Dan's Media Digest

LOST - S02-E16 - The Whole Truth

** SPOILERS FOR UK VIEWERS **

A decent episode from Lost, although there's very rarely an episode that isn't interesting on some level. I'm not a big fan of the Sun and Jin flashbacks, but The Whole Truth managed to blend some of their previous flashbacks into a more cohesive backstory that was quite rewarding.

Hopefully this is a sign of things to come for some other characters with patchy histories...

Regarding Lost's second season itself, much is being made by US fans about the show's direction. I'm not really sure what all the fuss is about, as the second season has certainly progressed the show by revealing the contents of The Hatch, introduced many new characters, lost a few, and deepened the mystery with the Dharma Institute angle, while still retaining enough secrets to make the mystery worth returning to each week.

I think a lot of negative feedback is actually arising due to the incessant breaks Lost is taking during its run. March was particularly bad, with a two-week hiatus. There is a legitimate reason for these breaks, of course; the network need guaranteed new episodes for the "sweeps" periods in November, February and May, so the producers are forced to take breaks in their weekly schedule to keep sufficiently ahead of the game.

Creating an episode of Lost is a logistical nightmare (flashback continuity, returning guest actors, location filming, etc.), not to mention a headache for the writers who have a weekly deadline to write a script! It's actually amazing the scheduling gaps aren't much longer!

Therefore, I think a lot of the criticism of Lost is due to these breaks. A bad (or, more accurately, uninspiring) episode has time to linger in audiences' memory, whereas if there were new episodes each week the bad would tend to get forgotten about.

Watching US drama on DVD tends to prove this theory. I watched Lost's first season on DVD in about a week and thought it was a thrilling piece of TV that never let up in terms of pace and revelations. However, fans who watched the show in the US (and even the UK to a lesser degree) always point out a "mid-season slump". Of course, this "slump"(that probably lasted a month or so for weekly viewers) was just an afternoon blip from my perspective!

I'm sure the same will happen when Lost's second season arrives on DVD this summer. Those who bravely stayed away from the TV (in the US), or - ahem - the internet downloads, will find it's a worthy and logical continuation of the series...