoping it doesn't lose everyone in the process: So far this season, Lost is averaging 11.3 million viewers, down 3.4 percent from last season, and a far cry from the series-high average of 15.9 million in season 1. But the producers say: Come what may. ''The fear is that Lost just became an AP class, and really, what's one's incentive for taking an AP class?'' says exec producer Damon Lindelof. ''But the show has gotten to that point where it had to let its freak flag fly. It needed to announce, 'You wanna know what the Island is? You wanna know why these people were brought to the Island? You wanna know what their purpose for being there is? Well, it might be a little weirder than you would've hoped.'''

But is it too weird? ''I was a little worried about the start of the season, to be honest,'' says Lilly, battling back a cold and enjoying some late-afternoon Hawaii sun in between takes. ''It might sound terrible to say, but the mythology of this show eludes me. I am all about the characters and the interplay of the relationships and the angst of redemption and retribution — all those good nuggets. So, in my biased view, I've been running around telling the world: 'Be patient! It's just the first half of the season! We'll come back!''' Her costar Matthew Fox has another, more optimistic take. ''It feels very different from what Lost has felt like in the past, but in a really good way,'' says the actor, sporting neatly parted hair and some dangling iPod earbuds. ''There will be many, many answers, lots of things from past seasons that left the audience thinking, 'That's never going to pay off' — but it does, in really cool ways that make you go 'Holy s---!' The season has a real feeling of things coming together, and it builds a groundswell of momentum for the end of the show.''

So, baffling or brilliant? Let the debate begin.

Of course, Lost has always been pretty off its rocker. Ghosts. Locke's legs. Smokey the monster. Those who've hoped Lost would avoid sci-fi answers may have been fooling themselves. ''Honestly,'' says Lindelof, ''the non-genre answer just isn't that interesting.'' And now it's clear the time-travel element of the Island (beyond just the flashbacks/flash-forwards) has been part of the show from the beginning. Among the clues: the never-identified cave skeletons (might they belong to time-tossed castaways?); the name of the company that recruited Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) to the Island, Mittelos, which is an anagram for ''lost time''; the sprinkled-in Stephen Hawking references. ''Whenever the show presents something about the history of the Island — like coming upon the Black Rock slave ship — these are things we are setting up for the endgame of the show,'' says Lindelof. ''This season, it's like the audience is finally opening up a present that was actually bought and wrapped years ago. At least, we hope they think it's a present.''

In other words: The producers have a master plan — and an exit strategy. But that master plan couldn't be unleashed fully until Lindelof and partner Carlton Cuse negotiated a series end date during season 3, a.k.a. The Year Lost Learned a Show About Castaways Stranded on an Island Can Last So Long No Matter How Clever It May Be. "The same way our characters were sort of locked in cages in season 3, when the show went awry,'' says Cuse, ''we felt locked in cages because we didn't know if our mythology had to go two more years or nine.''

Now uncaged, the producers face the challenge of telling their story successfully without unraveling the franchise. Cuse and Lindelof are keenly aware that time-travel yarns have had a spotty record of late (Life on Mars: struggling; Heroes: ugh; Journeyman: anyone? Bueller?) and that even the smartest stuff has the unfortunate side effect of causing serious brain crampage. The producers promise an approach to time travel backed by researchable science (Popular Mechanics even has a Lost blog analyzing it) and grounded in humanity. Cuse and Lindelof allow that the season premiere — in which a fragmented narrative mirrored the Island's erratic skips through time — may not have totally nailed that value, but they believe it was a necessary starting point. ''The complex episodes come early this season,'' says Cuse, ''but they lead to greater rewards downstream once the audience understands the rules of the game for the year.''

Seeing that plan play out has been heartening to Lost's cast, many of whom were left feeling alternately OMG! and WTF? by the season's first scripts. ' 'The first episode was wonderful, [but] it was also a lot to digest,'' says Jorge Garcia, adding that the storytelling of the Hurley-heavy second installment left him baffled enough that ''it totally went over my head that it was a Hurley episode.'' More worrisome to others was the possibility that a sci-fi emphasis might compromise the show's identity, limit its possibilities, and make the drama even less accessible to non-geek-minded viewers. ''I'm mixed about it, to be honest,'' says Daniel Dae Kim, whose presumed-dead Jin was discovered alive and well — and in the Island's not-so-distant past — on the most recent episode. ''One of the things that attracted me initially to this show was how universal the themes were and how different the kinds of stories it could tell. Now, I feel with the sci-fi we're becoming definable in a way that maybe we weren't in the first season. At the same time, I like how the writers are showing allegiance to the true fans. The people who stayed with us are being rewarded with the more complicated and nuanced storytelling that they've been hungering for.'' As for ABC's feelings about Lost's dive down the sci-fi rabbit hole, senior VP of current drama programming Kim Rozenfeld says, ''There were aspects that were certainly unorthodox, but we were comfortable because we knew how they set up the larger story.''

Despite her early season jitters, Lilly says she's committed to the producers' vision. ''You're either along for the ride and part of it, or you're not. And if you don't trust the writers, you might as well get off the boat,'' she says. ''I respect that they do things that could potentially alienate parts of their audience, because that means they are being true to their story and not being manipulated by outside pressure.''

And that story is still capable of addressing very relatable human themes. ''Usually in shows, the cliff-hanger is all about who's shacking up with who,'' says Leung. ''On Lost, the cliff-hanger is about the meaning of existence. What does it mean to be alive?'' Jeremy Davies — whose quirky physicist Daniel Faraday has emerged as a major player of late — credits Lost with allowing him to process the recent deaths of his father and a close friend. ''There have been so many compelling synchronicities between my life and Faraday's story line,'' says the actor. ''I'd be in a lot more trouble, personally, if I didn't have this opportunity to channel these energies within me.''

As for Lindelof and Cuse, they're channeling all their energies squarely onto the Island. ''We feel like the audience will be really clamoring to get back to the Island after these first seven episodes,'' says Lindelof. ''And they'll get a big massive dose of it for pretty much the remainder of the season.'' *****

**** ''Season 5 is about do they or don't they make it back to the Island, and every character has their reasons,'' explains Lilly. *****

***** Despite last year's helicopter kiss-and-whisper between Kate and Sawyer (contents of said whisper will be revealed soon), Lilly believes that the audience is rooting for Kate and Jack. ''But I could be completely wrong!'' she laughs. ''What I've noticed is that the audience tends to root for the coupling that gets the most screen time — and right now, what they're seeing is Kate and Jack.''

Whichever way romance blows on Lost, Fox hopes that it just doesn't...well, blow. He feels the show has sometimes indulged the lovey-dovey stuff for the sake of ratings. ''That's someone going, 'People love romance, so just turn the buttons and dial it up,''' complains Fox. ''Look, I understand that. But it has to be f---ing credible. Our world doesn't lend itself to conventional romance. Yearning? Yes. Desire? Yes. Passion? Yes. And when those things play out in the context of survival s--- that's gotta get done, where people's lives are f---ing at stake — that's cool. But romance? I haven't always bought it for Jack and Kate, and I haven't always bought it for Kate and Sawyer. The show's too intense for that.''

Besides, it's not like pandering to the audience is likely to grow it — not at this point. News flash! Lost — brainy, challenging, locked into an evolving, serialized story — is a tough choo-choo to jump aboard if you're not already up to speed. Ratings are likely to continue to inch down as opposed to up. But the producers aren't sweating it. ''For most showrunners, existence is predicated on 'If I get good ratings, I get to keep doing this,''' says Cuse. ''But we know Lost is ending, no matter what the ratings are. So we're just trying to make sure that we end the story well and we get it executed on film the way we want it.'' However, the storytellers hope that anyone who has ever been a Lost fan will tune in next year as the show moves into payoff mode and begins resolving long-term character arcs. Indeed, compared with this year, season 6 sounds like it could be something of a blast from the season 1 past. Lindelof teases that the sci-fi-heavy season 5 (which includes ****) ''sets up where we need to go in season 6, which will be much more grounded and character-centric than it is this year.''

Whatever form it takes, Fox believes they will go out strong — with or without massive ratings. ''People will remember it the way they want to remember it,'' he says. ''What I will remember is that Lost was one of the most innovative, risk-taking, smartest shows ever. That's how I want to remember it. And I think it deserves that.''

Lost Preview - TV Guide

2009-01-20T07:27:00.000-08:00

By Matt Mitovich

When ABC's Lost kicks off its much-anticipated fifth season this Wednesday at 9 pm/ET (with a two-hour premiere), ***. ***** Oh, it's just bad-ass Sayid and his new sidekick ... Hurley?! Jorge Garcia gave us a typically cryptic look at the new adventures of the Oceanic 6. Plus: Who from the island does the big guy miss most?

TVGuide.com: As an actor, how has the Season 5 storyline been different for you?
Jorge Garcia: The story has been different and a little weird, and I'm just "following along in my book," so to say. But there is a confidence having done Hurley for now five seasons. There's a lot more instinct in the sense that I kind of know how Hurley goes now, how he would react to new situations.

TVGuide.com: Are you finding him to be a more active character this season?
Garcia: There's definitely some stuff that picks up. And there are certain things Hurley does this season where I'm still trying to figure out how he gets to this point. That's what I'm most curious about. They like to skip around in the storytelling, you know.

TVGuide.com: So even though we've arrived at this certain point in the future, it's not necessarily continuous storytelling.
Garcia: Right. They're not afraid to skip ahead even more if they want to, and then fill in that blank at a later date.

TVGuide.com: Hurley and Sayid have kind of a "buddy act" going on at the start of the season, don't they?
Garcia: Yeah, that's how it starts. The season picks up right where the last one ended, when Sayid springs him from [the] Santa Rosa [mental hospital]. Then they go off together.

TVGuide.com: Are you having fun doing these different types of scenes with Naveen?
Garcia: It's cool, because we hadn't worked too much together or in such a large chunk like we did this time.

TVGuide.com: Does Hurley do anything for the first time this season?
Garcia: Hmmmm... . There are some first on the wardrobe front. [Laughs]

TVGuide.com: Are you in a James Bond-like suit or something?
Garcia: Um, I can't say exactly what the outfit choices are. But in the first two or three episodes, it felt like a parade of costumes — which is obviously not something I'm used to. And I wasn't happy with all of the outfits, I have to say. [Laughs] You'll see why.

TVGuide.com: Do you think Hurley misses Sawyer?
Garcia: Totally. Especially when the team kind of split up and a group of us set up camp in the Others' village, there was a lot of bonding between Hurley and Sawyer. And I think Hurley was definitely moved when Sawyer jumped out of the helicopter.

TVGuide.com: All eyes were kind of on Hurley...
Garcia: Yeah. [Sawyer's sacrifice] had an effect on him.

TVGuide.com: How quickly does the Oceanic 6 make it back to the island?
Garcia: That's a big focus of this season, the struggle to get back. ****

TVGuide.com: It's obviously not a matter of them simply reuniting and flying somewhere.
Garcia: It's a bit more complicated, yeah. *****

TVGuide.com: Ben says you all have to go back, and *****. But that's easier said than done, you're saying.
Garcia: There is stuff to figure out because things start getting more complicated off-island. *****

TVGuide.com: Is the plan still to run all 17 episodes straight through, with no big breaks?
Garcia: Yeah. Last season, they might have skipped a week before the finale and had a clip show day, so they might do that. But for the most part, it should run straight through.

Live blogging 'Lost': Team Darlton break their silence on season 5! - EW

2009-01-19T06:27:00.000-08:00

By Michael Ausiello

Follow along as I live blog the most anticipated session of press tour: The Q&A with Lost bosses Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse! As an added bonus, I'll be sprinkling in mild spoilers about this season's third episode, which ABC just screened for us as a precursor to the main event. Let's get to it!

4:01 pm/EST: Team Darlton's in the house taking our questions!
(Episode 3 spoiler: ****)

4:02 pm: We will be seeing a "lot more" of Nestor Carbonell (Richard Alpert) this season. Also, Nestor does not wear eyeliner on the show, Darlton insists! Stop the presses!!

4:07 pm: When Cane was axed, Darlton immediately stepped in and "secured [Nestor's] services" until the end of Season 6.

4:11 pm: Are they concerned that all the time travel this season will leave viewers, ahem, lost? "Time travel has been in the show's DNA from the beginning," says Lindelof. "The audience is prepared to go on that journey with us."
(Episode 3 spoiler: ***)

4:14 pm: "Sawyer has a lot to do this year," says Cuse. Adds Lindelof: "A lot of the focus was on the Oceanic Six last year... this year we tried to make up for lost time [with Sawyer]. Josh has been doing amazing work."

4:17 pm: "As we get deeper into the season," Cuse teases, "you're going to learn a lot more about the island's history."
(Episode 3 spoiler: ***)

4:20 pm: The purpose of the four-toed statue is revealed: Cuse says it was there simply to illustrate the island's long and rich history.

4:22 pm: "If the first episode of Lost you see is the premiere of season 5," says Lindelof, "you most likely won't understand the majority of it."

4:24 pm: Lost currently has 14 series regulars, Lindelof reveals, adding that the rough economic climate has forced them to "kill off five" this season. (He's kidding! I think!)
(Episode 3 spoiler: Someone -- or something -- called *** plays a pivotal role.)

4:28 pm: ****

4:29 pm: ****

4:30 pm: Darlton chose to spread the last 48 episodes over three seasons, as opposed to just two. "That was our choice," he says. "We calculated how many episodes" it would take to adequately tell the story of Lost.
(Episode 3 spoiler: ***)

4:31 pm: The session is brought to an end after only 25 minutes! Totally bogus! ****

Lost Bosses Solve "True Mystery" - TV Guide

2009-01-19T06:11:00.000-08:00

By Matt Mitovich

It's rather impossible to share much of what was discussed at Lost's TCA Winter Press Tour session on Friday, since to do so would delve into the first few episodes — the third of which was screened for reporters just before exec producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof took the stage. Here, though — and to supplement my teasy afternoon Facebook updates — are some Dharma-approved sound bites:

Lost's "True Mystery" Revealed!
Coming off of Richard Alpert's appearance in this season's Episode 3, Lindelof refuted one press person's contention that Nestor Carbonell wears too much eyeliner (especially when projected on the Hilton ballroom's 20-foot screens). "We had the same [observation] you did, but he does not wear any mascara, no eyeliner, nothing." Cuse chimed in to call Carbonell's distinct eyes "the true mystery of Lost."

*****

The Secret to Their (Avoiding) "Suckiness"
Though ABC has gone on record as saying they would of course welcome lots more Lost than currently is planned, the producers stand by the decision to wrap things up after 34 more episodes. "When we got to Season 3, the show had reached a point where we knew it was trending [toward] utter suckiness," said Lindelof. "We had a decision to make — choose an end date."

It's the "Season of Sawyer"
Acknowledging that last season's focus on the Oceanic 6 robbed Sawyer of some screen time, the execs promise a reversal on that unfortunate shift. "Sawyer has a lot to do" as one of the castaways left behind, says Cuse. Adds Lindelof, "Josh [Holloway] has been doing amazing work this year."

Why Lost Probably Won't Find an Emmy this Year
Team Darlton are the first to admit that Emmy voters like tidy, digestible episodes, and that's why Lost finds little love at the awards show. And looking ahead, nothing from this coming season will fit the blue ribbon panel's criteria. "If the first episode of Lost that you ever see is the first episode of Season 5, you will not understand a majority of it."

The Logo Is Loaded
Surveying the newest show logo — as projected onto the ballroom wall — the boys explained that the cityscape within the letters of "Lost" represents how "at least for the first part of this season, you're getting a split between [stories about] the people at home and the people who are on the island." ***

*****

As for Michael....
**** Harold Perrineau is busy starring on the midseason ABC series The Unusuals. "I'm working for the same network so anything can happen," says the actor. "You never know what Carlton and Damon are going to do."

Review: Lost Premiere Fires Up One Trippy New Season (TV Guide)

2009-01-07T05:54:00.000-08:00

The first seasons' flashbacks now seem utterly quaint. And the more recent flash-forwards? Relatively simple. As promised, previewed and teased by the producers of Lost ever since Season 4 came to a close, the next cycle of episodes introduce a new storytelling "device" of sorts that might make you want to keep a notepad and pen next to your TV remote.

But enough about that. No, really — that's enough. I can't say more, given the confidentiality request that prefaced the first two Season 5 episodes made available to the press.

Instead, I will simply note that the episodes "Because You Left" and "The Lie" offer compelling twists for both the half-dozen "survivors" of Oceanic flight 815 as well as those who are still on the island (wherever it may be).

The first hour is the stronger of the two, as it sends the mind reeling and uncorks infinite possibilities. Picking up soon after the events of the season finale, "Because You Left" reiterates Ben's claim that Jack et al must return to the island to make things "right" ***, then lets slip a bit of insight — from the perspective of those left behind — as to where the island moved. Alas, just as they figure it out....

Next up, "The Lie" revolves around a major predicament for one of the Oceanic 6, setting the stage for a twist that significantly staggers Ben's plan to "get the band back together." Meanwhile, Sawyer, Juliet and the others are subject to old island problems, new revelations and surprise saviors, with the showstopper being one of Lost's most electric and intense action scenes ever.

Familiar faces return. New faces create new problems ... or perhaps offer solutions (***). **** All told, the foundation is laid for a pivotal penultimate season.

Before I go, a few more teasers to whet your whistle until the new season arrives Wednesday, Jan. 21.

• Within the first minutes, **** turns up in a most unexpected place.

• Jack shaves his strife beard ... in the premiere's second such shaving scene. (And no, you'll never guess the first familiar face to take razor in hand.)

• ****

• Someone gets a nosebleed.

• Kate is haunted by a decision she made.

• ****

• ****

• Every theory I have read about how Desmond might remain in the mix, even though he and Penny were free and clear at the end of the season finale? No one got it right.

• Someone dares call Sawyer an "inbred." That can't end well. And it doesn't.

• Speaking of Sawyer, he remains shirtless for the entire first hour plus the first eight minutes of the second episode. (ABC, you owe me big time for spreading the word on that.)

Doc Jensen Season Five Premiere Review

2009-01-07T05:46:00.000-08:00

Yesterday. 9:30 a.m. I was moments away from spending the day at Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth, when a certain EW colleague, whose name rhymes with Shmichael Slausiello, tipped me off that the first two episodes of Lost’s fifth season were now available to lucky media dorks like me for reviewing. Suddenly, the House of Mouse (and really, any other locale that wasn’t my laptop DVD player) was not the happiest place on Earth, but the most hellishly inconvenient. ARRRRGHHH! A long day of standing in life-stealing, long-ass lines became even more criminal and assish as I counted the minutes before I could rip into the most awesome of delayed Christmas presents. (Although I must say, The Pirates of the Carrbbean - a masterpiece of experiential narrative on any other day - was almost compelling enough to distract me from my furious angst. ALMOST.)

Finally, at 10 p.m. last night, with exhausted family passed out, I sat down and broke the seven-month Lost fast with the first two helpings of season 5. Both went down well, one more so than the other. A few thoughts in advance of a more thorough discussion to come, once the episodes air and we're all on the same page.

Lost’s tradition of opening the year with a killer, capture-the-imagination sequence is honored and upheld, though the thing I loved most was how it was brazenly frank (and engagingly funny) about the heady high-concept conceit that will define the season. Almost everything that followed that opening passage was pretty cool, too. ****** The first two episodes will have the audience — and the show’s characters — trying to make sense of shifts in time. They demand active engagement, and I found it to be a lot of fun. Especially the first hour.

Lots of Sawyer in the first two eps. Lots of his naked chest, too. Lots of Hurley, and as for his chest, it is covered...with a very funny T-shirt. Sayid also has mucho screen time in both episodes, though ****. And **** emerges as a huge player in season 5. The eps are dotted with cameos and extended cameos from peripheral but important figures crucial to the Lost mythology and much-loved by the Lost fan community. ***** Once again, all things Ben just rock. *****

In short, it was worth the wait, and certainly the perfect tonic for a day at Disneyland. I can't wait to see if you agree - or disagree - with me when Lost premieres on Jan. 21. In the meantime, tell me: What are you most looking forward to seeing in season 5? What are your burning questions? Let me know...because I'll be able to soon answer them for you, in the most unexpected of ways...

Good to be gabbing Lost with you again, friends. Look for the first official Doc Jensen column next week. Namaste!

Lost's Michael Emerson, Part 2: More Burning Questions - TV Guide Interview

2008-05-29T05:32:00.000-07:00

Lost's Season 4 finale is being presented in two parts, and thus is my season-ending Q&A with Michael Emerson, who plays Ben. Among the topics this time around: Who exactly is the "her" referred to in the episode "The Other Woman"? And who has Ben never shared a scene with, though that seems destined to change? Read on, and then kick back and enjoy the two-hour conclusion to "There's No Place Like Home," starting Thursday at 9 pm/ET.

TVGuide.com: When the Others' shrink said to Juliet, "Of course Ben has a crush on you. You look just like her," who is "her"? Ben's mother, or the little girl he befriended on the island...?
Michael Emerson: It could be either... or a third choice. That’s a really tantalizing question. I still think we're going to revisit that little girlfriend of his that made him the carved image.

TVGuide.com: The moment where Alex was killed, coming on the heels of Rousseau's death. Was it hard to lose your 'family" there? Or did you suspect it would put this new fire in Ben's belly?
Michael Emerson: That is the way it's to function in the show – Ben now has the great motivation. He was cheated, and the game was upset. Now we see him prone to a feeling of grief and vengeance that is perfectly human. That will fuel his mission for the rest of the series.

TVGuide.com: When do you like playing Ben the most?
Michael Emerson: There are a couple of ways I like playing Ben. I like it when he's in a jolly mood. Like when he had his little dinner party for Juliet. He's bustling around the kitchen, fixing food.... There's something surreal to see him do that. That’s a fun antic Ben. Ben's stock-and-trade is those tense scenes in confined spaces, where a lot hangs on a high-pressure conversation.

TVGuide.com: At the end of the day, what do you think will be harder to explain: Who or what is Jacob, or who or what is the Smoke Monster?
Michael Emerson: The explanation of who or what is Jacob is going to be richer and more satisfying than who or what is the Smoke Monster. I have my own ideas about what the Smoke Monster is, and it's purely scientific. The explanation of Jacob, I think, may be more.

TVGuide.com: When that series finale airs, do you think it will be indisputable that Ben is "the good guy" here?
Michael Emerson: I would be surprised if we walked away from Ben feeling anything but... ambiguous. I don’t think they'd let that go.

TVGuide.com: Because in the future he seems to be doing the right thing.
Michael Emerson: Certainly his mission is going to be recontextualized — maybe many times — before the end of [the series]. Short of some amazing transformation – his becoming a monk or an alien or something like that – Ben seems a man fated to go on with this battle. And I wonder if the battle ever ends....

TVGuide.com: You seem to give your character a lot of thought.
Michael Emerson: I think about him because I sometimes have to explain things to myself in my own head. I don’t really have interaction with writers, so I just try to impose meanings and contexts on it, partly for my own amusement but partly so I know what to play. It helps me make an unpredictable choice in a scene if I have a new idea about what's going on.

TVGuide.com: Do you feel as if you stumbled upon something special here at Lost?
Michael Emerson: Oh, yes. It's a wonderful role. The ambiguity of it lets me paint it the way I please, episode after episode.

TVGuide.com: Is there anybody you wish you had more scenes with?
Michael Emerson: There are characters that I've never had scenes with, it's so crazy. I've never had a scene with Sun or Jin; Michael only briefly; Desmond.... Now that could be interesting. What could bring Desmond and Ben Linus together? *****

TVGuide.com: What are you doing with your hiatus?
Michael Emerson: We have three months off. I don’t really have any work to do. My wife (actress Carrie Preston) is working on a series in L.A. that films until the middle of July.

TVGuide.com: She's working on True Blood (based on Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire novels), right?
Michael Emerson: Yes, and that could be really interesting. It's so tantalizing, this idea of [Six Feet Under creator] Alan Ball tackling vampire material.

TVGuide.com: And he has a colorful cast there, not the usual suspects.
Michael Emerson: Right, fresh faces – and from what my wife tells me, some astonishing performances are being given. It's very exciting.

Lost's Michael Emerson Teases a "Dark, Violent" Finale - TV Guide interview

2008-05-28T05:48:00.000-07:00

Say what you will about wily Ben Linus, but Michael Emerson is easily one of Lost's most interesting cast member interviews. Maybe it's the way he searches for just the right words — always cryptic, yet sometimes telling. On the eve of the conclusion of the ABC hit's big finale, I decided to kick off a two-parter of my own. Here, Emerson talks of Ben's fractured bond with the island, names the other (Other?) character that makes his "mouth water," and chimes in on a tale of two Emilys.

TVGuide.com: Give me three words to describe the season finale.
Michael Emerson: [Thinks] Dark.... Violent.... ***.

TVGuide.com: About a year ago, you and I spoke about how Ben was loath to ever leave the island. And yet we've now seen that it is something that does happen. What do you think changed there?
Michael Emerson: Ben's attachment to the island was... provisional. ***

TVGuide.com: ***
Michael Emerson: I think so, yes. Things have gone so wrong. Events have forced his hand in a number of ways. And John Locke appears to have been "anointed" somehow....

TVGuide.com: And Ben appears to be making some sort of peace with that shift.
Michael Emerson: Yes. His gut reaction is that of a teenage boy, which is to be vengeful and full of rage and bitterness. But eventually, he will always play the board as it is in front of him. He will accept the terms.

TVGuide.com: "Whatever makes Jacob happy."
Michael Emerson: Exactly.

TVGuide.com: When you first were pitched this role, did they give you any hint as to the scope of Ben's involvement in the mythology?
Michael Emerson: No. I doubt if they even knew it at that time! As far as I knew, it was to be three episodes. I think it was an experiment, one that worked out happily.

TVGuide.com: They’ve told me that the same thing happened with Nestor Carbonell. They didn’t have any "grand plan" for Richard Alpert, but once he became available, they said, "We could do something here."
Michael Emerson: Yeah... And he's a great character. It makes my mouth water to think what they could do with Richard Alpert.

TVGuide.com: The guy is just flitting around time no worse for the wear, no nose bleeds....
Michael Emerson: Right, and he's just one of the eeriest characters.

TVGuide.com: You received an Emmy nod last year for Lost. Does an actor ever settle into a role and think, "You know what? This could be an award-winning project, if I do the right things with it"?
Michael Emerson: I tend to just show up and do the work. I don’t think too much about those more popular issues. Partly because I'm a creature of the theater and am therefore more superstitious. Some things are not to be said or thought, if you can avoid it. It begs for the gods to punish you for your hubris. It is flattering when it comes, though. Last year, I thought, "Oh my god, I am having more impact that I thought."

TVGuide.com: And with a dark role that doesn’t always connect with voters.
Michael Emerson: And we work in such isolation, too. That’s a contributing factor. We're out there in Hawaii, there are no paparazzi, there are no fancy parties.... We get up before the sun, drive to some remote location, and punish ourselves all day long. You don’t get a strong grasp as to how it's received on the rest of the globe.

TVGuide.com: Are we to make anything of the fact that both Ben's mother and Locke's mother were named Emily?
Michael Emerson: Well, that very idea occurred to me last week — and I'm usually the slowest on the uptake with those kinds of clues. I thought, "let's hold onto that." They don’t make those kinds of accidents. The guys who write Lost are very careful about names. [Laughs]

Ben Linus Plays Mind Games with Quint! - aintitcool.com interview

2008-04-29T06:07:00.000-07:00

Quint: Hey Michael, what’s up?
Michael Emerson: I’m just having a nice day off.

Quint: I can imagine. You guys all went back to work right after the strike, right?
Michael Emerson: Yeah, and we have just been going at a serious rate of speed with so many endless days of running around in a jungle and fighting and shooting… Oh, my god…

Quint: Well at least it is in Hawaii. You could be doing that in some… I was going to say desert, but you were in the desert last week. Speaking of the show, I’ve been a follower since the beginning, but I saw last week’s episode and I really dug it.
Michael Emerson: Oh, good.

Quint: It must be great for you, because they are making Ben such a central character to whole story.
Michael Emerson: Yeah, they have given me a lot to do lately and it does seem like wherever the uber story is going that it has something to do with Ben and his mission and the things he knows.

Quint: I know at the beginning that it was very much set up as kind of this Locke and Jack as the central figures, but it has slowly over the seasons and especially with the reveal of last week’s episode, it seems that the bigger power struggle is between you and Penny’s father, so it’s pretty interesting, at least for fans. It must be great for you, but it’s probably also got to be a little bit of pressure since there are so many hardcore fans of the show now that if you are playing more of a central role to everything, I would imagine, as a non-actor, that there would be more pressure on your part to appease those fans.
Michael Emerson: Yeah, well you just want to keep the work good and you don’t want your character to become… You don’t want to lose mystery or ambiguity and you want it always to be compelling playing, so yeah there is a little bit of extra responsibility to keep it fresh and hot if you can or if your role gets bigger. It’s interesting though how with each season on the show, the lens through which we do the story, pulls back a little further and includes more territory and more characters, so that the show… I don’t know if they ever actually meant it to be just about survivors on an island. I know a lot of people complain that they have sort of lost that first season blush on the show, but I don’t think they ever meant to stay there. I think that was just one look of many that and that the story was going to grow up and out and away from that.

Quint: Speaking as a fan, I think that as long as they keep the characters that everybody fell in love with in that first season, those who are left, as long as they keep them in the fold… I think that is where a lot of people were struggling with season two, because it focused so much away from all of the characters that everybody had assumed were going to be the leads rightly or wrongly, but I think that’s why the fan base has so roundly given themselves over now to Abrams and Lindelof and his crew, because they did. Now all of our characters are intermingling with all of the newer characters and like you were saying, they “keep it fresh.” I love their change up and when they started doing flash forwards.
Michael Emerson: Yeah, that was a stroke of genius, wasn’t it?

Quint: I think it’s an incredible way to keep a dynamic that everybody loves from the show without letting it go stale.
Michael Emerson: Yeah. I think it’s very fresh and I think it lends gravity and a maturity to the story now, because now we see that we are not dealing with the kind of story that has a trite ending, that this is going to be a thing more for grown ups and more about imperfect endings and things with regret; things left undone and unsaid, that kind of stuff.
Quint: Definitely. Let’s talk a little bit about some specifics form last week’s show if you don’t mind.
Michael Emerson: Sure.

Quint: Of course I’m a big sci-fi/horror nerd, so whenever the smoke monster returned and you walked out of that hidden tunnel and were filthy, I turned to my friends who I was watching it with and was like “Oh man, he just summoned the smoke monster, didn’t he?” It was great. That was great, but my favorite part of last week’s show had to be the moment when Alex was killed, because you can so clearly see in your character that you knew that that wasn’t going to happen and when it did, it was the very first thing we have seen in any of the episodes you have been in where you have been genuinely shaken.
Michael Emerson: Yeah.

Quint: I was just wondering how you approached that moment, because it was so new for your character.
Michael Emerson: Yeah, it was shocking and for Ben, he is never fully caught off guard, he’s never flummoxed or shocked really, but clearly something went very wrong and against every expectation in that moment and now he has sort of been shattered in a way. I don’t know how he is going to pull himself together exactly, but it was sweetly played by Tania Raymonde and I will miss her so much, quite afar from us having a fictional relationship, I also just like her very much as a person and have loved working with her. I do feel a fatherly sadness at her going away and not continuing to be on the show. There are a lot of sort of fictional and real impulses at play there and Ben has to play a scene more naked or vulnerable than he is used to doing. There were many challenges for me as an actor in that episode; physical challenges with combat and horses and then getting outside of my emotional comfort zone as well. It was interesting work… hard work.

Quint: Yeah, well it was definitely your episode. You were the flash forward and what is also really interesting, I think, about the episode is it really kind of takes what has been up to this point kind of a villainous person… It’s like the more we see of him, the less of a villain he is then when we first met him.
Michael Emerson: That’s true. I was just saying that to somebody yesterday, that gradually I’m sliding towards this empathetic end of the scale on our show.

Quint: Yeah, definitely. I mean with that moment at the end when you say you are going after Penny it was like you have become… it’s weird, because it is almost like you have become an anti-hero, except everybody loves Penny. It’s a weird place to put the audience, because we feel for you and we want you to get revenge, but we also don’t want to see the people that we like get hurt in the process, so…
Michael Emerson: It creates a dilemma for the viewer, doesn’t it?

Quint: It definitely does.
Michael Emerson: Who do we support here? We know that Ben has been wronged; we have seen his pain, but now he means to take it out on Widmore by way of his daughter and what’s that deal where he and Widmore can’t hurt one another? What’s that about?

Quint: Yeah, that’s one of the talents of the show that it is able to keep posing new questions while solving old ones, so you don’t really feel shafted and that’s something that I think they have been really good about in the last couple of seasons.
Michael Emerson: Yeah, well when people say they never give anything up, that’s just wrong, they give up something every episode and then of course new questions take their place, but I think that that’s what is fun about the show, that is the landscape of this show, that of developing mysteries and puzzles.

Quint: Have you finished the season out yet or are you just taking a break?
Michael Emerson: No, we are still working. We have a lot of material at the end, I think 10, 11, and 12 are maybe done, but there is so much post work to do. So much now has to be done with music. There are way more special effects than there used to be now and now we are dealing not just with people in a jungle, but we are dealing with big boats and helicopters and all of that equipment and stuff that is all difficult to work with, so it has been challenging for the company. We have been working such long days. Finally today they gave us a full weekend off for Saturday and Sunday.

Quint: And now you are spending one of your days talking with an idiot like me.
Michael Emerson: (laughs) Not at all. You know, I actually have a lighter schedule next week. I’m over the hump. ****

Quint: That’s cool. The secrecy surrounding everything that JJ Abrams has his fingers in, especially in LOST, is well known and has almost become his trademark with his devotion to secrecy, so I was just curious how much you as an actor are kept in the dark. How much lead time do you have before you shoot, when you actually know where your character is going?
Michael Emerson: There is very little lead time. I shot a scene about ten days ago in an episode that wasn’t written until the night before and it has been like that and I don’t know if you know, but very often in the finales, there are secret scenes and again this year there are a couple. There are a couple of scenes that no one is allowed to look at until the day we film them, which I think is like May the seventh. ****

Quint: Well, what is it like from an acting standpoint? Does it make it much tougher? Do you think it actually benefits you to work on instinct and not over think it?
Michael Emerson: Yeah, people often ask me whether I need to know the larger story to play the part and luckily in this case at least I don’t. In a way, it’s freeing for me not to be responsible for too much story or thinking “Oh, how do I play this when I know that X is going to happen in ten episodes or two seasons from now?” That would just sort of clutter up my work anyway I think. I just feel free to come in and play the scene that is on the page that day and let the geniuses who run the show put it together and make the larger sense of things.

Quint: Has there ever been a moment when you have played it one way and then they have come to you saying “No, you can’t do it like that. You have to do it this way, but we can’t tell you why.”
Michael Emerson: Yeah, there have been moments like that. In the early going, before I or anyone knew that Henry Gale was going to turn out to be the leader of the others, there were sometimes these difficult moments on the set where they would ask me to do a scene… I would do a scene one way and they would say “Actually, we need it to go this other way…” We still shoot some scenes with a couple of different tones, so that they can pick what works best in the final cut.

Quint: What tone do they usually go for? Is there even a usual one?
Michael Emerson: My experience is if I shoot a scene, they will usually pick the more malevolent read for Ben. They will choose the one that makes him scarier and colder, but then they know what they are doing. They are playing with audience expectation a lot, too. It probably serves their purposes to have made Ben look evil for a spell, so that maybe someday they can then turn that on its head.

Quint: Yeah, and like how we were talking about earlier, it seems like they are laying some tracks to move in that direction, if they choose to.
Michael Emerson: Yeah, I’ll be interested to see what happens in the next season ****

Quint: And they have put a cap on it, right? They have announced that they are ending at a certain point.
Michael Emerson: Two more seasons after this.

Quint: It’s good. As much as I would love to see these characters keep going, like THE SIMPSONS or something, it would feel like it was forced and I like the idea that they are telling a specific story, you know?
Michael Emerson: Yeah. I think it was a bold stroke on their part and it reinvigorated us and the writing team and I think the viewers too, in a way.

Quint: Do they ever get your input on the character, now that you have lived with him for so long?
Michael Emerson: No, we don’t have that kind of dialogue, which suits me fine. I trust them and in a way we communicate by way of our work. They show me what they understand by writing the role and I show them what I understand in the playing of it and that becomes a kind of conversation and I see over time that they are very sensitive to the way I speak and the way I behave and they incorporate it more and more into the writing of the part. I’ll read a script and go “Oh my gosh, they know of that tic I have...” or a certain phrase that I will use in real life and there it turns up coming out of Ben’s mouth. It is kind of an unspoken kind of dialogue that we have between us.

Quint: I think the hardcore fanbase was really excited to see the smoke monster return and I think the idea that Ben has some sort of control over it is really fascinating. I think that that has really piqued the interest of a lot of people, especially what is coming up in the next few weeks. I know you can’t say much, but can you talk about, based on what you know, do you think the fans will be satisfied with the promise of last weeks episode? Do you think that will be fulfilled?
Michael Emerson: Oh yeah, I think they are going in to some mind bending new surprising directions. ****

Quint: That’s really great. One thing that I really don’t like that I’m happy to see them avoiding in LOST is the soap opera or what they are doing in comic books now a lot where nothing means anything, where you can have a character die and it’s OK, because in five issues they will be back and the world has changed or they make this life altering decision and go “Oh, if people don’t like it, then we will just go back and it was something else or we will somehow change the rules midstream” and I like that people on LOST who have died, we can still see them every once and a while in a flashback, or at least we could back in the day, and that gave them a perfect way out, but I like that everything has a consequence and everything has rules.
Michael Emerson: Right, there are rules and there are prices to be paid.

Quint: If that wasn’t the case, then I don’t think LOST would have the fan base that it does. I think people like the fact that surprising stuff will happen, like Alex getting killed, or any number of people getting killed and that being it. Nobody is really safe. We can assume that Jack is safe now. We can assume some people who make it off of the island are safe, but we don’t know to what degree they are safe after that.
Michael Emerson: Right. They may be safe in the moment, but what’s the price tag going to be?

Quint: So yeah, it’s very fascination and I think that it has been getting stronger and stronger and I am really happy, because I have a lot of shows that I like to watch and there are a couple, like HEROES, that just kind of floundered where they had a promising beginning and just kind of floundered and I have hope that the next season will be better, but it’s good to see LOST keeping strong and without flattery intended, I think a lot of that has to do with you and Ben and what you bring to him.
Michael Emerson: Thank you. I think Ben started out as kind of an experiment where they were looking for a way to add another dimension to the antagonism of the island, so that they needed a character who had a face and a voice to go with these strange powers and it was an experiment that turned out very well and luckily I was the actor who got the part and I get to play it all of the time.

Quint: Cool, so what is coming up for you? You have shooting until May 7th and then do you have any more stage work later or any films coming up?
Michael Emerson: I had hoped to sneak in some stage work this summer and if we hadn’t had the writer’s strike, I would have been able to, because we would have finished the season months ago, but as it is, there’s not really time to do a play. My wife, Carrie Preston, is working on an HBO series in LA and I don’t want to go off and do a play somewhere and not be with her, so I’ll probably just hang out in Los Angeles with her while she is working on this series called TRUE BLOOD, the new Alan Ball series.

Quint: That’s cool.
Michael Emerson: Yeah, it has a vampire theme in it, which is kind of interesting.

Quint: That’s good. I like seeing fantasy… in this way a horror fantasy getting representation with something as prestigious as HBO can be and they are giving it the real treatment.
Michael Emerson: Yeah, the series is based on a series of pulp thriller novels and I can’t remember the lady who wrote them, but it is sort of a science fiction premise. In the very near future, vampires are able to come out of the closet, in effect, because science has invented a substitute blood product that they can live off of, so they don’t need to attack people anymore. I think there’s a sort of racial metaphor at the heart of it. What area people’s feelings about vampires and I think it’s sort of a social commentary.

Quint: Yeah, you can put any stigma, you can put the “anti-gay” sentiment that’s out there now or anti-anything. That’s what I love about the genre, that it’s able to have those messages without being preachy. It very much can be used really well to massage in social commentary. George Romero is very well known for doing that.
Michael Emerson: Exactly.

Quint: Cool, well thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I really appreciate it.
Michael Emerson: It was good talking to you.

Jimmy Kimmel Grills the Lost Bosses (Part 2)

2008-04-25T05:38:00.000-07:00

This is part two of funnyman Jimmy Kimmel's interview with Lost producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof. TV Guide was able to sit in on the Q&A as the talk show host grilled the show's masterminds with his burning questions about how the season — and series — will end.

Jimmy Kimmel: Will Walt continue to grow until he's 9, 10, 11 feet tall?
Carlton Cuse: That's one of our favorite lines of the whole show: "Who told you that, Taller Ghost Walt?" You know, we went and had lunch at Arnie Morton's with Malcolm David Kelley, the actor who plays Walt.
Damon Lindelof: This was before the finale last year.
Cuse: And he was still the same size. We were like, "Thank God!" So we wrote him into the finale and then somehow, in that intervening six weeks, he hit puberty hardcore. He shows up [to shoot the episode] and it's like, "Wow, can he slam dunk?"

Kimmel: See, you should've gone for an Emmanuel Lewis or a Gary Coleman. [Laughs] In my opinion, the episode where Nikki and Paolo were buried alive was the most different of all the episodes. It almost seemed like a Twilight Zone with a little Romeo & Juliet thrown in or something.
Cuse: I think what you're responding to is that it was the one episode that sort of acknowledged that this is just a TV show. We were responding very directly to the fans' criticism of those characters. I think some people really appreciated it as a satiric exercise and some were kind of offended that we would —
Lindelof: Break the fourth wall.
Cuse: We take the show very seriously, but we do so with a spirit of fun. And I think we have to acknowledge that sometimes we make mistakes. Nikki and Paolo were a mistake. I mean, we're trying to push the envelope — some things work, others crash.

Kimmel: I doubt there's ever been a show more responsive to its audience.
Lindelof: It has to be. Because Lost is highly-serialized, we can jump the shark in such a way that people would stop watching forever. And some people have. If you were to poll them all, the common answer would be it got too complicated. People are constantly threatening to leave the show. It's not the most stable relationship. [Laughs] At a certain point, you go, "Come on! You're four years in. We're almost home. Just stick it out with us!"

Kimmel: By the final season [in 2010], it may get down to like 175 really hard-core viewers.
Lindelof: [Laughs] As long as you're one of them.

Kimmel: I will be. I've never wavered. Some episodes blow me away more than other ones, but I try to look at the big picture. I defend it when people say, "Oh, this episode's not as good." Maybe it's because I have to do a show every night and I know it can't knock your head off every single time.
Lindelof: Do you feel like there's a creative decision we could make that would make you stop watching?
Kimmel: I mean, if the Globetrotters sailed up on to the island or if Tony Danza became a castaway…
Lindelof and Cuse: Uh-oh. [Laugh]

Kimmel: Is everyone on the island from the planet Earth?
Cuse: [Long pause] Yes. That may be one of the best Lost questions we've ever been asked.
Lindelof: When you get asked questions like that, you have to be very careful how you answer.

Kimmel: Will we see the process of the Oceanic Six coming home and becoming international celebrities?
Cuse: We will probably not see them hanging out with Paris Hilton.
Lindelof: **** We really thought about, what would happen if there was a plane crash and everyone was believed dead and then six survivors turned up?

Kimmel: Someone would probably write a book. They'd do Good Morning America. And they'd get a big settlement from the airline.
Cuse: ****
Lindelof: Would you book the Oceanic Six on Jimmy Kimmel Live!?
Kimmel: Absolutely. No question about it.
Cuse: The overriding goal of the characters in Season 5 is to get on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Lindelof: That's what Jack is talking about in the flash-forward. He's not talking about the island.
Cuse: [Laughs] "We've gotta go back…on Kimmel!" And Kate's like, "No!"

TV Guide: Do you feel pressure to live up to last year's finale? How do you beat the flash forwards?
Cuse: I don't know if you beat it. **** We're doing some pretty cool s--t. It's just gonna be on a different bandwidth than last year. It's not about the M. Night Shyamalan trick.
Lindelof: Jimmy, that's actually a question I wanted to ask you. Do you find now that you've done the Ben [Affleck] and Matt [Damon] videos, everyone's saying, "How are you gonna top yourself?"
Kimmel: Yeah, but because that's a departure from my usual show, I have the luxury of not doing anything. So we're just gonna leave it alone. Certainly, if there were some spectacular idea, we'd do it. But there isn't anything better than what we did the last time.
Lindelof: That's the way we feel about last year's finale — that it's a special moment in time. That moment when Kate gets out of the car is a once-in-a-lifetime show experience.

TV Guide: The Internet has played a role in the buzz surrounding both of your shows.
Cuse: I don't think Lost could've existed in the pre-Internet era. Now you have the ability to both catch up with the show and also discuss and explain it. The camaraderie of the fans that come together over the Internet to discuss Lost is a huge factor in its success.
Lindelof: Lost has always been a cult show in its DNA. It started out as being the band that everybody was listening to and is sort of migrating down to the people who are just fans of punk rock.

Kimmel: When the series wraps, is there any chance of a Lost movie?
Cuse: Our goal is to finish the show and have it feel satisfying. We have no plans at this point to do a movie.
Lindelof: We don't wanna do "and then" storytelling. Like, "Yes, that's the entire thing. And then the one thing we didn't tell you was this."
Cuse: When the show ends, it's over.
Lindelof: But I think it goes without being said that [until then], the show is gonna get weird. Weirder.
Cuse: [Laughs] I'm glad you added that amplification. Recently, we were doing [an interview for] a clip show and after about two hours of explaining plot, I was like, "This show is insane! We are certifiably insane people."

Kimmel: Then I'm insane, too, because I'm all in.

Emilie de Ravin: From Lost Princess to Indie Queen

2008-04-24T08:16:00.000-07:00

Good luck forecasting Emilie de Ravin's next big-screen role. The ambitious Aussie beauty, who TV fans best know as Lost's Claire Littleton, this week is celebrating the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of Ball Don't Lie, yet another edgy endeavor she can add to her resume alongside Brick and The Hills Have Eyes. TVGuide.com welcomed the chance to ask de Ravin about her latest "interesting" film role, her romantic comedy aspirations (if she has them) and, of course, the increasingly shaky outlook for Lost's Claire. — Matt Webb Mitovich

TVGuide.com: So, tell me not to worry about Claire.
De Ravin: To worry or not to worry.... What can I say? Oh, you know my lips have to be sealed, unfortunately.

TVGuide.com: Her pregnancy was positioned to be so significant to Lost's mythology, I always assumed she would be around for the long haul.
De Ravin: ****, so I guess we will have to wait and see. [Chuckles]

TVGuide.com: Do you have any private, top-secret insight into why Baby Aaron is with Kate in the flash-forwards?
De Ravin: No! I'm very intrigued to find out why, though. That’s one of the big questions I have right now. I always have at least one big question — and I never get answers until I get the script!

TVGuide.com: Was it hard saying goodbye to Dominic Monaghan (Charlie)?
De Ravin: It was hard in many ways. We had gotten so close working together. It was very sad, very emotional.

TVGuide.com: You must have thought that at some point they'd get to dive into their oft-stalled romance....
De Ravin: Yeah, but it got cut short, didn’t it?

TVGuide.com: So, turning to your Tribeca Film Festival premiere, Ball Don't Lie: How does a pretty young thing like Emilie De Ravin fit into a teen boy's coming-of-age story set in the world of street basketball?
De Ravin: [Laughs] I'm actually in the flashbacks, playing the boy's (newcomer Grayson Boucher) mother. There are a lot of flashbacks, a lot of back-and-forth. She's a bipolar prostitute, so she's got a lot going on.

TVGuide.com: But is she the bipolar prostitute with a heart of gold?

De Ravin: With a heart of gold! She's a very sweet girl, but she's on the wrong side of the tracks.

TVGuide.com: This film features quite the ABC all-star team. Harold Perrineau (Lost), Richardo Chavira (Desperate Housewives), James Pickens Jr. (Grey's Anatomy)....
De Ravin: I know!

TVGuide.com: Was that coincidence, or did you all know someone who was putting this project together?
De Ravin: No, it was complete coincidence. It was funny when I heard that Harold was doing it because I never saw him on Lost. We had no work together.

TVGuide.com: Do you have any other films in the works?
De Ravin: I worked on a movie last summer called The Perfect Game, which is a children's baseball movie based on a true story and set in the '30s.

TVGuide.com: How did you like the 1930s' sort of wardrobe?
De Ravin: Oh, it's amazing. My character's wardrobe and speech is based on Katharine Hepburn, so it was a lot of fun researching that.

TVGuide.com: I look at movies like Brick... you playing a bipolar prostitute.... Do you have any aspiration to be the romantic-comedy darling?
De Ravin: Oh, I'd like to do that as well. I'm just trying to explore everything. It's fun to mix it up as much as you can. I don't want to get pigeonholed in any one genre. I like to extend myself as much as I can and challenge myself.

TVGuide.com: A romantic comedy would probably be a day at the beach after the likes of chasing zombies with a pick axe.

De Ravin: [Laughs] Exactly! It's a little bit different.

Yunjin Kim on Lost's Return: Prepare to Be 'Amazed'

2008-04-24T08:10:00.000-07:00

She was part of one of this season's time-twistiest moments, but to hear Yunjin Kim tell it, Lost has even bigger tricks up its sleeve. TVGuide.com invited the actress to preview the batch of new episodes kicking off tonight. (ABC's Lost now airs Thursdays at 10 pm/ET.) — Matt Webb Mitovich

TVGuide.com: Was it any special thrill, if only because of the job security, to learn you were among the Oceanic Six?
Yunjin Kim: Initially I thought it would mean job security, but it doesn’t really look that way. It doesn't really mean anything. ****

TVGuide.com: When you were reading the script for "Ji Yeon," were you led to believe that Jin was on his way to see Sun?
Kim: Yes and no. The Year of the Dragon was a pretty significant sign that we weren’t talking about in 2005. I got a sense we were in two different time zones.

TVGuide.com: Were you touched to see that Sun and Hurley are still friends?
Kim: I thought that of all the characters, Hurley would be the one coming to see the baby. The question is, why was he so glad none of the other Oceanic Six members would be there? While we were shooting it, we discussed how far Jorge [Garcia] should go with that. Should he be really glad no one else was coming, or half glad...? We did a couple of different variations, and they made it very ambiguous.

TVGuide.com: From where you sit, is the energy on the set at all different this season? Does the show feel tighter, more exciting?
Kim: Because of the huge [strike] break, we were all happy to come back to work and find all the crew members returning with us. I was afraid to walk in and find a new crew. But yeah, I agree that the episodes have been great. [Sun and Jin's] episode had the right combination of the story going forward with Sayid and Desmond on the freighter, and also dealing with the A-story. And, of course, the huge surprise at the end raised so many questions. That’s what Lost is all about.

TVGuide.com: What is Sun's involvement in this week's new episode?
Kim: Well, usually when you do your "own" episode, you take it easy for the next one or two. But the story continues: Are we actually going to leave the island? Right now we’re going crazy trying to shoot three episodes all at once. [Laughs] We have three different units working, we're working every single day.... I think the finale is going to be amazing. I'm a huge fan of the show, and as soon as I get a script, I plow through it to see what happens next. People will be very amazed by how we end this season and set up the next one.

TVGuide.com: What has been your favorite episode of this season?
Kim: I really loved our episode, but I also loved Desmond's. With the love story between Desmond and Penelope and those last few seconds on the phone, as they were trying to get their words out, and the music.... It was so emotional and so satisfying. You really are rooting for those two to get back together. ****

TVGuide.com: Do you know anything about the "Frozen Donkey Wheel," aka the finale's big twist?
Kim: Hmm. They’ve omitted, I think, two scenes from the finale, which was not even a script, it was a book it was so thick! It's amazing. We go out with another huge "What?!" reaction at the end.

TVGuide.com: You're one of TV Guide's Sexiest Stars [to be detailed in the May 5 issue]. How does that honor rank compared to being on Maxim's Hot 100 and a Stuff pinup calendar?
Kim: Now all my dreams have come true. [Laughs] I was very flattered. I feel like we have a very good-looking cast, so we'll each take our turn.

TVGuide.com: It must feel good to be called "sexy" when you spend every episode covered in grit or sand or are in a lot of the same clothes week after week.
Kim: Right! I guess they find dirty sexy nowadays! [Laughs]

Jimmy Kimmel Grills the Lost Bosses (Part 1 of 2)

2008-04-23T05:14:00.000-07:00

When it comes to Lost, Jimmy Kimmel's not f--king around.

On a Monday morning earlier this month, the late-night talk-show host arrived on the Disney Studio lot in Burbank tasked with a mission: Grill Lost's executive producers, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, about their massively dissected drama, which returns April 24 to round out its critically hailed fourth season. (We were lucky enough to tag along!) Kimmel, a diehard fan since the pilot, has frequently championed the series on The Jimmy Kimmel Show — interviewing cast members, trekking to Hawaii for a set visit and coining a catchphrase for Hurley ("Hey, ladies, it's Hurley time!"). He's even given the world "Lost: The Musical," a parody skit featuring a Riverdancing polar bear. (And you thought you were obsessed.)

As Kimmel greeted Lindelof and Cuse, there were initially few signs of the funnyman who recently fired up YouTube with his A-list viral video "I'm F--king Ben Affleck" (a retaliation to girlfriend Sarah Silverman's "I'm F--king Matt Damon"). He not only arrived 10 minutes early with a writer from his show in tow, but also came armed with a two-inch-thick stack of research, which he'd diligently printed out the night before after roasting Simon Cowell at Idol Gives Back. As Cuse would later note, Kimmel had "the laser-sharp focus of Mike Wallace." After a tour of the writers' room — which, sadly, had been stripped of any visible top-secret scribblings –– the producers settled onto a sofa in Cuse's sunlit office and noshed on a breakfast of fruit and pastries. Kimmel, meanwhile, took a seat across from them and painstakingly laid out his research on a table in front of him. "Don't be alarmed," he said, "but I want answers."
— Shawna Malcom

Kimmel: The island heals some people and doesn't heal others. For instance, Ben needed an operation from Jack to beat cancer, but it seems like Sawyer gets injured every sixth episode and by the next, he's fine. Is that just a TV thing?
Carlton Cuse: Wow. [Laughs] Where are the softball questions, Jimmy? What about the warm-up?
Damon Lindelof: The short answer is, it's not arbitrary. Yes, there is a certain degree of compressing story. The idea that everything you've seen has really happened in 110 days of real time feels fantastical, but that's the convention of the show. However, who gets sick and how fast they heal is something we talk about. *****

Kimmel: How do cast members find out they're getting killed off?
Cuse: We call them ahead of the publishing of the script. So whenever we actually call a cast member, they're always panicked. Even if it's like, "No, we're just calling to say you were great in this episode."

Kimmel: Did you call Mr. Friendly beforehand to tell him he was gay?
Lindelof: [Laughs] No.

Kimmel: Do all the show's writers know Lost's overarching secret, if there is one?
Lindelof: They all know what the island is and what the history of the island is. But if Carlton and I were kidnapped, and the kidnappers said, "We will not release them until you divulge the last episode of Lost," I don't know if the writers would be able to provide that.

Kimmel: I see. So you don't trust your writers. [Laughs] But you do actually know the final specific scene?
Lindelof: We absolutely, 100 percent know what the last scene of the show is and could put [the pages] in a safe deposit box. But there is an asterisk next to that, which is that we're slaves to fluctuations in reality. If one of the actors in that scene decided to stop being in Lost…
Cuse: Or, perchance, got a DUI, the entire ending of the show could change. Basically, the show is in the hands of Hawaii law enforcement. [Laughs]

Kimmel: People come up to you all the time with theories. Has anyone come close to cracking the code?
Cuse: I think there are two assumptions that people make that are incorrect. One is that the whole answer to Lost reduces down to a sentence. It's not like searching for Einstein's Unified Field Theory. And the second is that you have enough information to "crack the code." The flash-forwards completely changed your notion of the show. So how could you do some accurate theorizing before you even knew those existed?

Kimmel: Has anyone made a really lucky guess?
Lindelof: In certain areas. Last season, when we showed what happened when Desmond turned the key in the hatch and he went on this little jaunt back in England, people started saying, "Maybe the electromagnetism on the island is related to space and time." But that's just one road on the map that is ultimately gonna be the entire show. The longer it goes on, the harder it is to construct a theory that basically answers everything you've seen so far.
Cuse: Even though we get asked a lot of questions about the mythology, Jimmy, we're really trying to write a character show. We spend about 80-90 percent of our time talking about how the characters are lost in their own lives as people. The mythology is kind of the frosting on the cake.

Kimmel: Do you have one jerk on staff whose job it is to come up with all of Sawyer's nicknames?
Cuse: I wouldn't call him a jerk. [Laughs] I'd call him one of our most valued writers, and his name is Eddy Kitsis.
Lindelof: And Adam [Horowitz], too. They both come up with a whole cavalcade of them.

Kimmel: What happened to the smoke monster? High winds?
Cuse: We'll see the smoke monster in the **** episode.

Kimmel: [Laughs] Do people find clues that surprise you guys?
Lindelof: In the pilot, there's a still frame of Walt, and behind him, burnt into the fuselage wreckage, is what looks like a Dharma symbol. We'd talked about the idea that there had been a group of hippies on the island, but the phrase "The Dharma Initiative" or the design for the logo didn't come along until much later. But it's there and it's not Photoshopped. Suddenly, you understand how hundreds of people can show up and see…
Cuse: The Virgin Mary in a piece of toast. It's a mystery that's even greater than our understanding.
Lindelof: We would love in moments like that to go, "Yes. We knew we'd be introducing the idea of the Dharma Initiative in the second season premiere and we wanted people to go back to the pilot and see that the symbol had been burned into the fuselage." But if we had known, we wouldn't have done it in such an oblique way. Sawyer would've went [adopts Southern twang], "Hey, what's this?" We want people to see our Easter eggs.

Kimmel: Something I noticed early on is that many of the characters have issues with their lousy fathers.
Cuse: Is this the part where we have to cry?

Kimmel: Jack obviously. Locke. Sun's father is a killer. Kate killed hers.
Cuse: You'd be better off just listing the people who have healthy relationships with their fathers.

Kimmel: Is that a coincidence?
Cuse: No. We're sort of working out our own psychological traumas in front of 15 million people.
Lindelof: Look, there's a certain aspect of the hero's journey, whether it's Luke Skywalker or Hercules or Harry Potter, where they're either orphans or have incredibly dysfunctional relationships with their fathers. They haven't been told what to do. They have to find a mentor character outside of their own family. The show's called Lost and we always imagined it from the beginning as a show about characters trying to be better people and evolve past their own petty insecurities and problems. And if you're gonna do flashbacks, some of them are gonna be about stuff that was put on them by their parents.

Kimmel: Is the person in the coffin someone who's not from the island?
Lindelof: [To Cuse] Tread lightly.
Cuse: ****
Lindelof: The only people you can rule out, based on what you saw in last year's finale, are Kate and Jack.

Lost and Found: Scads of Scoopy Nuggets!

2008-04-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

By Michael Ausiello, TVGuide.com

"Team Darlton" (aka exec producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse) on Thursday afternoon treated the press to a conference call teasing Lost's April 24 return as well as the now three-hour finale.

Before I dive into the full transcript, some nuggets to tide you over:

On the season finale:
"***" — which the boys just finished writing this past Monday and are now polishing/starting to shoot — kicks off Thursday, May 15 (at 10 pm/ET), and then continues with Parts 2 and 3, airing May 29, from 9 to 11.

On the fate of the Sawyer/Kate/Jack triangle:
"All we can say is that Sawyer is not one of the Oceanic Six, and Jack and Kate are," notes Lindelof. "*** We think that both fans of Sawyer and Kate — otherwise known as the 'Skaters,' I am told — and Jack and Kate, the 'Jaters,' will have a bounty of interesting romance scenes."

On Jack and Juliet:
*******

On buzz that *****’s days are numbered:
"We don't really want to comment on any particular character's fate," Cuse defers. *******

On the prospect of any non-Oceanic Sixer being killed off soon:
"It's always a tricky thing when it comes to talking about death on the show," Cuse told TVGuide.com. "If we were to tease a death, like when Shannon died, it leads everybody to chase it down and spoil it. On the other hand, if we were to say that everybody is safe, that would ruin the dramatic impact of the finale. So, we're excited about what's happening and there are definitely some very large and seismic events that will happen to our castaways between now and the end of the season. *****"

On a new between-seasons online experience:
"We loved Find815[.com]," says Cuse, "and hope to do a similar thing where there will be an online prologue that leads into Season 5."

On their plans for Comic-Con:
"Last year we showed the Orchid [orientation] video, ******" says Lindelof. ***** "We would love to give the Comic-Con fans an advance first look at what we have planned for Season 5."

On Jeff Fahey:
******* Fahey, interestingly, was plucked away from working at an orphanage in Kabul, Afghanistan, when Lost came calling.

On Seasons 5 and 6:
Since this season delivered just 14 out of 16 planned episodes, the next two rounds will indeed get boosted to 17 episodes each.

On the series' very last scene:
"The last line of dialogue, we have a little bit of wiggle room. But the last scene has definitely been determined," says Lindelof. "There would have to be some major sort of shift in both our mindsets to back off that. That’s what we've been working towards for a couple of years now, even before the [May 2010] end date was announced."

On the number of people who know about that final scene:
Outside of "Darlton" and J.J. Abrams "not a lot," says Lindelof. "You can sort of count them all on one hand. But if we were to disclose the names of any others, they might be kidnapped and taken off to Central America and tortured." Adds Cuse, "We told Dick Cheney because we were pretty sure nobody would be able to find him and get the secret from him."

‘Lost': Secrets from the Set!

2008-04-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

Doc Jensen

Due to the fact that there are some major spoilers in this four-page article, two complete pages must be pretty much removed. I’ll go page-by-page on what’s left. – Melissa

Page One:
Life on the Oahu set of Lost isn't always a day at the beach.
**********
You'll start seeing it on April 24, when Lost returns with the first of five fresh episodes that will wrap up its buzzy, strike-abbreviated fourth season.

Page Two:
Camp Locke is actually Camp Erdman in real life, a YMCA facility on Oahu's North Shore. On this rain-splashed afternoon, a couple dozen day campers sit on the grass, waiting to watch Lost XXX. XXX, the man who plays con-artist bad boy Sawyer, Josh Holloway , gamely takes questions. One boy shares how his mother, a big Lost fan, talks about the show so incessantly that he has to cover his ears and beg her to stop. The kids laugh, and so does Holloway, but the camp counselor is embarrassed. ''Now, remember,'' she scolds. ''Respectful questions.''

The stars of Lost have heard worse, especially last year when they were put in the awkward position of answering harsh criticism about how Lost had lost its way. ''When you came out here last season, I remember I didn't talk to you,'' Andrews tells an EW writer, ''because if all you have to say is something negative, why talk at all?'' Asked where he thought season 3 went wrong, Andrews smiles. ''Well, I wasn't in it much, so that's flaw number one, without sounding ridiculously arrogant,'' laughs the actor, whose Sayid was truly underutilized. ''A lot of us didn't know which way the show was going, and I'm not sure the writers did, either. They seemed to be meandering in the dark. But it's good now. We're on track.''

So how did they find the light? By negotiating the death of Lost itself. Last May, the show's guiding hands, Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, reached a deal with ABC to end the series in 2010 after three 16-episode seasons; as a result, Lost's storytellers have been able to bring structure and focus to their saga. It began with last year's bravura finale, which brought the promise of rescue and introduced ''flash-forward'' storytelling into the mix. Fox — who was the only actor besides Evangeline Lily (Kate) privy to the episode's it's-not-a-flashback twist — recalls barely being able to keep the secret from the rest of the cast. ''I knew it would take Lost to the next level,'' he says.

Season 4 has gone even further with new twists, new characters, and a new forward-moving, future-revealing mythology. Front and center are the Oceanic 6, a privileged clutch of castaways — Jack, Kate, Sayid, Sun (Yunjin Kim), Hurley (Jorge Garcia), and baby Aaron — who have somehow, someway escaped the Island. ''I think this flash-forward business is a stroke of genius,'' says Emerson. ''I think everybody here feels that we are now a more mature show, that we are now a show for grown-ups, because XXX.''

Page Three:
At the very least, Lost has become a show no longer dogged by skepticism that its producers lack a master plan. ''The question of 'Do you guys know where you're going?' kind of evaporated,'' says Cuse. ''People are no longer fearful that they're going to be led like lemmings to a cliff edge and plunge off.'' Nobody is more thrilled than the cast; across the board, their enthusiasm — and, in some cases, relief — is palpable. ''Now, the story carries everything and we're just players in it, which I like,'' says Holloway. ''The writers can be concise. I like that, too.'' Adds Fox: ''Our writers have always said we needed an end in order to start ripping. Now, we're ripping.''

This isn't to say that season 4 has been perfect. After hitting a high-water mark with ''The Constant,'' a deftly plotted, unabashedly romantic time-travel yarn that ended with Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick) finally making contact with soul mate Penelope Widmore (Sonya Walger), Lost slowed the pace and muffed some plays. A trick ending — She's in the future! He's in the past! — to an otherwise powerful episode featuring Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) and Sun alienated some perplexed fans. And the hyped-up return of castaway traitor Michael (Harold Perrineau) defied continuity logic and generally failed to meet expectations. Still, these are minor concerns compared with past infractions such as a guest turn by Bai Ling and last year's awkward introductions of — we hesitate to even bring up their names — Nikki and Paulo.

Ironically, season 4's overall strength and sophistication may have renewed Lost's creative mojo, but it has also sealed the show's rep as an intimidating weekly TV commitment. Viewership has steadily declined throughout the season, from 17.8 million for the season 4 premiere to 13.4 for episode 8. When the show returns April 24, it will air after Grey’s Anatomy, at 10 p.m., and while it may get some draft from the hospital hit, it's a less-than-McDreamy hour for a series that demands maximum alertness. But ABC Entertainment president Stephen McPherson says that even though he'd ''love to see the show grow...the reality is that the numbers are pretty good.'' And he's as excited as anyone about the new direction. ''Lost has established itself as one of the great shows of all time. I'm proud that by agreeing to end the show, we have freed them up to do what they want to do.''

Page Four:
And what they'll be doing is kicking things off with a meaty sweep of story.
**********
While fans wait to see what form Lost's future takes, the cast waits to see whether they'll be part of it: XXX. XXX Daniel Dae Kim addressed a reporter's question about Jin's uncertain flash-forward fate (he seemingly died in the March 13 episode) with a mock-frantic cry: ''I don't know!'' As it was at the start, Lost is once more the show where anything can happen. Drying out in the sun after scurrying away from a big wave that washed out the scene, Yunjin Kim sits in the tall grass of the beach and sums it up: ''It feels like season 1. And I love it.''

TV Guide - Harold Perrineau Gets Lost and Found

2008-03-20T05:29:00.000-07:00

by Shawna Malcom
Harold Perrineau is back on the island — and ready to talk about why he left.

"It only goes about five feet deep," Harold Perrineau says, nodding in the direction of the swimming pool in his backyard. "If I stand in it, part of me's still above water."

From the hint of relief in his voice, you'd think a shallow pool was a major selling point when Perrineau bought the unassuming Los Angeles home more than a year ago. You wouldn't be entirely wrong.

As the T-shirt- and jeans-clad actor, 44, settles onto a sofa in the family room, he admits he's not a big water guy. He doesn't swim and he's prone to seasickness. So it's not hard to imagine Perrineau's anxiety when he found out his hotly anticipated return to Lost (Thursdays at 9 pm/ET, ABC) would take place on a ship in the vast Pacific. "My first day it was like, jump in a speedboat, drive 20 minutes out in the rain, step on the freighter," Perrineau says with a laugh. "I was sick all day."

Nausea aside, the actor is relieved to once again be part of the Lost crew. His character, Michael, hadn't been seen or heard from since motoring off the island in the Others' boat with son Walt at the end of Season 2, leaving fans to wonder what the holy smoke monster had happened to them. "It was time to come back," Perrineau says. "Even if Michael was going to die, I [wanted] him to finish, as opposed to just disappearing."

When the character finally resurfaced, pushing a mop aboard the mystery freighter in the March 13 episode, he was very much alive — if very much pretending to be someone else.

Perrineau's off-screen Lost journey has been nearly as dramatic. By the time Michael — desperate to get his son back from the Others — shot and killed Ana Lucia and Libby near the end of Season 2, Perrineau wasn't hiding his displeasure with the evolution of his character. "Michael's been such a decent guy," he told TV Guide at the time. "To suddenly be the executioner, I don't know how happy I am about that." Still, when he ultimately left, Perrineau says now, "I was a little bummed out. I'd put my heart and soul into the show."

From the start, Cuse and fellow exec producer Damon Lindelof insisted Michael would eventually return. "He was always coming back on the freighter," Lindelof says. "It was just a matter of [when] we were gonna reveal the freighter." The initial plan was the third-season finale, but Perrineau chose to sign on to the CBS pilot Demons instead.

Reports at the time blamed the lack of a Lost deal on Perrineau's outrageous salary demands, something the actor — who starred in the horror flick 28 Weeks Later and wrote and recorded a song called "Stay Strong" in support of the U.S. troops in Iraq last year — denies. "They were not throwing money at me," he says. Instead, he claims he didn't want to again uproot wife Brittany and daughter Aurora, 13, to Hawaii, where the ABC drama shoots. (Demons shot in L.A.) "I was actually making less money on Demons [than Lost]," Perrineau says. "I just needed some stability for my family."

When Demons didn't make CBS' fall '07 lineup, Perrineau was once again available and, this time, the Lost deal came together quickly. Regardless of what came before, "I'm really happy to be back," he says. "It's been like going home to family."

His immediate family, meanwhile, will stay in L.A. while Perrineau returns to Hawaii to shoot the rest of Season 4. His wife is pregnant with the couple's second child and due in less than two months. "We're gonna have a little girl," he says quietly, "and I'm looking forward to meeting her."

To make sure he doesn't miss the blessed event, he's got a plan: "When I have downtime from the show, [I'll] get on a plane. Fly back and forth to make sure the baby hasn't come. It's gonna be crazy."

But at least there won't be any boats.

Doc Jensen LOST:XXX

2008-03-20T05:15:00.000-07:00

Note to readers: The second page of Doc Jensen's article marked off here by a line of ***s is Doc's speculation regarding an occurrence teased in last week's trailer for tonight's episode. If you consider the promos spoilers or don't want to engage in such speculation skip that section. If you do want to speculate, read away. Anything not related to that specific promo tease has been redacted.

---Memphish

Doc Jensen
'Lost':XXX
Doc Jensen sizes up the odds for XXX tonight's XXX episode. Plus: Speculation on the Oceanic 6

By Jeff Jensen

THE TEASE!
XXX is the eighth episode of Lost's fourth season and the last episode that was filmed before the Writers Guild of America went on strike for three months. The good news is that the strike is over and the show is back at work; at present, cast and crew are shooting the ninth episode. The bad news is that we'll have to wait until April 24 to see it. (Curse you, post-production demands!) The slightly worse news is that when our mutual obsession comes back next month, it will air at 10 p.m., a brutal time slot for people like me, whose glittering mental carriage morphs back into a moldy pumpkin at exactly 10:01 p.m. So relish this, the last installment of the year to air at a sane hour. It promises to be a dynamite chapter in the unfolding Lost saga, according to executive producer Damon Lindelof:

''Yes, you'll find out a lot about XXX. But you'll ALSO learn XXX''

The promise of additional intrigue about XXX? Curious. I want to see this thing NOW (which for me is Monday morning, not your present Thursday time-space coordinate, so you can understand my impatience).

************************************************************************************

Deathwatch ODDS!

Handicapping killability — how tasteless am I? (Don't answer that.) But hey: Death is important, according to ABC, and so we must dutifully give ourselves over to excited speculation over which Lost actor is about to become unemployed. . I'm leaving out all the flash-forward future figures like Oceanic 6 and Ben. And I'm not going to include any of the Freighter Four, because it's too soon to off them...although I do wonder if Frank Lapidus' possibly mutinous late-night chopper errands will run him fatally afoul with crusty Captain Gault. So who's left?

SAWYER: 10,000-1
WHY? Because all outrageously handsome men who cause our wives to swoon must die.
WHY NOT? Because said wives would take up sledgehammers and storm the offices of Lost's producers and threaten Kathy Bates-style horror upon them until they brought Sawyer back to life. And anyway, he probably has a story or two left to tell.

LOCKE: 1,000-1
WHY? His flashback story seems complete. He doesn't seem to figure into the flash-forward future. And [insert your own strained reach in logic here; make sure you use the word seem].
WHY NOT? Actually, I think Locke has more history to unpack and plays a key role in the flash-forward future. Regardless, he's intrinsic to the overall Island-set saga of Lost. When the Island goes, Locke will go with it. I don't think either will be disappearing for exactly 40 more episodes. Besides, I still think he's Jacob.

DESMOND: 50-1
WHY? He might have the time-travel sickness. Are his days numbered?
WHY NOT? The former Hatchman has more secrets to spill. Plus, it would be an ice-cold end to the fan-fave DesPen love story. Moreover — and with all due respect to you Jack-Kate time-loop theorists — he and Penelope are my picks for the Adam and Eve skeletons, so at some point in time he's gotta travel back to the past.
THEN AGAIN... Given how quantum leaping in the Lost-verse is a consciousness projection affair, maybe his death would help facilitate my Adam-Eve time-loop conjecture. Okay, then: 20-1!

ROUSSEAU OR ALEX: 23-2
WHY? The French Lady has been lurking in the background all season instead of slinking off into the jungle as usual after the premiere. The sneak peek clips released to the Web this past week XXX; is Alex's mommy due for a heroic death? Or is it vice versa: Will Alex meet an untimely end, serving as a catalyst for a new chapter in her troubled mother's dark Island life?
WHY NOT? Again, Rousseau is another character with too much valuable intel; if she dies, how would we get it? As for Alex, well, you need to keep her alive to react to the death of my top choice.

CLAIRE: 17-3
WHY? At some point, Baby Aaron has to transfer custody from the Charlie-grieving Aussie momma to Kate. Might her death be the catalyst? Also: a whopping 40 percent of Lost fans think she's the one, according to a deathwatch poll over at darkufo.blogspot.com
WHY NOT? It would be more emotional and dramatic if Lost was setting up a story line in which Kate must find some way to facilitate a mother-and-child reunion in the flash-forward future.

BERNARD OR ROSE: 6-1
WHY? Rose does have cancer; maybe she isn't as healed as she thinks. (If so, does that portend bad news for Locke's legs?) But maybe it's Bernard: In retrospect, that fishing-boat heart-to-heart last week with Jin might have been a setup for his tragic end.
WHY NOT? Because it's rude to kill your elders.

JIN: 5-2
WHY? One interpretation of last's week episode was that at some point in the near future, Jin will bite it...
WHY NOT? ...but another interpretation is that the Oceanic 6 are merely pretending that Jin — and the rest of their castaway friends — are dead, victims of the 9/22/04 crash of Oceanic 815.

KARL: 2-1
WHY: If you're asking ''Who's Karl?'' then you've established one reason why he's a good candidate for goner-dom. For the record, he's the Room 23-tortured boyfriend of Alex. And he seems to be the kind of guy who's bound to blunder into a bullet or machete swipe or deadly jellyfish sting sooner or later.
WHY NOT? Ummm...because he's got blackmail pics of Damon and Carlton?

*************************************************************************************

WHY DO YOU PEOPLE HATE LITTLE CHILDREN* SO MUCH?
*No, not the Kate Winslet movie — I mean Aaron!

Last week in my recap of ''Ji Yeon,'' I declared that the mystery of the Oceanic 6 lineup was over. Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Aaron, and now Sun — these are the castaways that wind up making it off the Island and shocking the world with the fact of their miraculous existence. You didn't need to be a fake doctor to make this quasi-brilliant diagnosis: the producers have told us in interviews over the past few weeks that by the end of episode 7, the O6 IDs would all be revealed — and episode 7 was last week. So, mystery solved. Right?

Wrong! Some of you are convinced that the matter isn't resolved — that twists await, that there's one and maybe even two more members of the O6 still to be revealed. Many of you suspect that Sayid isn't really part of the O6 team, even though he said he was Oceanic 6 right before he shot that Italian guy on the golf course. But since I don't think that Sayid could get away with lying about something like that — the O6 are super-celebs, after all — I believe he was telling the truth. I think you Sayid doubters are over-thinking this — and I admire that, as over-thinking things is my bread and butter. But I think you should prepare to give up on your theory: A little birdy tells me XXX.

Then, there is Aaron. It seems a whole mess of you are just like flash-forward Jack: You can't quite accept the fact of Kate's so-called child. The argument against Aaron rests on the following two assertions:

1. Aaron was not a ticket-buying Oceanic 815 passenger, as he was still gestating inside Claire's tummy (or Kate's, per the O6 cover story), so no one in the outside world would reasonably include him among the Oceanic 6. The knee-jerk reactionary part of me wants to flame this stinky piece of overly literal thinking into smoky little embers. Seriously?! That minuscule inconsistency fries your logic grid?! Think this through: In the off-Island world, every single passenger on Oceanic 815 has been declared dead. Remember, that salvage vessel found the wreckage and 324 corpses at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Moreover, the video of this discovery was international news. EVERYONE saw those pictures. EVERYONE beheld the terrible reality of rotting airline passenger flesh. Now: Imagine the reaction when five of these passengers are subsequently discovered ALIVE — and with a baby, no less! It's a killer story for the media, and speaking as a journalist, it just makes sense to me that the reporters who would tell that story would give this bunch of miracle people a punchy group name. And sorry, ''Oceanic 5 (Plus One)'' just doesn't have a good ring to it.

2. Aaron isn't Oceanic 6 because Kate's claim that Aaron is her baby wouldn't stand up to scrutiny. She wasn't pregnant before the flight, and if the Oceanic 6 leave the Island soon, that means she'll have only been missing for five months — not enough time to bring a child into the world. Another common sense-challenged argument. The only person who could have possibly known that Kate wasn't pregnant prior to the crash was the now-dead marshal who nabbed her in Australia. But are wanted women immediately given pregnancy tests upon being captured? I doubt it. As for the rest of the argument, our sci-fi fixation of the moment, time travel, neatly nullifies it. Think about this: If the Oceanic 6 moves forward in time when they leave the Island — like, say, one full year — it gives Kate the extra months required to support her cover story.

There's a THIRD argument out there for why so many of you don't believe/don't want Aaron to be one of the Oceanic 6, but it's an argument that most of you are too ashamed to voice. I say most, because there is at least one reader who's got enough stones to give this shockingly unsentimental and possibly even hideously inhuman sentiment public voice. His name is Christopher Lastrapes, and this past week, he wrote to say:

''Part of me just doesn't want to accept it's Aaron — mainly because I really don't care about Aaron. [Emphasis mine.] So I'm still trying to figure out who it might be. Maybe Ben is assuming the identity of someone on the plane. He certainly has the means, and might be able to find someone on the flight who had little or no connections in the world. Or now, maybe Michael. I just don't want to call this case closed just yet.''

Chris, I admire your frank baby-hating honesty. But it's time you and the rest of your Aaron-denying kind face facts: The kid is Oceanic 6. And the mystery is settled.

THEORY OF THE WEEK!

''Jeff: When you get a few free minutes, please check out the site I dedicated to my new time loop theory on Lost (www.timelooptheory.com). It gets over 10k hits/day and there is an active message board with over 500 posts regarding the theory. I'm very curious to hear your thought on it, being the avid Lost fan that you are!'' —Jason Hunter

Wow, what a little self-promoter this Jason Hunter is! But I think all of you should check out his theory nonetheless. It's an extraordinarily elaborate, creative, and well-researched piece of work, and an expression of Lost fandom that I absolutely admire. Try to look past the fact that it is also a brain-cramping crush of information, speculative thinking, and leaps in logic. Just admire the beauty of its head-shaking insanity. Similarly, I encourage you to check out two other theories currently getting a lot of fan attention, one of which I don't quite understand and one of which seemed to have a lot of promise for several weeks and could still be relevant in some form, but needs refinement due to recent Oceanic 6 revelations.

That's it for this week. Even though Lost will be MIA until April 24, I'll be back next week with a new column that will process the revelations of tonight's episode and put some big-picture perspective on Lost's so-far-sensational fourth season. And make sure you come back tomorrow morning for our recap of XXX. Until then, send your reactions and theories to JeffJensenEW@aol.com.

Theoretically yours,
Doc Jensen

TV Guide - Interview with Elizabeth Mitchell

2008-03-13T08:44:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Mitchell: Lost's Juliet Kisses Jack and Tells!
By Matt Webb Mitovich

It was a genuine, tender moment that all but made up for the somewhat silly "Stop the nerve gas!" antics that preceded it. Lost's Juliet, haunted by Ben's obsession, shared a rain-soaked lip-lock with Jack. Elizabeth Mitchell shares with us what's ahead, names the episode she deems "perfect" and talks about returning to work after the strike.

TVGuide.com: What was with that bait-and-switch you did for the TV Guide cover shoot? I saw you and Naveen [Andrews] and thought, "Oh, Sayid is going to pop up in Juliet's flashback or flash-forward" and... no such thing.
Elizabeth Mitchell: You know, it was more wishful thinking, wasn't it? I called it "a little fantasy episode."

TVGuide.com: It was a hot photo shoot, though.
Mitchell: It really was! Naveen and I have known each other for a long time, so we're comfortable together and we were able to play. It was very film noir-ish, and we both enjoyed that tremendously.

TVGuide.com: Let me pull out this quote you gave me a year and a half ago: "I don't know what kind of past Juliet and Ben have, but it definitely is complicated and intricate."
Mitchell: Yeah! [Laughs] I guess so!

TVGuide.com: And you were probably just pulling that out of your bum!
Mitchell: Well, I knew it was something really, really bad. But I didn't anticipate standing over the body of my dead lover with a stake sticking out of his heart, and having Ben claim responsibility. That wasn't in my imagination. I thought it was an interesting twist.

TVGuide.com: Can we talk about the ill-advised decision to engage in an extramarital affair on a small, isolated island? I mean, people are going to talk.
Mitchell: It's the same thing as, "You should never have an affair with anyone you work with," and of course that never happens. [Laughs]

TVGuide.com: I get this weird feeling that at the end of the day, it's going to come down to Juliet sacrificing herself to save Jack.
Mitchell: Well, I think that Juliet loves Jack. I've always said that. If she did do that... It certainly seems very likely to me, something along those lines. She's also tied up with [pregnant] Sun, so who knows, but it's a possibility. She's very rabid about the people she cares about. My mom said that this morning: "You know what I like about Juliet? I like that she likes the people she cares about so much." I said, "Well, that is lovely. It is good."

TVGuide.com: Let's talk about Juliet's kiss with Jack. Are we going to get any more of that?
Mitchell: I think we are, actually. I knew that was coming because there was all this stuff with Jack and Kate. That's the fun for them, creating these "triangles." And when they went back into the Jack and Kate connection, I thought, "It seems like they're going to pump up the stuff between Jack and Juliet," and that's what happened. [Pauses] I was very happy that Jack kissed her. I thought that was a particularly good scene for Matthew [Fox], in that he came across as a very strong and very leading man. I really enjoyed how he played that. His whole face changed when she said that she cared about him, and I thought that was fascinating. I've always liked them together, but I also liked Jack and Kate together, in the first season. But in watching Jack and Juliet, I hate to say the word, but there's such a maturity to them in the way they complement each other. So we'll see where that goes.

TVGuide.com: Are you able to still watch the show as a fan?
Mitchell: Yeah, I am! It's kind of fun to watch it now. The making of the episode was such a struggle because there was so much emotion, that to sit back and watch it as a fan was much nicer. I didn't realize what a build there would be to the kiss. I didn't realize how we are so sucked into our romantic archetypes that when Jack steps forward and takes care of Juliet, something in me went, "Ohhh!" My sweet husband was in Washington, and he said he stood up and started clapping: "He did it! He did it!" [Laughs] He was really excited.

TVGuide.com: Lost really gives you two different kinds of episodes: the "real" episodes, like last night, and ones like the week before, which are a whole different kind of entertainment.
Mitchell: I have to say, that Desmond episode was as perfect an episode as you can get. I freakin' loved it. I don't think he had a bad moment as an actor, the writing was A-plus.... It was fantastic in every way. And the speed! It was like a roller-coaster. I felt like ours was more of a "Sit back and take a deep breath" episode.

TVGuide.com: Are you able to shed any light on what Juliet's therapist meant when she said, "Of course [Ben likes you]. You look just like her." There are theories that it's a childhood crush, or perhaps his late mother (glimpsed in the May 2007 episode "The Man Behind the Curtain").
Mitchell: No, I'm not [able to shed light]. It could be a love-of-his-life kind of thing, or it could be his mother. You never know with Ben. It could be someone we haven't even met yet.

TVGuide.com: We actually did a reader poll at the start of the season, asking which character people want to learn more about. Ben and Juliet placed Nos. 1 and 2.
Mitchell: Oh, that's so nice. They created an amazing and complicated woman, and they made her very much a woman. I was very proud — proud is an odd word to use — but I was proud of the creation of her and the way they did it. It was very brave, I thought.

TVGuide.com: Is there a sort of "letdown" for a Lost actor after you get "your" episode for the season?
Mitchell: [Laughs] I'm so flipping hard on myself that for me it's a relief! Other people's episodes are a heck of a lot easier to watch. This is like pulling nails. I suppose there is [a letdown], but at the same time I'm a story dork. I'm a book reader, a comic-book reader, so I'm always interested in what happens next. I actually just got the script for [Episode] 409, and I was sitting here reading it just completely entranced, and it had very little to do with me. That's the kind of show it is. I was already a fan, so to be on the "inside" of it is kind of crazy.

TVGuide.com: Are you excited to be back at work?
Mitchell: Yeah.... Aren't you excited the strike's over?

TVGuide.com: Um, yeah!
Mitchell: It's nice, isn't it? It's exciting that people are watching Lost and getting intrigued with it. That makes me happy.

TVGuide.com: The TV Guide cover story featured "Burning Questions from the Cast Members." Did you have any that didn't make the cut?
Mitchell: I don't! Do you have any?

TVGuide.com: Well....
Mitchell: I'm always curious what people are curious about. Me, I'm just going to sit back and see what happens next!

Doc Jensen - 'Lost': XXX

2008-03-13T05:53:00.000-07:00

Doc Jensen figures that the ex-castaway is Ben's freighter spy, but has theories on how that came to be. Plus: Lindelof talks Numbers

By Jeff Jensen

THE TEASE!
At exactly the 30-minute mark in tonight's episode, the strike-shortened fourth season of Lost will reach its halfway mark. At the 31-minute mark, we'll have seen more Lost this year than we will see for the rest of the year. And by the 60-minute mark, we'll have just six more episodes of Lost left until the show waddles into its cave for another nine-month nap. This kind of thinking makes me kinda sad. Didn't this season just start, like, yesterday? As Kool and the Gang taught us long ago, we should cherish the time we have. So I invite you to savor this, our sixth-to-last tease of the year, an enticing tidbit about ''Ji Yeon,'' tonight's ... installment of Lost:

XXX

For several weeks now, all of us (or enough of us to create the impression of an ''all'') have assumed that our old friend Michael. ... Wouldn't it be awesome if the spy actually turned out to be Sayid's lost love, Nadia? Or Charlie's ex-junkie rocker brother, Liam? Or even — my crazy conjecture of the week — a returned-from-the-dead Libby, resurrected via the magic of course correction?

Still, I don't want to get your hopes up. All signs point to Michael. But how? Think this through, my fellow Lost theorists: Michael's return to the Island would defy storytelling logic. According to the well-researched timeline housed at lostpedia.org, Michael and Walt left the Island 67 days after the crash of Oceanic 815 — in other words, late November 2004. But the freighter has been offshore since mid-December. Surely it took longer than just a couple weeks for Ben to get Michael in position.

XXX

READER MAIL!
First thing's first: Yes, you got me — it's Obi-WAN, not Obi-WON. But you know, it SHOULD be Obi-Won, don't you think? ''Wan'' is just so...wan. Still, I goofed, and so to atone for my fanboy sin, I'm making it up to you in the form of some scoop from Damon Lindelof about the Numbers — complete with a cool, fact-checked Star Wars reference. Wizard! But first, some other burning questions — and answers:

''Doc: Harold Perrineau is the spy...but maybe he's actually the grown-up Walt! The vector that Ben sent them on may have caused them to lose 15 years. Thoughts?'' —Bill

Bill: Good one! Let's make that Possibility Number 3!

''My theory is that Ben's spy on the boat is...Ben. Here's why. We don't know that the freighter and the Island are happening at the same time. Maybe the freighter is in the future. Also, when Ben tells Locke who the spy is, he tells him to sit down — which you would definitely say if you were telling someone you can travel through time. People keep saying Ben is right where he wants to be — that is, in captivity — so no one can see when he goes catatonic as he time travels. It would explain how he knows so much of what's going on even though he's a prisoner. What do you think? Maybe this is impossible, but it would be fun.'' —Will

Will: Your last sentence sums up my reaction — probably impossible, definitely fun.

''In 'The Constant,' when Charles Widmore was in the bathroom with Desmond and turned on the faucet, he very purposely used a towel so that he wouldn't touch the knob directly. Later, when Desmond touched the faucet directly with his hand, he was 'transported' to another time. Do you have any theories on the significance of this?'' —Maria S.

Maria S: Your curiosity about Widmore's curious bathroom routine is shared by a number of readers. I can't quite recall Chuck's paper-towel act (he's probably just a big germaphobe), but I definitely saw what other people saw: that Penelope's papa left the water running. Many have suspected that Widmore was keenly aware that Desmond was time-trippin' and somehow knew that by leaving the water on for Desmond to turn off, it would trigger another quantum leap. Maybe water serves as a kind of activation for cross-time consciousness transfer, at least for Desmond.

But here's another idea. I think Widmore knows the future — some or all of it. He's used this foreknowledge to build his financial empire. Now, the example of Desmond has shown us that those who have flashes of the future, and wish to facilitate that future, become slaves to predestination, because in order to get the desired outcome, you must make sure that the flashes play out in real life EXACTLY as you see them. So maybe the reason Widmore left the water running was simply because that was the way it HAD to happen, per his knowledge of future events. Even if I'm wrong about applying this theory to the bathroom business, I think the theory itself holds: Papa Widmore knows the future, and it drives everything he does.

''Jeff: I am convinced that Harper, as she appeared in the jungle, was indeed a manifestation of Smokey/the Island. What is your opinion on this matter?'' —CS

Clay: You are not alone. Many of you e-mailed suggesting the possibility that Harper could be the Monster. Was Harper's profession a clue? Harper was an all-knowing psychotherapist — and Smokey has the power to probe minds. I have long argued that Smokey is capable of taking human form, and more, that he/she/it has more on its cloudy mind than just killing castaways. Smokey could be manipulating our heroes toward various ends, much like the Island's other resident evil, Ben. Which suggests a possibility: Is Ben a manifestation of Smokey? Or, put another way: Is Smokey a manifestation of Ben? Tune in next week when I put some more flesh on this theory.

''I was wondering about The Numbers. Are we going to find out the meaning behind them?'' —Amy

Amy: A couple years ago, Lost staged an alternate-reality game called ''The Lost Experience'' that, with great fanfare, provided an answer to this mystery. The Numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) are values in a mathematical formula called the Valenzetti Equation, which was designed to estimate the date in which (cue dramatic music) the world as we know it will come to an end. The Dharma Initiative was trying to harness the powers of the Island to change the equation so as to prolong the life of the world. Now, we've also seen how the Numbers play an almost supernatural role in Hurley's life. However, ''The Lost Experience'' didn't address that. Personally, I have become content with accepting the Numbers as a thematic idea — an inexplicable but dramatically potent manifestation of fate, fatalism, and freaky phenomena that defies easy understanding. But I can understand why other fans might want a more concrete explanation. So: Will the show ever give us specific Numbers resolution? I ran the question by Damon Lindelof, and here's what he had to say:

''There will be more ON the Numbers, yes. But explaining WHY and HOW they are magic is like trying to explain why some magic kids are born to two muggles. The Valenzetti Equation USES those numbers, but trust me, they were around LONG before the early '60s. But for fans waiting for an advanced dissertation on the mythic significance of the numbers, I direct them to Qui-Gon Jinn's speech to Shmi Skywalker regarding midichlorians and pose the following question: Happy now?''

Point taken!

And with that, we bring another Doc Jensen column to a close. I spend my Thursdays returning e-mail, although I answer older e-mails first, so be patient. Send your theories and questions to JeffJensenEW@aol.com. And I'll be here tomorrow morning to recap tonight's episode.

Namaste!

—Doc J

'Lost': A Desmond Fact-Check

2008-03-06T05:52:00.000-08:00

EW.com/Doc Jensen/Still wondering if you really understood last week's time-space-heavy ep? Doc Jensen confirms some details with Damon Lindelof. Plus: a theory on ''the sickness,'' and a crazy new connection

Doc Jensen

Still wondering if you really understood last week's time-space-heavy ep? Doc Jensen confirms some details with Damon Lindelof. Plus: a theory on ''the sickness,'' and a crazy new connection

''THE CONSTANT'' Once Desmond's 1996 self scored Penny's phone number, his 2004 mind got rebooted...complete with time-travel memories

THE TEASE!
A dollop of tasty info designed to whet your appetite for tonight's episode of Lost, the sixth episode of this fantastic fourth season, a Juliet-centric flashback outing called ''The Other Woman.'' Executive producer Carlton Cuse was gracious enough to spill the following:

''Finally! Ben's gonna tell us who sent that damn freighter!''

Whoa! Now that's a big-time tease for you! Thanks, Captain Cuse!

You know, wouldn't it be a fiendish twist if we find out that the man behind the freighter is none other than... Ben himself!? That's what reader Tom Champoux thinks. A fan of both Lost and The Usual Suspects, Doc Champoux sent me an e-mail arguing that Ben is pulling a ''Keyser Soze'' — creating a fictitious big bad to further manipulate our heroes and advance his big-picture agenda. ''I think he hired the freighter folk through some Kobayashi butler,'' writes Champoux, whose theory could explain the mysterious identity of Matthew Abbaddon. Regardless, he says, ''I think Ben was being honest when he told Michael at the end of season 2, 'I'm one of the good guys.'''

Tom, I like the crazy/scary/morally ambiguous way you think.

THE CORRECTION
Yes, Doc Jensen is capable of making mistakes. (What do you mean you already knew that?!) Last week, in this column, I said that tonight's episode would involve a trip to the Orchid, a Dharma station that was introduced into Lost mythology last summer via a bizarre orientation film released to the Web. I was wrong. You will NOT see the Orchid tonight. However, you will see a new Dharma station, rumored to be called ''The Tempest.'' Guess it's time to bone up on our Shakespeare, huh?

My apologies for the inaccuracy.

''THE CONSTANT'' REVISITED!
With clarifications from special guest Damon Lindelof!

After last week's time-tripping Desmond episode, I promised you guys some more analysis of ''The Constant'' due to the fact that I watched it while suffering through a crunch of flu-induced fever. As it turns out, it's probably good we spend some more time with it, anyway, given the intensity of passion and interest that many fans continue to have in the episode, arguably the best single outing since season 1's ''Walkabout.'' And to help us understand the story's noodle-cooking intricacies, I have some crucial insight from exec producer and ''Constant'' co-writer Damon Lindelof that I think you'll wanna know. To wit:

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO DESMOND?
In ''The Constant,'' Desmond became ''unstuck in time'' after flying through a thundercloud crackling with strange electricity. He experienced something like time travel, though not bodily time travel; instead, his consciousness shuttled between two different time periods, Island present 2004 and Desmond's past 1996. But here's the tricky twist: Desmond's Island-present mind wasn't the one doing the time traveling. When Desmond got hit with Island magic, his consciousness got knocked off-line and was replaced by his 1996 self. It was this older Desmond consciousness that toggled between present and past throughout the episode. Once Desmond '96 completed the errand of getting Penny's phone number so he could call her on Christmas Eve 2004, Desmond's present-day mind came back online, but rebooted with the new memories created by his time-travel adventure. I know: tricky stuff. But I had the chance to run all this by Damon Lindelof — and he says this interpretation is correct.

THE MINKOWSKI EXCEPTION
Desmond had the time-warp blues, but freighter freak Minkowski had Marty McFly Mania: Due to his own exposure to electromagnetic magic, he began psychically commuting back to a pleasant day on a Ferris wheel. He died desperately trying to zip-line back to this happy day one more time. Coldly poignant, I thought. Notice: Unlike Desmond's time-travel story, Minkowski's present day consciousness was making the trip. Lindelof says this difference was designed to make a very important point: ''As Faraday explains in the episode, the effect is random. Sometimes a person can be displaced by minutes, other times, years. And the direction of the effect is equally unpredictable. Our way of demonstrating this was to give Minkowski a wildly different experience than Desmond was having.'' Lindelof says none of this is arbitrary; exposure to electromagnetism or radiation plays a role. But he adds: ''Looking for specific rules for how all this works will lead you down the path of insanity.''

PARADOX R/X, or ''HOW COURSE CORRECTION WORKS''
To be clear, Desmond's past was different before ''The Constant.'' Before his time-travel adventure, Desmond never met Faraday at Oxford, never got Penelope's digits. As a consequence of changing the past, Desmond's personal history has been ''course corrected'' by The Powers That Be, beginning from the moment he walked away from Penny's apartment. Lindelof says this interpretation is also correct. But here's a Big Question: since scoring Penelope's phone number, has Course-Corrected Desmond lived his life knowing that on Christmas Eve 2004, he MUST be on a freighter in the South Pacific in order to make a call to Penelope if he wants any chance of having a future with her? Lindelof says this is indeed a matter we should be mulling. Perhaps in the future, Lost will give us an episode that replays Desmond's backstory (getting the boat from Libby; killing Kelvin; meeting the castaways) from the point of view of this knowingness.

[And with that, our friend Damon leaves the column to attend to other important matters — running a show, raising a family, shopping for cool T-shirts. We thank him for his input. From here on, the analysis is purely mine. Sorry.]

It ain't the weather Doc Jensen's convinced that Sayid, Desmond, and Frank's chopper attempted to pass through a very nasty wormhole

THE LIPS OF TURBULENCE
Desmond's ''unstuck in time'' nightmare began when Frank flew the helicopter into that monstrous thundercloud. The chopper was buffeted by intense turbulence. Lightning flashed. Frank pulled up and out of trouble. So what was that weird weather all about? Well, I don't think it was a passing storm. In, fact, I really don't think you can call it weather. As I explained last week, I think the Island is located inside the mouth of a wormhole, a possibly volatile anomaly in the time-space fabric. The chopper was passing over the rough-and-tumble boundary that exists between the anomaly and the outside world. (That wormhole has seriously blistered lips.) Another way of thinking about this is to think of a curtain hanging around the Island at a certain point offshore. This curtain extends from the sky to the ocean floor — hence, why The Sub also encounters turbulence when traveling to and from the Island. (See: Juliet's backstory in ''One of Them.'')

The problem with wormhole theory is that wormholes don't stay open on their own. Theoretically, they require a constant (and literally astronomical) supply of energy to stay in business. This past week, popularmechanics.com (which frequently ruminates on the science of Lost) speculated that this could have been why The Button had to be pushed every 108 minutes — to harness and discharge wormhole-sustaining electromagnetic energy.

Of course, now that the Hatch is gone, does that mean the wormhole is closed? Here's my theory: I think the failsafe key protocol (initiated by Desmond in the season 2 finale) called for one last blast of energy designed to keep the wormhole open for an extended period of time so that final business could be conducted. But when that time elapses, it's hasta la vista time-space anomaly. And maybe, bye-bye Island, too.

TIME PASSAGES
The chopper left the Island at dusk, but didn't arrive at the freighter until afternoon the next day, even though the flight lasted about 30 minutes. This bit of weirdness inspired the following question in my mind: Do different trajectories away from the Island lead to different points in time? Lapidus flew a trajectory (A) that took just 30 minutes; the chopper landed about 18 hours later. If Lapidus had flown a slightly different trajectory (B) that took roughly the same time, perhaps he might have arrived sooner. Or even later. Or possibly never. Why might this be important to season 4? Because if I'm right — if every different route away from the Island leads to a different point in time — then you have to wonder about those coordinates Ben gave Michael and Walt at the end of season 2. The question isn't just ''Where did Ben send them?'' — it could also be ''When?''

TIME DIFFERENTIAL: BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD?
For a couple weeks now, we've been trying to figure out the significance of Daniel Faraday's rocket experiment, which seemed to establish a 31-minute time differential between the Island and the freighter. However, ''The Constant'' suggested (at least to me) another possibility: it could be that the Island and the freighter are in synch, and that the rocket gained the extra time while flying through the turbulent perimeter of the anomaly. This is all to say, I think we need to reconsider the idea that ''time passes more slowly on the Island'' until we get more data.

MINKOWSKI GOT ''THE SICKNESS''
I tip my hat to Lost blogger Vozzek69 (at darkufoblogspot.com) and some of my own readers for catching this one: It seems most likely that the time-travel illness that killed Minkowski is the same mythical ''sickness'' that killed The French Lady's fellow scientists wayyy back in the day. I really love this idea. I was never fond of the idea that ''the sickness'' was a Dharma hoax. It just didn't feel right. But this — this feels right. And if it is right, I love it even more for the way this answer was basically left for us to puzzle out, as opposed to having some dude explain it all to us. I expect that in the coming episodes and seasons, more Lost mysteries will be resolved this way.

But enough of this stuffy science stuff! Let's kick some old-school, pop-nutty Doc Jensen lunacy:

DEACTIVATE! Obi-Won Kenobi and Charlie have more in common than a steely gaze

Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed: © & TM Lucasfilm Ltd.

LOST'S EMPIRE STRIKES BACK SEASON

Over the years, many connections have been made between Lost and Star Wars. But I got to thinking the other day: If Lost really did correlate to the original Star Wars trilogy, then season 4 — the middle of the Lost saga — would obviously correspond to The Empire Strikes Back. And it does! Think about it:

Hoth, hideaway home to ragtag rebels fleeing the big bad Empire people = The Dharma Barracks, hideaway home to ragtag castaways fleeing the big bad freighter folk.

Boba Fett, dangerous bounty hunter hired to bag Han Solo for Jabba the Hutt = Miles Straum, dangerous bounty hunter hired to bag Ben for mysterious master.

Cloud City, a distant locale that seems to offer hope for our heroes but actually houses hidden dangers = The freighter, a distant locale that seems to offer hope for our castaways but actually houses hidden dangers. It even has its own...

Lando, an old friend to our heroes but actually working (against his will) for their hated enemy = ''Ben's spy,'' an apparent friend to the castaways (probably responsible for opening that door for Desmond and Sayid in ''The Constant'') but actually employed by big bad Ben himself. (If the spy is Michael, as I believe it is, then we'll have the ''old friend'' connection that makes the Lando link complete.)

Obi-Won Kenobi, dead guy who deactivated the Death Star's tractor beam in the last movie and in Empire appears to Luke as a ghost and urges him to go to Dagobah = Charlie, dead guy who deactivated the Looking Glass's jamming device last year and in season 4 appears to Hurley as a ghost and urges him to return to the Island.

R2D2, heroic and very cute robot who can fix broken computers, spaceships, and other electronic stuff in a jiffy = Sayid, heroic and handsome, who this season alone has already worked on Frank's helicopter and fixed the phones on the freighter. C'mon. You know it's true!

And finally, a not-yet-confirmed link, but in the spirit of bringing this column full circle:

Space Slug, a giant worm that lives inside a hole in an asteroid and nearly gobbles up our unlucky heroes = The Wormhole, a giant anomaly that contains the rock that is the Island; it has gobbled up our unlucky castaways, but we know that six will get out. XXX

May the force be with you! = Namaste!

—Doc Jensen

I spend my Thursdays returning your mail personally, so write anytime at JeffJensenEW@aol.com

TV Guide - Lost's Killer Season

2008-03-05T11:02:00.001-08:00

This is the newest TV Guide article, from 3/5. It goes along with a cover shoot featuring Naveen Andrews and Elizabeth Mitchell. The cover itself has a spoiler to Thursday's episode, so I can't post the photo here.

Lost's Killer Season
by Shawna Malcom

Lost's Elizabeth Mitchell and Naveen Andrews are both trying to fit comfortably inside a phone booth when their TV Guide photo shoot suddenly takes a playful turn. The actress — the show's Other-worldly Juliet — wraps one leg around her costar, exposing a long stretch of skin through the slit in her show-stopping black gown. "I'd like to have a gun strapped to my leg," she says with a giggle. "Or a nice, shiny Hitchcock knife."

[SPOILER]

Not since Year 1 has ABC's Emmy-winning drama been this consistently thrilling. The flash-forward odyssey of the Oceanic Six — the survivors who made it off the island and back to the future — has infused the series with renewed urgency and richer emotional resonance. "It's heartbreaking to see these characters we love so hopeful [about] getting rescued," Mitchell says, "because we've seen that things after the fact haven't turned out so well."

That's an understatement. Besides sleek-suited assassin Sayid, Hurley's back in the loony bin, Jack's a suicidal pill-popper, and Kate's playing mommy.

According to executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, Lost rediscovered its focus when they secured a 2010 series-end date. "Working that out," Cuse says, "was immensely liberating." With that target in sight, the duo finally felt they could make like a Camaro-driving Hurley in this season's premiere and put the proverbial pedal to the metal. These days, when it comes to mapping out plot twists, Lindelof says bluntly, "We're no longer stalling."

Especially since returning to work in February after the writers' strike. The producers' first order of business was to condense what were supposed to be the season's final eight episodes into what Lindelof calls a "lean, mean" five. Those installments begin airing April 24 (in a new post-Grey's Anatomy time slot at 10 pm).

[SPOILER]

TV Guide - Lost Burning Questions Answered!

2008-03-05T10:49:00.000-08:00

Here is the TV Guide article from 3/4. I have left in the non-spoiler answers, as well as all of the questions (thought people might be interested in what the cast is asking). Enjoy!

Lost: The Cast's Burning Questions Answered!
by Shawna Malcom

[SPOILER] But what other intel are producers willing to spill? To find out, we turned to no, not viewers but to Lost cast members themselves for their own burning questions.

Jorge Garcia (Hurley): "Is Ben in the coffin?"
Carlton Cuse: Come on, Jorge!
Damon Lindelof: Seriously! [To Cuse] He's just trying to make sure it's not him. It's process of elimination. The next question is, "Is it Michael?" [Laughs]
[REST OF ANSWER IS SPOILER]

Yunjin Kim (Sun): "Is Aaron actually one of the Oceanic 6?"
Cuse: We're not officially saying yet. We want the audience to engage in an active debate about who the Oceanic 6 are.
[REST OF ANSWER IS SPOILER]

Josh Holloway (Sawyer): "Is it Jack's turn with Kate?"
Cuse: [Laughs] That doesn't sound very romantic, but I guess we get the underlying meaning.
[REST OF ANSWER IS SPOILER]

Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond): "It's 2004 on the boat. What year is it in Penny's world? What year is it when the Oceanic 6 get home?"
Lindelof: What's fundamentally interesting about all the time-jumping is that we want it to make sense when people watch the show 10 years from now. We don't want it to seem dated.
[REST OF ANSWER IS SPOILER]

Evangeline Lily (Kate): "Did Michael reach the mainland? Go home? Come back to rescue us?"
[ANSWER IS SPOILER]

Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet): "Why did Juliet become such a badass? Who trained her — the Others?"
Cuse: I think there was probably some martial arts in New Otherton.
Lindelof: She probably went out shooting with Friendly back in the day, which is why she can handle a firearm so well. But the real inspiration for Juliet being a badass was Elizabeth herself. When she read for the part, she had this huge cast on her arm and was talking about her days of kickboxing....
Cuse: And then she beat Damon up.

Holloway: "Sawyer needs a freakin' haircut! Since I'm living with Hurley, can he cut my hair?"
Lindelof: [Laughs] That episode's a casualty of the strike.
Cuse: But yeah, Josh can have a haircut.
Lindelof: Josh might've forgotten, but this is a recurring request from him. He's like, 'My hair's getting long, can't Kate cut it?' So we did an episode [in Season 2] where Kate cuts his hair. I love how Josh chooses who's going to be his barber at any given time!

Cusick: "Did Jack's flash-forward in the third-season finale take place after the events of Sayid's most-recent episode?"
[ANSWER IS SPOILER]

Naveen Andrews (Sayid): "Damon spoke once about going back into Sayid's childhood. It didn't sound like bulls--t at the time. Has he abandoned that?"
Lindelof: I love how he phrases it — "It didn't sound like bulls--t at the time" — [implying], "But it certainly seems like bulls--t now." [Laughs]
[REST OF ANSWER IS SPOILER]

'Lost': Checking the Time

2008-02-28T08:17:00.000-08:00

EW.com / Doc Jensen / Is there a wormhole on the Island? Doc Jensen's thoughts. Plus: what to know for tonight's ep

'Lost': Checking the Time
Is there a wormhole on the Island? Doc Jensen's thoughts. Plus: what to know for tonight's ep
By Jeff Jensen

THE TEASE!
Do you REALLY need one after last week's massive download of coy hints and contextual info for all of season 4 from exec producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof? Of course you do!

DOC JENSEN: Last season, you touted the Desmond-centric episode ''Flashes Before Your Eyes'' by saying that it ''uses the flashback device in a way you've never seen before — and will never see again.'' Does tonight's Desmond-centric outing, ''The Constant,'' uphold that pledge?

DAMON LINDELOF: '''The Constant' upholds that pledge, unpledges it, then repledges it. Also, there's a really cool auction in it.''

An auction scene? With the nifty numbered paddles? I'm there!

TIME DIFFERENTIAL: THE MAGIC 8-BALL SPEAKS!
In which Doc Jensen shakes his magical Orb of Knowing at a burning question for the sake of edifying Lost theorymaking.

According to Daniel Faraday's rocket experiment, there is a 31-minute time differential between the Island and the freighter. However, we have seen the freighter folk communicate with their ship in real time via satellite phone. Many fans want to know: Is this a continuity error?
MAGIC EIGHT BALL: No.

How do you explain it?
MEB: How do YOU explain it? You're going to have to work a little here, ''Doc.''

Harrumph! Well...could it be that there are certain frequencies that aren't affected by whatever forces account for the time differential?
MEB: Ding! Ding! Ding! See? These Lost mysteries aren't so mysterious! Try another one. How about the time differential? What's your theory on that?

Oh, great. We're really going to show the world just how weak-ass my physics game is. Okay: Clearly, we're dealing with Einstein/general theory of relativity here —
MEB: Oh, ''clearly.'' You don't know what you're talking about, do you?

How come you're talking like Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men now?
MEB: ''Now''? Now is not a time. Sigh. Doc, have you ever tried just thinking about these mysteries more — oh, I don't know — simply? Let's start with the most interesting thing about the time differential scene, which wasn't the differential itself — it was Faraday's reaction to the differential. Remember what it was?

I remember he wasn't exactly happy.
MEB: If that's how you want to characterize it, fine. Now, what might that suggest?

That he got a result that he wasn't expecting?
MEB: Go on.

That maybe the time differential isn't ''constant,'' to use the title of tonight's episode. Like, maybe if Faraday did his rocket experiment again, the differential would be bigger, smaller, or even nonexistent.
MEB: Very good. Now, I'm not going to tell you which of those three possibilities is correct. But...all three point to one idea about the Island that all Lost theorists should keep in mind. Can you figure it out, ''Doc''?

Why are you mocking me? Don't mock me! I didn't invent you as a storytelling device just so you could make fun of me, Magic Eight Ball! We can just as easily never do this again and then you wouldn't exist anymore!
MEB: So my current status is highly...''unstable''?

Damn skippy! As unstable as Jacob's Shack! As unstable as the Hatch! As unstable as...as...all the varied forms of Dr. Marvin Candle! Yeah! You're a flickering candle, Magic Eight Ball, and I'm going to snuff you out! Your wick is dwindling! Even now, the wax of your existence is pooling in the saucer of my — WAITAMINUTE! Is that what you've been trying to tell me? That the Island flickers in and out of existence like my candle analogy? That the laws of physics themselves are in constant flux on the Island?
MEB: As always, you get ahead of yourself and make everything so much more complex than it needs to be. Just keep this one word in mind: unstable. Now let's go grab a taco.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

Back by popular demand:

THE LOST CHEAT SHEET!
SEASON 4, EPISODE 5: ''THE CONSTANT''
This week, no crazy non sequiturs, dubious pop culture tangents, or flat-out lame jokes. Only helpful information. Honest! Today's cheat sheet is indebted to two books: Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions, by Lisa Randall; and The New Time Travelers, by David Toomey.

Dedicated to all you wormholes out there. You know who you are.

THE HATCH
A bunker buried in the jungle, properly known as the Swan, and part of the Dharma Initiative, a Utopian science outfit financed by the Hanso Foundation. It was allegedly created to study the Island's unique electromagnetic fluctuations. In the finale of season 2, the Hatch either exploded or imploded; regardless, it went bye-bye, leaving nothing but a charred crater behind. Desmond, Locke, and Mr. Eko were all inside the Hatch during this destruction event. They, too, should have been blown to smithereens. Instead, Desmond woke up naked, Locke woke up mute, and Mr. Eko woke up delirious. To this day, I have been convinced that Lost has not given us a satisfying explanation for how those three survived. But yesterday, a theory came to mind. First, we must revisit:

''FLASHES BEFORE YOUR EYES''
A pivotal season 3 episode in which it was revealed that after Desmond turned the failsafe key, he experienced something like time travel; his Island-present consciousness downloaded into his flashback-past self. Even more odd, when his mind returned to the Island present, Desmond came back with ''flashes'' of the future. Did Desmond's consciousness simultaneously expand forward and backward in time, then reverse course and contract back into his head? Does super-electromagnetic Desmond have the ability to omnisciently experience the arc of his existence (or his ''worldline,'' to use a word coined by Lost-cited egghead Hermann Minkowski) all at once, but chooses not to, or at least, only in manageable ''flashes''? Perhaps tonight's episode will offer illumination. During his ''Flashes'' flashback, Desmond learned from a mysterious lady named Ms. Hawking two things about the nature of Lost time (assuming that she was being truthful, of course): Both free will and predestination are at work. Hawking warned Desmond that if he proposed to Penny, ''every single one of us will die.'' But then, after they witnessed a man's death, Ms. Hawking told Desmond that despite knowing the man's fate, she was powerless to stop it; the universe would have found a different way to kill him. This brings us to:

DAVID LEWIS
David Lewis is the name of Charlotte Staples Lewis' father. (We know this from when Ben ran down Charlotte's bio at the end of ''Confirmed Dead.'') David Lewis is also a famous thinker in the field of physics. During the 1970s, he gave a series of lectures about the topic of time travel. One of his most important contributions was a response to the problem known as ''The Grandfather Paradox.'' This is the idea that a time traveler can't go back in time and kill his grandpa because it would create a new timeline in which the time traveler would have never come into existence. Lewis resolved this paradox by simply suggesting that in a world where time travel would be possible, creating paradox would be impossible; the cosmos would basically work against you and execute what Desmond would call...

''COURSE CORRECTION'' PART ONE
Example: Charlie. But two things about Charlie's death: (1) Fate technically didn't kill Charlie. Remember what happened: Desmond flashed on a new version of Charlie's death — one that offered a future that was beneficial to all castaways. Heroically, Charlie embraced this fate. Charlie exercised his free will and essentially killed himself. (2) Regardless, Fate got what it wanted. Which brings me back to the mystery of how Desmond, Locke, and Eko survived the Hatch implosion. Were they saved by ''The Grandfather Paradox''? Did Fate spare them because they just weren't supposed to die yet? Maybe. And if so, it would be awfully convenient; Lost could basically get away with any leap in narrative logic by chalking it up to ''course correction.'' Ironically, this is exactly the complaint that many physicists have to paradox theories like the one suggested by David Lewis. Which brings us to...

''COURSE CORRECTION'' PART TWO

Igor Novikov was a physicist whose name is attached to the most famous theory addressing time-travel paradox: the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle. Similar to Lewis, Novikov advocated ''course correction.'' But many others — including Matt Visser, who coined the phrase ''Novikov Consistency Conspiracy'' — opposed Novikov's articulation because it implied the work of supernatural agencies. A religious person (like Charlotte's namesake, C.S. Lewis) might call this agency ''God.'' An open-minded scientific person might call it ''Maxwell's Demon,'' named after James Clerk Maxwell's tricky thought experiment, discussed in this space a couple weeks ago. Novikov himself called it by another name, a name connected directly to Lost: ''Jinn,'' a word from the Koran for a category of formless magical entities that defy the laws of space-time. (The Monster, for example, could be a ''Jinn.'') But I might suggest a fourth candidate, one that our old X-Files friend Dana Scully would find hard to swallow but at least puts us in a plausibly human arena: an honest-to-God conspiracy, executed by Cancer Man-ish agents like Ms. Hawking, Brother Jerome (Desmond's former monastery boss), and many others. The Lostverse is populated by people struggling to avert catastrophic paradox and perhaps battling each other over the proper form of ''course correction.'' This raises the question: How would these flesh-and-blood ''demons'' know the future? Answer:

THE ORCHID
The Orchid is the name of another Dharma Initiative station that we have not yet seen, but will, soon. (Next week, to be exact.) A version of the Orchid's orientation film was released last summer by the producers of Lost; you can see it on YouTube or at abc.com. The film suggests that Dharma was trying to harness the unique energies of the Island in order to conduct experiments in time travel. It mentions something called the Casimir Effect, which points toward the kind of energy that Dharma was harnessing. What would negative energy be good for? Growing and maintaining a most volatile distortion in the fabric of reality, or ''Minkowski space-time,'' a distortion known as:

A WORMHOLE
I bow before the feet of many other Lost theorists, including J. Wood at powells.com, who've brought wormholes into the Lost conversation much earlier than me. If you're a sci-fi nut, you know all about wormholes, a theoretical phenomenon in space-time that can connect one point in time to another. Novikov speculated that wormholes could mature into ''natural time machines.'' If the Island is basically ground zero for a small, localized wormhole, then it's very possible that Dharma was to create a kind of quantum switchboard, connecting calls between Island present and the future or the past. I wonder if the name ''Miles Straum'' is another clue nodding in the direction of wormhole theory. The producers say ''Miles Straum'' was meant to sound like ''maelstrom,'' which is a massive, monstrous whirlpool in the middle of an ocean. Not a bad analogy for a wormhole in the South Pacific, eh?

+++

I know what you're thinking. You mean to tell me that I gotta know all this noodle-cooking stuff to understand Lost? My answer is this: If any of this is accurate, I'm betting it'll probably be explained just as generally, if not more so, as I did here. But here's the curious thing about all this. Science is supposed to be the process of making the unknowable knowable, right? This is essentially the argument against supernatural forces: They're just phenomena we haven't explained yet, phenomena like Lost's Monster, ghosts, and various other ''jinns.'' But the current direction of physics suggests that science has gone so far down the rabbit hole that they're coming back to where they started: to a view of reality marked by inherent unknowability. Concepts like ''braneworld cosmology'' advocate the existence of dimensions embedded in our reality that defy natural order. I wouldn't be surprised if, at the end of the day, Lost rallies around Edward Mitten's ''M theory,'' a unified theory of reality that incorporates multiple dimensions (10, to be exact) plus a bonus 11th dimension marked by supergravity. What does the ''M'' stand for? Witten never said. It could mean ''magic,'' ''membrane,'' or ''mystery.'' In fact, Lisa Randall offers the idea that the ''M'' means ''Missing theory.''

Sounds like Lost to me.

+++

Burning Question of the Week!
''Am I the only one that wonders why no one on the island ever wears shorts?'' — John Cleckler

Damon Lindelof responds: ''Actors look silly in shorts.''

Namaste!

— Doc Jensen

Doc Jensen: 'Lost': Mind-Blowing Scoop From Its Producers

2008-02-21T07:06:00.000-08:00

EW.com / Doc Jensen / 'Lost': Mind-Blowing Scoop From Its Producers

'Lost': Mind-Blowing Scoop From Its Producers

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse tell Doc Jensen what they'll answer this season, how they're handling the time/space plot, what's relevant (or irrelevant) to the story, and more

By Jeff Jensen

THE TEASE!
If I had to sum up tonight's episode XXX I'd say, ''Let's just ask executive producer Damon Lindelof.''

''Remember last week when you were left wondering if Ben was a member of the Oceanic 6? Well, the last line of dialogue of this episode will cause the fans to ask a very similar question.''

Okay, since you brought it up, Damon: Is Ben a member of the Oceanic 6?

''Nothing precludes him from being a member of the Oceanic 6 — other than he wasn't on the plane,'' says Lindelof. ''But he does have a room full of documents and passports. He could have just, you know, done some research and doctored some records and adopted the identity of someone on the plane — someone with no family or friends who would know otherwise. So who's to say he isn't?''

So...when will we know for certain?

''By the end of the seventh episode, the audience will now know who the Oceanic 6 are.''

Well, whaddyaknow: a Doc Jensen column with some genuinely useful information for a change! And guess what?

We're just getting started.

''Sometimes, a bracelet is just a bracelet.''

DAMON AND CARLTON: A SEASON 4 INTERVIEW
No cheat sheets this week. (Though may I suggest you bone up on Philip K. Dick's ''Valis Trilogy'' in preparation for tonight's episode?) No reader mail. (Next week, I promise.) And no crazy theories from me, either. Now that the strike is finally over, it's time we heard from the majordomos of Lost themselves, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof.

Last week, I had the chance to sit down with the producers for a wide-ranging conversation about the new season. Check out the new issue of EW for their thoughts on getting back to work after the strike, XXX. But in this space, you will the hear producers speak out on a variety of issues: the structure of the season; the big mysteries that will — and won't — get resolved; the relevance of extracurricular stuff like the recent ''Find 815'' alternate reality game; and the proper way to ''read'' the show's flash-forward stories. But perhaps most provocatively, the producers offer their rules for time travel and alternate realities — rules that many of you currently engaged in wild theory-making about the interpretation of time/space on Lost will find interesting, even challenging.

We pick up the conversation with Damon and Carlton discussing one unforeseen advantage of the recent writers' strike: being able to respond to audience confusion. (Note: teases and spoiler stuff are at the end. Veggies before dessert, you know.)

CARLTON CUSE: If we were sitting down with you right now, and there hadn't been a strike, we would be in the middle of writing the finale. The entire season would have been done and the audience would have only seen two or three episodes. Now, we actually have an opportunity to react and adjust to how people are feeling about everything.

DAMON LINDELOF: Naomi's bracelet in the Sayid episode is a key point here. I got some e-mails from people who wondered if there was a connection between Naomi's bracelet and the bracelet worn by the woman Sayid killed in his flash-forward. There is no connective tissue. Sometimes a bracelet is just a bracelet. We just thought it would be a cool emotional touchstone for Sayid; Elsa's bracelet reminds him of Naomi. But some people interpreted that, ''Is there something more there?'' We might need to address that.

CUSE: But this is a commentary on how the flash-forwards work. We were very concerned if the flash-forwards would have the same emotional resonance as flashbacks because people naturally, easily understand flashback storytelling as a device. The bracelet is one example of where people, I think, can get lost.

DOC JENSEN: Some people are even wondering if the flash-forward stories in each episode are being presented chronologically. For example, did the opening sequence of Sayid's flash-forward — in which he killed the Italian guy on the golf course in the Seychelles — actually occur after his ill-fated Elsa affair?

LINDELOF: There was originally a line in that episode where Sayid said, ''I've just returned from the Seychelles,'' which would have cleared all that up. But we lost it in editing because the scene went on for four minutes. When we're presenting you with a narrative, it's always happening in chronological order.

CUSE: Lost is complex and dense, but we are very conscious of the limits. If we are going to jump time, we're not going to jump narrative order within the time jumps, too.

LINDELOF: We wrote the Sayid episode before the Boston Red Sox won the World Series a second time. So when Jack said to Frank Lapidus, ''Did the Red Sox really win the World Series?'' and Lapidus says, ''Please don't remind me,'' certain subsets of the Lost audience began asking, ''Is it possible Lapidus is actually from 2008?!'' But you have to understand: we are not writing the show for now. We are writing the show so that when you put it in your DVD player 20 years from now, you don't have to understand the nuances of the Red Sox winning the World Series, only they hadn't won it in a long time.

CUSE: But you won't have a DVD player, Damon.

LINDELOF: It'll just be downloaded into your brain.

DOC JENSEN: Another popular theory making the rounds is that we're dealing with alternate realities. For example, there are people who think the flash-forwards are merely possible future scenarios, not written in stone.

CARLTON CUSE: We want people to believe in the stakes of the show. The problem with alternative realities is that you never know when the rug is going to be pulled out from under you. We want the audience to believe that the jeopardy is real. Postulating alternative realities would be an escape valve that would be damaging that as a narrative value.

DAMON LINDELOF: You can get away with it in Heroes, where there is an apocalyptic future you want to avoid. But we're doing the opposite. We want to work toward a future where Jack is absolutely miserable and wants to go back to the Island. Everything we present to the audience has to be factual.

CUSE: We want the audience to believe that is THE future. We don't want people thinking, ''Well, since there are five iterations of this, I'm not going to invest in what's happening to the characters.''

LINDELOF: We're not going to tell you that we're against bending the time/space continuum. We are very for it. Carlton and I are PRO time-space continuum bending! But we're ANTI-paradox. Paradox creates issues. In Heroes, Masi Oka's character travels back from the future to say, ''You must prevent New York from being destroyed.'' But if they prevent New York from being destroyed, Masi Oka can never travel back from the future to warn you, because Future Hiro no longer exists. Right? So when we start having those conversations at Lost, we go, ''This show is already confusing enough as it is.'' To actually have characters traveling through time has to be handled very deftly.

CUSE: For example, the fifth episode of the season [airing next week] deals with XXX. It was a tough story to break. But we adhere to our rule: no paradox.

LINDELOF: It's been weird, though. When we got back from the strike, we had to put up a master timeline of the future, from the point where the Oceanic 6 will end up leaving the Island all the way up to where the flash-forwards will end.

CUSE: XXX How do you illustrate [a] timeline when time isn't entirely linear? XXX

LINDELOF: — just to debate the quantum physics of it all.

CUSE: [We'd need] to bring in a professional illustrator. [They smirk.]

I have a sneaking suspicion you're pulling my leg on some of this stuff.

LINDELOF: Maybe.

CUSE: But we do feel this is a place where we can challenge the audience to create a chronology — where Sayid's story happens in relationship with Jack's story, etc. We'll be adding pieces of that mosaic over the course of these five hours that should hopefully leave you with some fairly clear understanding of what happened between the time the Oceanic 6 were rescued or returned to the real world and Jack and Kate's final scene in the season finale.

DOC JENSEN: How would you describe the general structure of the season?

CARLTON CUSE: This year, it's all about the castaways' relationship to the Freighter folk. Since day one, their goal has been to get off the Island. XXX

DAMON LINDELOF: The big mystery looming over this season is, how did some people get off the Island and what happened to the people who didn't? That's the mystery that we owe the answer to at the end of the season, in addition to who's in the coffin. We could be winky about the coffin all the way through season 5. But that was one of the first things we talked about when we got back to work on the new episodes: We definitely have to show who was in the coffin. That's the primary super-structure of the season. As a result of that, certain thematic elements — the element of fate or supernatural elements as they relate to the monster and Jacob — are certainly in play but not as interesting to us this season as these questions: Why do some of the characters leave? How do they leave? What are the circumstances under which they leave? Why do some stay? Is it a choice? Is it an accident? Both?

CUSE: There are larger cosmic questions involved in that. Daniel Faraday's rocket experiment in the Sayid episode, which established a time differential on the Island, was a very important scene XXX. We've learned a lot about our characters' relationship to the Island, but now we're going to learn their relationship to the outside world once they've been on the Island. This is an important new idea to the show.

What's the deal with Jacob's shack? It keeps moving. Then Hurley saw Jack's father rocking in Jacob's chair.

CUSE: You will definitely see more of the cabin and it was very observant that many fans noted the presence of Jack's father inside the cabin. We'll shine a little bit more light on that later this season. This is stuff that is a big part of the show going forward, but in terms of the final five episodes of the season, those are not the kind of questions we'll be answering.

Hurley also saw an eyeball looking back at him. Should we be wondering about the identity of the owner of this eyeball?

LINDELOF: You should be wondering, certainly.

CUSE: One of the definitions of omniscience is to be in more than one place at a time.

LINDELOF: I always thought that word was pronounced omni-science.

CUSE: Well, you've learned something new today.

My annual inquiry: Will we be dealing with the Adam and Eve skeletons this season?

LINDELOF: No. But they will be addressed.

More Dharma Initiative intrigue this season?

LINDELOF: You haven't seen your last station. But the larger mythos, like ''The Purge'' — that's more season 5.

CUSE: We showed the Orchid video orientation film at Comic-Con — that is important for this season.

Someone at my office wants an answer to this question: Wasn't it just a little too convenient for Penny to be calling the Island at the exact same moment Charlie killed the dampening field in the season finale?

LINDELOF: Good question. Here's how we always thought of that: What we always imagined was that Penny has an auto dialer in the bedroom of her house and in various places that is constantly sending some sort of transmission to the coordinates that were revealed at the end of season 2. So when Charlie turned off the dampening field, her auto caller indicated that her call could go through.

Now that they have a satellite phone, why doesn't Desmond just call Penny?

LINDELOF: XXX the rules of the satellite phone [will be explained] XXX

The Sayid episode established that Ben's got this list of bad people that need executing. What can you say about these people?

CUSE: We'll know by the end of the season that there will be two alternative explanations for why Oceanic 815 is in the trench at the bottom of the ocean. It will not be clear which story one should believe. [To be clear, Cuse is saying the mystery of Ben's list is linked to this wreckage.]

LINDELOF: Both stories will be presented and both stories will have legitimate facts presented on their behalves.

CUSE: The act of taking a plane, filling it with dead bodies and putting it at the bottom of the ocean connotes a group that is pretty freakin' powerful. You should be worried about the people involved in either scenario capable of doing something like that.

Is one of these groups ''The Maxwell Group,'' a mysterious outfit introduced via the ''Find 815'' alternate reality game?

LINDELOF: We cannot say that any of that stuff in ''Find 815'' is in canon. The Maxwell Group is something that Hoodlum came up with. Last fall, we presented them with the idea that, at the beginning of the second episode, a salvage ship was going to find wreckage of Oceanic 815. From there, they came up with a story — and backstory — that led up to that event. [Some background: prior to the strike, the producers and ABC's marketing team hired a company in Australia called Hoodlum to execute ''Find 815.'']

CUSE: We provided the creative framework but didn't oversee the execution.

LINDELOF: I'll sign off on this idea: the Christiane 1, which in the show was responsible for finding Oceanic 815, was in fact looking for the Black Rock. We established that in the show — but the people who owned the ship may have been up to a little bit more than just looking for the Black Rock.

So what's official and what's not? What's ''canon?''

CUSE: The mobisodes are in canon. The Orchid video is in canon. The videogame is not in canon. It's unfair for the audience to go to ancillary sources in order to really understand the show. Even the things like the mobisodes, which are in canon, aren't essential to your understanding of the show. These things are just added bonuses.

LINDELOF: The only true canon is the show itself.

DOC JENSEN: You've certainly picked some interesting names for your Freighter folk. How should we be interpreting them?

DAMON LINDELOF: With Miles Straum, we just thought it would be cool if his name sounded like ''maelstrom.'' Charlotte Lewis was an obvious reference to C.S. Lewis and an important clue to places we're going at the end of the season.

CARLTON CUSE: And an important clue to Charlotte's own, as-yet-untold important backstory.

LINDELOF: One of our producers, Eddie Kitsis, has been pitching to us ''Frank Lapidus, Helicopter Pilot'' for years. Daniel Faraday is an obvious shout-out to Michael Faraday, scientist and physicist.

CUSE: As is Minkowski, who's on the Freighter. Those names are clues related to the space/time issues that will become more significant downstream.

For the record, is the official lingo here ''the Freighter folk''?

LINDELOF: I like ''Freighter folk'' because you wonder if there's an album cover out there somewhere with all of them, and they have The Mamas and The Papas outfits on.

CUSE: ''Freighter folk'' is more benign. And they're not the only people on that freighter. You're going to meet some other people on the Freighter who have another name, and in contrast to those folks these freighter folk are very...uh, folkish.

How about Matthew Abbaddon?

LINDELOF: ''Abaddon,'' we dug that one out of Wikipedia. When we name people, we often do Web searches on certain verbiage or if we want to pull something out of Greek mythology or Native American mythology, like, ''Who was the god of wheat?''

CUSE: I can't believe you're telling Jeff about the god of wheat now! The entire second half of the fourth season is about the god of wheat!

LINDELOF: Wasn't your nickname at Harvard ''the god of wheat?''

CUSE: No, it was god of rye.

LINDELOF: You see how I get confused.

[Sigh.]

Until next week, friends — Namaste!

Welcome to Spoiler Fixed!

2008-02-21T06:58:00.000-08:00

Spoiler Fixed is a place to post articles containing spoilers that have been made spoiler free. Spoilers will be removed and replaced with XXX. Links to the original article will be provided, and articles will be removed when the spoiler info is no longer relevant.

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