Why the Future of Television Is Lost

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With Lost, he and Lindelof wrote a geeky mythology show with enough heart, humor and richness of character to appeal far beyond the Doctor Who convention set. There is Jack (Matthew Fox), a heartthrob doctor with unresolved father issues, and Locke (Terry O'Quinn), a paraplegic miraculously healed on the island. There is Hurley (Jorge Garcia), a likable sad sack who won the lottery playing a set of numbers--4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42--that we learn have mystic significance. There is a fugitive (Evangeline Lilly), a wisecracking con man (Josh Holloway), a heroin-addicted has-been rock star (Dominic Monaghan), a former Iraqi torturer (Naveen Andrews).

I left out the psychic kid, the Korean gangster and many others, but you get the point. The island may not be purgatory, but metaphorically it is: almost all the castaways have a past to atone for, and their backstories, told in flashbacks, give the mystery and monsters emotional grounding. The result is a moving, literate popcorn thriller that weaves dozens of characters' lives into a story of interconnection, redemption and grace.

Lost was a hit out of the gate, but serials typically bleed viewers as casual fans tune out. This is where the science comes in. What Lost geeks have that earlier TV cultists didn't is a mature, broadband Internet. The fans set up blogs, reference sites and podcasts. They watched, then debated and posted tidbits and theories (the smoke monster is a nanorobot cloud controlled by a psychic!). "Part of watching this show is talking about it," says Nicholas Gatto, 14, who runs abclost.blogspot.com "It doesn't just end at the credits."

The mystery of Lost--and the opportunities for cyberanalysis--turned it into TV for the post-TV generation. Besides stoking interest, technology has affected the kind of storytelling Lost can do. On a practical level, DVRs, DVDs and iTunes downloads mean it's less likely fans will miss episodes, fall behind and give up, which allows the writers to keep the show complex and challenging. "A show that is as serialized as Lost would have had a much harder time pre-iPod, pre-DVD, pre-streaming video," says Abrams.

And those technologies allow the producers to add levels of detail. In a Season 2 episode, Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), a former Nigerian drug lord, has a religious epiphany when he encounters the smoke monster in the jungle. Viewers who TiVoed the scene and played it in slow motion saw a series of images in the cloud: Eko's dead brother, a man Eko killed, a crucifix. The images flash by in fractions of a second. A casual viewer would not have noticed them at all. Either way, it works. You can sit back and enjoy the story, or you can play it, as if it were an adventure-puzzle game like Dungeons & Dragons or Myst.

The classic image of the TV superfan is the minutiae-obsessed, Vulcan-eared Star Trek fan, played by Jon Lovitz opposite William Shatner in a classic Saturday Night Live skit. Today the Lovitzization of entertainment is widespread. When Lost used stock footage from Norway to depict the founder of the Hanso Foundation--the apparent prime mover behind its conspiracy--Norwegian fans went nuts speculating over their homeland's connection to the mystery.